Having seen what the California version looks like I was expecting a simple outdoor miniworld, but the one at Windsor is inside. A lot more cramped and it makes it more of a walk through ride but it does allow for lighting and sound effects. On the down side that made taking good photographs a bit harder. Do you use ambient lighting and deal with the fuzziness, or use the flash and have it crisp but kill the mood? In the end I went for the former and got a few acceptable shots.

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I’d written up and scheduled a happy, upbeat blog post with comedy Jawas giving party advice and the official anti-MayThe4th video and then … then they went and over stepped the line. Chewbacca is a Justin Bieber fan? Chewbacca Gets A Job At MTV. This was the last straw. The shark has been jumped. LucasFilm has officially entered the Holiday Special zone.

Rather than leaving fans to celebrate what was a fan invented day in their own way, they just HAD to stomp in and try to take it over and in the process ruined it. It’s now simply embarrassing, like the friend who’s had a few drinks too many and hasn’t noticed that nobody is laughing at his jokes any more.

All my plans for tomorrow suddenly seem stupid. Star Wars cookies? Why bother? Watching movies? I don’t think I can really spare the time.

I might try again on George Lucas’s birthday (May 14th) but for tomorrow my heart really isn’t in it any more.

I’ve been comparing thoughts with other members of this site on the ‘rumoured’ Star Wars animation project Reclamation. My first gut reaction on reading it was, it’s a hoax, the work of a fanfic writer being passed off as real, but I thought I’d try to explain why I think that.

First, this little snippet from the OVERVIEW

“Besides again targeting children and young adults, we believe we can also appeal to the 18-49 demographic, by focusing on the ORIGINAL TRILOGY era characters and imagery.”

That doesn’t make sense does it? Surely young adults fall into the 18-49 bracket and The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, when any current 18 year old was a little kid. Why would Original Trilogy characters appeal to them particularly? It reads like someone thinks talking about demographics is something you have in a document like this but they don’t really understand them.
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It started well enough with the promise of new movies, although plenty of fans didn’t see the need for a sequel trilogy, but then the rumours started with confirmations coming hard on their heels.

The Clone Wars was indeed to be cancelled and later we discovered that LucasFilm Animation weren’t being reassigned to a new project as the LF announcement had seemed to imply, they were just being ‘downsized’ into oblivion.

Next the whispers about 1313 being on hold turned into LucasArts being shut down in all but name.

Now today we hear that the LucasArts shutdown is resulting in job losses at ILM.

It’s clear that Disney wanted LF for it’s Intellectual Properties. They now own Star Wars and Indiana Jones and they’re systematically asset stripping the company that came with them.

So what does that mean for the future of Star Wars? Well, the news from the LucasArts shutdown suggests that Disney are more than happy to license the Star Wars name, it’s easy money after all, but how much quality control can we count on them for? They haven’t exactly shown any interest in keeping existing Star Wars fans happy so I’m thinking, not much. Episode 7 is an unknown quantity but given everything else I’m inclined to expect the worst. Not that I’ll be rushing to find out, if I hear it’s good from people I trust I’ll watch it on TV one day so Disney don’t get any money from me.

Baring an unexpected U-Turn I’m going to save myself any more disappointment and consider Star Wars finished when the Clone Wars ‘bonus content’ is released.