Animated shorts about ewoks before the films. Yey.

lucas must be dying

Oh my god that is fucking awkward.

I don't want any of the original cast returning. Even for cameos. But if R2 and 3PO aren't in there I'm not going.

almost lost in all of this is indiana jones. i would love for that franchise to be run like the james bond franchise where a new indy is cast every 4 films or so. he's such a bad ass character.

i think this whole thing is great news overall. worst case scenario is the new movies suck as bad as the prequels. people write about the prequels tarnishing the holy trilogy, but that's a load of old toss. if anything, i think it made most of us appreciate just how great those films actually are. and i find it pretty easy to disassociate the new from the old. so if the new movies blow, whatever. then a bunch of sexually frustrated people can blog about what could have been if they'd gotten this director or made the movie darker. it's worth the risk. it's a cool universe to play in.

i think what's exciting is that they can do anything they want. it's nice that they've announced their intention of making a new trilogy, but if wolverine can have his own movies, so can boba fett. you know all you fanboys would cream your jeans if that movie got made, was all dark and shit, and had a surprise cameo from another bounty hunter acting like a fucking bossk.

They had me at 'George Lucas will not write or direct.'

I know Disney is gonna want a huge director, big name, big resume, but I think the man for the job to direct whatever they make is Neil Blonkamp

Agree. it pains me to watch ANH on DVD. I would get the OT in two seconds.

Director wishlist?

Del Toro
JJ
Bird
Gore V.
Ron Howard

Spielberg could be interesting in War of the Worlds / MR mode.

Dare I say Ben Affleck?

Leave JW alone to do Marvel.
Leave Jackson in the Shire.
Leave Cameron on Endore, or where ever he is.

Duncan Jones

I don't mind some of the additional scenes, and I'd be up for a Director's cut with some deleted scenes added in, but yeah, most of the Special Edition things were terrible.

Obviously Greedo shooting first is probably worst, and for me, that dumb muppet video in ROTJ in Jabba's palace is equally as bad. It's just embarrassing. I'm also not a fan of the Hayden Chistensen (sp?) ghost thing at the end of ROTJ.

I don't mind some touched up effects though, like a more robust Mos Eisely in ANH. I'd prefer it's just left alone, but some of the special effects touch ups aren't a big deal to me. The Han / Jabba scene in ANH doesn't bother me too much, but I could take it or leave it.

I really hope they strongly consider redoing Episodes 1 through 3. These had the backstory to be better than the Original Trilogy, but what we got was a steaming pile o' shit instead. I bet a lot of people would be up for a fresh take on Ep 1, 2, and 3.

I wonder if Episodes 7, 8, and 9 will be somewhat based on the Timothy Zahn novels? I never really paid much attention to SW outside of the movies, but I did read 2 of those books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrawn_trilogy

Favreau and JJ Abrams were the first names that came to mind

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog ... -lucasfilm

Star Wars: the force may be strong with Disney

In a galaxy far far away, before the days of CGI, there were Star Wars films that people loved. And Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm may yet find a new dawn without the master

Ben Child

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away … there were decent Star Wars films that didn't consume viewers with rage and disgust. Movies that purloined the best bits from boys' own comics and adventure serials, then added pseudo-oriental mysticism for good measure. Films that used cutting edge special effects to imagine advanced technologies in distant galaxies at a time when computers were still in their infancy, yet still looked more realistic than many of today's pixel-fests. Then came the dark days of digital tinkering, CGI Jabba the Hutt and damn Jar Jar Binks. But now … just maybe … there is a New Hope.

Observers may view the announcement that Disney has bought Lucasfilm, the company owned by Star Wars creator George Lucas, as a signal that the new trilogy of films due to arrive in 2015 will be a vapid confection. In reality, the $4bn (£2.5bn) purchase of the rights to the long-running space opera is the best thing that's happened to Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Yoda et al in years for one reason and one reason alone: it potentially removes Lucas himself from the equation.

Since delivering the iconic Star Wars trilogy between 1977 and 1983, the series' creator has systematically unpicked almost all of the goodwill fans had felt for his universe. First came the decision to splatter the original films with spectacularly incongruous CGI that to this day comes close to ruining the experience of rewatching the trilogy. Then, just as we had forgiven him for giving the really quite scary original Sarlacc (just a horrific gaping maw in the desert) a silly lizard monster occupant and allowing Han Solo to step on Jabba's tale in a "brilliant" comic addition to the first Star Wars, Lucas delivered the horrible prequel trilogy. Set in the years prior to the fall of the Republic and the downfall of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, it imagined a shiny new universe with lots of CGI planets populated by personality-free space zombies. While the new triptych delivered at the box office (though not as impressively as its predecessors) it devalued Star Wars as an entity so successfully that the subsequent 2008 animated film Star Wars: the Clone Wars could not even reach $100m at a time when some Pixar films were posting 10 times that amount. It also saw Lucas notably described as "the enemy of fun" by one US critic.

Disney's announcement notes that Lucas will still be a "creative consultant" for the next Star Wars film and its sequels. But it has to be hoped that the studio will have the good sense to recognise that he long ago lost sight of what made his own creation special, and began pumping it ruthlessly for cash. The suspicion has always been that the film-maker is more obsessed with keeping the guys at his special effects unit Industrial Light and Magic busy than in picking the right kind of design for the right kind of movie. Otherwise, why parachute a CGI gofer into the start of the latest Indiana Jones film?

Disney has made a habit of being relatively hands-off with its purchases, an approach stemming from the crisis of confidence that affected the studio after it was forced to buy rival Pixar in 2006 and install the latter's founder John Lasseter as head of its animation division. The Emeryville-based company subsequently embarked on a run of four Oscar-winning movies (from 2007's Ratatouille to 2010's Toy Story 3) though it dipped last year with prosaic sequel Cars 2 and this year's solid but unspectacular Brave. Nevertheless, it has been a very good buy. Nor has Disney tinkered too much with Marvel Studios, a 2009 purchase, allowing the company to continue its five-year build towards this summer's ensemble comic book flick The Avengers, which duly went on to post a staggering $1.5bn at the box office to wide critical acclaim. Lucasfilm, however, is a different matter: in short, it could do with a good kick up the Millennium Falcon.

Star Wars certainly has the potential to soar once again. There are kids even now who are seeing the earlier trilogy for the first time and loving it. But another movie which failed to capture Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back's perfect storm of awe, atmospheric dread and operatic exhilaration would surely sound the death knell for the series as a serious proposition. Star Wars VII desperately needs somebody to take it on who can wrench themselves from the saga's decades of canonical gravy and reimagine the series for a 21st century audience. Critics will suggest that Lucas should have called time on the series after 1983's Return of the Jedi, but that was never going to happen given the films' incredible popularity with audiences. Yet we live in an era in which iconic mythologies such as Lord of the Rings, Batman and Star Trek have all been successfully reimagined: there is no reason Star Wars cannot join them.

Disney has the clout and the contacts to recruit directors with the vision to take audiences into a new era of Jedi Knights, Sith Lords, lightsabers and Death Stars. Imagine The Phantom Menace if The Avengers' Joss Whedon had been brought in to rewrite the dialogue, or Attack of the Clones with Andrew Stanton at the helm instead of Lucas himself. Cynics might respond that the odds of a new Star Wars movie being anything less than terrible are about the same as those for successfully navigating an asteroid field (3,720 to one according to C-3PO in The Empire Strikes Back). I would have to reply: "Never tell me the odds."

It's nice to be excited about Star Wars again.

That's how I feel and duncan jones is a nice choice also. I don't think guys like Del Toro or Nolan would do this.

Yeah, I read all of these between ages 11 and 15. I don't think any of them would work as a movie, really, and I doubt they'll try to follow any of them.

He was bypassed for both the Superman reboot (Zack Snyder ) and The Wolverine. The big question is whether John Lasseter would take a chance on a guy with only two movies under his belt. This would also open the door for David Bowie as a Jedi.

what did you all think of the bane voice?