Thirteen years ago I got together with several of my friends and lined up to watch Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I was never a rabid Star Wars fanboy, but back then I, like many other people, believed that the world was about to witness a cultural milestone. When the prequel trilogy wrapped six years later, everyone knew better, of course, but by then a whole new legion of bitter, disillusioned fanboys had been spawned in their wake, and melodramatic (and somewhat insensitive) phrases like "my childhood has been raped" were coined. The Star Wars prequels had come and gone, but it was hard to argue that the collective cultural landscape was any better for their passing.
Personally, and issues of filmmaking quality aside (acting, script, etc.) I had a number of problems with the very nature of the prequels.
The first was that they told stories to which audiences already knew the various endings. For starters, everyone knew Anakin Skywalker was going to turn into Darth Vader. Everyone knew all the Jedi were going to die, and that their shining, utopian civilization was going to go to the dogs. The Clone Wars were nothing but a scam perpetrated by Chancellor Palpatine to rationalize his conquest of the galaxy. Luke and Leia were born and separated. Sure, there was definitely interest to know how these came to be, and it was enough to sustain people's interest over three movies, but if the internet and box-office receipts are to be believed, people did not enjoy these films as much as they did the original trilogy. To my mind, and for reasons already mentioned, it was impossible that they ever would. For the same reason the Clone Wars TV show held no appeal whatsoever for me; viewers already KNOW that the entire thing is a sham and that just about everyone fighting the war is being manipulated, so what is there that's new to tell?
The second thing I found extremely off-putting was the rather odd sight of an older world having slicker special effects, which was an inevitability considering that the first of the prequels came out sixteen years after the last of the original trilogy. Given the relentless pace of advancement of visual effects technology, sixteen years is an eternity. The first trilogy made use of plastic miniatures and stop motion animation, while the later one had the benefit of computer-generated imagery and, even where practical effects were considered, vastly improved prosthetic technology. Sure, it was established that society had gone to hell because of Palpatine taking over, but did things really have to get that bad? It's not unlike the astonishing CGI of the 2012 film Prometheus looking much better than the relatively clunky effects of the older Alien saga films, all of which supposedly take place after the events in the newer film.
Happily, the new trilogy will have none of this baggage weighing it down, because the events of Episodes I to VI will be long behind whoever the characters are that will inhabit its world, and the filmmakers will be free to tell whatever stories they think will captivate audiences. For the first time in 32 years audiences of a Star Wars film will go into it not knowing what will happen to the principal characters down the road, or how things will turn out in the end. People imagining the recasting of the principal cast of Episodes IV to VI are missing the point; this isn't a remake or a retelling, but a chance to take the franchise where it has needed to go for years: into new territory. The fact that the VFX technology will have, again, improved exponentially in the ten years between 2005 and 2015 is simply icing on the cake.
Of course, there are the embittered fanboys and just-plain cynical people who would say that Disney should leave well enough alone, that the franchise has suffered enough, and that audiences have suffered enough regurgitation of the same old products, what with remake upon reboot upon sequel being foisted upon audiences year in and year out. The easy thing to say to them would be, if you don't like the idea of new movies, then no one is forcing you to watch them.
There is, however, a solid argument to be make for continuing the 35-year-old franchise, and it is simply that anything is worth doing if it can be done well. The Batman franchise was left for dead after Joel Schumacher and George Clooney had turned it into a laughing stock, but Christopher Nolan and his cast and crew came along and came up with movies that will be remembered as genre classics for generations to come. The Star Trek film franchise, a staple of the 70s and 80s had been reduced to spoofs like Galaxy Quest and sequels involving a whole new set of characters with the "Next Generation" movies, until JJ Abrams took a step back from all that had come before and told a story which both respected what had come before and took the franchise in a whole new direction.
Perhaps most recently and notably, the producers of the James Bond films have taken a 50 year old franchise, something which should, by now, be weak in the knees and threatening to collapse under its own weight, and turned in a fresh, and utterly brilliant take on a character almost anyone who's ever watched a movie already knows. It is possible to teach old dogs new tricks, apparently.
The Star Wars universe, in comparison to the Bond-verse and the Bat-verse, is infinitely richer in its possibilities, because it revolves around so much more than the adventures of just one man. There are stories upon stories upon stories to be told here, and considering that new Lucasfilm owner Disney has the pockets for it, and there is, no doubt, no shortage of talent ready to work on it, I am happy they are going for it.
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