Zahn Trilogy with CG (Speculative)

Arawn is completely correct, but really, the question is: would Lucas totally use someone else's story to make a new trilogy? Highly, highly doubtful.

 

Not to mention Aayla Secura.

 

I'm talking about him dedicating an entire series to something from the EU. Isn't that what this thread is about?

-matthew

 

I think the prospect of it being a film trilogy would be a no-go for Lucas & Co. It would be too symbolic as a continuation of the saga. That would be according it too much weight. After reading this thread, what I would like to see is a TV mini-series that covers the Thrawn Trilogy and the Hand of Thrawn duology. I believe this medium would be better suited for the stories themselves and for Lucasfilm. For the series to work they would have to cast Mark, Carrie, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams and what will be infinitely harder Harrision. Those voices will need to stay with the characters.

 

Well we all know by now how often Lucas said something and always went back on it just to surprise us.

Plus he already did state that he might explore many grounds using the new animation studio they've opened up. There's no reason why they should stop at the Clone Wars series with all that they've developed.

I'm sure I recall Knights of the Old Republic was confirmed as a possibility in one convention. Plus we've already heard that the live action series was going to be divided up into four parts.

An animated post ROTJ is more or less a given. I think it's just a matter of time. Who wouldn't love to see the Solo kids on the screen by now?

 

Lucas has been firm in his belief that his story ends with the death of Anakin.

 

Ever since they came out with those books, I thought they somewhat were going to do something to that extent, animation or otherwise. But, since then, they've came out with too many novels which kind of deluted the whole expanded universe idea.

But yeah, I would love to see a Thrawn trilogy.

 

Killing his heroes in the last movie would have made things easier for the franchise.

 

I like the miniseries idea mentioned above. Shoot it and put it on HBO.

 

Ya, that would've been fun to watch.



There are all kinds of possiblilties in the EU for potential animated series. I wouldn't mind seeing the adventures of Han and Chewie prior to ANH. Shoot, throw Boba Fett in for fun. However, part of the problem of mining the EU for stories is that the time line and character backstories have become to restricted, before, during, and after the OT/PT eras. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room to insert new stories even if new characters are created.

 

A lot more fun then him having the centerstage instead of the new generation of heroes.

 

on the topic of lucas taking from the EU, I think this is really unfair. He never reads the stuff, but being the high overlord of the franchise, he can yank other peoples creations, twist them to his own ends, and then disregard the inventor completely.

Case in point, Timothy Zahn's Coruscant.

 

I wonder...
if somehow lucas passed away. who would be the new evile palpatine ??
hopefully someone that is villing to use some off the stuff inn eu

by the way.
we only need as many episodes as comic parts made off those books

 

How do you know for certain? Given that certain lines of dialogue in AOTC and ROTS seem to be almost directly lifted from books like Rogue Planet and Shatterpoint ( note the timing of the book releases ), I think it's not too far-fetched to assume he reads some of them.

 

I assume he's read some in his spare time. But I wouldn't blame him if he didn't read NJO and Beyond. But Millennium Falcon is good.

 

Just because GL doesn't take the EU into account when telling his own stories in his universe, it doesn't mean he hasn't read any of it. There are quite a few times where GL has talked in surprising depth about the EU.

 

I really doubt George reads the EU books. I imagine he has some idea about some of the characters, though. I've only read one SW book, but I still know a good bit about some of the characters from stuff like Wookieepedia.

 

Don't think of it as television or feature films, but as direct to DVD release ala DC Animated and Marvel Animation. You know, like Superman Doomsday, Green Lantern First Flight, Wonder Woman, Batman Gotham Knight, Justice League the New Frontier, Hulk VS, Ultimate Avengers, Invincible Iron Man, Doctor Stranger etc.

I think Zahn's trilogy and Dark Empire would work perfectly for that. They could take the opportunity to do a little bit of retconning or visually connecting them better with the PT in some ways. Dark Force Rising has a "miniature scout walker" on one of the Katana Fleet Dreadnaughts... easily turned into an ATRT.

 

Zahn's trilogy is what got me back into Star Wars.

And I bet you could get at least Hammill to do the voice of Luke for the show. I would really like to see it, CG or live-action(a more expensive prospect obviously).

 

I could see getting Hamill to do a live action flick of Luke as an older Jedi Master... not TTT, though.

 

While I do appreciate what the Thrawn trilogy did to kickstart the EU franchise, ultimately I don't think a film version of it can stand up to the cinematic standards set by the SW films. To be specific, the Thrawn trilogy is not a space opera but rather a sci-fi story that revolves around a whole series of technological and biological gizmos like ysalamiri, Spaarti cloning cylinders, cloaking shields, and what not. While this sort of stuff is fodder for sci-fi fans, much of the nuances involved will not impress general audiences, since the sum of all the junk at Mt. Tantiss can never hope to match the visceral impact of stuff like the Death Star (it can blow planets away), the AT-ATs (they just keep lumbering on), or even the Kamino cloning facilities. Zahn's work ultimately relied too much on mysterious, but not flashy enough uber-tech for it to ever make for a movie that the masses can enjoy. As for the Force-arc, showing a crazed C'baoth clone going after the Skywalker twins is really not as connected to the story of the Saga as having a reborn Palpatine do the same thing.

Therefore, I propose essentially a hybrid of the Thrawn trilogy and the first Dark Empire comic (ignoring the other two). Instead of using clones to come back, Palpatine simply uses the Force to assume a new physical form (who knows what Dark Side powers Palpatine discovered since ROTS), and merely masquerades himself as the insane Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth (again, cutting down on the use of clones as plot elements) who's been hanging out at his warehouse waiting for someone with brains to come along and take stewardship over the Empire. "Heir to the Empire" can play out much like the original novel, but the next two movies would resemble DE itself more as far as the Skywalker and Imperial Reconquista-arcs are concerned. As for the Emperor himself, it should be clear that he dies for good at the end of the third film because the Skywalkers cut him off from the Force (something that would be aluded too with the ysalamiri's abilities). Sure this destroys EU continuity a great deal, but I don't think that's all important when trying to make a sequel trilogy that can serve as an effective continuation of the Anakin-Palpatine-Luke-Leia story from the first two trilogies and not just some random "what happened after ROTJ" story.

 

We aren't talking about a sequel trilogy here, my friend. We are talking about a direct-to-DVD animated adaptation of EU stories, much like DC Animated has been adapting major story arcs or graphic novels into the animated medium like Superman Doomsday(did alot of rearranging and changing) and JL: New Frontier(Didn't change stuff so much as kept it hyperfocused on certain storylines). I think TTT would stand up well with even some casual fans, I know alot of people who are not avid readers of Star Wars that loved TTT. The ysalamiri are no more strange to the Star Wars viewer than midi-chlorians are. And the cloning facility in Mt Tantiss is really all one needs... it could very strongly resemble Kamino, so that is clearly not an issue. There's not much really significantly unfamiliar going on in TTT that isn't unfamiliar going on in the PT. We never see the full scale Clone Wars, we've got alot of political manuevering, behind the scenes Sidious action(which, I think it might be worthwhile throwing in some references to the resurrected Palpatine doing to the ignorance of even Thrawn, make him out to be more of a patsy ala Grevious... only a better commander, obviously), clones, cloning tech, strange new creatures and planets we have. There's so much time spent in the New Republic Senate and Inner Council that it's not at all unfamiliar and matches up quite well with the Senate heavy TPM and AOTC. You've also got a similar arc of introduction of certain elements. HTTE plays out with similar plot points as TPM with Thrawn and C'Baoth as phantom menaces manipulating events unseen until the very end(in this sense Thrawn acts similar to Maul), then in DFR you end up with C'Baoth in an almost Dooku-lik

 

Id definatly see it, I just dont know if I would like it in CG. Although, I loved the Clone Wars in CG so I guess it wouldnt be much different.

 

I think a different style would be necessary. More along the lines of TOR or TFU cutscenes than TCW. Either that or traditional animation. It seems like using traditional animation kind of lessens, somehow, the association of an animated project with being in accord with "G-canon."