Star Wars: Episode 7
So, as you’ve probably heard if you’ve been near a tv, radio or the internet in the last 24hrs, Disney has bought LucasFilm, and are planning on continuing the main Star Wars story of Luke, Han, Leia et al. Although a rather worrying report has popped up on the E! website citing ‘sources’ in the LucasFilm camp that are saying the new films will throw out all of the current Expanded Universe stuff in favour of a story which will be “nothing you’ve ever seen or read before from the Star Wars universe…” Personally, I think this would be a colossal mistake of Jar Jar sized proportions…
There was a lot of speculation that Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy would be the basis for the new films, but i’m not convinced that is the way to go either. There are issues with filming those, one of the main ones being that the actors are too old for the characters in that time period (that’s assuming you can get Harrison and Hamill to appear). Otherwise your recasting and that doesn’t sit massively comfortably with me. I know Ewan took over from Alec Guinness, but that was to play a much younger version of a character that had only ever appeared as an old man.
Personally I’d like to see something that take elements of the E.U. but maybe doesn’t feel the need to stick 100% to the stories that are currently out there. Something that is set after the Thrawn Trilogy, and skips further forward. Bear in mind LucasFilm doesn’t see the novels and related E.U. stories as 100% canon, and can be superseded by the films or TV shows. Films take precedent (known as G-canon), then TV (T-canon) then the E.U. (C-canon). To me it would make more sense to jump Episode 7 a number of years after the events of Return of the Jedi. This has the advantage that you can introduce character such as the Skywalker and Solo children (who are in the Expanded Universe) in their early 20s, rather than as young kids, and it would also allow the original actors to reprise their roles. Even if the stories are different, I think to throw out all the ‘history’ that’s been built up by authors over the years would be massive slap in the face to the work those people have done to keep lining Lucas’s pockets over the years.
There have been some great examples of creating great films, whilst playing fast and loose with their origin stories. The most notable recent example would be Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Despite altering the history of a number of major Batman characters, it still carried much of the essence of the comic books. Or JJ Abrams Star Trek, that found an extremely nifty way of rebooting the franchise without destroying everything that went before…
Of course, there is the issue that George has apparently written a ‘story treatment’ for the new films… And it’s fairly well know that he hasn’t read any of the novels… So it’ll be interesting to see if, whoever gets the screenwriting gig, is more of a fan of the EU than George is… I’d like to hope they decide to pull the 2 worlds of ‘George’s Star Wars’ and ‘The Expanded Universe’ together into something that passes Disney/Lucas’s inspection, and doesn’t annoy the fans that have spent money on EU stories over the years… Only time will tell!
