The world premiere of the new Star Wars movie us tonight, with wider opening this Friday. Are you reading this on your phone while you're in line? If not, then you won't be seeing it until a week from Wednesday.
But it's it any good? It seems like people just asked that question, since I suddenly noticed "Will this be a disappointment?" stories appearing today. That's pretty late in the game to be asking that question, especially given the disappointment with the last trilogy. Of course, that brings up the point that it may not matter; even if it is disappointing, movie-goers will probably keep watching the sequels anyway. People are already talking about how the franchise may outlive it's original fans; with large-scale timelines like that, it doesn't really matter if they need to pause the parade of new Star Wars movies for a decade to wash the bad taste out of viewers' mouths. It's sort of reminiscent of the aliens from Contact, where we don't understand its strategy because these beings are thinking much longer term. Ironically, sci-fi franchises have become like sci-fi beings.
It's not necessarily a bad thing that Star Wars may never end, spawning several movie series, TV shows, video games etc. But I would hope that if it's going to go that far that there would be some competition. The market is big, why not have a competing science fiction world to create a never-ending series of movies, TV and other media? In other words, this Coke needs a Pepsi. Star Trek would be an obvious possibility as the other big sci-fi franchise, that has always been the yin to Star Wars' yang. But I'm not really sure it can reach the same audience numbers. Well, not without making it more like Star Wars.
Perhaps some media conglomerate will try making a Star Wars competitor from scratch. I know that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Or at the very least, a recipe for Go-Bots. But consider the amount of creation, art, world-building and promotion that goes into a Massively Multiplayer Online game. They're practically building a complete science fiction/fantasy franchise right there, and might be paying the cost of a movie or three to build it. If you're making that investment, and intend to stick with it for years to come, you might as well make some tie-in movies to further cash in.
It's something to think about if you're a media company out there that's not part of the Disney/Lucasfilm empire. And if you need any story ideas, call me, I've got plenty.
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