A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The Blu-ray packaging for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. © 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Buena Vista Home Entertainment No. First of all, (and I’m tired of explaining this over and over),  The Walt Disney Company  does not, nor did it ever have, a plan “to have the audience focus on a new set of characters.” If anyone had such a plan, it would have been  Lucasfilm,  the Disney-owned subsidiary that is responsible for actually making  Indiana Jones  and  Star Wars. Second of all, creating a new set of characters for the Sequel Trilogy was always going to be in the cards, as the window for making a post- Return of the Jedi  trilogy closed sometime between 1983 and 1994, partly because of George Lucas’s divorce from Marcia Lucas and  Star Wars  burnout, and partly because when Lucas decided to go back to big-budget filmmaking, he chose to make the Prequel Trilogy instead. Meanwhile, as Steve Perry noted in his foreword to the  Shadows of the Empire  graphic novel based on his 1996 boo

On Quora, member Al Hartley asks: Does the fact that the Empire is still basically around in the new Star Wars trilogy diminish the events of the original trilogy? As Luke Skywalker says in  Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi,  “Every single word you just said is wrong.” First off, the Galactic Empire is  not  “basically around” 30-some odd years after the destruction of the Death Star II and the downfall of Emperor Palpatine and his evil regime. The main antagonist of the heroes in the Sequel Trilogy is not the old Empire. As the title crawl of  Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Force Awakens  states: Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed. The villains - Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader Snoke, Armitage Hux, Captain Phasma,  et. al.  are not Imperials. They are, in essence, neo-Imperials, fanatical adherents of Palpatine’s New Order

© 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Buena Vista Home Entertainment What happened to the Galactic Empire in the Sequel trilogy? In   Lucasfilm’s Sequel Trilogy ( The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi,  and  The Rise of Skywalker,  the Galactic Empire created by Supreme Chancellor/Emperor Sheev Palpatine 19 years before the events of  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope  is no more. With the destruction of the second Death Star, the death (presumed, anyway) of Emperor Palpatine, the death (confirmed) of his fearsome agent Darth Vader, and thousands of Imperial senior commanders and field-grade officers at the Battle of Endor and elsewhere, the old Empire shattered and was defeated after several years by the New Republic. The Galactic Civil War ended when the remnants of Palpatine’s government led by Grand Vizier Mas Ameddas signed the Galactic Concordance five years after the Battle of Endor. However, a core of Imperial fanatics, including Brendol Hux, his young illegitimate son Armitage, a

Cover art for Marvel Comics' omnibus edition of The Last Jedi comics adaptation. © 2018 Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On Quora, member Michael Justin asks: Why did Kathleen Kennedy let Rian Johnson throw away J.J. Abrams’ Episode VIII script if she was going to hire him back for Episode IX? This question, like so many others like it, is based on a basic assumption that seems to be popular among many “fans” who get their information almost exclusively from YouTube or bloggers whose views they share. The assumption:  That J.J. Abrams had a detailed plan for the Sequel Trilogy, even had  scripts  for all three Episodes, and that this grand plan was wrecked by Rian Johnson with  Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.  And clueless, SJW Princess Kathleen Kennedy let Johnson ruin  Star Wars. Oh, you poor deluded child. First of all, just as George Lucas did not write a ginormous 360-page screenplay with all the beats and plot twists of the Original Trilogy c

Quora, a popular Q&A site that is a direct competitor to Yahoo! Answers, has hundreds of thousands of daily users that ask and answer questions about everything under the sun; topics range from archaeology to zoology, including world history, aviation, U.S. and world politics, pop culture (including subcategories such as Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter ). and sex.  The quality of the questions varies greatly as well, depending on various factors, such as age, education level, cultural awareness, and writing abilities. As such, one is bound to see queries that run all the way across the quality spectrum, from the Very Interesting to the Very Weird. This one, by Quora member Mina Simard, is one that falls into the Weird end of the spectrum:  What are the chances that we'll get Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII and IX with the original cast coming back to reprise their roles? My reply: Well, considering that Lucasfilm (and, in the case of

(C) 2016 Marvel Comics & Lucasfilm Ltd. Cover art by Phil Noto On December 6, 2016, Marvel Comics published Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a 136-page hardcover compilation of the six-issue comics adaptation of director J.J. Abrams' eponymous blockbuster space-fantasy film. Written by novelist, screenwriter, and game designer Chuck Wendig ( Star Wars: Aftermath ) and illustrated by Luke Ross and Frank Martin, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is based on the screenplay by J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt, as well as the characters and situations created by George Lucas. IT'S TRUE - ALL OF IT!  THE BIGGEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR JUMPS FROM THE BIG SCREEN TO THE COMIC-BOOK PAGE! It's been three decades since the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Death Star and toppled the Galactic Empire...but now, on the remote planet of Jakku...there is a stirring in The Force. A young scavenger named Rey...a deserting Stormtrooper named Finn...an ace pilot named Poe...and a d

Officially?  None.  Star Wars: The Force Awakens  and its two sequels, Star Wars: The Last Jedi   and Episode IX  are all-new original stories based on concepts by J.J. Abrams, Michael Arndt, Lawrence Kasdan, and the Lucasfilm Story Group. (George Lucas, when he sold Lucasfilm to Disney, handed in a treatment for  Episodes VII-IX,  but it was not used.) Unofficially:  Some story elements of  The Force Awakens  bear some resemblance to plot points from the  Star Wars  Expanded Universe novels and comics. For instance, in the film, Han and Leia have a son (Ben Solo) who is strong with the Force and is seduced by its Dark Side. This is also a plot point in the old EU, except that in the books the son is named Jacen Solo (who has a twin sister, Jaina) and after undergoing training as a Jedi in Luke Skywalker’s academy, turns bad and becomes Darth Caedus.