The Disney Empire Strikes Back

Lucas films signed over the rights to Star Wars to Disney in October for $4.05bn and plan to bring out three new Start Wars movies over the next few years. Disney have already announced that Start Wars episode 7 is set to be released in 2015 with episodes 8 and 9 to be released two years after each episode. After already taking over Dream Works and Pixar Animation, Disney’s empire grows stronger every day with rebel studios struggling to battle against the dark side of the force.

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was first released in 1977 and was created, written and directed by George Lucas. The original Star Wars Trilogy was credited world wide as one of the greatest Sci-Fi series of all time and still holds up strong today. Its huge critical acclaim lead the first of the new prequel trilogy was released in 1999. While the prequels were often disliked by fans the franchise is still beloved by old and new generations even after 35 years.

Now fans get the chance to experience a whole new side of the force with no control what so ever from Darth Lucas. Mickey Mouse has gone from his days on Willies Steamboat to captain of the Millennium Falcon who will guide this series to a galaxy far far away.

When we think of Disney we of course think of the classic tales of the Disney Princesses of being locked in a tower and awaiting the arrival of her prince charming to rescue her. So who better to take over the franchise than Disney? The original Star Wars movie was Luke coming to rescue princess Leia from The Empire. She was the princess and Luke was Prince Charming – even if they are brother and sister.

But can Disney live up to the expectation and legacy of Star Wars and give the fans a story that is true to the ideas and themes of the franchise? We all know that Disney is world renowned for its animated movies for creative design, original story telling and professional musical score. However if there’s one thing that Disney have the least success with is sequels.

Disney movies are always very compelling and often dark at times despite being targeted towards kids. In our childhood we have witnessed Mufasa being killed by his own brother, Bambi’s mother being shot and Claude Frollo singing about lust and temptation. All of these elements were key making Disney movies a step up in animation and children’s stories.

However when it comes to sequels they seem to lose that dark edge that the original movies had. Ideas like The Fox and The Hound starting a rock band, or Quasimodo finding true love or Beauty and The Beast having domestic argument all add up to Disney having a bad reputation for movie sequels.

But this isn’t the first time that Disney have joined forced with another franchise. In 2002 Disney teamed up with Square Enix, creators of the on going video game franchise Final Fantasy. Together they released Kingdom Hearts, a game that combined the elements of Final Fantasy with Disney characters from Mickey Mouse, Donald and Goofy and film titles such as Tarzan, Peter Pan and Aladdin. The game reached massive success worldwide, gained several sequels and is sometimes claimed to be better than the Final Fantasy games.

Disney is used to taking risks and it’s one of the traits that makes their movies so memorable. Star Wars is the biggest gamble that they have ever taken and one of the biggest in recent movie history but Star Wars won’t become just another Disney sequel. With all of its history and critical acclaim over the years not even Maleficent taking over the death star can kill this franchise.