Madsen Pirie

Disney, which has taken over the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas tells us that a new Star Wars film will appear yearly from 2015, alternating between new episodes in the space saga and spin-off character films.

“In February, Disney announced that alongside a new trilogy, a series of films built around existing characters from the Star Wars universe were in development.  It is rumoured the first stand-alone film could focus on the diminutive Jedi master Yoda.”

I suppose this will sound like good news for Star Wars afficionados, but I view it with some trepidation.  I fear the franchise might be done to death as the studio tries to wring every last dollar from its investment.  I call this “death by dilution.”  On a literary level it happened to ‘Dune,’ Frank Herbert’s sc-fi masterpiece.  Yes, I concede that ‘Children of Dune’ had some merit, but there followed a series of low quality sequels whose only function seemed to be to make the author and publisher a lot of money.  A similar fate befell Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ series.  The original trilogy was supplemented late in his life by a succession of books with the word ‘Foundation’ in their titles.  What made it more irksome was Asimov’s attempt to link his Robot series with the Foundation stories in a totally implausible way.  Again, I guess the publishers made a shedload of money, and Asimov probably left a few more millions in his will.  No service was made to literature, however, and I fear the same might be true of cinema with a succession of ‘Star Wars’ movies.

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