New Star Wars Films announced. Plus Ahsoka

[KraytKing]

First they say the Expanded Universe doesn't count, then they rip it off for ideas.

While I hope the new stuff does well, can we please find new people to run it?

The old EU may have been shit overall, but it did have some good ideas. I can't blame them for plundering it.

Should have done that for the sequels in the first place. Except not Dark Empire because that was seen as one of the worst EU storylines

It will forever baffle me that out of forty years of EU, they chose to riff on possibly the mostly widely reviled for their capstone movie. There were worse ideas, but I don't think any got the airtime that Dark Empire did. Was it accidental? Was this a case of convergent evolution, perhaps? Are the creatively bankrupt doomed to write Palpatine's return? There's a funny idea.

[ray245]

It will forever baffle me that out of forty years of EU, they chose to riff on possibly the mostly widely reviled for their capstone movie. There were worse ideas, but I don't think any got the airtime that Dark Empire did. Was it accidental? Was this a case of convergent evolution, perhaps? Are the creatively bankrupt doomed to write Palpatine's return? There's a funny idea.

Convergrent evolution. I remember long time ago people like Mike said movie writers are of a higher calibre than most comic book or EU novel writers. Guess they were wrong.

People just get too obsessed over SW and the OT that they can't think beyond a limited framework, unless there is someone that's a non-fan like Tony Gilroy dragging the writers kicking and screaming away from being SW fans while writing the shows.

[bobalot]

I wonder if we can get George Lucas back to make movies which are not so... meh.

ALL IS FORGIVEN GEORGE. WE WERE WRONG.

Might be the only way to make this shit heap worse. George couldn't direct twenty years ago, why would he be any better now? Spielberg and Kasdan, his old buddies, have finally caught up and entered the shit heap of creativity. When will we learn and stop giving these gasbags our attention? Get the old blood out and get some new blood in, and preferably new blood that actually likes telling stories, not just teasing them or subverting them.

That's a fair point. George made his best movies when he didn't have complete creative control and was kept in check by various constraints and people.

[TrekkieJeff2000]

I am wondering how much of "Heir to the Empire" they're going to use in Ahsoka. It does look like they're going to have the Sith (clone?).

I am curious as well. The Thrawn trilogy was some of the best novels written and I’m excited to see how it works with the current universe. Cautiously optimistic.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

I do have a couple of small insights.

In the trailer, Thrawn and Elsbeth are shown in a room (or possibly a ship's bridge) with a distinct style; one I haven't seen before, and which isn't classic Imperial. Also, in The Mandalorian Season 3, we learn that while Thrawn is theoretically part of the Shadow Council, he rarely appears at meetings - Pellaeon was acting as his proxy - and Gideon was starting to challenge his leadership.

To me, all this suggests that Thrawn has either transferred his allegiance back to the Chiss, or has gone into business for himself; setting up something like the Empire of the Hand. Either way, the implication is that he has little or no commitment to the Empire itself (or what's left of it) and is simply exploiting it for his own goals.

Yes, this is all a bit thin. But all we've got is one trailer. And I really hope we do get to see the Chiss at long last.

[Solauren]

I was looking at it as Thrawn was busy, possibly setting stuff up, and didn't want to waste time on political stupidity.

[Evilchumlee]

I do have a couple of small insights.

In the trailer, Thrawn and Elsbeth are shown in a room (or possibly a ship's bridge) with a distinct style; one I haven't seen before, and which isn't classic Imperial. Also, in The Mandalorian Season 3, we learn that while Thrawn is theoretically part of the Shadow Council, he rarely appears at meetings - Pellaeon was acting as his proxy - and Gideon was starting to challenge his leadership.

I think Thrawn is only... "technically" part of the Shadow Council. Palleon is like, a place holder for him, but Thrawn is out doing Thrawn things... he just so happens to be one of the higher ranked Imperials still around, and the rumor mill is running wild that he's up to something big.

I'm not sure how the Imperial hierarchy works, with Moff vs. Grand Admiral. Part of me suspects Gideon kind of just named himself Moff post-Jakku. In that case, Thrawn might quite literally be the... Heir to the Empire... in being the highest ranking Imperial to still exist and not subsumed into the Republic.

I'm curious about Hux's inclusion though. He SHOULD already be a part of the First Order. I wonder if at this point, the First Order is just one of many Imperial remnant factions and by the end of the Mandoverse story, it's the only one left standing.

[Adam Reynolds]

Might be the only way to make this shit heap worse. George couldn't direct twenty years ago, why would he be any better now? Spielberg and Kasdan, his old buddies, have finally caught up and entered the shit heap of creativity. When will we learn and stop giving these gasbags our attention? Get the old blood out and get some new blood in, and preferably new blood that actually likes telling stories, not just teasing them or subverting them.

Lucas is a brilliant visual director, it is just that he has no clue how to direct actors. The only truly well executed characters in the Prequels are the actors like Lee and McDiarmid who were so good they didn't need direction. This was worst with new actors like Christensen and Portmen who hadn't had enough experience at the time to be effective(and I think by the end, as her career was taking off, Portman already thought it was beneath her).

Convergrent evolution. I remember long time ago people like Mike said movie writers are of a higher calibre than most comic book or EU novel writers. Guess they were wrong.

People just get too obsessed over SW and the OT that they can't think beyond a limited framework, unless there is someone that's a non-fan like Tony Gilroy dragging the writers kicking and screaming away from being SW fans while writing the shows.

It's not that they are better individually, it is that they are often better collectively because there are more hands involved in the process. A huge problem in the sequel trilogy is that Abrams and Johnson were freely allowed to do just about whatever they wanted without any higher level of oversight of the franchise.

On the flip side, you also wind up with the 2003 movie I, Robot that was rewritten three times. It was initially a tense murder mystery involving robots. It was then rewritten to make it an Asimov robot movie with references to the three laws and then finally rewritten again to make it a sarcastic action movie starring Will Smith.

[Evilchumlee]

It's not that they are better individually, it is that they are often better collectively because there are more hands involved in the process. A huge problem in the sequel trilogy is that Abrams and Johnson were freely allowed to do just about whatever they wanted without any higher level of oversight of the franchise.

On the flip side, you also wind up with the 2003 movie I, Robot that was rewritten three times. It was initially a tense murder mystery involving robots. It was then rewritten to make it an Asimov robot movie with references to the three laws and then finally rewritten again to make it a sarcastic action movie starring Will Smith.

There's a fairly easy solution to this, and it's worked brilliantly for over a decade now.

Apply the Marvel formula to franchises. Have a head with authority over the entire franchise, have individual directors/writers take on projects, but ultimately filtered through the head.

It really shouldn't be rocket science here. Now granted, if you put somebody terrible in charge, it's not going to work as well. OR if you put somebody who is just too hands off, it won't work either. Like theoretically we had Kathleen Kennedy in the role who was kind of both awful and kind of hands off. On the Mandoverse side, we're finally getting it with Filoni... I can understand criticisms of giving a superfan the keys to the castle, but at least we're getting something with a mostly coherent plan.

In the grand scheme, that's REALLY all that's needed. Just. Have a plan. "Winging it" only works once in a blue moon.

Knowing out of the gate you're doing a trilogy of movies... it's absolutely asinine to not have at least a rough outline of what will happen throughout.

[Elfdart]

Ray Stevenson, who plays the villain in this series, just died. It's like Disney Star Wars can't buy a break.

[Adam Reynolds]

There's a fairly easy solution to this, and it's worked brilliantly for over a decade now.

Apply the Marvel formula to franchises. Have a head with authority over the entire franchise, have individual directors/writers take on projects, but ultimately filtered through the head.

It really shouldn't be rocket science here. Now granted, if you put somebody terrible in charge, it's not going to work as well. OR if you put somebody who is just too hands off, it won't work either. Like theoretically we had Kathleen Kennedy in the role who was kind of both awful and kind of hands off. On the Mandoverse side, we're finally getting it with Filoni... I can understand criticisms of giving a superfan the keys to the castle, but at least we're getting something with a mostly coherent plan.

In the grand scheme, that's REALLY all that's needed. Just. Have a plan. "Winging it" only works once in a blue moon.

Knowing out of the gate you're doing a trilogy of movies... it's absolutely asinine to not have at least a rough outline of what will happen throughout.

This is an extremely late response, but I just remembered a YouTube overview of this story that was fairly interesting. As a combination of this and some of my own observations:

I think Abrams actually did have a bad plan, which was to remake the original trilogy out of order and with his mystery box, it is just that he threw it out because it never worked and was flawed from the start. It was a weird mashup of what Lucas had originally intended for his draft of the sequel trilogy(which Lucas included in his sale) and Abrams' obsession with nostalgia at any cost. Lucas couldn't get anyone else to direct the movies if he didn't sell it first(just like he couldn't for the prequels), and Disney was so desperate for a quick director that they allowed Abrams to entirely reboot the series by throwing out the Lucas treatment that Michael Arndt had spent a few years developing into a proper script.

The indication seems to be that Rey was always meant to be Han and Leia's daughter, it is just that they made her something else when that seemed problematic, both because of Reylo and mostly because Carrie Fisher's untimely death combined with Han Solo's previous death meant that there was no one for Rey to have a heartfelt reunion with. I think they were more or less wanting to remake the Luke/Leia reveal in which Rey was somehow hidden and her memory was wiped from both Leia and Han, but they were still drawn to her in ways they could not articulate. The way Han immediately offered her a job and the way Leia embraced her after Han's death to me were clear signs of this.

The fact that Billie Lourd auditioned for Rey is another piece that indicates that the original casting was for Han and Leia's daughter. I also am pretty sure that the name Rey was a last minute swap. Early plot spoilers that were otherwise fairly accurate always called her Kira, and I believe Kira Solo was the original name in the Lucas treatment. Abrams changed it to Rey at the last minute to increase confusion and fuel the mystery box, because people had already realized that Kira was Kira Solo.

I actually think the ultimate biggest mistake was in not delaying and releasing Rogue One first as the stopgap/nostalgia bait, while they had someone else develop the Lucas drafts and then get a director who would just make them properly. This might have meant a sequel trilogy without Carrie Fisher, but that would have almost been better in the end than having her die midway through and leave massive dangling plot threads.

[Elfdart]

Nerdonymous is thorough and his videos are like watching a prosecuting attorney with all the evidence do a roll-up on a crime family. That said, Rick Worley (another meticulous debunker of bullshit) makes the case that without George Lucas, there is no Star Wars -just a name brand:

It’s been a popular notion for some time now that Star Wars needed to be saved from George
Lucas. It took me a long time to work out how people could seriously think something so
nonsensical.

There is no Star Wars without George Lucas. Where do these people think that Star Wars came
from?

To get around the conundrum of loving Star Wars but hating George Lucas, fans have created
entire alternate realities. The Secret History of Star Wars is a book-length attempt by fan/possible
mental patient Michael Kaminski to give credit for everything good about the original three films
to somebody, anybody, besides George Lucas. It was Ralph McQuarrie, Gary Kurtz, it was
Lawrence Kasdan, Irvin Kersher, Marcia Lucas, it was maybe the craft service guy, but it was
most definitely not the guy who wrote, directed, and originated the entire thing. Kaminski makes
baroque conspiracy theories about how Lucas has lied about the development of all of the films,
based on the fact that Kaminski has “uncovered” that the story did in fact evolve over the
different script drafts and didn’t originate fully formed in the version that Lucas has chosen to
finally present. The way that fans are able to twist reality to fit their preferred version of events is
displayed in fact that he presents these revelations as “secret” when he has no special access of
any kind and all of his research is based on information readily made available by Lucas and
Lucasfilm themselves.

Almost all those other contributors I mentioned did in fact make important contributions to Star
Wars, but to say that their contributions negate Lucas’, or that it means that these films are not
Lucas’ creations, simply displays a basic ignorance of how art is created.

Everything about Star Wars- The love of fast cars, the Saturday matinee influences, the
Kurosawa influences, the Joseph Campbell influences, the daddy issues, the editing style, all of
it- this is George Lucas’ life on screen. Star Wars is what happens when you take his life
experiences, things that he absorbed and that inspired him, and throw them in a pot together. The
stew that happens is Star Wars.

This is how any work of art happens, really. Film is of course an especially collaborative
medium, but in any work of art, even a novel, every person that enters the artist’s life directly or
indirectly has an effect on the person that they are and the life experiences they are drawing upon
to create their art. This does not mean that the novel doesn’t have an author. Those other people
are influences, but the artist is the final arbiter, the lens through which those experiences are
combined into a piece of art.

Lucas sold Disney a pig-in-a-poke. The fact that he was dismayed over what they did with his creation doesn't mean he didn't know they would do it. He was in the business far too long to be fooled on that score.

So his treatments and the scripts he commissioned from Michael Arndt were buried along with the EU. The fact that aside from Andor, every movie and TV show spun off from Star Wars has had to rely on scavenging the same material Disney made a point of discarding shows that this isn't going to get better anytime soon. Maybe Disney Star Wars will blunder onto something good by taking a well-like characters (Ahsoka) and giving her and the characters from Rebels the Heir to the Empire story line. With Lucasfilm's batting average of one good movie (Rogue One) and one good animated series (the last season of Clone Wars), I wouldn't bet on it.

[Evilchumlee]

The indication seems to be that Rey was always meant to be Han and Leia's daughter, it is just that they made her something else when that seemed problematic, both because of Reylo and mostly because Carrie Fisher's untimely death combined with Han Solo's previous death meant that there was no one for Rey to have a heartfelt reunion with. I think they were more or less wanting to remake the Luke/Leia reveal in which Rey was somehow hidden and her memory was wiped from both Leia and Han, but they were still drawn to her in ways they could not articulate. The way Han immediately offered her a job and the way Leia embraced her after Han's death to me were clear signs of this.

I actually think the ultimate biggest mistake was in not delaying and releasing Rogue One first as the stopgap/nostalgia bait, while they had someone else develop the Lucas drafts and then get a director who would just make them properly. This might have meant a sequel trilogy without Carrie Fisher, but that would have almost been better in the end than having her die midway through and leave massive dangling plot threads.

I still say to this day that Force Awakens goes out of its way to tell imply Rey is Han and Leia's daughter. The way both Han and Leia react to her is so... familiar. They both seem to know her, but don't want to come out and say it.

I had it pegged that Rey was their younger daughter, born after Ben had already ran off. The timeline mostly works... if Ben was conceived essentially at Endor, that makes him... 33ish by TFA. If Rey was born a few years before that (she's not a baby when she gets to Jakku), and she's 18-19 by TFA... she was born when Ben was somewhere between 12-16. That tracks with everything.

Whoever it was, either by choice or not, then basically took Rey away from Han and Leia to hide her from Luke... I had figured Luke ran off as well, fearing his anger and dismay would lead him to the dark side... and others worried about the same thing. They took away Rey to both protect her from a potential dark side Luke ruining another Solo kid, Ben potentially coming back and looking for his sister, and to protect her from herself.

(Alternatively, I remember literally night-of in the theater, that if Rey wasn't a Solo, she was DEFINITELY a Palpatine.)

[Evilchumlee]

The indication seems to be that Rey was always meant to be Han and Leia's daughter, it is just that they made her something else when that seemed problematic, both because of Reylo and mostly because Carrie Fisher's untimely death combined with Han Solo's previous death meant that there was no one for Rey to have a heartfelt reunion with. I think they were more or less wanting to remake the Luke/Leia reveal in which Rey was somehow hidden and her memory was wiped from both Leia and Han, but they were still drawn to her in ways they could not articulate. The way Han immediately offered her a job and the way Leia embraced her after Han's death to me were clear signs of this.

I actually think the ultimate biggest mistake was in not delaying and releasing Rogue One first as the stopgap/nostalgia bait, while they had someone else develop the Lucas drafts and then get a director who would just make them properly. This might have meant a sequel trilogy without Carrie Fisher, but that would have almost been better in the end than having her die midway through and leave massive dangling plot threads.

I still say to this day that Force Awakens goes out of its way to tell imply Rey is Han and Leia's daughter. The way both Han and Leia react to her is so... familiar. They both seem to know her, but don't want to come out and say it.

I had it pegged that Rey was their younger daughter, born after Ben had already ran off. The timeline mostly works... if Ben was conceived essentially at Endor, that makes him... 33ish by TFA. If Rey was born a few years before that (she's not a baby when she gets to Jakku), and she's 18-19 by TFA... she was born when Ben was somewhere between 12-16. That tracks with everything.

Whoever it was, either by choice or not, then basically took Rey away from Han and Leia to hide her from Luke... I had figured Luke ran off as well, fearing his anger and dismay would lead him to the dark side... and others worried about the same thing. They took away Rey to both protect her from a potential dark side Luke ruining another Solo kid, Ben potentially coming back and looking for his sister, and to protect her from herself.

(Alternatively, I remember literally night-of in the theater, that if Rey wasn't a Solo, she was DEFINITELY a Palpatine.)