Why I Love: More Star Wars films.
Why I Hate: More Star Wars films that may exist solely to squeeze every possible dime out of an existing franchise.
Why I Love: There’s a whole generation of filmmakers who grew up on Star Wars who could revive the franchise creatively.
Why I Hate: There’s a whole generation of filmmakers who grew up on Star Wars who could finish it off once and for all.
Why I Love: Disney ownership has not negatively impacted the quality of Pixar and Marvel films.
Why I Hate: This could turn out to be the exception to the rule.
Why I Love: The possibility of the story continuing in a future time frame.
Why I Hate: The possibility that they will do more prequels instead.
Why I Love: Actors from the original films could appear in the new films.
Why I Hate: How old I’ll feel when I see the original actors in the new films.
Why I Love: George Lucas won’t be directing the new films.
Why I Hate: George Lucas is unlikely to have a significant creative role in making the new films.
Why I Love: A revived Star Wars franchise could inspire a whole new generation.
Why I Hate: A whole new generation could reject it.
Why I Love: Darth Vader might appear on Once Upon A Time.
Why I Hate: Jar-Jar Binks might appear on Once Upon A Time.
MOON IN GEMINI 
So much potential to go either way. I’ll keep my fingers crossed whoever is in charge loves the source material. Check out my blog, I have a few Star Wars related posts, including this one http://amandalovesmovies.com/2012/03/02/star-wars/
I agree. I’m hoping that there are a lot of people involved who want to do everything possible to avoid hurting the franchise.
I’m cautiously optimistic, because I love Star Wars and I want to watch more movies. And like you said, Disney’s done well with Marvel and Pixar thus far, so their track record is pretty good.
The Pixar and Marvel examples are what give me the most hope that we’ll get some good, maybe even great movies.
The only thing I’m really worried about is if Disney decides to “reboot” the franchise after episodes 7, 8, and 9 — cast new actors in the familiar roles of Luke, Leia, Han. Redesign Darth Vader, Threepio, Artoo, Jabba, Reimagine the saga. Unlike other franchises like James Bond, Star Trek, etc. which are more episodic in nature with stand alone adventures, Star Wars is a saga dependent on continuity — it was inspired by serial movies, what happened before impacts what happens next. It could be a big disaster for original fans if they ever decide to shake up the franchise and start from scratch with the basic elements in place (lightsabers, space battles, the Force, the Dark Side, Jedi vs Sith, Old Republic vs Evil Empire vs Rebellion)
Continuity is very important. A reboot would be a horrible idea. I would say they wouldn’t do it because they know fans wouldn’t stand for it, but there is already talk of rebooting the Batman franchise. You’d think they wouldn’t just to avoid antagonizing the Nolan fans. Unfortunately, if they think they can make a buck off of it, Hollywood will do it. I mean, they’re talking of doing a sequel to Casablanca! Nothing is sacred.
The problem with your being against rebooting with new actors is that the old actors are just that: they’re old. They’re not young and fit like they were in the originals (with the exception of Harrison Ford…that guy never lost his looks). Depending on the point in the timeline where the new trilogy takes place, it may be necessary to recast. Also, the concept you talk about (starting from scratch with the basic elements in place) has already been done successfully. What most people who discuss Star Wars don’t realize is that everything released with the Star Wars name (books, comics, video games, etc.) has been read over and studied by George Lucas and accepted as canonical work. There are series that exist during the emergence of the Sith almost 100,000 years before even Yoda was born, all the way up to 133 years after Vader’s death. At this point, the movies are almost required to either take place immediately after the original trilogy, or be film versions of an existing set of books to keep from destroying the timeline with a single event or death. If the original actors are in the new movies, their age difference would push the films back into the New Jedi Order and Legacy eras. I would, on that note, really enjoy it if the films were based on the Fate of the Jedi series, which actually takes place 40 years after the original films, a perfect spot considering the amount of time it’s been since those were filmed and released.
George Lucas himself has even admitted to never reading any of that stuff in an interview with Starlog magazine in August of 2005:
LUCAS: “I don’t read that stuff. I haven’t read any of the novels. I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions.”
The only stuff that is truly Canon material is material created directly by GL. This means pretty much only the films and the historical data provided by George. This is a godsend because honestly 95% of all Non-movie Star Wars material is complete garbage anyway. Disney shouldn’t be held down by those subpar works, when I have the feeling they’ll come up with much better material. Disney won’t screw up… unless they do a reboot.
From what I’ve heard so far, it is true that George Lucas won’t be the director, however, he will take a significant creative role, helping to write the screenplay and for advice.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Lucas being involved with writing the screenplay or being on-board as a creative adviser. The man can tell a story, the problem is that he can’t direct a movie to save his life. So go ahead Disney, let Lucas draft a screenplay for you…just don’t let him anywhere near the director’s chair and for the love of pete, leave him out of the casting room.
Lucas didn’t write the screenplays for the original trilogy. He just provided what he wanted in them and look how much better those turned out.
George Lucas didn’t write “A new Hope” at all. It was published in 1976 and titled “Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker”, and was written by Alan Dean Foster. It was just credited to George Lucas. Read it.
forget about it. lucas is a has been.
You got one wrong.
Why I Hate: George Lucas is unlikely to have a significant creative role in making the new films.
Should have been
Why I Love: George Lucas is unlikely to have a significant creative role in making the new films.
He loves to change things just to change them, with no regard to continuity. Most of his ideas turn out to be cheese-filled crap, hence Jar-Jar Binks, a whiny little bitch who turns into Darth Vader, the 2-headed pod race commentator, Samuel L. Jackson speaking in an Ebonics accent (yeah, that’s believable), C-3PO built by Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan not remembering ever owning a droid, then having R2-D2 as his astromech in all the prequels, Bad CG remastering of the original trilogy, “NOOOOO!!!”, midichlorians, The entire planet of Naboo, and above all, Greedo shooting first.
I for one am glad George Lucas won’t be prison raping my childhood anymore.