Lit How would the Thrawn Trilogy or Dark Empire have worked as film trilogies?

I often here people touting these two book trilogies as the best sources of adaptations of films (especially a few years ago, when the subject of the Disney sequel trilogy was still in doubt). But setting that aside, how would either of these do as films? Could they be adapted well? I remember Lucas said that Dark Empire was closest to his idea of a sequel trilogy, and many fans say the Thrawn trilogy would have made the best sequel trilogy.

 

The Thrawn trilogy would not work well as a Star Wars film trilogy. It was missing several key things that the 7 Saga films have all had.

1. At least one lightsaber duel per film
2. A powerful antagonist with a very physical presence
3. A red lightsaber

Dark Empire by contrast would work quite well. It would need a few tweaks though.

• Start the film on peaceful, Republic-ruled Coruscant and show the initial Imperial attack.
• Luke gets trapped on Coruscant in the attack and is captured and brought to face Palpatine
• In the final confrontation, Palpatine doesn't die, but instead is presumed dead in the wreck of the Eclipse

Dark Empire II

• Luke meets Kam, whose a Dark Side Warrior hunting for Luke at Sedriss's order
• Palpatine returns to Byss in his clone body to find his traitorous Dark Side Adepts have smashed all his cloning equipment

Empire's End

• Palpatine searches for a new body, hoping to take Leia's baby and use it's DNA to create a new clone for himself

Dark Empire had a lot more of the traditional Star Wars themes, such as a powerful Dark Side antagonist (that wasn't insane). Numerous lightsaber duels, superweapons, an overwhelmingly powerful opponent. The Thrawn Trilogy ventured into new directions for Star Wars, and while some people liked that, it did deviate a bit away from the main themes of Star Wars.

 

If Disney hadn't been so quick to fill in the post-ROTJ timeline with those Aftermath books, we could have a really cool Dark Empire animated adaptation where they just replace unborn Anakin Solo with unborn Ben Solo. And it wouldn't really contradict anything in TFA since Palpatine isn't mentioned in that film at all...

 

I think the new Jedi order if handled properly would have been an awesome series of movies, same with Legacy.

LOTF/DNT probably would have needed to tweaking/toning down the violence but would have worked as well.

 

I think you could argue that Thrawn did have a physical presence, but I do agree some sort of darkside presence would be needed by the second movie in a trilogy based around Thrawn. You could fairly easily change the guard of Palpatine's from a dark Jedi to a dark force user fulfilling at least the second key thing. The first movie in a Thrawn trilogy could get away without a dark side user.

 

Tend to agree that Dark Empire translates pretty easily into a cinematic trilogy, while Thrawn feels very different (but good!). You'd need a more complex Dark side villain, and some of the cerebral aspects might not work well on screen (i.e. Thrawn's tactical brilliance)

 

Dark Empire would work better.

Thrawn Trilogy would need to be heavily retooled. Though I wonder if a film would portray Thrawn in the whole "I am amazing worship me" in the same sense that Zahn did not even try to hide in his text.

 

Neither.

Each saga trilogy is supposed to be its own generation. Anakin's, then Luke and Leia's, now Rey and Finn and Kylo's.

All the fans who wanted a sequel trilogy just 5 years later seemed to be missing the point. The saga is about generations.

 

Ghost makes a very relevant point. A second trilogy about the heros of the OT would be...acceptable, but not really the point of the saga. The NJO is a much better example of what could have fit as a natural sequel trilogy in th saga.

Now, could Thrawn or DE work as films as a trilogy of "anthology" movies like Rogue One? I think so. And I think both could do well with the right director. Dark Empire is more of the classic "feel" of the conflict, but Thrawn is something entirely different which would draw audiences from that alone. Thrawn is proving to be the best antagonist of Rebels (not that he had much competition) so it is already vident that a more cerebral villain can translate to the screen. Especially with Pellaeon to act as the foil.

 

NJO for ST.

 

By this sort of superficial criteria, ROTS doesn't work as a Star Wars movie because nobody gets attacked by a creature.

TTT would be difficult to adapt to film because it's a big, complex story that derives a lot of its enjoyment from all the moving parts Zahn meshes together. I think you could do it, and they'd be good movies, there would just be a lot of adaptation required. Would there be fewer lightsaber duels? Yes. Are lightsaber duels what Star Wars is all about? No. Not unless you're stuck on the superficial, J.J. Abrams-level vision of Star Wars. There are space battles, there's learning about the Force, there's a dark Jedi and a genius Imperial and intrigue and smugglers and all kinds of Star Warsiness. The more limiting element is that it doesn't really have the depth of character arcs and development to work as a saga trilogy. TTT is the perfect "What happens after ROTJ?" story. It continues the action as well as you could ask. It sets the stage for the further-adventures storytelling that was able to build up a cast and a universe for the NJO to run with. But it's not really the next chapter of the saga. There's not enough going on, mythologically. If you told the story of the next chapter, the next-generation saga, the big-picture challenge, and this was just sort of an interquel, a "here's what happened between ROTJ and the NJO," then, yeah, it's great. But you'd need to punch it up a little for the films.

DE is actually in the opposite boat. It hits a few key saga-scale beats. Luke deals with rebuilding the Jedi more directly than in TTT. He struggles with and overcomes the dark side. Leia becomes a Jedi. As a comic book, it's just in a more filmable format, with a simpler, more visually-oriented story. But its weakness is that it's not really a very good follow-up story itself. It's basically built around repeating the beats of ROTJ with "but this time Luke joins Palpatine" substituted in. Nothing really gets built. The New Republic is reduced to a Rebellion on the run. It's dependent on bringing Palpatine back, which is an incredibly lame story beat. It's sort of TFA-level in that it's very obviously just the OT reskinned and passed off on audiences again, and this time without even using new characters. I just don't think it's a successful attempt to continue the saga either because it gets the opposite elements wrong -- instead of a great original story lacking saga-scale elements, it's a bunch of saga-scale elements lacking a good, original story.

Ultimately, I think that if you wanted to adapt Bantam-era storylines into a saga-level film trilogy, you'd have to sort of cobble together elements of multiple sources. It would almost have to be a sort of Marvel-style thing where they just pull out a bunch of elements they want, throw them in a blender, and get a new story out of it. Basically, throw TTT, DE, and JAT in a blender, because you can use the beats from all of them. TTT has the workable villains, the big scale, and the kickass characters. DE has the idea of Luke going undercover and struggling with the dark side, gathering these followers to rebuild the Jedi kind of haphazardly, and some cinematic elements like the crashed Star Destroyer and Nar Shaddaa. And JAT has Luke rebuilding the Jedi and Leia ascending to lead the New Republic. You'd probably end up with something that looked basically like TTT, but with C'baoth as a more direct Palpatine successor, a DE-style follower or Kylo Ren-style cultist, who's messing with Luke's students so Luke follows the clues to study under him as a fake Jedi, C'baoth style, and quickly realizes he's dark side, does his undercover routine, walks a dark line, but comes through and is able to come back and successfully mentor his students, who would probably include Mara Jade as an undercover Imperial agent or C'baoth apprentice he redeems. That sort of remix.

 

Argh, I have to post after Havac already gave a really good answer. Oh well. Anyway, my thoughts-

Out of the first two mentioned, I think the Thrawn trilogy would make a better film trilogy, as it had a better plot progression. The first part introduces the new characters (Mara, Talon) and builds up Thrawn's threat. Part 2 is a bit darker, then ends on the ominous note that Thrawn has a new fleet and basically unlimited clones to bolster his forces, then the finale.

While I don't think red lightsabers are required, the Thrawn trilogy probably wouldn't work as a movie trilogy. I love it as a sequel/post-OT story, but it probably wouldn't work as a movie trilogy.

Dark Empire could maybe work as one movie, but it recycles a lot from the OT, and while I like the art a lot, a lot of it is also unnecessary (like the trip to Nar Shadda). Certain moments would make for great cinematic scenes (like many of the big battles), but its a comc, so that's a relatively easy transition. Dark Empire II is even worse in that respect, recycling the OT and DE I. If Empire's End hadn't been shortened to just two issues, maybe it could work better, but really bringing Palpatine back from the dead again in DE II already wore out that storyline.

NJO would work, with say the first movie covering the initial encounters with the Vong, then showing the huge fleet invading, then part 2 would basically be SbS, then TUF as the finale (with the Solo kids' storyline rearranged of course).

The Legacy comics could also work, although that would require a lot of reworking too of course. Say the first movie would start with Cade having a nightmare about the fall of the New Republic/GA, then wake up to the awful present then end part 1 with actually taking up Jedi training again, etc., etc.

There's plenty of material that could be adapted, in theory anyway but the execution is always the hard part.

 

In terms character journey in the TTT that's Mara. Don't get me wrong it's a fantastic arc (even if Zahn contradicts it in later books) but most of the other characters don't really develop or learn anything new, they just have a series of adventures. In fact I even think the showdown between Luke and C'Baoth was actually taken away just so Mara could kill him. While Thrawn meets his end from one of his own OC's rather than an OT character.

Strangely enough (considering its writing) but the JAT is arguably the best choice for a Trilogy. You had an evil Female Warlord and a Sith Ghost. Neither of which has been done.And no wasting Gwendoline Christie doesn't count. The powerful but dodgy Apprentice with the whole poetry it rhymes theme, as well as the principle theme of Love and it's redemption qualities. You have an exploration of new Worlds like Kessel. Yes some of the story would need tweaking but as a Movie Trilogy it could work.

 

I actually do think that Lucas reading Dark Empire in the 90s influenced, at least in some broad strokes, his development of the prequels. I also think that if Lucas had hypothetically done the sequel trilogy in the 90s/00s instead of the prequels, they probably would have come out closer to DE.

Well, by this metric, TFA doesn't have a space battle or the Sith, so it's not a saga film.

 

Also, Episodes I, II, III, and V didn't have a bold assault on a giant spherical planet-destroying battlestation, so they're not saga films, either.

 

I want to make the case for Dark Empire in terms of its visuals.

Reading Dark Empire as a comic is fun as all get out. The color scheme is a bit strange, but a lot of the visual ideas are really cool. Dark Empire does scale a lot better than the Thrawn trilogy (IMO). Comparisons to ROTJ aside, everything in Dark Empire is scaled past anything we'd yet seen in the Saga. Everything is bigger and badder, and visually distinct and interesting. The stakes are raised in a way that the Thrawn trilogy could never hope to reach.

Dark Empire also falls in better to the traditional Star Wars storytelling, so it will be easy for new audiences to access and old fans to appreciate, all the while showing those older fans so.e really visually interesting ideas instead of making every planet a desert, a snowy wasteland and a forest.

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On this topic, I actually do wonder if some of DE's negative reactions come from the fact that, despite being published in the US as a spinoff of an American blockbuster movie, it is very much in the vein (artistically, as well as at least to a degree, story wise) of some of the more out-there European comics of the 70s and 80s like Metabarons or Valerian.

 

I always thought the backlash, negative view of DE was the standard fare of criticism-Emperor resurrected, Luke going dark(not really but the general public can't see nuance), and so on.

 

Never read Dark Empire, so no comments (although it's never been a story that I've had the urge to check out, for what it's worth).

I have a hard time imagining the Thrawn books working onscreen. They have a lot of talky moments and plotting that work well on page, but I can't see coming off that well onscreen.

 

I don't think any of Zahn's novels would work all that well as films. I have been reading HoT again, and it's not cinematic at all... and when you really think about it, TTT doesn't really translate well to cinema. Especially not as Episodes VII-IX.

That said, I feel if you made both as trilogies you would have to pepper TTT with more references to the specter of Palpatine's clone to tie the two stories together. In which case, you end up with a very PT/OT situation with these properties. TTT would piss general audiences off just as much as the PT did because there is SO much crap in the Senate. While DE really is OT redux initially. Although, DE2 and EE play out differently. I think DE would have to be altered such that Palpatine's clone doesn't die on the Executor I, but barely makes it off so that when we pick up on Byss in DEII, the minions think he died.

That said, TFA has already set the stage of reworked elements of the post-ROTJ EU. I'm looking forward to some of the more bold concepts considered for TFA cropping up in VIII and IX.

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I used to think that but it is actually a good read. Well the first book is anyway. It's got a great scope. Natural explanation for why Palpatine wasn't to bothered if Luke killed him in RTJ. Even the New Super Weapon the World Devastators is better than ANOTHER Death Star, Cough Abrams Cough, While the Boba Fett return explanation line, is simple,direct and brilliant.

Just bear in mind that it was written at the same time as Zahn and TTT and originally set for 1 year after RTJ and they had to change it to 6 years. So if things don't jive between the 2 it's due to that. Otherwise have fun and enjoy

As for the TTT, there is only so many times you can have an actor cock an eyebrow and say "Point" before the audience would get tired of it.

 

Both of those quirks in Zahn's writing are overstated considerably - if they're actually counted, they're much rarer than Zahn's critics make it seem.

Anyway, if Star Trek can have Spock's eyebrow-raise, Star Wars can have Thrawn's.

 

Point

 

I always have maintained that TFA isn't just a love letter to the OT, but the old EU as well, as several of the ideas in the film are reworkings of EU concepts.

But YMMV about whether or not they did those concepts justice.

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One of the first things I noticed about Kylo Ren's look was the sleeves being exactly like DE Luke with the addition of a Revan mask. Starkiller Base is visually DS3, but functionally a Galaxy Gun powered like the Star Forge. Incidentally, World Devastators would go a long way to explain how the First Order managed to turn a planet into a Galaxy Gun.

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