Disney buys Lucasfilm

[Luftmensch]

It took me until now to realize this deal has been in the works for months and months and months, and they've had all this time to come up with wacky viral videos.

I thought that video was familiar, so I looked it up, and it turns out it's actually over a year old, and was made to promote the reopening of Star Tours

I've never been to Disneyland, so I didn't know about any of this stuff.

[Twig]

Oh wow, Lucas has preempted all snide comments about him forevermore. He's donating the four billion from the sale to educational programs.

Nice!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Oh wow, Lucas has preempted all snide comments about him forevermore. He's donating the four billion from the sale to educational programs.

That bastard! (Just kidding. Nice one, Mr Lucas!)

[melmer]

He should use it to compensate all the entitled fan boys

Imagine if they pay no attention what so ever to any of the extended universe... Imagine if Han and leia never have any youngling.... Imagine it!!!

[Sno]

Imagine if they pay no attention what so ever to any of the extended universe... Imagine if Han and leia never have any youngling.... Imagine it!!!

Really though, I'd be pretty bummed out if Disney chose to just reboot Star Wars or something.

There's a lot of terrible junk in the expanded universe, but it's also an impressively large and cohesive canon. It's quite a feat of universe building, and i think it would be a terrible shame to discard it all instead of finding new corners of it to explore. (It is not, for example, like Star Trek, which was always a massive continuity snarl.)

[Luftmensch]

Will this be considered Star Wars canon?

http://youtu.be/-yRNXFhboBI

[ThunderPeel2001]

He should use it to compensate all the entitled fan boys

"Entitled" is exactly the right word.

[Vegas]

There's a lot of terrible junk in the expanded universe, but it's also an impressively large and cohesive canon. It's quite a feat of universe building, and i think it would be a terrible shame to discard it all instead of finding new corners of it to explore. (It is not, for example, like Star Trek, which was always a massive continuity snarl.)

As somebody who spent a LOT of time in middle school on wookiepedia contributing stuff about boba fett, mandalorians, and clones, I shudder to think .

Honestly if they're making 7, 8, 9, I'm sure we can expect all that stuff to get shit on. A big messy wet shit.

[Ben X]

Lucas wrote over some existing expanded lore already with the prequels, right? iirc, on a special feature for one of the films, they talk about how there are levels of canon, with GEORGE canon being the top, indisputable level and anything that clashes with what George writes is immediately considered non-canon.

[melmer]

This is top level canon for sure

[ThunderPeel2001]

I love this one...

[melmer]

This is definite canon

[Nachimir]

Here's a good thing to come of this:

George Lucas Donating Disney Billions to Fund Education

[Ben X]

Some of the comments on that story are incredible.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Oh wow, Lucas has preempted all snide comments about him forevermore. He's donating the four billion from the sale to educational programs.

Here's a good thing to come of this:

George Lucas Donating Disney Billions to Fund Education

Hmm!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Some of the comments on that story are incredible.

I know. Scary.

[MrHoatzin]

So basically he moved the money from the pocket labeled Slush Fund Whatever to the one labeled Philanthropy Etc. For all we know, that money will be used to promote stupid privatized education on the corporate model of data-driven accountability, Bill Gates style. And when he rolls over and dies, control over all that money will probably go to the lawyers he's been collecting at Skywalker ranch—like some sort of a cat lady.

[TychoCelchuuu]

The charity has existed for many years and has done tons of good. I used to volunteer for a nonprofit and we got money from the Lucas Foundation. I know it's hip and edgy to hate people but when someone donates $4 billion to charity sometimes it's worth it to maybe stop and think "maybe this person has just done more good in his life than everyone I have ever met, put together."

[ThunderPeel2001]

So basically he gives $4 billion to charity and people still give him shit.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Well, I mean it's still fair to give him shit for the Prequels or the Special Editions or whatever, but acting like giving $4 billion to charity is just some way corporatize learning until he dies and lawyers eat the money is importing the deserved hate into an area where he hasn't really done anything to deserve the censure. Like, just because he forgot how to make movies doesn't mean his $4 billion is somehow going to magically be wasted.

[Twig]

So basically he gives $4 billion to charity and people still give him shit.

I read some of those comments after they were mentioned. I ugh'd, repeatedly. Now I'm just kind of sad, instead of happy.

EDIT: Hoatzin what the fuck.

Saddened all over again.

[Nachimir]

Some of the comments on that story are incredible.

Favourite:

gimmie his $ and i'll show lucas what real charity looks like.

[MrHoatzin]

It is true that I am talking out of my ass here. But I am not pre-hating his altruism for destroying my favorite movies or whatever. That is a bit of a straw man. I put more weight on his decisions surrounding Lucas Arts. Lucas has been responsible (in The Buck Stops Here kind of way) for a lot of really stupid disappointments of my childhood—on top of the fact that I consider his judgment in matters of art to be super suspect and his successes accidental. All the best shit Lucas Arts did happened before he took interest in the company. It is a kind of common knowledge that at some point he kicked out most of the creative peeps from Skywalker ranch and kept lawyers and such around, keeping Skywalker Sound as a token. So for decades this dude's been cool with being surrounded by people who threaten the AGS community for a living. He obviously takes his own judgment to be unimpeachable. It is unlikely it ever gets challenged in any meaningful way.

On top of that, it is super fashionable nowadays for powerful people of the West Coast liberal flavor who don't know shit about teaching kids to take on Thinking Big about Fixing Education—which has resulted in charter schools, standardized testing, and holding teachers accountable—pseudosolutions universally reviled by everyone who actually deals with the realities of beating enlightenment into the heads of kids.

If Lucas turns out to be the savior of all education from the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I will gladly eat all the hats you can throw my way, but for the time being I choose to be a flippant dick about it. Sorry. Let's see how this shit plays out. My best hope right now is that he somehow manages not to do more damage.

[Sno]

Lucas wrote over some existing expanded lore already with the prequels, right? iirc, on a special feature for one of the films, they talk about how there are levels of canon, with GEORGE canon being the top, indisputable level and anything that clashes with what George writes is immediately considered non-canon.

So Star Wars has tiers of canon with the movies at top, and as long as things in the lower tiers of licensed materials do not contradict with things in the higher tiers, they are considered canon. It's a very organized continuity that even allows for a lot of the older Video games to be part of actual canon.

So yeah, there was opportunity for the prequels to mess up A LOT of things, and they did, but not in the sense that it was wiping out established canon. In fact, Lucas ended up adhering pretty closely to the very expanded universe that he has often been quite dismissive of. (Coruscant, for example, originated with the Thrawn trilogy novels.)

So while the prequels introduced a whole lot of things people didn't like, like midichlorians, it didn't exactly wipe out huge swaths of the existing canon or anything. The thing i remember people being angriest about is that the prequels overwrote Boba Fett's existing origin story.

The subsequent Clone Wars CG cartoon has been way messier about contradicting existing canon.

Still, compared to something like Star Trek - which i am also a big fan of - where even different seasons in the same show can have details that are irreconcilable with eachother, Star Wars is an extremely well maintained canon.

[ThunderPeel2001]

It is true that I am talking out of my ass here. But I am not pre-hating his altruism for destroying my favorite movies or whatever. That is a bit of a straw man. I put more weight on his decisions surrounding Lucas Arts. Lucas has been responsible (in The Buck Stops Here kind of way) for a lot of really stupid disappointments of my childhood—on top of the fact that I consider his judgment in matters of art to be super suspect and his successes accidental.

THX1138: Great movie (and experimental as fuck, too).

American Graffiti: Great movie, and one of the highest grossing films of all time.

Star Wars: Great movie, and the second highest grossing movie of all time.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Great movie, and the 19th highest grossing movie of all time.

Empire Strikes Back: Great movie, and the 12th highest grossing movie of all time.

Everything else is pretty shit (except for Last Crusade and the beginning of Temple of Doom), but there's no way you can argue he didn't have talent, or that his successes were "accidental". He's made a LOT of critical and commercial successes.