Mickey Mouse: Evil Emperor or Savior of the Force?

In case you were living under a rock last week, it was announced that Disney has bought out Lucasfilm from George Lucas. This includes both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones properties, and it was also revealed that a seventh Star Wars film is in the works as well and will be coming out 2015. What do I think about the matter? Read onwards to discover....

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Okay, I understand I'm a little late on this bandwagon, but many of the geeks that I associate with on the internet and in real life keep asking what I think on this matter, so I figured it was still worth blogging about. Plus, it will probably save my marriage, as Ashley has heard my thoughts on the matter so much that she starts to groan whenever somebody brings up Star Wars around me.

First of all, let me get this part off of my chest: every nay sayer that I hear/read about talking OMG STAR WARS IS RUINED! EPISODE 7 IS GOING TO HAVE MICKEY MOUSE IN A DUEL WITH JAR JAR!! makes me want to go into a Hulk-style rage. Do you hear how dumb that sounds? Yet that was about 60-70% of my twitter feed the day that the deal was announced. To those people, I offer one piece of evidence:

Did you see the Avengers?

Yes, this current deal with Lucasfilm is nothing new to me. Us comics fans were in a very similar predicament a few years ago when Disney purchased Marvel Comics. Honestly, that's probably why I get so mad at all the stupid things people say because they are the exact same things that people were saying was going to happen to Marvel. Yet, Disney has shown to have little to no impact on the comics-side of Marvel, and as far as the movies are concerned, they have the high amounts of cash required to give us a quality Avengers movie. Granted, it has been a few weeks since I re-watched the Avengers, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Mickey Mouse wasn't fighting alongside Iron Man. So the collective nerd culture needs to settle down a bit.

Instead, lets talk about how this is a good thing for Star Wars. Most of us fans will agree that while George Lucas did a wonderful job with the original 3 movies, the prequel movies were garbage. Honestly, can our new mouse overloads bring us anything worse than Jar Jar? I think that in recent years some of the best Star Wars stories have come from people other than Lucas (The Clone Wars, the Old Republic video games, etc.). It's time to give somebody else a chance to tell their Star Wars story. Sure, Lucas might still be around as a creative advisor, but I'm cool with that. That means he can give pointers and ideas, but ultimately there is somebody who can choose to listen to him or ignore him.

So what is Star Wars VII going to be about? As someone who has not read that many of the books, I really do not care that much. If they decide to ignore the books, so what? Welcome to the same club as us comics fans. You think Avengers or the Nolan Batman movies followed the backstories to the letter that have been in the comics for several decades? Nope. They took ideas and concepts from those stories and used them to tell their own stories, and I honestly think any new Star Wars movies will be in the same boat. Don't like that idea? Well, you've got hundreds of Star Wars books you can go read instead, go do that.

IN CONCLUSION: 2015 is currently shaping up to be an interesting year for movies, as we will witness a new Star Wars movie, Avengers 2, and a Justice League movie. Two out of those three movies are owned by Disney, by the way. I hope that all three will be great, and there is always the possibility that any of those three wont be, but I will eagerly wait in anticipation.

Do you agree? Which of those three are you excited most about? Leave a comment below telling me your thoughts.