ST Who's The Baddie?

I keep hearing that JJ will be taking the ST back to the OT feel, are there any specifics or opinions on what that actually means? Is it just simplicity, or could it mean character development and chemistry -- something else?

Having worked with Lost and Fringe, I think Abrams would be very capable of subtly incorporating Mortis or the Force Ghosts world, and then having the ability of bring the beings into the GFFA. It was the OT where we encounter the Force Ghosts - for me, this is just a natural progression.

I have to agree I don't like the idea of Gods fighting mortals, but maybe the daughter wipes out the son before things get too out of hand.

 

I think the specifics can be seen in the Ralph inspired designs and used universe as seen in the leaked pictures, the casting of virtual unknowns, and having Kasdan work on the screenplay.

Opinions on what that means? Less COMPLETELY CGI environments, less ambiguous story, OT inspired designs, and more personal story.

 

Definitely the more personal story... Which I think is yet another reason to throw Mortis out of contention. There's no personal connection between the Family and Luke, Leia or their descendants nor are they something that can even be overcome by someone as powerful as Anakin at the height of his power.

The only role Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka played in the Mortis arc was as distractions or morality pets for god-like beings struggling with each other for dominance. It could have just as easily been a Star Trek episode for all the influence the heroes had on the plot. The Sister was only killed because she sacrificed herself and the Father killed himself in order to kill the Son. Short of either grossly depowering them or providing some McGuffin to let a mortal fight a Force god there's just not much you can do with the Family that isn't just rehashing the Mortis arc and the ostensible heroes being yet another distraction while another member of the Family takes out the Son again.

There's just not enough there to wrap an entire TRILOGY around. Also, its just a feeling but I think Sydow is a one-and-done character simply due to the risk of 'Actor Existence Failure' and I can't see how they'd resolve a Mortis-redux trilogy without having the Father appearing in all three films.

 

Frankly, I'm all for new things that don't necessarily "feel like Star Wars." I think we've seen them all so many times that it's difficult to remember that each episode usually brought something new to Star Wars. ESB got more philosophical and deeper into the Force, introducing visible Force ghosts, Luke's trippy experience in the cave, etc. ROTJ gave us Force lightning. TPM gave us the prophecy and midichlorians, for better or worse. Though we heard about the Clone Wars in ANH, Star Wars didn't delve into such hard sci-fi until AOTC with the cloning facilities on Kamino. ROTS gave us dream/nightmare sequences, which we hadn't seen from a first person perspective until then.

I think expanding the universe and subverting our expectations of what Star Wars could be is a good thing. I'd rather they take chances and go "out there" than stick to what we've seen before.

 

I'm dragging my comments from the attachments thread over to here because I had a thought related to baddies, motives and timelines.

What if our new baddie isn't 'dark' at all... or least not in the sense the Sith were? What if they were more akin to the EU concept of a Grey Jedi? Say one of Luke's apprentices decides that the whole space hippie 'embrace your emotions' path Luke is following is wrong-headed and dangerous. Let's say he read some of the old Jedi philosophy texts that Luke recovered and thinks they had the right idea about attachments being too dangerous after all.

So he abandons Luke and starts his own rival school that's all about cutting all emotional ties as the path to enlightenment and over the following years slowly gets more extreme to the point where, in order to join, you have to sever ALL ties to your old life (including taking on a new title) by any means necessary. Then a potential student who has been rejected by this rival school because he's unable to let go of a particular loved one does the unthinkable and kills that particular loved one to sever that attachment and Luke's former apprentice is so out of touch with human feelings by this point that he applauds the student for his devotion to detachment on the logic that the good that this student will eventually do to aid the galaxy will far outway the loss of a single life so that need never be in danger from attachments.

This, obviously brands the group as pariahs, but some splinter government or another would offer them sanctuary simply due to the power that having a 'Jedi Order' within its borders wold provide. From there this Order grows and twists both from complete detachment from any human feelings beyond certain platonic ideals and the greed and hunger for power of this Order's political sponsor to the point where, 30 years after Endor you have a 'Jedi' cult that is complicit in the abduction of children and the murder of their families in order to create Force disciples who are completely detached from everything except their Order's goal to bring about the greatest possible good the greatest number of people by any means necessary.

And this Order sees the emotionally attached disciples of Luke as grave dangers to the galaxy because their emotions could drive them to darkness... and now, after decades of preparation they're finally ready to wipe out this threat to the galaxy.

 

Well the supposed title IS Ancient fear, so I think it would be something veeery dark. But it really WOULD be a welcome change if it weren't obvious from the start, which side is actually right. Then again, with the milennia long cycle of one order almost exterminating the other and the remnants taking revenge, it is hard to argue with the POV of the Sith.

 

That was exaggerated by the EU. GL only had one Sith purge and one Jedi purge (the one in ROTS) in mind.

 

Maybe so. But think about it. You disagree about howm much emoption you can show, so you are expelled and hunted down. Of course you want revenge. Let's say you are Hitler and someone kills your girlfriend. Of course you want to flay that person. We don't really know the details of what GL planned to be the Sith purge or how the two orders split.

 

So...Latino Review is suggesting that there will be a female villain who is likely to be a Sith and there will be Mandalorians or Mandlorian-type armor at least.

Grain of salt, grain of salt....

Okay, I found it on LR. Here is the exerpt:

So what can we talk about in terms of what we know about Star Wars: Episode VII?
Here are some fun bullet points that have solidified enough through different channels to be reportable:

• There will be a female villain. Over 50% sure she's a Sith. I'll follow up on this in later weeks.
• Despite having 30 Years after Jedi to set one up, there is NO New Republic at the start of Episode VII.
• Boba-Fett-similar armor is around. Probably not for the man himself. Mandalorians? Clone drama? Still unclear on a plot/character connection.
• John Boyega isn’t a Jedi or a Padawan at the beginning of the movie, he’s the one that has the story arc that brings him into Star Wars’ greater universe. It has echoes of Luke’s arc in A New Hope.

Have it at, speculate away! I’m just as curious about some of those developments as you are.

Link:
http://www.latino-review.com/news/s7ar-wars-jjedi-mind-tricks

 

I think it'd possibly be interesting to see two bad guys in the movies - particularly if one was revealed in ep7 / 8, and the other hinted at all through them, then revealed in 9 (as in the OT with Vader and Palpatine). And I have an inkling that it could be that Asajj Ventress (played by Lupita Nyong'o) is the one revealed early on, and Ahsoka Tano (played by Daisy Ridley) is the mastermind of the whole scenario, who has trained Ventress since her departure from the Jedi Order back in TCW season 5. I also think the reason that they've become so uber-powerful is because after leaving the Jedi Temple, Ahsoka was furious with the Jedi, she sought ways to get back at them, believing that she could never win back their favour, and discovered Darth Plagueis' holocrons, possibly on Morriban (I wish they'd never changed the name, Korriban was so much better, but whatever). Bear in mind that in spite of the fact that Ep7 is set a full 30 years after RotJ, we have no canonical source to show how quickly either the Dathomiri or the Togrutans age, so it is still conceivable (if a little contrived) that they could still both be apparently youthful characters, hence the age of the actresses suggested.

 

I should have posted this here first-sorry I posted something similar in another thread.

The biggest surprise to me is: Despite having 30 Years after Jedi to set one up, there is NO New Republic at the start of Episode VII.

That wasn't expected. I sincerely hope that this doesn't not give credence to the idea that the Empire may still exist. Ugh!!!!!!

 

Uh oh...I smell the foul stench of an Imperial remnant. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

To be fair, Lucas did say (back in 1983) that 7, 8, and 9 would be about the rebuilding of the Republic. This couldn't happen if a new one already exists when 7 starts.

 

I'd be surprised if there was no New Republic at all. That being said, if there isn't, I doubt the Empire will still exist as the galaxy wide Political/Military entity we saw in the OT. If we do see anything calling itself Empire this or Imperial that, I suspect it'll be on a smallish scale similar to the Remnant.

 

I take everything from LR with a dump truck of salt, but I would LOVE a female villain. I would really love for her to be the main villain, but I'd take a large-ish villain role that's not the big baddie.

 

Holding on to large grain of salt... It does sound like the story idea I posted about.

No New Republic: Yes! That means a united Galaxy is the goal, it's the reward - the thing that characters fight for. The movie opens on a very chaotic Galaxy.

Boyega: Main Character, kind of like ANH Luke. My idea is that he's a citizen from the Imperial Remnant - Warlord systems, joins up with the Alliance and helps the OT Trio. His arc represents the Old Imperials joining forces with the Alliance to take on a bigger foe. Boyega is not a force User, he's going to be a King Arthur type. The First new king/ruler for the New Republic when it's finally established in Ep 9. Luke will be like Merlin. (Mirroring Palpatine mentoring Anakin, in a way)

Mandalorian armor: Sounds like a new invasion force. Could be cool if handled properly.

Female Villain: Yes! All in favor of that idea.

 

Is a galaxy-wide Republic really expected before Episode 7? I don't see it. The dominant government (Empire) is severely weakened but the Republic is not able to replace it. The people of the Republic could have splintered after Palpatine and Vader died. Other groups could have risen up to carve up the galaxy. The criminal underworld could play a factor as well. So many reasons for the Republic to not be the dominant power.

 

I think the Republic will be the dominant power, but not as big as it was prior. There will still be an Imperial Remnant and there's still Hutt space etc.

I think the Republic is still trying to rebuild itself too... I agree that there would likely be a high criminal element within it's boarders.

I also think that many former Republic worlds that were under Imperial rule, may want nothing to do with a new Republic and may form their own smaller unions with neighboring systems.

 

It may just not be called the Republic but rather something else like Intergalactic Union (IU) or Alliance of Star Systems (AS...oh wait!).

 

Im completely opposed to the idea, that after all our heroes went through in episodes 1-6, that all they were rewarded with was 30 more years of civil war ....fudge that

Its why I hate pretty much all Post ROTJ EU

 

@obi_kenobi_24

You may not like Episode VII at all then, as the Rumor is the Empire still exists...

 

A broken Empire could be a lot of fun.

 

Except that's kinda how it works.

Things were not exactly sunshine and lollipops after the United States won the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 either. Our first attempt at government (the Articles of Confederation) collapsed and it took the War of 1812 (which didn't end until 1815, nearly 25 years after the victory at Yorktown) to actually get the British to fully withdraw from US territory and stop impressing our men into their navy. The US Civil War only lasted four years (1861-65) but US occupation of the former Confederate States didn't end for another dozen years after that (1877). The United States is still involved in bloody 'nation building' operations in Afghanistan more than a dozen years after 'victory' was declared.

Realistically, establishing a peaceful New Republic across a thousand thousand inhabited worlds is the work of decades if not centuries. That our heroes will be able to pull such a thing off within the lifetimes of those who fought at the Battle of Endor would be something of a miracle... a miracle that we'd actually see unfold as part of the ST if the rumors are to be believed.

 

I love happy endings as much as the next person but Episode 6 is not the end anymore. They can do whatever they want with the story now. Episode 9 or maybe 12 will be the official happy ending.
Look at Europe, was everything fixed at the end of WWII? I don't think so. Or look at Africa after colonial independence. Look at France in its own Revolution shortly after America's and how that turned out. There are plenty of precedents to show that stuff could still happen.

 

On top of it.... the deciding battle of the Civil War was Gettysburg... yet the war lasted another 2 years... so the deciding battle was only half way through the entire war.

This may have been the deciding battle... but this is a war that has been going on for 20yrs, and is spread almost across the entire Galaxy.

Sorry, but that did not look like an entire Galaxy worth of assets on either side of that battle. The head was cut off and the Empire significantly weakened, but they were FAR from dead.