Brave New Worlds or the Same Old Ones?

by Brian Martin

Star Wars.  Just the mention of it sends a warm, nostalgic swell through my body.  It was a series that not only looked and sounded great, but made a young kid feel like anything was possible.  I, like so many of us, spent my youth playing with Kenner’s boundless line of action figures, dreaming up the further adventures of Luke Skywalker, Bib Fortuna, and Snaggletooth in that galaxy far, far away.  Hell, in middle school I even attempted to make a stop-motion sequel to Return of the Jedi, in which a newly christened Emperor Yoda was assassinated and J.J. from Good Times had to discover who was behind the plot.

They really did make an action figure out of everyone

Full disclosure: I do not hate the prequel trilogy.  I don’t believe that George Lucas “raped my childhood” with the prequels.  I think Lucas made three flawed movies that don’t measure up to the impossibly high standard I’ve held the original trilogy to for my entire life, but I would never even consider mentioning The Phantom Menace in the same breath as Battlefield Earth or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  It’s just not that bad.

The Star Wars prequels were always going to be problematic, because they had to end up in a specified place.  This is the reason that Revenge of the Sith turns into a checklist of events that have to transpire before Episode IV can start.  Anakin becomes Darth Vader?  Check.  Obi-Wan takes Anakin’s lightsaber?  Check.  Twins born?  Check.  C-3PO and R2-D2 are aboard the Tantive IV?  Well, it’s a little early, but check.  Yoda says his teary farewell to Chewbacca?  Uh…check?  All the pieces had to be put in a preconceived and widely understood place, completely eliminating the potential for suspense and surprise.  But now, with Episode VII, we’ll finally get a new Star Wars film that isn’t beholden to anything, one that can literally take us anywhere.  Why, then, are fans so opposed to that idea?  Not the idea of a new Star Wars film, mind you, but the idea that it should be, you know, new.

She kept that thing?  I did NOT see that coming!

We’ve been hearing it since 1991, really.  Ever since the release of Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, fans have been exploring what came to be known as the Expanded Universe, a series of ongoing tales set outside the events of the (then only) three films.  Zahn went on to pen two more novels to complete his trilogy, and fans almost immediately started saying the same thing: “They should just turn these into the next Star Wars movies.”  Sure, it might’ve been fun to imagine back then, when the prospect of any new Star Wars films seemed like a pipe dream.

Now, here we are two decades later and, due to circumstances my brain is still struggling to understand, a new Star Wars movie is getting made.  I had accepted the fact that the Lars family, looking out over the Tatooine sunset, was going to be the final cinematic image Star Wars ever gave us, but the world has changed.  As soon as the news sunk in, my brain started swimming in the possibilities of further stories, which is why I was so surprised when a large portion of the fan base simply went back to their 20-year-old default idea: “They should just make the new movies the Thrawn Trilogy.”  (Admiral Thrawn was the blue-skinned antagonist of the Zahn novels).

The fact that these folks typically use the word “just” in that sentence is a testament to the sheer laziness of the idea.  Really?  The first completely fresh Star Wars movie project in three decades and the best you can do is an adaptation of a novel that you read 15 years ago?  Granted, those books are pretty good.  My own exposure to the Expanded Universe doesn’t stretch far beyond Zahn’s novels, though.  I read the Dark Empire comics.  I played a few video games.  That’s about it.  But if there is one unifying thought I had while engaging with all of them, it was that I did not, under any circumstances, care to see them adapted for the screen.  I had already enjoyed them in their respective mediums.

This phenomenon isn’t even unique to Star Wars.  For years, people clamored for a fourth Indiana Jones movie, and a lot of them said the same thing: “They should make it an adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,” which was a goddamn computer game!  This line of thought persisted throughout early development of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and, in the disappointment that followed the release of that movie, has morphed to become, “They SHOULD HAVE just made it Fate of Atlantis.”  Uh, no, they STILL shouldn’t have.  Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may have had its monkey-swingin', fridge-nukin', Shia-LaBeoufin' problems, but making it a video game adaptation was NOT the solution.  Even though filmmakers might not always know what’s best for a franchise, they can sure do a hell of a lot better than unimaginative members of the fan base.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the persistence of this line of thought.  You want the next movie in a franchise so near and dear to your heart to be one that you already know the entire story to?  No surprises?  No discovery?  Do you even remember WHY you fell in love with these movies to begin with?

Thankfully, Disney was quick to kill the very thought that a new film would be based on anything from the Expanded Universe and it would instead be an original story because they understand that that’s the only way to make the movie.  For every hardcore Star Wars fan out there who’s read every adventure of Mara Jade, there are about a million casual fans who have, I dunno, ONLY SEEN THE MOVIES.  Do a Wikipedia search for Star Wars novels.  Even the staunchest of fans might take a look at that list and burf a little in their mouth.  The last thing any studio or filmmaker with half a brain cell would do is make Star Wars Episode VII, the latest entry in a film series that doesn’t exactly pride itself on being impenetrably complex, IMPENETRABLY COMPLEX.  So brace yourselves, fans of Kevin Anderson’s Jedi Academy series—your holy text is about to get blown to hell.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that elements from those stories won’t be incorporated into the new films.  This has actually already happened once, with the inclusion of Coruscant (a planet established in Zahn’s trilogy) in the prequels.  That Leia and Han have twins seems like a no-brainer, and any movie that DIDN’T include a new member of the Skywalker bloodline certainly wouldn’t mesh well with what’s come before.  Luke will obviously have continued efforts to rebuild the Jedi order in the wake of Episode VI, and ignoring this in any future installments would, again, seem odd.  However, I have serious doubts that the filmmakers are going to be sitting down with detailed synopses of every EU story and saying, “Ok, how do we make our movie fit in here perfectly?”

Everyone is nervous about Star Wars VII for completely different reasons.  Some are afraid it will contradict the 900 novels, comics, and fever dreams that came before it.  Some are afraid it will include the original actors.  Some are afraid it won’t include the original actors.  Some directors are scared to get near the thing for fear of insurmountable expectations.  And I can’t be the only one who’s thought of the obvious: that this will be the first Star Wars film to open WITHOUT the 20^th Century Fox Fanfare?

Why is NO ONE talking about this?!  Sacrilege!!!

Whatever our fears, and whatever our expectations, two things are certain.  We will ALL be there.  And, once again, anything is possible.

NEXT: Mel will, seriously, talk to you about longevity.