ST The Development Of The Sequel Trilogy

Gonna be honest i question George's actual validity of his words when it comes to the ST....Don't wanna call him a lier or anything but more....(Man this sound very passive aggressive ;p) I could see him exaggerating things a bit.

Then again I don't know, will never know but that's just my gut reaction.

 

Telling things that are true from a certain point of view perhaps? I'm shocked, Jid, shocked I tell you!

 

Lol.

But no i sorta agree that Lucas statements are more in that sort of vain then outright lying.

 

You're telling me that George Lucas changes his mind?!?!

 

I think the best we can surmise in terms of finding out about Lucas' initial ideas for the sequel trilogy are in the early parts of the Art Of books for both TFA and TLJ. Of course I'd love to see a comprehensive book breaking down the entire development and production of the whole trilogy from 2012-2019, but I suspect that's a long way off, and who knows if it will even officially come from Lucasfilm.

For what it's worth, I suspect the only people outside Lucasfilm with reliable knowledge of Lucas' treatments for the sequel trilogy would be Michael Arndt and J.W. Rinzler.

 

I don't understand why Disney and Lucasfilm didn't use more ideas from "Legends" than they did when making The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. They could've took a lot more ideas from Legends, and made some tweaks and changes to them in order to fit them in movie form.

Like here's a idea on what the story could've been like if they did that:

30 years has passed after the defeat of the Empire, a terrorist group called the "New Galaxy Order" has risen from the ashes of the defeated Empire over the years, and is now ruled by person who is very strong in the darkside of the force.

So over the years, the New Republic has risen to power and is now in controlled of the Galaxy, and Leia Organa (now Leia Solo) is now a senator for the New Republic. Leia is also now a Jedi. Han Solo is now a general, and over the years has taught people how to fly combat ships. Han and Leia now have twins (1 male and 1 female) who are 15 years old, and they are being trained by their uncle Luke how to be Jedi knights. The twins names are Sam and Kira. Sam would have a love interest in the sequel trilogy who's name is "Lisa Kolulan". Lisa is also a Jedi who is still in training.

Over the years, Luke Skywalker has successfully trained a new Jedi generation, and is now married to a woman named "Marie Skywalker" (who is a Jedi master). Luke and Marie have two sons named "Jake" and "Quinn". Jake is 17 years old, and Quinn is 20 years old. Jake is still learning how to be a Jedi, while Quinn has recently just became a full Jedi knight.

Quinn Skywalker would be like Jacen Solo from Legends, and become the main villain of the sequel trilogy like how Kylo Ren did.

Jake Skywalker, Sam and Kira Solo would be the center trio of the trilogy. And Jake and Quinn would be like Cain and Abel from the bible, and become each other's enemy.

Episode VII would've been about how Quinn Skywalker fell to the darkside.

So that's a idea on what the sequel trilogy could've been like if Disney and Lucasfilm did used a lot more ideas from Legends than they did. And so it blows my mind that there was a lot of good ideas from Legends that Disney and Lucasfilm could've used for the sequel trilogy, but they ended up deciding to go the direction that they went.

 

I posted this in the Hayden/Anakin thread. Ren =sith entity.

So, two villains would have been established very early on and almost overlapping chronologically: 'Ren' and Snoke. Leia and Luke thought it was all about Snoke, and Snoke wouldn't have known about Ren. For Ben, Ren and Snoke would have been two different 'people' -only,he thought Ren to be his grandfather. He talks to them separetly in TFA.

As for Snoke himself: I think the idea of him being 'an older student of the emperor' in that Mizzlewump leak was scrapped or modified. The leaks does not say the 'older student's (Snoke's) age, and maybe it was not established at that point, but my guess would be that Snoke was made much older and two 'older students' were then created. One was Snoke's:



https://www.slashfilm.com/snoke-apprentice/

Maybe this is the Acolyte/Matt Smith guy. The other 'older student' was still Snoke but, since Snoke was now 200 years old, the master would have been someone else:

'What all masters live to see'/'the burden of all masters'. Maybe Yoda was Snoke's 'old wound'. Or maybe Snoke was a student of both Yoda and the emperor, in that chronological order.

Narratively, this would have made easier for post-ROTJ Yoda and Anakin to have a chat and coordinate eforts in order to keep 'Rey' away from both Ren and Snoke, as I posted above.

Makes sense, but time will tell.

 

@DarthVist I doubt he'll ever reveal that info. Seems like he's stepped away from Star Wars now and there's little use in looking back on what might have been.

 

I'm not really sure what's supposed to be so good about all of this. You don't really say much about the story at all, you just take some vague references to the old EU while still changing quite a bit about it. Who exactly is that going to please? It doesn't matter much for those who didn't care about the old EU, and it doesn't really do a whole lot for those who did care either. It might even be worse for those who cared about the old EU, because instead of telling something entirely new, you take existing pieces and give them different names for no apparent reason.

The only real story-piece in there, is the bit about a Cain and Abel like relationship (though it isn't really anything like that story unless the Abel character dies right away), but that doesn't have any true resemblance to what happened in the old EU.

It's not like Lucas had any interest in following any part of the old EU either. He made it quite clear that those stories had nothing to do with his.

 

Which is what a lot of us have clear by now. Rey was once a Solo. Not even in Lucas treatments Luke had kids.

 

All quotes and little anecdotes we've had over the last four years or so have led to one conclusion: that the Luke of the ST is pretty close to what Lucas also had in mind for the character, at least in part. One thing is for sure, we were certainly never going to get a Luke like he was depicted in the old EU.

 

Uh... nowhere is it suggested in that thread that Rey was once a Solo. In fact Pablo clearly states that GL was referring to Skyler & the Jedi Killer as Anakin's 'grandchildren', NOT Skyler & Thea. Pablo also replied to the question whether Kira was the hero/chosen one with; "Yep. That was the core of it."
This is what I have been saying for some time; there was always a Solo son (& possibly even two at some point in development), Luke never had children, and Rey aka Thea aka Kira was never related.

 

Refreshing take

 

We don't know that. Pablo Hidalgo said GL's original story was about his seduction to the darkside by Talon while Thea is being trained in the ways of the Force by a Colonel Kurtz type Luke. How would that work if Skyler didn't also have the Force? More importantly, who is "JK"? It couldn't be the Jedi Killer which was created in January 2013 and didn't even got that name until March 2013 after they replaced Talon by him. There's also the student who betrayed and fought Luke, apparently, this was a way to separate the OT characters by the start of the trilogy which was a late-2012 idea.

 

Hidalgo (development quote archive) has always referred to Skyler as "the son" of Leia and Han. Not "one of the sons", nor "the child". He has a policy against talking about the future and stuff that hasn't been revealed elsewhere yet - such as another of their children being the daughter.

• “[When was it decided to make the villain Han and Leia’s son? Was it JJ’s idea?] The son falling to the dark side was always in the mix. The movies just ended up having it already an established fact.” (January 3, 2018) “[Was he Skyler or another character? Was he always the one to kill Han?] Skyler was the son in some versions. And as for how all that was gonna go down, that ain’t my story to tell.” (January 3, 2018)
• “[They changed the name of Kira to Rey] Skyler and Kira (and Kira wasn’t the first proposed name either; she had at least two others) became, after a fashion, Finn and Rey. The Jedi Killer morphed from Talon corrupting the son to becoming the son. Uber became Snoke. The starting point shifted. Yadda yada yada.” (January 3, 2018)
• “I would rather read this [Star Wars: Junior Jedi Knights – The Golden Globe book than watch the Golden Globes]” (January 6, 2019) “[Soooo, canon, or nah?] Lets just say George Lucas disagrees with the number of kids Leía and Han have in the books.” (January 6, 2019) “[Thank you for the clarification, might I ask if you ever received any direction that George Lucas disagreed with the number of children the Solos had as depicted in the EU?] All I meant is his starting point for this trilogy didn’t have Jacen, Jaina and/or Anakin.” (January 7, 2019) “[Was there Ben Skywalker?] There was not.” (January 7, 2019) “[Same question applies as before however, was his existence retconned in the scripted or would he have simply not been part of he films?] He did not exist given what Luke’s storyline was in Lucas’ starting point. That is, Luke did not get married or have children.” (January 7, 2019)
• “It was Lucasfilm [that threw out the old expanded universe], but it wasn’t the group. That predates the group’s existence by months. The second George [Lucas]’s ideas of the sequel trilogy started to form it became obvious he was forging a different path than publishing did, which came as no surprise.” (February 12, 2019) “[Wasn’t the ultimate push because of the moon being dropped on Chewbacca?] Chewie wasn’t dead. Han and Leia had different children. Luke never married.” (February 12, 2019)

As for Luke, George Lucas did say back in 2012 (quote archive) that there were holes in the treatment he turned over to Disney: "I said that I would back her up and I would be there if ... and, especially helping with the script and making sure the script sort of ... there's a lot of blank spots in the story treatment that hopefully we can help fill in."

Hidalgo claims the reason for Luke's state in the ST was a thing Johnson came up with.

• [George] Lucas had the ‘colonel Kurtz’ [older version of Luke] Skywalker. Which… would have been something.” (February 10, 2019) “Well, yeah, [Johnson said he came up with the reason] because there was no why there in the [Lucas] treatment. It just had a broken Kurtz up the river. TFA (and later, TLJ) had to figure out how to get there.” (June 14, 2019)

 

Except that a dozen writers could do it pretty close to what Lucas had in mind with many differences. The way Lucas works is to have a general idea that he allows himself to take all kinds of avenues before fully forming it. This seemed to be the tactic he was going for again as he collaborated with the new people.

The obvious difference seems to be that the "Colonel Kurtz" Luke apparently did train the "Rey" figure.

Hamill:

What I wish is that they had been more accepting of his guidance and advice. Because he had an outline for ‘7,’ ‘8,’ and ‘9’. And it is vastly different to what they have done.

George had an overall arc – if he didn't have all the details, he had sort of an overall feel for where the [Sequel Trilogy was] going – but this one's more like a relay race. You run and hand the torch off to the next guy, he picks it up and goes.

The very fact that Hamill was aghast at their take on Luke compared to the general idea of Lucas' is telling:

I said to Rian ‘Jedis don’t give up,' I mean, even if he had a problem, he would maybe take a year to try and regroup. But if he made a mistake, he would try and right that wrong.

Whatever one thinks of RJ's Luke the most basic problem with it is that the entire thrust of the TFA narrative and ending is incompatible with TLJ. The TLJ Luke wouldn't be on the island in the first place and would not be standing there in Jedi robes awaiting Rey. The way to cut yourself off from the Force is not by isolation in one of the strongholds of the Force in the galaxy.

 

And how is it suggested the other son was the JK instead? The things we know about the JK character before he became Kylo Ren was that his role was once played by Darth Talon, and that the concept art always depicted him as a cyborg. With Thea, we have concept art of her next to Skyler in which both look exactly the same in terms of face design. Thea looks like Leia and Skyler looks like Han (they also appear next to Leia in art of book). There is no concept art at all of two brothers or two male characters looking alike. Not to mention, when Lucas was in charge of the story, it is hard to believe he would give the lead role to an unrelated character. Especially with the emphasis he has placed on each interview about how his stories were about Vader's grandkids.

This still does not change my view of how things are right now. I still don't think Rey was the daughter of Leia and Han in TFA nor in TLJ. Some here like to speculate trying to pass their theories as if these were always the ultimate plan. I think Rey was once a Solo, but something changed during TFA pre-production. If TROS ends with Rey being revealed as the ultimate Skywalker heir, I will have a hard time believing that will be nothing else than a retcon by JJ.

I still wonder if, even when it seems it was never Lucas or JJ's idea, there is room for a Rey Skywalker reton for TROS. I still believe it would feel cheap and way less powerful than a Rey Solo reveal though.

 

For me, Rey has to be a Skywalker. I mean . . . the Sequel Trilogy is supposed to be a part of the Skywalker Family Saga. It doesn't make sense to me that this trilogy is a part of this family saga and none of its leads are related to Anakin Skywalker. I realize that some would bring up Kylo Ren. But I do not consider him to be one of the main leads . . . just an antagonist.

 

Ben Solo is the Skywalker of this trilogy.

 

First off, I said 'possibly even two at some point in development' as in that was my speculation, that had nothing to do with what Pablo tweeted. Now as for that let's recap:
Pablo: I doubt he was referencing Jaina and Jacen and Anakin. Might have been referencing Skyler and then "JK".
Meaning Skyler at one point Jedi Killer at another point.
Tweeter: I feel like those were mentioned in the Art of TFA. I’m assuming these were meant to be Leia and Han’s kids cause Luke never married in GL’s vision of the ST?
^ He's referring to Skyler & Jedi Killer here NOT Skyler & Thea in the Art of TFA.
Pablo: Skyler was the son character, who then merged with the Jedi Killer to become Ben in subsequent development.
Tweeter: And “Kira” was always the hero/chosen one of this trilogy based on my understanding, getting a “Colonel Kurtz-esque” Luke to train her after he retreated from the galaxy.
Pablo: Yep. That was the core of it.
In other words, Skyler-Jedi Killer-Ben was the grandchild, Rey-Thea-Kira was the unrelated hero/chosen one.

And we already know from earlier versions of TFA that Kira-Rey's village was destroyed & Skyler was her companion and the two of them later met up with Han Solo... no mention of her being his sister or of a missing daughter. Concept art with similar 'face design' means nothing, could be just the artist's style.

LOL, this is hilarious... I've never done that but I will say it when facts come out that support my speculation, especially since I'm not basing my speculation off of any pet theory but off of what is known of the ST development.

Yep, Pablo has been saying so since 2016.

 

I'm sorry, but I've already pointed out that Kylo Ren being a "Skywalker" does not make this trilogy a viable addition to the Skywalker family saga for me. If he had been one of the three protagonists, then I would consider this trilogy part of the family saga. However, I simply regard him as the antagonist. And since we're being told that none of the leads is a Skywalker, I might as well consider Episodes I to VI as the Skywalker family saga, with "SOLO" thrown in for good measure, since Han is a Skywalker in-law and the protagonist in that particular movie. As for Episodes VII to IX . . . eh.

 

Not sure how what you have bolded proves what you want to see there. If he says Skyler and THEN JK, I don't know, it could be because these are the different takes of the same character maybe?. Skyler was never the lead character, he was moved from the lightsided Solo kid who gets seduced by the JK to being already dark and becoming JK himself, who was the old apprentice Luke had who betrayed him. Where does Pablo say Thea was not a Solo and always was an unrelated hero?

What about my other points then? What about the concept art of Thea and Skyler looking as close as possible? Cause this also fits with rumors of the time about the Solo siblings being the leads, with the girl being a Solo too.There is no trace about a second Solo male kid.

There is nothing hilarious about what I said. It was not meant to be referenced to you but to some here who not even with Pablo saying Luke had no kids under Lucas either, were still twisting it to fit their alternative reality. But I have also noticed some Reylo supporters also seem to keep trying to disprove Rey was ever a Solo. My theory is she is not a Solo, which does not mean at some point she was not. And it's fine, not everything we believe had to be right at every point in the production of these movies. As we all know, the story evolved as production went on.