Giant Freakin Robot

With the news flying fast and furious over the past hour or so since news of Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm, and the Star Wars franchise first broke. But while we’re hearing more and more details about what this will mean for the future of Star Wars across all media, we haven’t heard much beyond his official statement from the man who created it all in the first place, George Lucas. Now he has taken to YouTube in a new video, which explains his reasoning behind the sale, as well as his own plans for retirement. Take a look:

Remember John Carter? At the beginning of the year it was considered one of the most disappointing science fiction movies of 2012. But strangely, when John Carter was released on Blu-ray/DVD, people seemed to come around to the movie and now it’s regarded as a pretty decent action adventure film. What a difference eight months can make.

One of the biggest takeaways from Andrew Stanton’s John Carter is the spectacle of Mars. Delivering a believable Red Planet was a daunting task for MPC VFX supervisor Adam Valdez and producer Phil Greenlow. In the video below, they show how exactly they brought the Martian landscape to theaters and homes everywhere.

At this rate my fingertips will be bleeding all over the typewriter before too much longer. We had barely finished posting the breaking story about Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm, including the Star Wars franchise, before more news arrived by way of a conference call between Disney investors and Disney chair Bob Iger. Not only is Disney planning Star Wars VII for 2015 — they’re planning Episodes VIII and IX as well.

Our sister site, Cinema Blend, got the skinny on the conference call announcement, where Iger said that they will be releasing the next three Star Wars movies in two-year increments, meaning we’ll be getting new Star Wars throughout the back half of this decade, and a few years on into the next. And that’s assuming that they stop at Episode IX, which there is no real reason to think.

It’s still not clear what George Lucas’ role as “creative consultant” will entail, but it seems unlikely that he’d be directing the new films, or even be involved in the day-to-day running of the franchise. At this point, I think the guy has earned a retirement. While some GFR readers are already crying foul and weeping in our comments section over on Facebook, I’m regarding this as a tentatively positive development for two simple reasons: 1) I think the prequels, as well as Lucas’ refusal to release the original, unaltered Star Wars films on Blu-ray and DVD, showed that Lucas had lost touch with what elements of Star Wars made the fans fall in love with the movies in the first place. And 2), I really, really want to see a Star Wars movie made by a top-tier director like Christopher Nolan. Think of the way Nolan reinvigorated the floundering Batman franchise, and just imagine if he or some other talented person brought a new energy and excitement to a universe that left many fans stung and bitter in the wake of the prequels.

If you can’t wait for the elusive Ghostbusters 3 to march into theaters, maybe this fan-made short film will tide you over until then. Bustin‘ Makes Me Feel Good is a Ghostbusters-inspired Halloween short that answers the question “What if proton packs were readily available like iPhones?”