The Walt Disney Company’s recent purchase of Lucasfilm has been one of the biggest news events in the movie industry this year, and perhaps carries with it the most mixed emotions.
For some fans, Disney brings “a new hope” to the “Star Wars” saga, but others think it might be one big, bad idea.
“I would definitely like to see more ‘Star Wars’ movies,” Colton Graham, a mechanical engineering student, said. “I’m excited to see what Disney has in store.”
Graham said Disney makes great movies and his only concern about their announcement of “Star Wars Episode VII” is the timing.
“It’s gonna take too long — 2015 is a long ways away,” he said.
Famed director Robert Rodriguez is on the same page as Graham, telling “Entertainment Weekly” he thinks Disney is the best studio for the job.
“I can’t imagine a better scenario,” Rodriguez said. “And 2015 can’t get here fast enough.”
Some students are still in the middle and have mixed feelings about Disney continuing the franchise, though.
“I think Disney has the means to do it well, and it could be really good, but it might not be as successful as the previous movies,” Anna Guyer, a genetics and biotech student from North Carolina said. “It’s a lot to live up to.”
There are others who think this could be the ruin of the “Star Wars” legacy.
“I personally think they shouldn’t even mess with it,” David Steed, a neuroscience student from Kaysville, said. “They’re already so good, and such epic movies.”
Within the first 24 hours of the news release, thousands of fans shared this disdain for the deal on Twitter and Facebook. Marketing Cloud, a social network analysis company, found that Tweets and posts on the acquisition were slightly more negative at 49.3 percent, while positive posts were 48.8 percent.
Twitter user Ryan Croxford said he thinks Disney will ruin “Star Wars” and they shouldn’t attempt to make more movies. Hannah Yates tweeted that George Lucas is a sellout and predicted the original movies will get locked away in the Disney vault.
Another reaction to the Lucasfilm purchase is who the new director should be. Collider.com has rumored that Matthew Vaughn, famous for “X-men: First Class,” is in negotiation with Lucasfilm to direct “Episode VII,” but it’s still just a rumor.
Some students have said a trilogy director such as Peter Jackson should direct the film since he did so well with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, but other students, like Micah Hodges, think there is another who could do it better.
“James Cameron,” Hodges, a food science major from San Diego, said. “‘Star Wars’ is a pretty epic train of movies and he’s known for making epic movies — he’s good for the job.”
Being that “Episode VII” is still three years away, fans will have much more time, and many more Tweets, to speculate who will direct it and how good it will be.
