ST Star Wars Episode 7 Plot Ideas

How was Dark Knight not a typical bad guys vs good guys plot? sure you had the corruption of a city hero near the end, but that's what SW does too.

 

If you think about what Episode VII needs to accomplish it amost has to adhere to a tight, fairly simple, 3 act plot just to set up the rest of the trilogy.

- It has to catch us up with what's changed with the old characters. They'll want to show us that while some things have stayed the same, not everything has with time.
- We'll have to meet the new characters, who'll begin naive, bored, and jaded and end wiser, battle-tested and thankful.
- We'll have to meet the new villains. They'll have to strike first.
- There will have to be a goal (getting somebody back. Surviving. Protecting the kids. Counter-attacking... Something).
- They will want to show that this is no longer Lucas at the helm and that the complaints of the prequel are behind them. We'll see better timed and delivered humor and comic relief. Better banter and dialogue. More chemistry and sparks characters who'll later strike up a romance later. More shades of grey from the characters that aren't the main protagonist. More practical FX and charm.
- They'll want to deliver something satisfying that has fans walking out of the theatre happy with this new era of Star Wars movies, and happy that they just watched a complete movie that can stand on its own. Having said that, they will obviously make it clear that while an important battle may have been won, and disaster averted, the war is far from over.

It's going to have to function story-wise a lot like ANH in other words. The other 2 can take more risks and set up more twists and turns and play with structure more.

 

Totally agree with that ender_and_bean. I had to make changes to my plot idea because it had become too similar to ANH. The difficulty for the actual writers is ticking all the boxes of your points above whilst making it different enough. At least they have a few familiar faces that will not require much character development. Arndt perhaps used this idea and the old cast became a footnote on the journey of the new leads and changes were made

 

Basic plotline centering around Daisy Ridley's character: (taken from my own ideas and some others)

Fearing a new prophecy about the Sith returning someday to eliminate any Jedi lineage, especially any Skywalker kin, Han and Leia whisk their daughter, Daisy, away from the Republic focus to be raised apart from any attention. She was born with an apparent Force sensitivity. However, her sister (played by Katie Jarvis-we'll call her Katie) stays with mom and dad because she has no Force sensitivity.

Discovering her powers as she gets older, Daisy becomes restless and runs away from her adopted parents. She finds and falls in love with a renegade on Tatooine who also knows about the powers. They fall in love. Seeing how restless and angry Daisy, this new suitor begins to teach her how to use her powers in a "good" way. However, little does Daisy know, this new beau of hers is aligned with the dark side, something she knows nothing of.

She is gradually taught hate but it is done in a very subtle way. Her adopted parents embark on a mission to seek help from the Republic for their missing daughter but are killed in flight.

Daisy is sent to the Republic capital during an attack from a mysterious enemy force. Her sister is mortally injured during the attack before Daisy arrives. Daisy, sent to kill Republic officials, finds her sister, whose identity she never knew. However, as Katie dies, Daisy sees into her sister's eyes and realizes who she is. That emotional scene causes a turn in Daisy's character and she goes crazy.

This whole incident causes Daisy to live with tremendous shame and guilt. Her confused state eventually leads her to the hands of her uncle Luke (still working on that part) who, despite the wishes of Han and Leia (who Daisy STILL has not met) trains her to truly use the Force in the right way.

Eventually Daisy must reconcile with her true parents who she feels abandoned and the fact that she was involved with the movement that ended up killing the sister she never knew. That anger plays into the attempt of the dark sider to continue to pull Daisy deeper and deeper into the dark side of the Force.

 

Here's an idea I had a few months back. Although I think it'd be cool to replace Imperial Remnant with Mandalorians. Like they've been secretly building up a huge military force for a long time & have a gigantic command ship that's taken a really long time to build, but here:

It is revealed that a remnant of the Imperials lead by a Moff or Admiral or something have been secretly building a huge military force & that it's time has come to attack so they quickly take up the power. Also, unbeknownst to Luke Skywalker, his son (the child of an abducted love that he thought dead) is now the right hand man- raised by imperials & a total BAMF. Think Hitler youth all grown up in an imperial officer's uniform with a lightsaber. The leader of the Imperials thinks that being raised in such a matter makes him more controllable & less volatile than a Sith, so they want him to father a generation of dark jedi servants, and he already has a bunch of evil little kids. When this new threat reveals itself Luke begins training Leia & Han's children, who he was reluctant to train when they were younger, fearing he'd make Obi-Wan's mistake. Leia and Han are captured in an effort to lure Leia's daughter, who the empire wants to breed with Luke's son to create the next Emperor (Feeling someone purely of the Skywalker line is destined to rule.) Despite Luke's protestations, they rescue Leia and Han, but by giving up Luke in trade.

Luke stays in the trilogy as his son's prisoner while they hunt for the solo kids & gang, who have some adventures. Han & Leia fade into the background as advisers in the resistance. (meanwhile Luke as the prisoner tries to find his son's humanity)

It all culminates with Solo's son fighting Luke's son over Solo's daughter, with Solo's son giving into his rage more and more so that Luke steps in & saves his own son from Solo's anger by stepping in and dying in his stead.

The three cousins then fight their way through a bunch of little damien dark jedi 10 year olds & re-command the flagship to turn the tide in a giant space battle, vanquishing the imperial force.

 

The 3 young front-and-center kids should be two Jedi, and one non-Jedi with some other prowess (technological genius or something...engineer?)

I'd like to see the plot center around some group of dark Jedi. They aren't really Sith, so that way they can ditch the rule of 2 and be a little more wild. Perhaps they seize control of an Imperial remnant force, who does their bidding in secret (kind of like how Palpatine was controlling the Trade Federation...except these guys aren't using holograms). They just need some kind of opposing army in the movie. Maybe old imperials is too obvious....maybe it's just something newly invented (new species of aliens or something?)

I just think it would be cool to say...introduce like 5 to 6 dark force users in a group in the first film. Maybe only one of them dies though....so the other ones are still around for the remaining 2 films, and it's a full trilogy conflict. I don't want it to be like TPM, where they fight a big droid army, kill the Sith, then everything is cool for 10 years until AOTC. It needs to be more like ANH with setting up the conflict (Vader survived the Death Star attack....so should our new bad guys).

 

Totally agree. And I totally think he will meet these expectations. I hope it will have that extra thing that makes it a special one, but no one can predict that, not even them...

Good plot proposition, I have to say. I like it because I see some ideas I threw out there a few days ago, they may be common ideas, but in any case, it's great to see them arranged and nicely formulated. Other cool thing, you have me believing in stronger roles for the original 3. Now I can see them.

The opening crawl is going to be something like that.

Great job overall. I don't like everything but it's a serious hypothesis, it would make a movie. It's fast-paced and looks like fun. It's about here and now. I like !

 

I wouldn't mind seeing Dark Jedi who served as mercenaries to the Emperor simply to learn all of his secrets and to gain power for themselves. Once he and Vader are dead they band together to find all of the secrets the Sith left behind like super weapons capable to destroying entire planets or maybe even star systems for the sake of galactic conquest. They form a weapon with new technology such as using anti-matter, black holes, fire asteroids like a cannon, cause massive earthquakes, or a weapon that can suck the atmosphere away from a planet and make it uninhabitable. Something they can use to do serious damage against the Jedi and the New Republic.

Perhaps it could be a mineral that provides an unlimited resource to an entire armada of ships or a factory to produce them. This is something lucrative to an ancient warrior race like the Mandalorians.

It could even be something that makes one invincible like the Kaiber crystal or an artifact capable of making the one who uses it immortal with the Force who could rule the galaxy potentially for eternity.

It would be all a good macguffin to go after and threaten the new group.

 

Glad somebody finally brought up the Death Star in this thread. lol. No but seriously, from what I've read, I'm surprised no one's brought up major set pieces like the Death Star in this thread yet. Maybe we're all Death Starred out.

To be completely honest, though, I kind of missed a nice, unifying set piece like the Death Star in the PT. Evoking a set piece like the Death Star in the ST is definitely a good way to wear out your welcome with ANH pundits but I still think this is a viable option going forward. But it'll have to tie in to what has come before - namely the Death Star.

What I'm thinking (inspired once again by "Interstellar" (in a Michael Crichton sort of say)):

An underground railroad in hyperspace. Lol.

Listen: During the times of the OT regional governors began building secret escape routes into hyperspace for themselves as a response to the threat posed by the Death Star. Kind of a nuclear bunker deal, but in space. Hyper space. After the second Death Star was destroyed, however, these under ground rail roads (which might form a kind of vast, spider-like network) were boarded up, as it were. Cut 35 years into the future and someone has gotten a hold of the coordinates to these secret hyperspace routes (I'm not going into the actual physics of how these networks would actually work - even in a SW sort of way) and is now using them to cause havoc in the inner sanctum of the new Republic.

What was once used for good is now being used insidiously for evil and mayhem. It'll seem, initially, like a new secret weapon.

At some point in the story the heroes would have to navigate this perilous, and seemingly uncharted, network of hidden hyperspace routes - maybe to free the slaves from Tatooine. Kind of like veering into new worlds.

 

We have to remember that a lot of old Imperial facilities and secret locations should still exist around the galaxy, especially related to Darth Vader and the Emperor.

 

Excellent point. And judging from some of the speculation on these boards, you're not alone in thinking this.

 

Speaking of Jabba; also PURE SPECULATION ALERT

I read somewhere that it was rumored that Jabba's Palace is being reused as a location, most likely under new management. Not saying there is any weight to the rumor or anything but it sparked an idea in my head.

What if Jabba's Palace was abandoned after Return of the Jedi (as it was in the EU) and Luke used it as the new Jedi Temple? That'd be interesting to me; the former hub of crime now housing the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.

The Jedi Palace; that would be pretty wizard.

 

Since Ford has a larger role, I see him leading a search party for a missing Luke Skywalker. Since Boyega/Ridley are on Tat I would imagine they could be retracing Luke's steps and searching for clues to his whereabouts, and if Luke was on Tat, he might have been on some quest, searching for answers from the past, which would make the need to be on Tat less lame.

I would say after 30 years a new academy had already been established with new masters pretty much running the place in Luke's absence. This would be the easiest way to introduce all of the new characters quickly and get a feel for their relationships.

I think Han will ultimately sacrifice himself saving his kid(s). Even though the EU is scrapped I think the prospect of having Driver/Ridley as the Solo twins is too good to be passed up. Han's sacrifice will prompt Driver's descent to the dark side.

I hope MVS's role is not a big scary typical bad guy and we are surprised by his character. Perhaps he is a key to the Kenobi descendant rumors and the reason for Luke's search.

I cannot figure out a villain scenario that won't be lame. Remnants of the empire or some Sith popping up will be very disappointing.

 

I have been trying to piece together my movie plot for a long time now. I think I'll get around to it on the weekend.

 

An aged Ahsoka coming along to aid Luke with his new order? I think that would be rather interesting....

 

Ahsoka: I served alongside your father.
Luke: You fought in the Clone Wars?

 

Doh!

 

I really would love for Ventress (Lupita Nyong'o) to be the Vader-type character (apparent overall big bad in 7), and then in 8 discover that Ahsoka (Daisy Ridley) plays the actual big bad role a la Emperor. I just need to figure out a valid, genuine way that neither of them really age that much in 30 years, without being encased in carbonite or simply using the excuse, "well, the Dathomiri and Togrutans don't age as quickly as humans"....

 

The Skywalkers are cursed by the Sith. The Master of the Sith has achieved the unnatural ability of material immortality through midichlorian manipulation. He has outmaneuvered opponents through the series of events in the PT and OT and becomes more powerful than our heroes can possibly imagine in the ST. He knows Luke has the ability to talk to the Jedi Force Ghosts and through his dark side machinations creates a Rend in the Force through a plague. This separates Luke and the Jedi from the Force Ghost ancestors. The connection is lost.

At the end of VII Luke finds himself trapped in an attempt to thwart a powerful Sith Lord. He senses immediate danger to his friends and family in the proximity of the battle. He believes it is time. He raises his lightsaber to his face and is struck down by the dark foe. However, his body does not disappear and become one with the Force. The others are confused having been taught to expect some transformative moment. The rest escape in a cliffhanger.

Luke comes back from the dead in Episode VIII. He is a transfigured character. The same, but vastly different.

Also, part of the resolution of the problem is the destruction of the curse that separates Anakin and Padme in the Netherworld. It is a symbolic representation of the separation of Heaven and Earth and/or the Jedi and the Force Ghosts. In other words, the Rend in the Force. Their reuniting is symbolic of the goal of our heroes. Incidentally, Luke is finally reunited with the Mother he never knew, albeit as a Force Ghost, which ends this accursed separation of the Mother of the Chosen One.

 

Had a weird dream the other night about watching Episode VII.


It started with the New Jedi ambushing these generic destruction-loving Dark-Siders, the remnant of a cult that Luke shattered 10 years earlier after killing their leader.

But the young Jedi (who are also a romantic couple) receive some unexpected help from Lupita Nyongo's mysterious character, who's also Force-trained but with a yellow lightsaber and seems to dislike the Jedi, but is no darksider herself. She invites these younger Jedi to her current base of operations. While there, they learn she's the travelling miraculous healer that's been the source of many rumors in the last year or so, who seems to even bring people back from the brink of death and completely heal even old wounds. But she seems to dislike the current Jedi and Republic leadership. They're asked to stay, but the young Jedi (Daisy, Boyega) go back to Coruscant to report.

Stuff happens, action on Coruscant by some Liberation terrorists/freedom-fighters, we re-meet the old generation on Coruscant. Lupita's character's movement begins military strikes on select Republic targets throughout the galaxy. Han, Luke, Leia go to investigate, and they decide to bring Boyega and Daisy with them since they've already encountered the leader. They spot some of her faction's starfighters while in the Falcon, and pursue them, unknowingly crossing into Imperial space.

The Liberation starfighters seem to disappear, but the Falcon is caught in a tractor beam by a patrolling Imperial Star Destroyer that appears. The admiral is old and traditional, Von Sydow's character. He wants to know why they're violating Imperial space, and he never detected the other starfighters and questions their story. It gets tense between the Admiral and Han/Leia/Boyega, but Luke calms it by asking to speak with the Emperor himself, which Daisy convinces the others to go along with.

It turns out the new Emperor is Palpatine's grandson, and a former student trained by Luke but who left him when he was about to become a Jedi Knight (on friendly terms) to manage the Empire and redeem it. He's even started a branch of Imperial Jedi, loyal to the Emperor first. He's played by Oscar Isaac. His mother was born blind to the Force, completely neglected by the old Emperor. Isaac was one of Luke's first students. Anyways, they go to the throneroom where they're warmly greeted, but many of the heroes (especially Han/Leia/Boyega) still do not trust the Empire or its Emperor. They argue, with Isaac trying to convince them how the Empire is now a force for good and he is what his grandfather promised to be. Imperial Space is under very strict surveillance, and the Emperor leans toward believing the Admiral. Luke points out that even the best technology has a weak point, and Daisy points out that perhaps not everyone in the Empire is as loyal to Isaac as he thinks. Isaac is offended at that last one, but Luke de-escalates things, and asks to speak to the Emperor privately in the gardens.

They speak frankly, without the Imperial Court around, and Luke suspects that the Liberation fighters may be hiding in Imperial space to try and divide the Empire and Republic and spark a new war that would destroy them both and all the Jedi, something Lupita has said she wanted, to build a better galaxy and bring justice for the oppressed. Luke asks for help from the Admirals, or at least the Imperial Jedi, in tracking down the Liberation starfighters, which may be using the Force or new cloaking technologies to hide. The Emperor says he'll consider it, but he needs to speak to the Imperial Council first, then goes to visit his mother that night.

While visiting his mother, she asks what brings the Skywalkers to the Imperial throneworld, and he tells her about the Liberation movement. She's very old, sickly, and now blind in sight as well as the Force, and confined to her bed. When he tells her how their leader is some new miracle-worker trained in the Force by herself, but stronger than even some Jedi, the Mother becomes very curious. She then says how she was not the only thing that her father hid in his secret compound for all those years, there was also a great library of knowledge. What her father prized most of all, even more than herself (his daughter), was a holocron created by Darth Plagueis the Wise. She tells his story, and asks if Plagueis's reported powers remind him of anyone. The Mother then says her father thought he learned all of Plagueis's secrets, but when he tried them by himself they never worked after Plagueis died, and he could never open the Plagueis holocron. Old Palpatine would visit the holocron often, trying to open it, it was the only time the Mother would ever see her crazed father, but it remained sealed. After Endor, it was stolen when the Imperial base fell, taken by someone. The Emperor and his Mother suspect that it eventually found its way to Lupita's character, who somehow unsealed it and learned the healing powers. The Mother asks him to recover what is rightfully theirs, and truly become the galactic savior her father promised to be. He promises to save and heal her too, she's so sickly, but she says it's probably too late for her but he must use Plagueis's power to save as many as he can.

Isaac meets Luke & gang again, much quicker than they thought, and decides that not only will he help and send Imperial Jedi (led by the captain of the guard, a female Imperial Jedi played by Gwendoline Christie) but he himself will come to personally see the job done and the Liberation fighters exposed. They're pleasantly surprised. The Admiral (von Sydow) is unpleasantly surprised, saying its disrespectful to not consult the Imperial Council first, especially when it comes to aiding the Jedi/Republic and possibly drawn into their internal conflict. They leave at once.

More stuff happens, they discover that the Liberation has a secret base on an Imperial world, which the Admiral has been covering for. She's been training a Force-sensitive army to help her liberate the galaxy. During the heat of battle, when the Admiral's betrayal of the Emperor is exposed, he's in this mechanical battlesuit inspired by Vader and reveals he was a Mandalorian in his youth, but Christie's Imperial Jedi character kills the Admiral, who says he did it to create enough chaos so the "Jedi" Emperor (which he says as an insult) can be overthrown. Boyega charges headstrong at Lupita, and engages her before the other heroes are ready, he's saved by Luke but she escapes. During the chaos of the battle, the Emperor is separated from the others but finds the Plagueis holocron and secretly takes it with him. Han and the Falcon go down, while saving Leia and Daisy. Lupita realizes the holocron has been stolen from her, is angry, but then accepts it and says she's already learned what she needed.

The Emperor returns to his capital, but learns his mother died a day ago. Boyega is healed but bitter about his defeat and wanting to prove himself as a hero. The Emperor learns the secret to opening the holocron, and listens/sees the holographic form of Darth Plagueis, who begins to instruct him. Luke and Leia honor Han's memory, along with many others. The Emperor visits his dead mother in her crypt, loses emotional control and uses the Force in a new way, and actually brings his mother back to life. Lupita has lost the battle but she and most of her Force-trained army have escaped to fight another day, she gives an inspiring speech to her followers about how the war of liberation has begun and their victory is inevitable.

 

Three words...Death Star III.

 

In 30 years? VII takes places 30 years after ROTJ, not TCW. So Ventress would be over 80 years old and Ahsoka a bit younger but still old as hell.

 

I'm guessing the movie starts on Tatooine & then moves into a rescue mission , then the baddie makes a big military move & the whole thing ends up with a big space battle & the new big 3 save the day .....

 

I don't think we need another Death Star. Since all of the weapons from the Tarkin, Galaxy Gun, and others are no longer canon, we can create something new.

My take is that during the Galactic Civil War, the Emperor designed a gravity weapon that uses projectiles to level civilized planets, but it was never build and was lost in Imperial archives after the fall of the Empire. Some Dark Jedi loyal to Palpatine seek out the plans for this weapon to assemble it themselves as a means of gaining power across the Galaxy and to destroy the New Republic. The Jedi and the Republic must find and prevent the construction of this weapon lest it wreak havoc. Even Coruscant itself becomes targeted by the device at some point.

 

For the Empire to hang on after ROTJ, I think they'd need either new Sith warriors or some kind of superweapon.

I'm one of the few people who didn't mind the return of the Death Star in ROTJ. After all, once you design plans for a weapon like that, you don't stop building it just because the enemy destroyed it. That would be like us canning the drone program because a few were shot down. If anything, they'd just seek to redesign it minus the weaknesses.