ST The Development Of The Sequel Trilogy

Jonathan Kasdan, about Qi'ra: "There are increasingly fewer things that haven’t been explored in these 12 movies or whatever it is. To create a female character that didn’t fit this mold of the sort of warrior princess, and was a different kind of character, and related to people differently, and used her power differently, and was intellectually superior to our male characters in a lot of ways — almost always… It was a fun type that we hadn’t seen and we were both drawn to writing a woman, a female Star Wars character, that really broke the mold from the ones we’ve seen"

Arndt was out in Oct 2013:

Lawrence Kasdan: "I just put aside Han completely and began working with J.J. on Episode VII. We wrote it very fast. We started in the fall of 2013 and delivered our first draft to Disney in January,” says the elder Kasdan. “And from January until the start of production, J.J. and I just continued to write and write and write and then, much to my surprised, we continued to write right through the entire picture. And so I didn’t have much time to concentrate on [Solo]

At that point, when J.J. started production, in May or something, I could then turn back to the Han job [...] At that point I didn’t want to do the Han job[...] I said to Kathy, “Look, I don’t know if I want to write another one. I’ve just spent all this time on Force Awakens.” But Jon [Kasdan's son] was with me and he had enormous enthusiasm and ideas and he reawakened in me everything that had gotten me excited when I first started [...] the movie could be different from any other Star Wars movie ever, that it could touch on many of the genres that both he and I like. Film noir, Westerns[...]"

Hes referring to May 2014:

Adam Driver: "What were your initial conversations with J.J. [Abrams] about your character? Did you know the character’s name was Rey?"

Daisy Ridley: "No, no, he told me it was meant to be Kira. And then, when we were already shooting in Abu Dhabi [May 2014], he told me that he was thinking of going with Rey, which I thought was frickin’ awesome"

(https://vmagazine.com/article/driving-miss-daisy/)

If all this is of any indication, it would point to 'Kira' being taken out of TFA and moved to Solo.

'Rey' was 'Kira' once. Then 'Kira' became Qi'ra, and the girl that lived in the desert called herself just Rey. But I guess Rey could still be Qi'ra.

In any case, its interesting how both Leia and Qi'ra, although different by design (warrior princess vs femme fatale) as noted above, 'shielded' (to use Leia's word) Ben and Han respectively from Snoke and Maul, the two uber/boss dark side figures. Perhaps thats what Kasdan Jr. was referring to with Qi'ra using her power 'differently'.

TFA, Leia and Han:

"I thought I could shield him from Snoke’s influence and you from what was happening.” Her voice dropped. “It’s clear now that I was wrong. Whether your involvement would have made a difference, we’ll never know.”

He had trouble believing what he was hearing. “So Snoke was watching our son.”

“Always,” she told him. “From the shadows, in the beginning, even before I realized what was happening, he was manipulating everything, pulling our son toward the dark side."

Solo:

"Han: you're with Dryden?
Qi’ra: I'm not with him,but I owe him.He helped me out of a bad situation.
Han: And how long do you have to pay off that debt?
[Dryden, before: Once you're a part of Crimson Dawn, you can't leave]
Qi’ra: Everyone serves somebody, Han. Even Dryden Vos. Look, you don't want to make an enemy of Crimson Dawn which is exactly what you and I would both be doing if I left here with you"

Its as if 'Kira' had carried with her the Leia 'its better to keep Han out of it' element from TFA to Solo together with the romance thing, and adapted to her personal circumstance.

But Ben, he was shielded; and then sent away.

"Once you're a part of Crimson Dawn, you can't leave"

One wonders if that was all 'Kira' carried with her from Leia, story-wise. Perhaps Qi'ra had a child to be shielded (or sent away) at one point.

 

It’s honestly hysterical to read some of them writing about "dirty hippies" and attributing all these conservative thoughts to Star Wars. It’s even more insane with Star Trek - how anyone watched any Star Trek and thought it was conservative is absolutely beyond me. Well, maybe that junk JJ passed off as Star Trek, which hasn't a political thought in its head...but even that. I mean, look at the cast.

 

Exactly. And did most of these fans not notice that one of the primary villains in TPM was a combination of Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan's names?

 

Not to mention Palpatine's rise to power was inspired by the corruption of Richard Nixon. A woman in charge of the Rebellion. A tribe taking down a mechanised army.

Lucas even got upset at Reagan using 'Star Wars' to describe a missile defence system.

 

Speaking from the perspective of a pretty ardent Libertarian, not only does Star Wars appeal enough to what I believe personally but I often wonder if it actually helped inform my views on some level, almost religiously watching the first six as a kid and all. But that's probably just me overthinking it. Scratch that, it almost certainly is! LOL

 

It's been instructive reading this thread. Jokesters and haters aside, some folks really brought a lot to the table here and I want to thank them.

I guess in retrospect it was inevitable that Disney would have parted ways with Lucas on the ST. Going his route could have taken his usual ten years to produce it. And Disney, as he said, wants to make movies.

Abrams and Kasdan moved many story beats into flashback territory. Lucas made the specific decision to not use this particular storytelling device and the choice they made to not honor that decision has contributed to the ST not feeling like Star Wars to me.

However, GL's last trilogy did address the fall of the main character, so I can see the filmmakers wanting to shift their focus to differentiate their story. Given time, I believe they could have found a better way. But the Mouse wanted movies.

That's just the surface stuff tho. The real meat of this trilogy for me would have been revelations about the Force. And they may possibly still deliver... something there. I'm actually a little more hopeful after reading all this.

 

ANH was partly inspired by Vietnam and Nixon, ROTS by Bush and Iraq.

 

Fascinating insights from Christian Alzmann about his first piece of concept art made for TFA in January 2013. Perhaps Lucas' ideas for Luke in the sequel trilogy might have been even more extreme than what we saw of him in TLJ.

 

I like it, but it's too "neat" for someone who's living as a hermit.

 

Proves that Lucas would have been more than willing to challenge fan perceptions of Luke.

 

Luke Hipsterwalker. Made Forceprojections before they were cool.

 

I concur. I feel like Lucas' vision and sequels would have been the continuation and maintained one saga. From what we've heard from his ideas from Lucas and from Mark Hamil, I think they sounded like it would have been more epic than what we got. And I do think they might have made more money. Ultimately the saga would benefit from a mapped out storyline and one story of 9 films. There was plenty of opportunity to release anthology films in the mean time. Rogue One was a tremendous success for instance.

 

Hmmm...

The insight that he was a "Col. Kurz" type hiding in a cave might've softened the blow to those that didn't care for Luke's character in TLJ a bit - had that insight been made around 2015.

Not to be "that" guy, but saying it 5 days ago might be a bit revisionist in it's insightful appearance now.

Who's to know?

 

It was made around 2015 in the art book.

 

So it was actually going to happen:

 

The scene was in the shooting documents procured by MSW, so I believe it was likely filmed. I wish they had kept it in. More direct connections to the OT would’ve strengthened TFA, and perhaps counterintuituvely, helped alleviate the criticisms of TFA as an ANH facsimile.

 

Somehow he looks like a guy who took the wrong door in Pinewood and accidentally dressed like a Jedi instead of a Hobbit.
Horrible. I'd rather want to see Luke milking and drinking for another 2 hrs instead of having this in any movie

 

Dude. He was probably only going to be seen from behind, or in a shadowy, dreamlike shot where you couldn’t exactly make him out.

 

Sure. That explains his make-up. Even Lor was shocked when he saw Fred Skywalker

 

This image perfectly summarizes the ST at this point. Bizarre, derivative and totally missing the mark.

 

The art, yes...the statement that the idea was always "Col. Kurz hiding away in a cave from the world" was made 6 days ago.

See what I mean? And the artwork is a little clean for hiding away in a cave. You can justify anything after the fact with a few carefully placed words if no words were there when the art was first published.

Now if the artwork in the book in December of 2015 has a caption or explanation saying this version of Luke as Col. Kurz was always in the offing, I'll retract my statement. If it's just now being claimed as such, it's a bit fishy wouldn't you say?

Like I said, I don't want to be "that" guy, but LFL and those employed by them have a way of spinning things to their advantage narratively. To deny that they do is somewhat baffling to me.

 

Apart from the fact you're accusing the LFL employee of blatantly lying, I'm fairly sure it was mentioned in the art book.

 

Fairly sure? Or completely sure?

Like I said - I'll retract my statement with apologies if it was. I haven't read it so I don't know either for sure.

And as far as accusing a LFL employee of blatantly lying...seriously? Spinning the truth and blatantly lying are two separate things. Kinda like you just did by declaring that I claimed a LFL employee was "blatantly lying" - that was spinning the truth of what I actually said.

Yes - I accused an employee of the most powerful media company in the world of spinning the truth, which is what employees of MEDIA do. Sorry if that sad truth pains you.

 

The notion that GL was in on the whole thing with Luke reassessing his life at the first Jedi Temple isn’t exactly new, as evidenced by the first pages of this thread.

 

Yeah this is about as bad as the guy they got to stand in for Scott Speedman in Underworld Awakening.