Free Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell Page B

the
Guardian
website any time soon.
    The guys at Disney have promised to bring out
Star Wars
episode seven in 2015 and to follow that with episodes eight and nine. Thereafter their plan is to release a new film every two or three years pretty much indefinitely. Basically, they want
Star Wars
to go Bond.
    To Disney’s investors, the prospect could hardly look more appetising. The latest release from the 50-year-old 007 franchise is being showered with critical praise and box-office cash. Having seen
Skyfall
, I can’t say I understand why. I mean, it’s fine. It’s probably an above-average Bond movie, but then it benefits from budgetary and technological possibilities that most of its predecessors lacked. It certainly isn’t the “best Bond ever”, as many are claiming. It is very nearly the longest Bond ever, narrowly beaten by Daniel Craig’s first appearance in the role,
Casino Royale
. Maybe Craig has ambitions to bethe longest-serving Bond but wants to get there in the fewest possible films.
    There’s a lot wrong with it. It takes itself far too seriously, and the suavity of the character is lost; the heartless charmer, the well-dressed psychopath who will unhesitatingly deploy violence to get what he wants – but who wants nothing more, due to an accident of his nature, than the furtherance of British national interests – has been replaced by a gnarled potato-headed bruiser haunted by his own past. Batman without the gear. I miss the jammy sod in the bow tie whose toast always lands butter side up. Yet, for all this self-importance, the plot is still as daft as in the campest days of Roger Moore. I won’t spoil the ending for you – the writers have already done that – except to say: have courage, the film does, eventually, end.
    Comparisons with the Bond franchise are bound to make hardcore
Star Wars
fans nervous. Most would balk at an open-ended series of adventures vaguely set in the
Star Wars
universe, but with the same variance of style, tone and competence that the Bond franchise has displayed. Will they have to endure different actors taking on the central characters? They’ve already seen Ewan McGregor struggle to fill Alec Guinness’s shoes. But, as the roles of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia are taken forward, the opportunities for other actors to screw them up – or rather “put their own stamp on them” – are endless.
    Will they have to cope with a moody Russell Crowe interpretation of Han in middle age, complete with inexplicable and shaky geordie accent? Will Maggie Smith turn an aged Queen Leia of the Universe into a wise-cracking old gossip? Will Mark Hamill be allowed to reprise the role he created or will he have to stand in line to audition with the likes of Bill Nighy, Steve Martin and that bloke from
Breaking Bad
? Or are Disney’s real intentions hiding in plain sight in that photo? Are they going to give the galaxy to the Great Mouse?
    The prospect of a Disneyfied
Star Wars
would have appalled me 15 years ago. The thought of that corporate giant getting its weird three-fingered hands on the beloved space stories of my childhood would have seemed like sacrilege. Since then, of course, Jesus has desecrated his own altar and then set up as a money-changer in his own temple. And if you think that’s a hyperbolic way of describing the fact that George Lucas made three disappointing sci-fi films, you need to get online more.
    As a feckless writer and comedian, I spend a lot of pub time railing against all the occasions when creative control is wrested from the people who have the ideas by the people who keep the accounts. So I find the story of the Star Wars franchise unsettling. Lucas had the successful idea and maintained rigid creative control over it, doubtless fending off the advances of avaricious predators who wanted to exploit or develop it differently. And yet that idea was more comprehensively ruined than if it had been left exposed to the worst and most