Solo4114
Master Member
I'll be honest: I went into the news about TFA with a very jaundiced eye. I didn't WANT my OT heroes messed with. I wanted that story flung far into the future.
But I came to realize that, as Bryancd has described, that would basically doom the Star Wars to a niche film.
Take a look at the Star Trek franchise right now. That's a best case scenario for what we could've expected if they hadn't basically done what they did with Ep. VII. If, instead, they'd flung the story far into the future (or far enough that it didn't deal with the OT characters), it wouldn't have been as recognizably "Star Wars" as the actual film was. I'm not even gonna touch preserving the EU, either (I'm not even sure everyone who didn't like Ep. VII cares about that, for that matter).
Now, there's another story possibility that they could've done with TFA, but again, I think it's pretty risky.
Imagine a version of TFA where, instead of the First Order already being at war with the Republic/Resistance, you had the galaxy in a state of peace, the Republic doing just fine, Leia is chief of state (Galactic Chancellor? President? Prime Minister? Whatever, you get the idea.). Luke has been training Jedi for a while now, has his own academy, and it's doing fine. Han is either a successful merchant or a general in the Republic military, or something. Chewie is...I dunno. The Wookiee liason to Kashyyk (sp?). R2 and 3PO are trucking around as usual.
Now...how do you introduce a state of affairs into the galaxy that suddenly turns into a galactic civil war AND that rings true? Does the First Order show up out of nowhere? Or do we acknowledge that they've been there all along? If they've been there, how do we explain why the Republic hasn't done squat about it? I mean, they won, right? Shouldn't they have completely dismantled the Imperial military? What's the story there? (That part's manageable, I think, by having simply a group of Imperial Remnant diehards fly off into the uncharted regions of the galaxy, and then come back with a vengeance.)
But the real problem, the real danger, would be (ugh, as usual...) the Jedi. If Luke has been successful, that would require pretty much that there are (1) some graduates of his academy who are powerful enough to work on their own, and (2) a crop of students with whom he's working. So, what do you do to upend all of this in a satisfactory way that introduces drama, and that sets the stage for having some unknowns come along and save the galaxy? I think this is a MUCH heavier lift, narratively speaking. Could it have been done? Maybe. But I think it would've been a real longshot that it would succeed.
From my perspective, Ep. VII was good enough to make me want to see what else LFL's creative team has in mind. If they keep just recycling the old stuff, yeah, that'll grow tired. I saw that already. I can see it any time I want. I'd rather the story go in different directions that don't ape previous films. But I think there's a good likelihood that we'll see that moving forward. Once they get a handle on that, they just need to settle on a better sense of pacing... (Seriously....rathtar sequence was totally unnecessary and could've been swapped out for more exposition)
But I came to realize that, as Bryancd has described, that would basically doom the Star Wars to a niche film.
Take a look at the Star Trek franchise right now. That's a best case scenario for what we could've expected if they hadn't basically done what they did with Ep. VII. If, instead, they'd flung the story far into the future (or far enough that it didn't deal with the OT characters), it wouldn't have been as recognizably "Star Wars" as the actual film was. I'm not even gonna touch preserving the EU, either (I'm not even sure everyone who didn't like Ep. VII cares about that, for that matter).
Now, there's another story possibility that they could've done with TFA, but again, I think it's pretty risky.
Imagine a version of TFA where, instead of the First Order already being at war with the Republic/Resistance, you had the galaxy in a state of peace, the Republic doing just fine, Leia is chief of state (Galactic Chancellor? President? Prime Minister? Whatever, you get the idea.). Luke has been training Jedi for a while now, has his own academy, and it's doing fine. Han is either a successful merchant or a general in the Republic military, or something. Chewie is...I dunno. The Wookiee liason to Kashyyk (sp?). R2 and 3PO are trucking around as usual.
Now...how do you introduce a state of affairs into the galaxy that suddenly turns into a galactic civil war AND that rings true? Does the First Order show up out of nowhere? Or do we acknowledge that they've been there all along? If they've been there, how do we explain why the Republic hasn't done squat about it? I mean, they won, right? Shouldn't they have completely dismantled the Imperial military? What's the story there? (That part's manageable, I think, by having simply a group of Imperial Remnant diehards fly off into the uncharted regions of the galaxy, and then come back with a vengeance.)
But the real problem, the real danger, would be (ugh, as usual...) the Jedi. If Luke has been successful, that would require pretty much that there are (1) some graduates of his academy who are powerful enough to work on their own, and (2) a crop of students with whom he's working. So, what do you do to upend all of this in a satisfactory way that introduces drama, and that sets the stage for having some unknowns come along and save the galaxy? I think this is a MUCH heavier lift, narratively speaking. Could it have been done? Maybe. But I think it would've been a real longshot that it would succeed.
From my perspective, Ep. VII was good enough to make me want to see what else LFL's creative team has in mind. If they keep just recycling the old stuff, yeah, that'll grow tired. I saw that already. I can see it any time I want. I'd rather the story go in different directions that don't ape previous films. But I think there's a good likelihood that we'll see that moving forward. Once they get a handle on that, they just need to settle on a better sense of pacing... (Seriously....rathtar sequence was totally unnecessary and could've been swapped out for more exposition)
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