Today, I was talking with my friend Mysterious Pants about the future of the Star Wars movies, and the crazy rumors swirling around what’s coming with them. Things like that they may be doing one movie a year for three years (which I believe), that Clone Wars will be yanked from Cartoon Network after this year (which could happen, given that Disney doesn’t own Cartoon Network), and that they may bring back Darth Vader (not true, I hope).
He thinks if they bring back Vader, it will be a clone. I suspect something similar, although I was thinking it would be neat if for some reason Vader in the new trilogy is actually Luke Skywalker, who has been forced to take on the role.
But it was when we talked about what we’d like to see for the new movies that things got more interesting. George Lucas has already said they “won’t be bound by the Expanded Universe” (books, comics, etc) that have been produced in the last fifteen years, which I take to mean the period after Return of the Jedi is basically now open to a full reboot. (All that EU stuff is now alternate reality, which may or may not be true in the new movie timeline.)
This creates a lot of possibilities, but Mysterious Pants made an awesome suggestion I’d love to see.
Luke Skywalker, now an older Jedi recluse, discovers that there is a new Sith Armada (or even small Empire) sitting at the edge of the galaxy, and realizes that he needs to create a new order of Jedi to battle them. This is complicated by the fact that the Sith believe the Jedi extinct, and if they know what he’s up to are likely to jump the gun and attack the New Republic. So Luke must go on a quest to find and recruit new Jedi in secret, while avoiding Sith agents (who are also trying to secretly recruit force-users for their army) and prepare them before the enemy arrives.
This introduces a bunch of new characters, our next generation of heroes, and sets in motion a conflict for Skywalker himself- who has a decision to make. With the looming Sith threat, and an army of untrained Jedi who don’t seem ready for battle, will Luke have to make use of the one thing that could even the odds- The Dark Side of the Force?
Of course, the final film would be the Sith Invasion, and we’d end with a spectacular battle between the new order Jedi /New Republic and the returned Sith Empire. The Sith would be beaten back, but still out there, and the Jedi would have to work at rebuilding their order and replacing their losses. Thus setting the stage for future films and stories.
This would of course even lead into a new Jedi Academy series of stories and whatever else they want to do as the Star Wars universe *finally* goes forward into the future.
Sounds good to me!
Rob
STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP.
That is all.
Too late, Jack! The Falcon has left the station, and it’s time to jump into hyperdrive!
Hmmmm….
>that Clone Wars will be yanked from Cartoon Network after this year (which could happen, given that Disney doesn’t own Cartoon Network)
The tricky thing with this one is that Clone Wars HAS to end sometime. We’ve already seen HOW it ends….
>Luke Skywalker, now an older Jedi recluse, discovers that there is a new Sith Armada (or even small Empire) sitting at the edge of the galaxy, and realizes that he needs to create a new order of Jedi to battle them. This is complicated by the fact that the Sith believe the Jedi extinct, and if they know what he’s up to are likely to jump the gun and attack the New Republic. So Luke must go on a quest to find and recruit new Jedi in secret, while avoiding Sith agents (who are also trying to secretly recruit force-users for their army) and prepare them before the enemy arrives.
I dunno…. One of the problems with any continuing story is that the beginnig is usually awesome: you’re introducing the setting, you’re showing the audience all sorts of new stuff…. but sooner or later you get down to the actual STORY, and everything starts contracting ‘cos you’ve got to start wrapping it up. For a continuance of Star Wars I think it’d be best if they DIDN’T focus on the Jedi so much…. we’ve seen that. We’ve seen durned near every permutation of that (so…. Pants’ take turns Luke into the new Yoda….) so it’s time to ADD something. Show us something new about the setting; something that was somehow always there but we missed it, and build a new mythos around that.
I was kinda hopeful when they announced the merc based series they were planning for tv. It’d be a bit different, and it’d be neat to see guys like the Jedi as the antagonists for a change.
>The Sith would be beaten back, but still out there, and the Jedi would have to work at rebuilding their order and replacing their losses. Thus setting the stage for future films and stories.
….because nothing would have changed. I knwo they’ve tried the “new” thing with stuff like the Yhuzin-vog (or however that’s spelled) but the problem when you do that is: you certainly add some stuff to the setting, but it’s ad-hoc, ‘cos it comes out of nowhere. If you don’t do an absolutely awesome job selling it right away (perhaps by having your new stuff genuinely NEW for the audience) then it falls flat.
And fer Horque’s Sake; NO KIDS! I’m SSSSOOOO sick of the precocious super-youth idea. Sure, you want to market it to children so’s to ensure a new generation of fans, but you don’t have to sell it so patronizingly! The original didn’t need kids. Even the kid…. Luke…. was what; twenty or so? Oh; if only Han was a hip-talking wisecracking 14 year old in the original series…. maybe THEN he could have been popular!
Don C.