Star Wars

Photo credit

There is no denying StarWars’ influence on pop culture throughout the past 30 or so years. How influential? Well today, according to statisticbrain.com, it’s total revenue adds up to be $27,000,000,000. That’s including all Star Wars toys, video games, dvd sales, book sales and more. This all started with the first movie in 1977, which was a breakthrough in visual effects. It offered spaceship battles, awesome characters, and light sabers. The movie was so good 5 more came out. It makes sense, the money was good, the fan base was definite, so how come we haven’t seen another movie in eighth years?! Well fellow star geeks the time for yelling and begging at George Lucas is over, Disney has swooped in with 4.05 billion dollars and has taken the wheel for Star Wars. This week on Movie Madness, I report to you the future of Star Wars.

                                          photo credit: link

I love sci-fi. It is probably my favorite genre of all time. I’ve been a star gazer since I was little, watching episodes of Star Trek with my dad, or having Battlestar Galactica marathons are one of the fondest of memories so you can see how a new Star Wars movie would induce a super nerdgasm. The best news folks is that Disney hasn’t just planned for one movie, they’ve gone the traditional route and scheduled a Star Wars trilogy. It doesn’t stop there either as they’ve announced starting in 2015 there will be a new Star Wars movie every year. No this doesn’t mean we get a whole trilogy in 3 years, it means that there’ll be stand alone Star Wars films.

                                                    This is not the actual movie poster.

The possibilities are endless. Think about it. Disney could expand the whole Star Wars universe this way, introducing characters we’ve never heard about. They could even visit a different era in the Star Wars galaxy, the Old Republic, where the Sith (those dude with the red lightsabers) were a lot more common than you think.

                                           Gosh this would be awesome.

Or maybe Disney could go the much more safer route and give movies to characters we’ve all grown to love. We could see stuff like maybe a young Han Solo movie.

                                                  Young Harrison Ford

O0o0or a Yoda origin movie.

                                      
                                          Green and mean.

O0o0o0o0o0or a R2D2 & C3PO Duo comedy

Comedic duo?

Ok, maybe not the last one, but one can hope, heheh… So we’ve answered the “what?” and the “when?” now it’s all about the who? Who are they going to bring in to work on this billion dollar franchise? Who will be in front of the camera? Who will be behind it? Lucky for us, a lot of the important who questions have been answered.

                                            The fastest ship in the galaxy.

First up, as the new trilogy is set to be a sequel from the original Star Wars trilogy you have to wonder if anyone from the old cast will be involved. Thanks to an online article by screenrant.com, author Sandy Schaefer reveals that while not officially announced it’s almost definite in the fandom world that Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Harrison Ford (Han Solo), and possibly Billy Dee William (Lando Calrissian) will be returning. This article is credible as it is from a renowned site that treads carefully over such news. It provides quotes from George Lucas himself and writes it’s information with a kind of self awareness of other factoring matters such as Disney and Lucasfilm’s deal. Schaefer also provides her assumption of the inclusion of the original cast by stating the trio after all is “passing the baton to a new generation of actors who” will most likely be playing their offspring in the movies.

                                          Man they're old...

So who’s to bring back their original on screen brilliance without George Lucas in the director’s chair? Disney didn’t look too far and went and stole the director from Star Wars’ life-long nemesis, Star Trek. For those of you that don’t know his name, it’s J.J. Abrams ladies and gentleman. While it pains me to see him step away from another beloved franchise of mine I think Disney could not have picked a better person.

                                          George and J.J.

What ideas do you have for a stand-alone Star Wars film? Thanks for reading fellow bloggers, may the force be with you.