Come On Baby Light My Saber

Unless your yurt in rural Montana doesn't get internet (and most yurts in rural Montana do these days) you've heard that Disney bought Lucas Arts and is planning on making a seventh, and possibly eighth and ninth movie. After the carnage caused to the franchise by the prequel trilogy, which was basically George Lucas going back in time and sodomizing every member of Generation X as an eight year old, I can't help but worry that the three new films will look a little bit like, well, like this:

The biggest problem with this is that the new generation of Star Wars movies are going to be Disney movies. As if Disneyland weren't already enough of a trip through the wormhole of Angelean Hyperreality, now there are going to be stormtroopers walking around, posing for photo-ops. But that's the least concerning implication of this whole thing. In a Disney Star Wars universe, Greedo will always shoot first. Because there is no room for ambiguity in a Disney movie. Characters are either good guys or bad guys.

A New Hope would have almost worked as a classic Disney movie. You have an orphaned protagonist who is dragged into a wild adventure that pits good against evil and good emerges triumphant, with some whacky best friends he meets along the way. And for the most part, these characters are either good or evil. Light side of the force or dark side. 

But who's the only character to transcend this duality of light and dark? Han Solo. Han Solo is the linchpin holding the entire Star Wars universe together. Because he's not the light side, he's not the dark side, he's human. They tried to do that in the prequel trilogy with Hayden Christensen being sad and angsty, showing how people can be corruptible, but something was glaringly off about not just his character, but every character in that trilogy. But Han Solo, he's rough, he's crude, he's crass, and his banter with Princess Leia in Empire got an estimated 500,000 girls pregnant worldwide. The only thing close to that in the prequel trilogies was the image conjured in one's mind by the presence of Samuel L. Jackson that he would call someone "muthafuqqa!!!"

But Han Solo didn't only make the movies entertaining, he made it philosophically compelling. This isn't some sort of binary universe, dominated the light god and dark god of the Manicheans, or the asha and druj of the Zoroastrians. Han Solo is a dude, like the rest of us, who shoots first because dammit, he's got to survive, but later flies his beloved ship into a battle which he well might not survive. Yoda said "do or do not, there is no try," but most of us, like Han Solo, are just out here, trying our best.

And ostensibly, Han is going to be in this one. But, we saw what happened last time a Lucas Films character portrayed by Harrison Ford happened. He was old. Indiana Jones could have sealed his legacy, but instead our lasting image is of him wearing a catheter, hobbling around a temple with a walker, complete with tennis balls on it so he doesn't scuff up the booby traps. Also, Mark Hamill looks like this:

And remember how you thought Princess Leia was hot? Remember how she'll always be immortalized in your mind at the age and hotness she was when she wore that metal bikini in Jedi? Well not anymore:

Now I'm not saying I'm not excited. I'm incredibly excited, I'm going to the midnight showing dressed as a wookie whenever this thing comes out (and you can hold me to that, Ozone Nation). I'm just dubious. I don't want another Phantom Menace. If we get one, I am self immolating. Ozone Nation, please don't hold me to that one.