ST Master Filmmaking Team announced! JJ now writing the script

How do you figure? I can't find any definition of the word that indicates gender specificity. Leia is the one who has Jedi powers after all.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by gender. Mentors can be any gender. The point is fathers and mothers are influential on their children, correct? If you have Han/Leia and Luke zooming around with young Jedi on a mission, you should have different sorts of teaching and mentoring going on. But who is the dominant teacher when it comes to Jedi values? Who is the young Jedi listening to? If you have Han/Leia, and Luke all basically agreeing on everything, there's no point in having them all together; that's a lot of static dialogue. Do Han and Leia look at the world the same as Luke? Do they even agree on everything together?

When you're writing the SP, you have to decide what POVs are going to be pushing the arc and how. Unless you're just saying that Han/Leia/Luke are all the same, which would be odd and poor writing, you have to do due diligence to their unique views. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Whoever you pick as the primary mentor, like Old Ben, you're going to get a different movie. So you pick the mentor that gives you the movie you want.

 

I appreciate this is all supposed to be insider knowledge but can someone please give a good reason why the focus couldn't be on the Solo children, with Uncle Luke looking out for them? (family, Skywalker blood, lineage, mentor - ticks all the boxes but moves away from the somewhat predictable Father/Son motif)

Actually, they could keep that in there too. The eldest/youngest Solo child doesn't take the death of his father very well - cue subplot for Uncle Luke to stop his nephews fall into the Darkside.

Don't get me wrong, as long as the story is good, I'll enjoy it. But why oh why are we so stuck on "It has to be the offspring of Luke to be a grandchild of The Chosen One"?

Even the most casual fans know that Luke and Leia are siblings. They know all the jokes about "the kiss"

 

StoneRiver That's what we're saying has changed (if the speculation is near the mark at least). We're speculating off word that has leaked out (which people should absolutely take with a pinch of salt).

It was Solo kids and Luke in the Old Ben role. Now it appears that at JJ's insistence the focus will be more on Skywalkers - whether that's Luke as the lead or Luke and his offspring I'm not sure (my guess would be the latter), which is why Arndt is out and his draft is being reworked.

If the initial info is wide of the mark then you're right, there's no reason it couldn't be Solo kids and Uncle Luke.

 

I think what Mystery Roach is actually referring to is the assumption that it has to be a male who mentors someone. "Why can't a female mentor someone with equal ability?" is the implied question within the question.

Regardless, setting issues of gender aside for the present, both Han and Leia have radically different points of view on things, but they are both good people; who's to say that there couldn't be a scene with them both giving radically different but equally valid "good guy" opinions on how their child-character should do something? In other words, as in life, two parents may agree that they want what's best for their child, but not necessarily agree on how best to achieve that, and may offer broadly divergent opinions; in the end the child has to weigh and measure both opinions and, quite often, come up with a third path that marries aspects of the ideas of both parents. In this way, the child learns to be capable of deciding for themselves. And in the end, it'll be what the chiold decides that's going to be important to the plot, not Han or Leia.

Which brings me to this: all those points having been said, I still think that all this nonsense about the Big Three having big roles in the ST is just that: nonsense. They can't have significant roles in the ST if they want the next generation of characters to come to the fore (and Jett Lucas, who has read the story as currently constructed, has specified that it is going to focus on that first and foremost). GL even told Hamill and Fisher that if they chose not to jump in to Episode VII, they would not be killed off; their roles would simply be written out. That alone tells me that they never had significant roles to begin with; why would they be so prepared to write them out if they were going to be so significant to the story? Answer: they're not. Regardless of what we may want, whatever the ST is, it's not just going to be the OT all over again.

And that's as it should be.

 

What sort of story do you want to tell? Why do you want to tell a story of an Uncle mentoring his niece/nephew? That's a different story than a father mentoring his own child. If the kids aren't any different to you, they're all interchangeable except for the last name, then you might as well have Luke with his own kids.

And, if you pick the Uncle thing, do you just ignore Leia and Han? Or do you include them? All of these decisions are going to give you different effects.

My point is: what effect are you going for? JJ and company wanted a particular effect and picked a way of doing it. So feel free to argue for Luke, Han, and the Solo kids, but explain to us why you want that over another setup.

 

It has nothing to do with how you worded it (Choosen one and all... though it could help make that plot line make more sense)... but everything to do with Lucas's quote that Star Wars (that he wrote: PT,OT, ST) is like a sympony of repeating events. In this case, a young man becoming a father, to father & son, to son becoming a father of his own (I'd love for Luke to have either a daughter or son but understand why people would want one or the other, a daughter would make even greater contrast when a son might hit closer to the original theme... both are great stories imho). This way we get a great thermatic theme carried across all three trilogies and the melody of the three trilogies repeats itself with one more new take on that same core theme, this time though from a father on the light side of the force instead of the dark side and his

Sure Luke can adopt, train his neices/nephews, or remain single and a hermit... but if any of those happen the running theme of the past two trilogies is detracted from ever so slightly. Yes, I realize this would have been better done 15 or 20 years ago so we could see Luke dealing with becoming a father than him now being old enough to become a grandfather... but we deal with the cards we're given.

 

I like the idea of seeing how Luke deals with a son or daughter of his own. We've seen him wrestling with own dad - how does he deal with it? That to me offers more interesting thematic potential than Han or Leia as parents (although they'll probably have at least one kid too).

I can see either approach working but I lean to the Skywalker approach. I'm sure if there are any Solo kids they will still play a key role.

For me, the difference would be telling the same story as the OT, but with Leia or Han as the lead. You can still have the same villains, the same general plot and the same key locations and beats, but the emphasis would change massively and you would have a different focus. Which is probably why they would need to rework the trilogy treatment as well (I'm assuming for the sake of debate that the speculation is close to the mark for now).

 

That's correct. Sorry if I wasn't clearer. I just took exception to Dra's assertion that either Luke or Han would have to be the dominant mentor figure, when Leia was just as capable as either of them, and I would argue more capable than Han.

 

Yes, I think similar. In many, many ways I find the PT superior to the OT. The story is far more complex, the characters grow and change through the movies and there's that psychological element that lacks to the OT; Anakin's personal doubts, desires and flaws make him more interesting, and the story of his seduction, love and fall beats anything we got from Luke. The OT is based on interaction between the characters, they do not change after ANH and the focus that originally was on Luke, Han and Leia by the time of Ep 5 remains only on Luke and Han.
I'm not trying to derail this thread, my post includes Kasdan and Abrams rewriting the script now. Kasdan wrote TESB and ROTJ which are essentially good, but have it's share of character and story flaws and are rather simple movies compared to the PT. Abrams directed two ST movies which are, again, good, but the story is too simple and already seen and while the characters do have some qualities, they also depend on interaction between each other. My personal wishes include evolving characters that change, that have some flaws and doubts (like in the PT) and appointing Kasdan and Abrams on Ep 7 script, judging by their previous work, makes me feel sceptical.

 

But why shouldn't the first film of the trilogy BE simple? It's only in the second film that we have any right to expect a little more complexity. All Episode VII is going to be is set-up. When Episode IX has finished and the credits are rolling, then we can talk about whether the story of the ST was complex or simple.

 

I'm not approaching this by gender; I'm only bringing up Han instead of Leia because the rumor seems to be implying to me that Arndt's treatment focused on the Solos. When I think of Solo, I think of Han. Not because he's a male, but because of the average person/scoundrel type he represents, and the effect a writer would get from that POV. Leia represents more of an elitist view (she's a princess, remember?). I assume Leia would be right there with him too, unless she's busy being the leader of the Republic.

Obviously any gender can be a mentor: the question is who do you pick and why? If you want an OT feel, you probably focus on the Solos; if you want something else, you pick something else. They picked something else, and they picked it for a reason.

 

Agreed.


As much as I believe Luke mentoring his own child would be best to carry over the thermatic theme of the past two trilogies... Leia mentoring her own child too, imho, can only add to this. Also Leia not being involved in mentoring future Jedi would detract from Yoda's final orders to Luke of passing on what he has learned. As you state, Leia should have a much larger role than Han in terms of mentoring Jedi... though I think Han has his role to play by grounding some reality and common man understanding to the ideas and philosphies of Jedi training.

 

I agree... Ep VII should ease the audience into a new trilogy, whilst sowing the seeds for future events/situations. That doesn't mean it has to be lightweight or avoid subtext, but I think it needs to be accessible.

 

The tough choice about Leia is whether or not you decide to have her Jedi up, or whether or not she's a Republic leader; or both.

 

You have to include Leia in the Solo equation if they can be assumed to still be together, and by this point Leia will undoubtedly be trained as a Jedi if Luke followed Yoda's final instructions, So her character arc will have taken her further away from the elitist view and more in tune with Luke's. Her children should be just as strong in the Force as she and Luke were, so there's no reason to think that their side of the family would be more representative of Han's former worldview than the Jedi view that Luke adopted in the OT. Han would have his role in shaping them of course, but I don't think it would be the dominant one, and already by ROTJ he's lost most of his scoundrel qualities anyway.

 

You know me better than that. It's not about what I want or what effect I'm going for, and I'm not arguing for or against. I'm trying to expand my understanding and trying to ascertain a difinitive reason why it should be the offspring of Luke.

 

I think Jedi would take precedence, although I could see her taking on both roles. I don't think she would forsake Luke's Jedi teachings though. He already said in ROTJ that she would learn to use her powers in time and she didn't argue.

 

That's an interesting take, and I admire your confidence about what Leia will be doing. I believe the EU had a similar issue with Leia, as she get caught up in politics for a few years before becoming more of a Jedi. So why do you think she'll turn her back on politics? She's spent most of her life in that arena, and she has her own political lineage to consider: Bail, her father, and as we know now, Padme. Why does she deny this lineage in favor of the Jedi? You make it sound like it's a no-brainer -- why is that?

There's no reason to think Han's viewpoint will affect their children? Why not? Are they all going to ignore Han? Will Leia even want her children trained as Jedi when Vader. her father and a former Jedi, tortured her? In the EU, that was a big issue for her to get over, and it turned her off from becoming a Jedi.

I really have no idea what they'll end up choosing. I have my own ideas. In my most recent plot synopsis, I imagined that Han and Leia's daughter was a mixer of them both: politically savvy, something of a scoundrel, but also a Jedi. These decisions make for a certain kind of story.

You keeping saying what the characters should be like, but I'm not sure if you're just picking for arbitrary reasons, or if you have a story in mind. Do you? What is it?

 

I could totally see Luke having problems with raising a force potent child. One scenario I think is possible is that the child feels that Luke is holding him/her back (like Anakin) and that child is in secret seduced by Palps spirit/voice... This could then lead to Luke teaming up with his own father to save the child from Anakin's fate... Damn I forget to fit Plagueis in that scenario,

Imagine Leia taking on Padme's legacy and her and Han becoming Queen and King of Naboo... I that case I truly hope that Chewie loses a game against JarJar and does what wookies are supposed to do in such situations...

 

Agreed... its a very tough choice. Though I do have an opinion here (like everyone else).

While Leia can lead the Republic... I think her best role is as a bridge between the Jedi and the Republic but in the role of a Jedi Master (like Yoda listening into Senate debates or meeting key figures in the senate throughout the PT, than a light side Palpatine in or near the seat of power). At least as the ST starts... though she should 'Jedi up' as the ST continues if she hasn't already... or take it even further.

Her past implies more a role in the Republic but the ending of RotJ implies her destiny lies along a different path than her past imples... imho her past should be used as training for how she applies her Jedi destiny, not that she'll use her jedi skills while carrying out the same thing she used to do before she was running Death Star plans to Obi-Wan.

Her love of a man like Han, only cements this further in my mind since it implies to me she knows he is more her destiny than another debate with a commity. She's a woman of action, not a behind the scenes like Mon Mothma. Even back in 1977 she was criticized for not being a damsel in distress by some, so build on that aspect of her since it is the core of who she always was in the publics minds eye (even though she was never intended to be Luke's sister).

In other words Leia should imo focus her training on cementing the Jedi with a 'New Republic' (for lack of a current official name I'll defaut to EU term for now) while Luke will focus his training on rebuilding the order by looking for future Jedi Masters to help him do so more quickly. That said both will hopefully overlap in their assigned roles, so Leia will also teach diplomacy, lightsaber training, leadership skills, dogfighting skills, and force powers to future generations Jedi and Luke will also settle trade disputes from time to time before they lead to blockades and wars.

So I say 'Jedi up' but lean into her past with the Republic to make it look like character development between the films... then throughout the course of the ST she can take this 'Jedi up' even further for further character development beyond just being a mother. Not to mention her doing this is the best excuss for Disney to have Leia more involved than behind the scenes... thus maximzing her characters potential and making Star Wars even more accessable to females (mainly needed since Lucas didn't quite do as good of a job here as he could have).

 

I certainly don't want to derail the thread, but can I be honest here? I'm certainly sympathetic to those who have brought up the issue, but as of this point, after months and months of it, I'm flat-out sick to death of gender identity being any consideration at all for the ST, and all the demands on this forum that it be a consideration are likely going to fall on deaf ears in Hollywood. The people at Disney/LFL will pick the genders they're going to pick for the characters they want to show according to what the story demands; I just can't shake the notion that when we attempt to shove in our two cents, we're not doing so for any other reason than to try to fulfill some deeply-rooted longing within ourselves - in other words, if gender-identity is a consideration for you in your life in any way, it's going to manifest in what you want to see from the ST. But whether or not people have a right to expect more diversity from Star Wars (and, to be fair, one could indeed successfully argue that they can make room for more diversity in the franchise), the fact remains: when they make such statements, they're making it clear that they're actually less interested in the film itself (what it's about, who the heroes and villains are, etc.) and more interested in their own personal notion of "What Star Wars Ought To Be."

We can't do that to ourselves this time out. Not this time. For more than a decade now, I've been fed the excuse that the only reason I didn't like the PT is because it didn't meet my expectations, which I had somehow built up prior to walking into the theater. Setting aside the fact that I thought that excuse was a crock of **** then, and still do now, simply because the only expectation I had back then was that it be good, the fact is that we're doing ourselves no favors at all by doing now what they accused us of doing back then, with even more weighty and, in some cases, deeply polarizing issues such as gender identity being thrown into the mix this time. We're only going to have some serious backlash, far worse than that seen during the PT era, if we walk into the theater with expectations of some form of commentary on social issues that we really have no right to have. To ask Disney/LFL to keep all such considerations in mind is to ask too much of a two-hour space adventure film that is probably not going to be primarily be about such things anyway. I'm not looking for the film to put an end to the blacklist, or win the Nobel for changing society; I'm quite happy with being entertained, thank you very much.

I will throw out one exception that I could totally support that may bridge the divide. Remember that Star Wars is primarily about young people learning about making moral choices. We've seen two examples of what happens when a young male is given the test: to kill, or not to kill, an unarmed and defenseless opponent because someone in a position of authority tells you to. Anakin blew his moral test, and Luke passed his. And since we've explored the basics of both a positive and a negative male character, really, all that's left to explore is what happens when a young female is given the same test. What would a female Skywalker do when asked to kill someone who's defenseless, and would the outcome be any different than the other tests because she's female? We've seen what the males do, good and bad. There may yet be value, strictly in terms of plot and overall message, in seeing if there's something about the female mindset that produces a unique outcome to the moral test, which makes the ST hero(ine) distinct from the heroes of the PT and OT, provides commentary on the moral choices of the previous heroes, and wraps up the entirety of the storyline from Episodes I to IX. For these reasons, I would certainly not be against the main hero this time out being a female; but it has to be done because the story merits it, not because we want it.

 

This was discussed last earlier this year. Just because Lucas said he would write them out if they didn't want in does in no way what-so-ever speak to the size or importance of their roles in the ST.

As stated before, during the filming of TESB, Hamill asked Lucas what he would have done had Mark died in the car accident. George told him they wouldn't have recast, they would have changed the story. I think we call all agree that Luke had a significant role in the OT, yet George said no recast and Luke would be written out. Same thing here. That in no way changes what George initially planned as his story, or the size of Luke's role for the ST.

Matter of fact, we know what Lucas had planned. The news about JJ and Kasdan appears to be bringing the story back towards it.

 

I only have my view of the characters, and what seems to me to be the most logical place for them to go after ROTJ. Not sure if you noticed, but I amended that quote with an acknowledgement that Han would have his role to play as well, but that by ROTJ he had really lost the scoundrel aspect of his personality, so I'm not sure that would carry through to his children so much (unless it was just a convenient excuse to write in another character like Han, which people have been clamoring for since the PT).

The question of Leia's dual allegiance to the Jedi and the political arena is an interesting one. I totally get where you're coming from with that. She comes from the political world, which would make her ideally placed to have a key role in the reformation of the Republic. On the other hand, she is Anakin's daughter, which apparently I have a lot less of a problem believing she would be able to come to terms with than EU authors. Luke had plenty of reasons to hate Vader too, but he chose to love him instead, and I think Leia would follow suit, especially since Luke was right about his father, whose last words were for him to tell that to his sister. Now I know how you feel about whether Anakin deserves forgiveness, so we don't have to rehash that now, but in the context of Lucas's story my feeling is that Leia would follow Luke's example. Anyway Yoda told Luke to train her just before he died, and at the end of ROTJ it seems like a given that he will, much like Obi-Wan trained Anakin after Qui-Gon told him to on his deathbed. (Now if I can just work Shmi's last words into this I'll have covered them all. )

So then the pertinent questions become, will it be permitted for a politician to be a Jedi as well, and will it be permitted for a Jedi to be a politician as well. On the first point, I think that after decades under a Sith ruler they might as well accept a Jedi one, and on the second point I'd say that the rules of the Jedi can be whatever Luke wants them to be. However the notion of a Jedi Chancellor would certainly rub some people the wrong way, which could actually serve as an impetus for discord among varying factions of the new Republic, and dramatically I actually think that would be quite interesting and is just the sort of thing that could lead to another war. But if I had to choose between the two, I would agree with Ryus's assessment and make her a Jedi.