ST Official Sequel Trilogy / Legends / Expanded Universe discussion thread

Simon Kinsberg seems like an obvious candidate. He's supposed to have a writing credit on the Rebels pilot, and is an executive producer for the series. He's also been linked to the spinoff movies.

 

That's definitely my thought as well.

 

Of course Pablo Hidalgo, Leland chee, Jennifer Heddle from Lucasbooks, and of course a rep for Kathleen Kennedy, when she can't make it, and who knows who else.

 

Yeah those are pretty much a given but I know there are others.

 

I went into a toy shop the other day & staring me in the face was an action figure of Mara Jade from the dark series & the information on the back was she married Luke Skywalker ect so my point is more & more of the public will know about Mara Jade & when she ends up non existent in EP7 what will people think ?..........

 

Well the number of people who know about Mara Jade is still a relatively small percentage of the audience for Episode VII and the number of people who care about her is even less. And the people who do know about her are probably savvy enough to get that the new movies overrode the old continuity. Toys like that are more for collectors than children anyway.

 

Point is, buy the toy. If she gets made offical odds are they'll be a run on that toy, and if she isn't it will go away and maybe one day it might be worth a lot due to its rarity.

Im foolishly hoping its a sign she's in VII (be it just off hand comment that she dead years ago, to full blown supporting character role and hoping the later)... but not holding my breath.

 

I say don't buy it because her head sculpt is ridiculous, the eyebrows are tacky, and that hair is a nightmare. Good hustle, Hasbro, good hustle.

 

I also foolishly hope she is mentioned in EP7 no necessarily in it but say Luke mentions her passing cause as being a fool I was hoping the EU could stay intact & EP7 takes place after Cruicible at 45-50ABY..........

 

They won't have Luke fall in love, get married, have a girl and have his wife die all off screen.

 

How about a son? Or his wife still being alive?

What about spin-offs that could eventually show us them falling in love tgen getting married (be it live action or more likely CGI)?

Are we just to assume all the characters have been static in development just cause we have to assume audiences are too stupid to realize 30 years of character development has taken place between the films?

I mean really. The film could be from the daughter/sons pov of desiring more info on their dead parent... you know just like episode IV where Luke wants more info on his father. Star Wars has done this before already, so history can clearly repeat itself here.

 

Filling that kind of back story for an established character just isn't good storytelling and you don't do it. It would be like starting ESB and having Luke say in passing "I met this Jedi named Yoda who trained me, so now I'm a Jedi".

The difference between ANH and Episode VII is that we KNOW Luke, people are going to care about Lukes wife what happened in that time between movies.

 

What if The St, is much closer to ROTJ, than the majority assume?

No one has said anything about when the story takes place.

Jett Lucas did not say anything about the new characters, and plot, JJ, and his dad would have his head if he did.

 

You assume much, young one. Your anolgy assumes there won't be a massive subplot to the entire movie and that line wouldn't just a teaser intro for instance.

So start off VII with villain who got captured by new female character that the Sith have returned and they'll crush Luke's Jedi order and the new character replies "My dad and Aunt will never let that happen". Now omg, we know Luke has had offspring. The audience now want to know more about all the details... which VII will slowly leak throughout the rest of the film. Say this daughter now meets a survivor soldier from ____, who agrees to help them cause of the sacrifice her mom made with her life to save his planet. Now the mother is revealed to have died but she's still set up the romance plot of VII... and what's this about another planet almost being destroyed?

Your example only works if there is bad writing that fails to capitialize on the audience not knowing what's gone on and relying on telling instead of showing (your example just told, my example showed cause the audience will get to witness the daughters reaction to being reminded about her mothers death). Simply put Star Wars in a very big sense is a Space Opera, ever watch a soap opera... you can miss 20 years of it and yet still know what's going on in the plot with in 5 minutes. The details aren't as important as you'd like to believe, its really about what's done with them instead.

 

If they're including the Big Three- it will take a lot of CGI and/or makeup to make them look convincingly much younger than the age of the actors.

 

Which is bad writing because the audicne is already invested in Luke. When you aren't invested ina character you have back story that sets that character up. Once the audience is invested, skipping over big life moments just becomes bad storytelling, as I said having Luke train with Yoda off screen.

 

I'm with you on this one Sluggo. Despite large gaps already in the story, all of the other movies have gone out of their way to pick up pretty seamlessly where the last one left off. The biggest exceptions really are the Rebellion which was set up in Episode III by Organa's resistance to the Empire (although I do miss those deleted scenes that further spelled it out) and Padme being a Senator instead of a Queen, but that one isn't really a big deal in the scheme of things and we are introduced to her in a familiar way with a silver ship, yellow starfighters and even a decoy. Everything else that happens between the movies is a logical extrapolation of where the story left off, i.e. Leia being in the Rebellion on the same ship where we last saw her adopted father. We even see Artoo and Threepio on that same ship in the same hallway where we last saw them to establish right away that nothing much has changed since the last movie. Given how carefully this was done, I cant help but think the same will be true of Episode VII. So to me it doesn't make sense for Luke to have children because no precedent has been set up in a previous movie for that to happen, whereas we saw Han and Leia's love story so them having children makes sense and becomes a logical extension of that. So (back on topic) because of this, I don't envision Episode VII featuring or mentioning Mara Jade in any way because it just doesn't fit the established method of storytelling.

 

Excatly. YOu can't have complicated, life changing adventures happen to characters you are invested in off-screen.

I have on problem with Luke having children, I have a problem with "Luke got married but that wife is dead". Granted, a wife dying is not as bad as "Luke was married to Mara Jade who was killed by her nephew etc...".

 

Again, you missed my point from my first reply to you. It would only be temporary since Disney can and will eventually show us the in between, just as they're doing between III and IV with Rebels and likely a spin-off or two. After all think about it, by your very own statement the gap between episode III and IV is bad writing since you know that whole Rebellion thing happened, Leia got into politics but Vader somehow never realized it was his force sensitive daughter cause shouldn't have Bail tried to keep her out of the spot light better, Chewie got with Han (think that one was kinda big, don't you? Are you only excusing this cause it was the last prequal? Oh wait we're rumored to be getting a spin-off that could be about this, geeh...)

Or how about in Empire where no all the sudden Han wants to leave again because of the bounty hunter he ran into at Ord Mandel unlike at the end of ANH where he finally had setteled in. Or Luke now knowing a lot more force powers and knows how to consturct a new lightsaber without having gone back to visit Yoda at the start of RotJ. Or back to Empire where all the sudden there is this Lando guy who used to own the Falcon when it was previously implied to be Hans old customized hot rod. Or Leia clearly now liking Han more than Luke in Empire when many people after ANH thought it'd be Luke x Leia. Etc...

These aren't examples of bad writing but opportunities for us to realize Star Wars is a grander galaxy than we knew that let's our imagination fill in the gaps. You only call it bad writing since you want to see the details. You argue that the episode left our characters pretty much where we left them between the eps... which is only half way true. There was some pretty big changes between the characters in quite a few ways. The difference was they where well written vs your worst case senerios gag reactions.

Its been 30+ years, greater than any gap between any prior movies. People are smart enough to realize this and the fact its new management. Yes, there might be one or two moments where we have amuch further development than some would like, but its the nature of taming the beast to direct this franchise into 50+ years of more movies. Look everyone expects Han and Leia to have kids, but parenthood changes people... Luke clearly liked girls in the OT but you're arguing he can't have found one in 30 years!?! Sorry that doesn't fly with me, Luke should have either choosen to remain single (gag) or found someone (which imho is more in line with the feeling of the original trilogy... not to mention Lucas's very own comments teasing Luke found someone in the Sequal Trilogy back in the late 80's)... you know like Anakins mom did between eps I & II. This isn't uncalled for in Star Wars mythos...

This is a herdle you don't want the plot to overcome, therefore you called it bad writing and made an argument to support it when greater changes have happened already between prior episode. Fact is marriage between a know and unknown character has already happened between episodes in Star Wars... and people accepted it then. Next off Star Wars hasn't always had good writing, but they did all their bad writing for tieing into good later plot developments and connecting stuff. At worst with a writer like Arndt this just be a minor hickup... if it transpires that is.

 

There were 19 years between III and IV and the changes that happened in that time were pretty negligible. Sure there will be things that happened that we weren't privy to, but I'm just saying if they follow the established pattern of storytelling, the major events will have pretty much unfolded in a way that's consistent with where we left off in the last movie, barring some possible new threat that began just before the start of Episode VII. But as far as character's lives, I don't think we'll be seeing things like Luke having a family since we never saw anything in the OT to make us think he would end up with a family besides Leia Han and their offspring. And new management shouldn't factor into it. These are still GL's stories and he's still guiding the process and Disney isn't going to swoop in and start from scratch when his treatments were such a big part of what they paid for.

 

So its only bad story telling when people first see it........

You are confusing back story with important events in an established, loved characters life.

Nothing of importance happened with the bounty on ord mental. What you're suggesting would be like Han - being frozen in carbonite changed my mind

 

New mangament does greatly factor in here since Lucas only wrote 3 more story treatments and Disney/LFL said they are planning 50+ years worth of new content right now. Clearly Lucas's story treatments will be used as a base template of where to begin however that leaves 47 years of movies to fill... but let's look at what Lucas already said about Luke's love life in the sequal Trilogy back in the late 80's he was quoted in a magazine interview stating Luke would have a female love interest in the sequal trilogy.

Next off Pablo Hidalgo was just hinted that they are cherry picking the EU. So Mara being fitted in is quite possible. Maybe you're right that Luke wont be married and with kids, but maybe he'll be dating and learn he got her pregnant and at movies end they get married. Fact though is unless Lucas drastically altered his story treatments then Luke wont be single cause he already revealed this over 25 years ago.

I personally think though Disney will realize too much time has passed between VI and VII and they'll be bolder in a few places with character development between the movies, since after all between every movie there was development between characters. Sure thus one will be bigger than most but so what... is this film really about Luke or the new generation? This really is the key question here, not a game of semantics of just how much change is acceptable. I don't see this as a problem... more of just landing in happily everafter where RotJ left off and happily ever after can mean a lot.

I mean who really expects Lando to still be single? Why the double standard with Luke? Luke imho is now a supporting character, thus he is fair game to larger changes in what happened to him. What really matters here is the new generation of heroes and if some said 'child for Luke' is one of them than filling in the gaps is fair game since its now about the offspring, not Luke.

 

Also, Ryus & all you others, the events off-screen must serve a purpose to the story, the Clone Wars in ANH was a mystery, and it was played up for its emotional resonance to the events of the OT. If they 'honor' the EU in the ST there will be a portion of the audience that knows the background beforehand (and a significant portion too, assuming the EU was thus deemed significant enough to keep). This will make whatever emotional resonance you could achieve out of this material incredibly difficult to juggle with, having different levels of mystery backstory, different levels of audience foreknowledge, and so run great risk of ruining the whole thing.

-An example of audience foreknowledge handled badly is the scene in TPM when Qui-Gon haggles with Watto, he tries to use the Jedi Mind Trick, but fails, and it's sort of played for laughs with our foreknowledge of Jedi powers. But if you watch the films in episode order, this is actually the first time you see this iconic use of the force.. and it fails.
That is quite the contrast to Obi-Wan with the stormtroopers in ANH.

 

The difference between Luke and Lando is that Lando was established as a ladies man while Luke became a much more serious minded Jedi. Sure he can set the rules of the new Order and get married if he wants to, but I just think it's a stretch that he would have done that based on what we've seen in the movies so far. The fact is that the legacy of the Skywalker family can be carried down through Leia so Luke doesn't need to be married or have children of his own. I also seriously doubt that in these movies he would have impregnated someone he was only dating. That just doesn't fit into the nature or style of these stories. And I don't remember anyone ever saying definitively back in the day that Luke would have a love interest in the ST. I remember Hamill saying he asked Lucas why Luke didn't get a love interest in the OT to which Lucas replied "You haven't seen the final trilogy yet." This is hardly a confirmation considering Lucas's tendency to joke and the amount of time that has passed since then even if Lucas was actually considering it in the first place. Hamill has also said since then that he came to recognize that Luke didn't need a love interest because that wasn't necessarily part of his path as a Jedi and that he could see himself ending up as an old hermit like Obi-Wan in ANH, which seems to me like a much more appropriate place in which to have his character start this new trilogy.

Yeah that bugs me a little but remember that Qui-Gon used it on Boss Nass first so when he used it on Watto we were able to get the necessary information about what the Jedi power was. The problem is that it's handled a little clumsily because even though Qui-Gon appears to succeed with Boss Nass, Nass then immediately indicates that he could have ulterior motives for allowing them to have the transport.

 

Lucky. Still waiting for her to show up here.