Star Wars 7: 5 Ways Disney Is Wasting The Saga's Potential

1. Everyone Is Too Reverent Of The Original Trilogy

This one's a bit tricky, since we don't really know what the tone of these movies will be since no one has seen them yet, but all the signs point to these new films being so reverent of the originals that they might fail to become anything special on their own. The first sign is the hiring of JJ Abrams as the director of all three films. Abrams has always been an enormous Star Wars fan, something which showed on-screen during his Star Trek films, and was hesitant to take on the project at first because he wasn't sure if he was up to it. What scares me about this is that Abrams's movies are already too safe and formulaic, so putting all this pressure on him to live up to the original films and its creator, might result in him taking even less risks. The worst case scenario here is that Star Wars VII, VIII, and IX will end up being more homages than actual movies. Even though Lucas has always said that if a sequel trilogy was made that Luke, Leia, and Han would appear as their older selves, the casting of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher in supposedly major roles doesn't help the feeling that this new series will spend more time looking backwards than forwards. Maybe this supposition is all wrong, and just maybe this series turns out every bit as good as everyone wants it to be, but from what has been seen so far, it remains hard to place too much trust in Disney, or in JJ Abrams, to feel completely optimistic about the future of the franchise. What do you think? Share your thoughts below in the comments thread.