PT Would Star Wars be a "Dead Franchise" Had Lucas not made the PT?

Which decade was Star Ward dead?
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars_home_video_releases

All through the 90s, they kept re-releasing the OT on VHS/Laserdisc. They had new SW toys (Power of the Force). You'd go to a comic book store and could sell a SW figure or vehicle for a small fortune.

It was dead only in that Lucas didn't make a new movie, but not dead in popular appetite. People still wanted all things Star Wars. So it wasn't the Prequels that made the Star Wars franchise life possible, but the Star Wars franchise life that made the Prequels possible. Heck, the prequels were funded with the re-release of the OT into the theaters. In that regard, the question is not:

Would Star War be a "Dead Franchise" Had Lucas not made the PT?

but instead
Would the PT be possible had Lucas not created the greatest franchise ever with the OT?

I honestly don't get either side of the PT v. OT debate. The OT people that hate the PT films and the PT people that swear it is better than the OT. It is all one big saga. The PT did what it was supposed to do. Expand and enhance the saga. The PT makes the OT better and vice versa.

As far as the overall state and competition of the industry, I don't know where you are going with that. It was less competitive in the late 90s, 70s, 80s, now? We are at the dawn, dusk or peak of the golden age of film? The industry now is in shambles with nothing but rehash/reboots or it is the age where old ideas can't compete? Honestly, I'm not sure what you meant and I'm not going to draw any conclusions on what you think that state us now v. then v. then's then and how it makes the comparison invalid.

 

Well, if nothing else, most fans had an opinion on the PT, so yeah, I'd say it kept the franchise alive. In addition, it did draw in new fans. That's all beside the point of whether or not an individual fan particularly liked the PT films themselves.


Having said that, it Lucas had not made the PT and then sold LFL to Disney, and Disney went on to do something, that would have likely rejuvenated the franchise. People love Star Wars.

 

Here's an interesting question on the same theme. Did the PT reception create the LFL sale to Disney that gives us the current state of the SW franchise. I would say most likely on more than one level.

First, I'm pretty sure that Lucas didn't want to subject himself to another round of troll level criticism. Especially if it is highly likely to be what will take up the remainder of his life. So he does the sell, but he goes with the criticism that the PT were flawed in execution, not story. That the Star Wars universe is still best charted with his guidance, but the details (directing, dialogue, actor selection and performance) is best left to others. That's the deal he goes in with.

Second, instead of getting what he aimed for, once the ink is dry and the publicity of the handover is complete in the mind's of the public, Disney decides to follow the criticism that the PT were a disaster from top to bottom. That Lucas has completely lost it. So they find a reason to cut him out of the process completely.

I think had only the first part happened, we would have been left with the best of both worlds. A Lucas universe and vision with the execution by others. Cutting Lucas out completely seems to have created a disturbance in the Saga.

 

Not dead, not fully alive. Geek culture would be worshipping The Matrix Reloaded as not the only the greatest sequel of our time, but the greatest overall film. The film's CGI elements would be celebrated as the only logical way to make a movie. People would still be using AIM, communicating with each other about the long-rumored Matrix 4, finally confirmed to release in 2019.

The OT would be on the level of Adventures in Babysitting. Ironically, Lucas would approve an ANH remake that would premiere exclusively on the Disney channel.

 

Late '80s and early '90s.

So...? Since when is that relevant for anything?

 

Possibly. I think we would have seen books and comics and video games but it would really be relegated to ultra-geek status if it wasn't for the PT.

 

Depends on when.

If Lucas had not done the SE's and the PT and was doing nothing with it then he might have sold far earlier. Without them though I don't know that he would have got anywhere near the money.

What he did get was nowhere near what it was worth due to all the successes that did happen. In open bid he gets far more.

Let's take the scenario there is no SE or PT but Lucas only sells a few years ago.

SW is then a loved franchise but one that hasn't been seen for 30 years by most.

Lucas retains the exhalted status in the pop culture he had before and someone not him is doing the prequels and sequels as well.

Successful probably but after that long I think a far harder climb.

 

I think that's true. Whatever people's individual opinions are of the SE's and the PT, they certainly kept Star Wars as a subject of importance in geekdom.

 

I would admit that Dark Knight Rises is the least polished of the three and has the most flaws - but I actually enjoy it the most of the three. Plus, the fight scenes were better than in the previous movies. And I just love how they so obviously ripped off Rocky 3 and didnt even acknowledge it. For BB they acknowledge ripping off Superman 1, for The Dark Knight they acknowledge ripping off Heat, then for TDKR theyre talking about Charles Dickens. And yeah I gotta respectfully disagree with you about Bane. I thought he turned out great.

 

It's cool... we all have different opinions and obviously a lot of people liked Bane, He just didn't work for me. Overall thought, Great trilogy, very well done..!

 

I really liked the OT, but TPM was what really invigorated my interest in the franchise. I remember getting tons of merchandise from both the OT and TPM after the movie came out, and started rewatching the OT on VHS more than I ever had before.

 

The only thing that I can is that if the PT was never released at the end of the 1990's and beginning of the 2000's, I would not have been a Star Wars fan today. The PT has introduced me to this galaxy far far away and has attracted my curiosity towards this franchise when I was a teenager more than 10 years ago. A great number of fans also share a similar experience as mine, thanks to the PT.

 

this is where I am, I love the OT, but I was in middle school when TPM hit, it was the SE and the PT that pulled me in. I never saw the OT until I was 11 or 12 and the SE came out on VHS.

 

after the movies the novels and games kept the franchise ticking over as well as toy sales. no it wouldn't of been a dead franchise but it wouldn't of been worth 4billion either. though i think lucas sold it for unders but at that price who cares

 

The "dead" part is the problem.

It is more than just Special Editions, Prequel Trilogy and The Clone Wars cartoon series that helped build it up to euphoria. It was also the sale to Disney and essentially removal of Lucas from the franchise. Had Lucas simply put out Episode 7 in 2015, it probably would have received lukewarm reception and bad reviews even if he made The Force Awakens exactly the same. He became a meme. It doesn't matter if you agree with Lucas becoming the touch of death for Star Wars movies, that is essentially where we were.

 

The point is that the Disney sale doesn't happen without the PT or the SEs, because Star Wars wouldn't have been in the limelight in that scenario. It would have been a quaint sci-fi series that hadn't seen a sequel since 1983.

 

So you're saying that if Lucas made the Episode 7 we got, which he would never do, being far more creative than that, the movie would not have been as successful as it was?

That sickingly makes a whole lot of sense. In fact, TFA probably wouldn't have been successful at all if made in 1999 instead of TPM.

 

I disagree with this because this reasoning doesn't add up to me.

First, it is a common myth that the PT got nothing but bad reviews.
The more correct term for TPM and AotC are MIXED reviews. Some good, some bad and some in-between.
RotS got on the whole quite favorable reviews and noticeable better reviews than the two film before it.
So if Lucas was the "kiss of death" and his name alone will give bad reviews, RotS is an example that proves the opposite. On Metacritic RotS has a score of 68 which is "Generally favorable reviews." Of the 40, 28 were positive, 11 were mixed and only one were negative.

And RotS made more money at the BO than AotC, both domestic and world wide.

So if we assume that Lucas had made TFA and it would be identical to what we got, the idea that it would get much worse reviews or make much less money is based on not much at all.

Sure some people might have made up their minds to dislike the film before seeing it just for that reason. But the would also be people that would make up their mind to like the film beforehand as well. I have seen people, that don't like TFA, say that if Lucas had made it and even if it was identical to the one we have, they would have liked it better just because Lucas made it.

Second, if TFA had come out in 1999 and it would have flopped. That is VERY unlikely.
The hype for TPM was huge, the first SW in 16 years. If you add to that the return of Han, Leia and Luke. That would have pushed the hype even further.
People were excited for the PT but the ST would be even more exciting.

Would people comment on the reused elements? Sure but critics did that for TFA.

Would if have made over 2 billion at the BO?
In 1999? That is very unlikely, tickets prizes have increased a bit plus 3D add some too.
Would it have made more or less than TPM?
Impossible to say.
Critics liked TFA better on the whole and the audience also liked TFA better on the whole.
So the notion that it would have flopped is, sorry to say, far fetched.

If TFA had been made in 2015 and no PT before it?
The hype and overall interest would have been less, that is a fairly safe bet.
TFA became an event at the cinema, would it still have done that without the PT?
Possibly not. Less people would be going opening weekend and the opening would thus have been lower. The huge opening added some to the hype I think. As I've said, the film became an event.

Would it have done well?

I think so.

To answer the OP, Star Wars was never "dead".
Consider, take the LotR books, they were published in the mid 50's, quite a while ago.
So was LotR "dead" at some point?
Less in the public eye certainly but not forgotten. New people still found the books and read them.
There were no new books about Aragorn and co. Well yes you have other books that Tolkien's son published after his death but they were not as popular as the LotR books.
The popularity waxed and waned true enough, in the 60's and 70's the books were very popular.
Possibly less so in the 80's and 90's but after PJ's films, book sales were big again.

Like SW, LotR has games and the like but unlike SW, there is no EU. No further tales. Unless you count the Silmarillion.

SW was less in the public eye in the late 80's true enough.
On film we had Stallone and Arnold, action movies.
But in the early 90's with the already mentioned "Heir to the Empire" books, interest in SW grew.
You had games, books, comics.
And as someone who lived through it, the release of the THX VHS tapes was quite big. I was in university at the time and my whole dorm got together and watched them.

To take another example, Star Trek.
The original series was just three seasons and then it was cancelled in 1969.
It was then in syndication and there it's popularity grew. So not "dead".
The first film came out ten years later and despite mixed reviews, it made over 80 million at the BO. Which was quite a bit at that time. Adjusted for inflation it is almost 300 M today.

Or third example, Indiana Jones. The third film was in 1989 but was that series "dead" in the early 2000's? I don't think so. Less talked about sure but play the theme or show a guy with a hat and whip and many would know it.
Did Crystal Skull add more fans? Possibly but here I think the effect is less than with the PT and SW.

To sum up, without the PT, that there would be less interest in SW is pretty clear. If Disney bought it, very likely they would have paid less for it.
That it would be "dead" or thought of as a quaint series of SF films, I think not.
The three films were far too big back in the day for that. And the large number of films that came from them and the filmmakers they inspired would ensure a lasting legacy.

Again take Indiana Jones, in the early 2000's, it wasn't dead by any stretch.

Perhaps the best example of a TFA without the PT is Mad Max Fury Road.
There the last film was in 1985 and while there had been rumors for a while that a fourth film might be made, nothing much happened for a long while. But people still watched them and liked them.
And Fury Road was received very well.
It didn't make anything near as much as TFA did for sure but then again, none of the first three Mad Max films did anything like the OT at the BO.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Do not forget that Disney is a huge part of why the films are making so much money. If George Lucas made EP VII and found a way to get the Big 3 back it would have made $1 billion guaranteed. I don't know about $2 billion. Why?

Because Disney is very good at what they do. They have the means to make something that appeals to the most amount of people. They check off all boxes. Thats why TFA and R1 are making so much. They are designed to please.

Lucas makes the movie he wants to make, so inevitably there will be less money. But still he would have done very well as evidenced by the success of the OT, Special edition, PT and TPM 3D boxoffice.

With Disney you are guaranteed for a good time, but I'm not so sure about stuff beneath the surface or incredible music or a visual tapestry. At least I can enjoy enjoy ILM and Lucasfilm bring back OT era designs in crisp modern clarity. (Please don't be stuck in the OT forever though, we need new designs/era)

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Okay. Now would Star Wars be a dead franchise? Yes. Nobody talks about the Godfather anymore. Great films, but there is little interest aside from checking off your list of best movies ever.

Nobody cares about the Matrix anymore. They successfully destroyed that franchise, good job.

Lord of the Rings lives on in memes, and successfully got a bit of a boost from the horrible hobbit prequels. But people have forgotten again. (The hobbit trilogy managed to make less money with each sequel...yikes)

Harry Potter lives on. Why? Because the world is so vast. You can do anything with the material. There is endless opportunity.

This is what the prequels did. They turned Star Wars from a tunnel that expanded into an unending ocean. Before the PT we had EU that was so hacky and superweapon of the week. By providing a fundamental backbone to the OT, the PT added rules and lore to the saga that made it much more interesting.

We got KOTOR I and II, two incredible games that spawned a great comic series. We got the best comics and novels after the PT. It really made Star Wars so much better.

Even if I hate everything Disney does I can at least enjoy whatever future videogames they put out, they have so much material to mine. The potential is limitless. Star Wars can go anywhere thanks to the PT.

 

yes I got into ST because of the PT, so did many others and it also made the characters of Luke and Leia that much more important to me.

 

I think it is a very limited view on "dead" if one thinks that alive means that people have to talk about it a lot. The issue is if people WATCH them. And they do.
And plenty of people watched the OT during the late 80's, early 90's.

I work as a teacher and I know that several of my students know about the Godfather films, they have seen them, know the music and so on.
Same with the Dollar trilogy, they know that music well.

Lord of the Rings is a book series first and foremost. And the books were published in the 50's. And yet they were hardly "dead" in the 60's or 70's. A lot of people read the books back then and people still read the books.
The movies added to the book sales sure but the books haven't stopped being sold.
The LotR films are still pretty much the bench mark for other epic Fantasy films.

As for the Hobbit.
The WW gross of each film is 1021 M$, 958 M$ and 956 M$ for about 3 billion in total.
So the drop wasn't big from 1 to 2 and hardly noticeable from 2 to 3. And both were far smaller than the drop from TPM to AotC.
And the third film was hit by the rising dollar and if the exchange rate had been the same for all three films, the third would have made more money than the second and maybe even the first.

Even if there wouldn't have been a new film or that play.
People wouldn't stop reading the books.
People read the books before the films and they read them after.

[/QUOTE]

Granted I am not very familiar with the EU since I don't read it.
But from what I know the Zahn books, The Heir to the Empire series, they were received very well.
And they gave rise to a lot more EU-books and it had some very popular characters that have appeared elsewhere.

In closing, I think it is too limiting to view a franchise as "dead" just because no new films/books are made.
To me what matters is if people still read/watch them and they are still liked.
Not being in the public eye is not the same as having faded from living memory.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

It was so dead that I hadn't even really heard about it until the SE. It would have been like Back to the Future or Ghostbuster as some old 80s sci-fi that is largely forgotten about without the PT.

 

I think there has to be some sort of steady content that keeps the fans talking. But the PT really lifted the ceiling off of what Star Wars used to be.

I suppose the cheap flashlight lightsabers and ugly art used on the Fate of the Jedi series covers signified a decline, but I hear GL had some plans for Episode VII before the Disney purchase... so perhaps he was just always intending to keep the train going?

 

I'm not sure I would call it a "Dead Franchise" but Star Wars probably wouldn't of been as popular today or during the early 2000s if it wasn't for the prequels. They probably would of still made books and comics still but Star Wars probably would of been in that niche for a long time since unfortunately not many people read comics. The original movies would most likely still be viewed as classics like E.T. and Back to the Future but thats about it. Like what some other people said here I was also brought into Star Wars because of the prequels. Because of the them I also got interested in the old movies too. The prequels definitely got people talking about Star Wars again wether for the better or for the worse thats up to you. Even after the prequels movies were finished we still had the The Clone Wars cartoon that lasted 6 seasons that built off those movies and most likely turned many more people into Star Wars fans. So yeah, Star Wars probably wouldn't of been a "dead franchise" but it wouldn't of been no where near as popular today if it wasn't for those movies.

 

You made a point.

But I had the chance to sometimes take a closer look to some reviews of the PT and even recent ones, and you cannot deny that, in some way, critics uses their reviews of the movies to attack Lucas and sometimes mock him. Everything that he does, from how he's holding a camera on a movie set to how he dresses, talk, and his beard... Some reviews have many times left me puzzled and I even wondered "is it a critic towards the movie or just a mockery towards its creator?"

Of course it's not all the reviews, but some of them. And I think that when you're seeing this, you cannot deny that in people's head, their opinions towards a creator cannot also influence their opinion towards his movie...

I don't know but there's always a desire in people to mock or humiliate people for just simple and insignificant things, or sometimes, you can simply be easygoing on them, depending on how and what you think... And, just I'm just opening a parenthesis here, even if it's out of subject, our very recent history has perfectly demonstrated how people can think and behave like this...