When You Wish Upon a [Death] Star

On Tuesday, nerds around the world became up in arms over the George Lucas-selling-his-company-to-Disney-for-$4.05 billion debacle. My Tumblr and Facebook feeds were filled with posts along the lines of “WHY,GEORGE, WHY?” and “I can’t believe he did that” and there was a plethora of Disney/Star Wars mash-up art as well.

For those who are still sad/enraged by this merger, I urge you to CALM THE FUG DOWN.

Disney/Star Wars mash-up art (or just Disney/Stars Wars mash-ups in general) isn’t anything new — in fact, you can already see and buy that kind of stuff at Disneyland and Disney World considering the fact that there are both Star Wars and Indiana Jones attractions at either park. In Tomorrowland, you can buy popcorn inside an R2-D2 unit. Hell, there are even R2-D2 mouse ears and you can make your own light saber. Disney World holds Star Wars Weekend (which is totally unfair! What about Disneyland?!) and there’s also the Jedi Training Academy Show where little kids get to learn how to wield a light saber and face Darth Vader and Stormtroopers.

So when I first heard the news I thought, “Oh, that’s cool” because it just seemed like a natural thing given the facts I have previously mentioned.

And this video exists:

(click here in case the video doesn’t work)

I didn’t hear about Episode 7 being put into the works until a bit later (because I didn’t bother clicking any links to read the full story), but when I  heard, I started thinking, “NO, DISNEY! DON’T MAKE PEOPLE HATE YOU.” My boyfriend calmed my nerves once he told me that George Lucas was only going to be a creative consultant, because if he’s not in full creative control, then they can always turn down anything he has to say. I told Shanice (my bestest friend who hasn’t seen episodes 1-3) about that and she said, “That’s a bad thing. That can hurt Star Wars!” To which I argued, “No, it’s a GOOD thing. George Lucas is the worst thing that has ever happened to Star Wars.” You know it’s true! Just watch The People vs. George Lucas. Watch the original trilogy and see Han NOT shoot first. Just look at Jar Jar Binks.

Despite the fact that they’ve had more than a few flops (The Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy and the plethora of Air Bud movies), Disney are great story tellers. I have no doubt in my mind that they’re going to respect the Star Wars franchise and the people that will be working on Episode 7 are going to be folks who grew up with Han Solo and Chewie, so they definitely won’t bastardize the franchise. And weren’t many skeptical about Disney buying Marvel in 2010? Has anything gone wrong with that merger? No? Yeah, I thought not.

Lucas is also donating all the money he got from Disney to educational programs, which makes him better than a lot of people (looking at you, government). So you can’t hate him completely.

Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers pointed out something pretty interesting in his last video — Lucas has an effects studio called Industrial Light & Magic and in the 80s a computer graphics department was made and then sold to Steve Jobs for $5 million. That computer graphics department was Pixar and Disney bought them for $7 billion in 2006. Pretty sweet deal, right? I’d say the only bad thing to come out of that is Cars, but Cars Land at California Adventure looks pretty damn awesome. So I withhold judgement until I get to experience it in 14 days.

So people, PLEASE STOP COMPLAINING AND LET DISNEY DO ITS MAGIC. When Episode 7 comes out, THEN start complaining. Or start cheering. Whatever floats your Jabba barge.

Cheers,
Nina