Discussion Time Period/Era For New Film Series

https://www.starwars.com/news/inside-star-wars-the-high-republic-meet-the-jedi-knights-and-masters

Has this been posted here? Anyway, gives a bit of an idea of the flavour of the High Republic.

EDIT: The last comment on this thread was in January?!?!! Come on, people, I need my fix of over-analysis of every tiny crumb of information!

 

Apologies for the double post, but since the edit period ended I found this post (I'm sure many of you are already aware of it):
https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-high-republic

"This period on the Star Wars timeline will not overlap any of the filmed features or series currently planned for production, giving creators and partners a vast amount of room to tell Star Wars stories with new adventures and original characters."

So it seems the rumours of a High Republic movie were off the mark. Bit of a bummer, I thought it could've been really fun.

 

I didn't vote for "After IX - RJ Trilogy" because I'm not even sure if there will be an RJ trilogy.

 

Taika has now signed on - I think RJ's trilogy is dead in the water ,

Who knows what time period they will come up with High Republic , Old Republic , post TROS ?

Personally I would like them to have a look at Knights of the Old Republic as this has never been seen on film......

 

I agree - it also frees them from having to canonize the whole thing or worry about tie-ins. To me there is a rich, untapped world out there that takes place way before any of the prequels. Old Sit/Jedi stuff. Old Republic. Im down.

 

Why must there be a "time"? Can't it be set in the world between worlds, a place where time has no meaning and any Jedi or Sith from any era can be drawn in???

 

I wouldn't want that in a film, but I would absolutely love a video game that used the WBW to bring together characters from all the different eras.

 

An Era of when the Mortis gods and WBW were known all around and was gifts from the gods. Let's take Star Wars into the bible. The mortis are this galaxy of god, the devil and nature.

 

Disney simply has to do KOTOR as some stage and soon I hope as there is a lot of fan demand to have a look a this era......

 

I agree with you 1000% !!

 

Knights of the Old Republic as a trilogy is what everyone seems to want.

The only thing that I worry about with a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic adaptation, is that they will change beloved aspects of the games, without reason, when showing fidelity to it's memorable visual design would be very popular. Some of the music in KOTOR II (which had a superior soundtrack to the first), was the best music I've heard after John Williams - for example the title track "The Sith Lords" - which evokes Williams brilliantly but sounds archaic and ancient. BioWare's art design was brilliantly suggestive of being an earlier era of the Republic, and Darth Malak was a great adversary. Visual language is important, and if any franchise understands this, it is Star Wars. But when adapting Expanded Universe content, sometimes things end up looking less periodised and more generic.


The Leviathan


Ancient Shuttle


Archaic Sith Armor


Ancient Vibroswords

Personally I would like to see the trilogy perhaps cover:
- Episode 1: The Mandalorian Wars/Malachor V
- Episode 2: The Original Game, Revan revealed, elements of KOTOR II
- Episode 3: The defeat of the Sith Emperor (retcon TOR)

 

KOTOR would def need more than a trilogy as it covers so much ground.

zayne carrick and the mandalorian wars

discovery of the true sith

Jedi civil war

post civil war purge and Jedi exile’s story

I don’t really enjoy the way Tor handles post KOTOR 2. I would’ve much preferred an endgame like team up of revan, the exile, the republic, and surviving Jedi against the true sith to end the saga.

you could probably cover all of this with 4-5 movies and 3 tv mini series.

 

What Disney could possibly do is go all out with the first KOTOR movie and then leave it open to do a trilogy so if the first one is well received and the box office is good as in $800 mill + worldwide then commission part 2 and 3 cause they don't really want to announce a trilogy first up and then the first film gets some backlash and then barely does over $500 mill.....

 

Just some thoughts I had on the KOTOR era recently that I wanted to spill out here.

So, it's no secret that the KOTOR-era is one of the most fan-requested ideas for a film/film series. Even before Disney, this idea has been thrown around for years and it's not hard to see why. The KOTOR games accomplished something spectacular story-wise, in that it both felt like classic Star Wars while also not resting on its laurels by telling a great, fresh SW story unlike anything we had seen before. The story of Darth Revan is so beloved, it's not hard to see why so many want, essentially, a live-action adaptation.

The thing is, I don't know if it should be adapted. It's tough, bc to adapt the KOTOR Revan story would require a tricky balance between staying faithful to the source material, while also adapting it in a way that fits the current canon AND works as a film story, not a story built for a video game. We have seen how anal some segments of the fan community can be when it comes to the films, and that's with films that are original and are not an adaptation of any prior Star Wars story.

If Lucasfilm sat down and said "Okay, we want to make a Revan KOTOR film/trilogy, let's go hire some talented writers and a talented director"... I honestly think it would be hard to find someone who is both extremely talented, but also willing to basically adapt a prior story, a story that if they messed up or even nailed but with deviations from the original video game, would create online harassment that may turn them off. But even if you find someone that is fine with all that, would it be advisable to base the next era of Star Wars cinema on a previously told video game story? As engaging as the story may be, it might be better if the next series of films took place in new worlds and a new era in canon, expanding the universe rather than telling a story many hardcore fans know about.

That being said, I think the Revan story DOES deserve to be told. I just think perhaps a video game reboot/remaster, or at best a television series would be the avenue to go, rather than film.

If KOTOR is adapted to film, then perhaps use that same era but create new characters and a new story. You could still reference Revan and his story (and tell that on a different medium), but have the new series of films that take place in the Old Republic be new and different.

And that's just story-wise. The actual era itself, with it's art design, technology, etc would probably be very different than in the video games. First of all, taking place 5000 years ago is a bit much, it would probably be best to scale that forward to before the extinction of the Sith, but rather at their height (which according to George was 2000-3000 years before the films). Then, the technology SHOULD be more ancient, to signify how far in the past this story is. The tech in the video games were largely, but not completely, VERY similar to the films that take place 5000 years later (esp in the Old Republic MMO). I think the best course of action is this:

1) Have it set during the 2000 year period (about 3000-1000 BBY) where the Sith (according to George's head canon) ruled the galaxy. In Legends, Revan lived about 4000 years before Darth Bane's establishment of the rule of two, or in other words 5000 years before the films. Perhaps their lives could be a bit closer in the timeline. Revan can be one of the last Sith Lords before the rule of two and the Sith's destruction, or the opposite and he is the Sith that conquered the galaxy and started the 2000-year Sith Empire.

2) Have the tech still be Star Wars, but more rudimentary. Meaning perhaps less dog fights and ground-vehicles (like walkers, speeders, etc), less blasters, and less space travel. Hyperspace travel should take longer and be less casual (and possible only with large capital ships), and blasters should either be non-existent, or very un-wieldy and cumbersome (think muskets), making hand-to-hand combat with vibroblades, lightsabers, and other melee weapons as the norm in terms of large scale battles or any action sequence. Vehicles on land can be replaced with mounted creatures.

3) Place major emphasis on the Jedi not being warriors. One of the big moral questions of the Skywalker saga, especially the prequels, is how the Jedi can fight a war when their primary goal is to promote peace and not act as soldiers. I think one of the major reasons the Sith Empire existed for so long is bc they had no problem declaring war and fighting political battles. In Legends KOTOR, the Jedi seem to act not so dissimilar to the Jedi of the PT. I think having them act more as an underground religion that does their best to help everyday people under the oppression of the Sith works better than just giant armies of Sith vs. armies of Jedi. Leave the army-to-army large scale battles to Sith vs. Mandos, or Sith vs. Republic soldiers (with some Jedi helping of course). I would equate the Jedi to Christians being prosecuted by the Romans, except for nearly 2000 years until they ally themselves with the newly formed Republic and take over the galaxy from a weakened Sith Empire that is collapsing due to infighting.

 

At least we agree Revan story should come to cannon I think a TV series would be awesome or a cgi animated series also as far as some hardcore fans being upset that will happen no matter what they do so I don’t even consider that an issue

 

If they do use Revan as the main hook of the next series, I hope they at least bring in the character's creator to consult. Don't make the same mistake twice. It doesn't have to be the same as legends, but at least make sure you have someone help you nail the essence of the character.

Star Wars doesn't need another Jake Skywalker situation.

 

Make Revan female. Nah we need Lake Skywalker.

 

I'm hoping for a couple hundred years after the ST.

I always imagined the next series of movies being more like the PT in the sense that it's on a much wider scale and that it'll involve multiple characters. I hope that that's the direction they take it in. It would be best to have a trilogy or even a tetralogy that captures that grand scale that the prequels had. Even the OT had that, to a degree. Make it into a whole new era three or four hundred years into the future after the ST so that we can capture more details and get immersed in this hypothetical era. I think that the detail was really lacking in the ST. Others may be fine with the "going back to basics" approach of the ST, but it felt like dumbing stuff down.

 

I’d love for in-universe legends/myths to be a thing. In a movie set 2000 years before the Saga, characters could a reference a Sith Lord who may have existed 4000 years before the Saga.

 

If Disney does the KOTOR period one day, they will do their thing and largely ignore the EU source material. Maybe they'll do few nods here and there, but that's it. Like they did with the ST.

 

Yes I totally agree with you. For me personally, I believe the big win from doing a KOTOR film is the period/setting itself, and not the established EU characters and situations per se. It's probably best to give a filmmaker a free reign to tell their own story/stories in that setting. I think one of the biggest challenges, visually, is to make a film that can convey being 1000's of years before the PT, giving it an aesthetic that makes it look ancient, whilst retaining iconography, and a style that is quintessentially Star Wars... I'd be inclined to make it much more of a brutal time. Far less technology. Far less civilised etc. etc. If the OT has an aesthetic of a western. The PT an aesthetic of the renaissance/art deco, then KOTOR needs to be more akin to the late 5th century and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (IMHO).

 

I thought PT was Art Deco... the 1930's or so... which made sense considering it was a generation before the 1970's of the OT.

If the next trilogy went a few more generations back into the Victorian Era that would be fun. If it got all Steampunk. Droids with exposed gears and letting out little puffs of smoke.

 

I say go back further with the historical analogs. Give us Byzantine and Norman and Ayyubid influences. So many cool design options when you dip into the early medieval era.

 

lets go back to when light sabers looked more like medieval swords.