Lucasfilm, Ltd.Put out a casting call for a small squadron of Luke Skywalkers. Hire someone who didn't direct the year's biggest box-office blockbuster. Blu-ray everything.
Here are five bold ideas worthy of Disney's bold, $4 billion move Tuesday to buy George Lucas' Star Wars universe:
1. Remake Star Wars—Five Times: Yes, the Disney plan is to make an all-new, all-original Episode 7 (and then after that sequel, Episode 8 and 9, too), but if Alexandre O. Philippe, the director of the prequel-panning documentary The People vs. George Lucas, were calling the shots, he'd do this: "I would call three hot directors—let's make it five—and commission them to make their own version of Star Wars, and then release all five movies at the same time." From there, he says, moviegoers would vote on which version was the best, and the winner would earn the right to remake Empire Strikes Back and so on and so forth. (Adds Philippe: "It's never gonna happen.")
2. Forget Nuke the Fridge: If elections were held today, The Avengers' Joss Whedon would run away with the popular vote to direct the new Star Wars movie(s). But TheForce.Net's Philip Wise has another idea, one that in another decade perhaps would've seemed as perfect and right and true as the Whedon scenario does today. In fact, maybe it is still perfect and right and true. "If I had somebody who could do it tomorrow," Wise says, "it'd be Steven Spielberg—that'd be the second, third and fourth choice, too."
3. Build StarWarsLand: Note, not "add more Star Wars stuff to Disneyland." Not "hire stormtroopers to run the hot-dog stands at Epcot." What Mike Collins of the theme-park podcast CoasterRadio.com suggested in a tweet was an all-new, all-Star Wars theme park that would rival (surpass?) The Wizarding World of Harry Potter attractions in Orlando and Japan.
4. "Immediately Expel Episodes 1-3 From the Canon": While many Star Wars fans presumably have already implemented this proposal, thusly stated in a tweet by blogger Benjamin Morris of Skeptical Sports Analysis, in their own homes and personal movie collections, imagine the epic cathartic release of Disney actually removing the adventures of Qui-Gon Jinn, Jar Jar Binks and Halloween-mask favorite Darth Maul from the official Hollywood film vault, which doesn't exist, but should.
5. Release The Star Wars Holiday Special on Blu-ray: Oh, and make it a special edition, too, filmmaker and professional fanboy Kevin Smith wrote on Facebook. Oh, and while you're at it, find Lucas' long-buried original theatrical cuts of the first three movies, and release those on Blu-ray, too, said every Star Wars fan everywhere (especially those who've signed a petition). In short, own the past (the prequel movies, excluded). There's not much more revolutionary than that. And hardly a better way to move forward.