Re: Star Wars Episode VII
Tatooine is the home planet of both main characters in both trilogies, it makes sense that they would go back at least once. That said, I don't think we will see Tatooine. Unless, of course, Luke's child is born on Tatooine...but since I doubt Luke would ever go back there, that would be stupid, so i hope not.
Honestly, I don't think they needed to make Tatooine Anakin's home planet. There's no reason why "Uncle" Owen needed to be Luke's actual uncle. In fact, he really wasn't Luke's uncle except in a really tangential way. He could've been some guy that Anakin served with during the Clone Wars or a buddy of Obi-Wan's or the janitor in Yoda's gym. He could've been anyone. You didn't need Anakin to be from there just to get Luke to his "uncle" by Episode III.
Second, even if it is either guy's home planet, why would they need to go back at all? Luke's entire life on Tatooine is destroyed when the troopers attack the Lars homestead. He says it himself "There's nothing for me here now." And there wasn't. The only reason they went back was to get Han from Jabba, and there's no reason why Jabba needed to live on Tatooine either. Yes, one of Jabba's goons tries to hunt down Han in ANH, but so what? In the non-SE version, Jabba never appears at all on Tatooine. He could've been on Nal Hutta or living on some entirely different planet. Yes, they filmed the scene, but even if Jabba was physically present...what, he can't travel? Again, no reason to go back there unless Lucas just has a thing for shooting desert landscapes.
Anakin could've been born anywhere. Jabba could've lived anywhere. Anakin's birthplace is irrelevant to getting Luke to Tatooine. The only reason this stuff is in there is because that's how the movies were written. But the way the movies were written is not the only way they COULD have been written. Yes, if you set up enough preconditions, then you can make an argument for why they went back, and the movies do that, but I'm saying that the preconditions themselves weren't necessary.
Think of it this way. Does Lando need to be in Ep. VII? No. No he does not. People may WANT him to be, but there's no inherent reason why he would NEED to be. You could write the story such that it'd be weird for Lando to NOT appear (e.g. significant portions of the story take place on Bespin, and nobody bothers mentioning Lando at all -- that'd be weird), but there's no reason you have to do that. Why bother including Bespin, in that case? Are there no other sources of Tibanna gas? Is Tibanna gas going to be a real plot point for the story? Or are you just writing all this stuff to get Lando in so Billy Dee can flash a smile and fans can see old Lando puttering about?
By that same kind of thought process, why did Anakin need to be from Tatooine at all? Why did he need to go back to see his mom? Why did the Lars family have to get involved in precisely the way they did? No reason whatsoever. It's just how the story was written, and it could've been written any number of other ways. And even having been written the ways it was, you STILL didn't really NEED to go back to Tatooine in all of those cases. The only reason for going back -- and even this isn't even absolutely 100% necessary, but closer to, like, 98% -- is to show the handoff of Luke from Obi-Wan to the Lars family. That's it. That's the only reason you absolutely need to revisit the planet in the entire saga. The whole thing could've had exactly two (2) appearances of Tatooine. 3 at most if you absolutely HAVE to include Jabba's palace being there. The rest is just redoing what was done before because...uh...it was done before.
If they go with using Ewan as Obi-Wan, they could have Luke or another Jedi discover a holocron left by him. If that happens, guess where IMHO, they would be most likely found. There would have been no reason for him to make them before Anakin turned and anytime that he would have made them after that, he would have been living on Tatooine.
That'd make sense as a reason to revisit Tatooine, but there's also no reason they'd need to have the holocron come from Obi-Wan. Why not a Yoda holocron? Or some other Jedi we've never heard of? Why use a holocron at all? I'd submit that the only reason is so you can stick Ewan McGregor in and not have to explain why he still looks young. But again, there's no reason you HAVE to use Obi-Wan at all in the story. He could be completely gone. There's no reason why Luke would need to consult any old Jedi stuff. It could all be in the ruins of the old temple on Coruscant. Or he could decide that the Jedi failed before for a reason, and maybe we should just start over. Any number of possibilities exist.
The only reason we end up going back to this kind of stuff is because people search for ways to shoehorn a character into the story, and then concoct a reason after the fact to explain the appearance. The scenario I described with Lando is a perfect example of this kind of thinking. The starting point is never something like "We need to have the story center around a precious gas that can only be found on one planet, and that gas HAS to be Tibanna gas and that planet HAS to be Bespin....so I guess we'd better figure out how to include Lando." It's always "Lando should come back. I loved Lando. Why would Lando be back? Hmm...maybe there's...um....a Tibanna gas shortage because Sith terrorists attack Bespin?"
The problem with this is that the story itself ends up taking a backseat to "notes," as if the production office is sending notes to the writers telling them "Find a way to include Lando," rather than letting them tell an organic story on its own without feeling the pressure to include this or that moment, character, or beat JUST for the sake of familiarity or marketability. It's putting the story and its coherence and integrity secondary to the whims of the masses or the production team. This is why you have Chewbacca being best buds with Yoda in Ep. III. They wanted to include Chewbacca, so off to Kashyyk we go and since Yoda's leading the war effort there, how could you NOT have Yoda meet Chewbacca? As a result, the moment feels very "forced" and not some natural outgrowth of the story. It's a cameo for the sake of having a cameo, around which a story justification was built, rather than a story that is built which happens to require a cameo.
