After 20 years too long, the over-bloated series of Star Wars movies that was ignobly labelled 'The Skywalker Saga' is finally at an end, good riddance. What's left is an entire universe of opportunity for Disney to explore, full of timeless stories and characters that have been hoisted from their rightful place in the Star Wars canon. Now it's true that Disney themselves are responsible for a great deal of that hoisting, but they still hope to sink brownie points with the community by reintroducing this stuff so I think we're supposed to forget about that. "Hey, you guys liked Timothy Zahn's 'Heir to the Empire', right? Well we've already screwed up the plot of the sequels too badly to bring in Mara Jade, but you guys can have Thrawn. (Not in the movies, though. Just in the animated series which we'll then cancel before it's finale.)" So us Star Wars fans should be grateful, shouldn't we?
All of this pandering and posturing would be just that little bit bearable if, at the end of the day, Disney higher-ups finally pulled their heads out of their rears long enough to hear what the fans want. Instead they must play this excessively perverse game of Chinese Whispers for how badly they managed to mutilate the execution every single time. Do you remember, not so long ago when Benioff and Weiss weren't industry pariahs, how they had been selected to direct the new trilogy of Star Wars movies that would set, lo-and-behold, in The Old Republic? Wait really? The Old Republic? So it's finally happening? The best Star Wars comic series and the best Star Wars video games will finally be recognised for their greatness and be touched upon on the silver screen? Huh, I guess that maybe Disney aren't a bunch of talent-less hacks afteral- what the heck is 'The High Republic'!?
In a desperate effort to revitalise the Star Wars community after a divisive trilogy, (to put it mildly) Disney have unveiled the direction of their next movies through a publishing effort they have dubbed 'Project Luminos'. Luminos intends to bring the Star Wars mythos to a whole new era of history; 200 years before 'A New Hope', a time they've dubbed 'The High Republic' for it was a time in which the Jedi were at the height of their strength and power. (Really? What was wrong with them during the prequels, they seemed pretty with-it. I mean sure, they granted emergency powers to the Chancellor who then took advantage of that to launch an empire within the space of a week, but everyone has their ups and downs.) Interestingly, Disney isn't just going to launch us head-first into this era with a movie, but rather ease folk in which a collection of comic books and the like that will be aimed at everyone from adults to children. (Because I'm sure that Disney are really going to publish adult Star Wars stories. Pull the other one, Mickey.) All of this signals a brand new dawn for the Star Wars universe and I totally hate every second of it; and let me share with you why.
The Old Republic marks a period in history that it feels like Star Wars had been building up to for a long time ever since the prequels launched. Us fans always dreamed of a time before the Sith were driven underground, where they and the Jedi were equal forces in the galaxy and fought for supremacy. It represented a time where the distinction between 'good guys' and 'bad guys' wasn't so distinct and clear cut, and the Republic wasn't yet accepted as this galaxy-wide government. And most of all; it promised of huge battles between thousands of Jedi and Sith, something that people had been hopeful for since the year dot. All that is completely ignoring the great stories that have been told with the Old Republic as a backdrop, and it's all meaningless to Disney I suppose; because they've gone and made their own era just to avoid addressing KOTOR.
Project Luminos' announcement was accompanied by a sizzle-real in which you can watch a room full of 'young put-together' folks brainstorm their ideas for this new universe and coming up with such amazing deductions like the fact that these new stories should have: "Feelings". (Give these people the Oscar!) From an optics standpoint, this is clearly just a propaganda video designed to make people think that they actually have a plan this time around (seeing as how that was one of the biggest complaints with the sequels) and that this has some connection to George Lucas. (Because some folk were upset about that recently.) They even went so far as to arrange their little summit at Skywalker Ranch, although George wasn't even there so I presume that they just broke in to shoot that segment. Security probably had to chase them off the premises as soon as the cameras were off.From that video we've learnt precious little about what the actual universe is about apart from the fact that the Jedi order will not be opposed by the Sith but rather a new faction called the 'Nihil', that are apparently supposed to be space vikings. I guess that means these folk will go around raiding colonies on the fringe of space and living like nomads; hardly 'take over the universe' level threats. Even the brief concept shots we got of them was largely underwhelming, with the folk just looking like a collection of alien pirates from all different walks of life with no discernible uniform visual. (at least none that I can tell so far.) The team seem really chuffed with these bad guys too, claiming that they were born out of the desire to discuss "what are the Jedi afraid of?" To which the answer apparently isn't an age-old order of similarly powerful warrior monks who's power and influence threatens to undermine all that the Jedi are and could be, but rather a bunch of pirates who don't wash. (I know I'm quaking in my boots right now.)
Talking about 'visual style' that's another aspect of The High Republic which is looking pretty weak so far. Every single era of Star Wars has had something unique about it's style so that you identify it at a glance, with this trait only really faltering when Disney took hold. The Original trilogy was iconic with it's impressively distinct design, the prequels played up the monk-angle to the Jedi and the Old Republic bought a medieval touch to everything. The Sequels just seemed to to remix the original trilogy's design philosophy and the High Republic has borrowed from the Prequels aesthetic; nothing looks unique so far. They couldn't even be bothered to show off a new lightsaber colour, which is another thing that these Era's used to do. The Original bought us Red, Blue and Green; the prequels bought Purple and Orange and the Old Republic introduced Yellow and Silver. All these new era's have given us is increasingly stupid new saber designs that are just plain impractical. (What's that? Some High Republic Sabers have hilt guards? Well what the hell is that going to do against laser swords?)
So there we have it. Disney have bait-and-switched their audience and left everyone eager for TOR stuck with this bargain-bin rip-off era. What makes all this worse, at least in my eyes, is that we won't even be able to enjoy this from a gaming perspective as with EA still in charge we'll have to wait for the late 2020's until they manage to get a game together. Who even knows if Star Wars will even still be profitable then. Personally, I feel let down by Disney to the highest degree. They've done this time and time again and I'm getting really tired of getting myself excited for the next Star Wars event only to be gut punched at the last moment. Hey, maybe I'm just being myself and this Project Luminos is going to turn out to be a really cool idea; but after remembering that Disney's last big Star Wars related project 'Operation: Cinder' was literally one of the dumbest villain plans ever conceived, my hopes aren't exactly high.
No comments:
Post a Comment