I did some quick reading last night. It sounds like Lucas handed over film treatments for the ST, and Disney tosses them in the trash. My understanding from what I read is that TLJ picked up a lot of the discarded ideas from the Lucas version of VII after Arndt decided to push Luke almost entirely out of VII.

It sounds like there’s an alternative reality version of the film where we get to Han faster, and instead of heading for Maz he takes Rey right to Luke, where a lot of the Last Jedi’s Luke content would play out.

 

Haha, no. Johnson and JJ used a few concepts from VII, but the films would have been vastly different. I covered them earlier in the thread. Kennedy was chosen as his successor with the promise of sticking to his treatments, but she immediately betrayed George on this.


Kira and Sam, Anakin's grandchildren, would eventually become Rey and Finn.


The Jedi Killers / Jedi Hunters, the main villains, would eventually become Kylo Ren.

The power behind them was a character only known as "Uber" and was turned into Palpatine / Snoke.

Kira would have been Han and Leia's long-lost daughter, but I don't know how she was lost. I am guessing that it had to do with Luke and the Jedi Killers, as Luke's retreat had to do with those two being former students who fell to the dark side. Having two of your students turn evil and seemingly kill your niece makes a great deal more sense than trying to murder your innocent nephew.

 

I recall this earlier in the thread. Thanks for reposting this. That concept art is uncanny for Rey.

When I read this earlier in the thread I recalled thinking that none of this sounded all that different from the elements of episode VII. Rey, Finn, Luke losing his students, they're all there. It sounds like the pieces got permuted, with some changes with the biggest being Kylo Ren being Ben. And once that happens it fundamentally changes Luke's journey. And that isn't even all that original of an idea as in the old EU Jacen basically has Kylo's journey (Talented Skywalker, falls to Sith temptation from a threat from the OT era, Luke agonizes about confronting Jacen and ultimately can't, but not before alienating Jacen, falls to a peer/close relation).

I'd add that reading what it sounded like Lucas wanted to do with VII, I understood what was going on with his version of the ST. It's the final part of the hero's journey that you get if read the rest of Beowulf, or King Arthur and the Fall of Camelot, or King David's fall in the Bible. When I saw TFA in theaters I had no idea what the ST would be about. When I saw TLJ, I got it, in much the same way that I got it after reading Lucas's VII treatment.

 

They really butchered Rey's lineage. Not necessarily because of her being a Palpatine (I don't think that's an inherently bad idea), but because it was so poorly handled. I still remember how fun and exciting the following year after TFA was. "Who are Rey's parents?" was pretty much the #1 pop-culture question. It was basically equivalent to "who's going to survive Infinity War/Endgame?" Lucasfilm/Disney could have taken that hype and really made something great out of it. Instead they flip-flopped and didn't even fully decide until the third movie was already being filmed. By the time they revealed that she was a Palpatine, no one really cared about that question anymore.

As for Rey Kenobi...it could have been interesting, just because we've never seen another member of the Kenobi family. But if it were handled the same way as the Palaptine reveal, it probably would have been equally bad. I actually don't mind her being a Palpatine...if you told me that back in 2016 or 2017, I would have been satisfied with that answer. But they crammed it in at the last minute and didn't really do anything interesting with it.

In hindsight, my preference would have been to just make her Luke's daughter, and don't even try to hide her linage. There's no point in setting up a mystery if they don't have an answer in mind.

 

That’s what I’ve pretty much read as well or something very similar. From what I read, Lucas didn’t agree with what Disney had planned but he didn’t really have a say at that point.

 

Last Jedi has stupid kids saying stupid cringey lines, so I can totally believe Johnson got that from Lucas.

 

I like it.

 

Now that I think about it, I think Rian Johnson would’ve been better utilized at making a prequel movie for new characters that didn’t have important ties to the original trilogy characters. The ambiguity in his directing lends itself better to that.

 

The Secret Fourth STAR WARS Trilogy - Nerdist

I have really liked how Rebels, Rogue One, and Solo have shown what it’s like to live in the Empire. I’d also add Fallen Order to this fourth trilogy. In general this age of pre-open rebellion has been an excellent, rich source of Star Wars stories since it’s right between the OT and PT, and can plausibly feature characters and things from both trilogies, and it can also bring in stuff from the ST if it really wants to (whether it’s Kylo’s crossguard style Saber in Rebels, Illum in Fallen Order).

 

Sometimes I wish those Jedi Mind Tricks actually worked in real life. I run into a lot of weak minded people in the city.

 

That says more about you, then it does about them.

 

 

Star Wars: Marvel Confirms Luke Skywalker Met - and DESTROYED - [SPOILER]

Fascinating.

 

I saw this too and honestly don’t know what to make of it. I thought Rebels implied his soul was at peace. He shows up, in a very strange way, after his death in the show.

 

That version of him at the Lothal temple wasn't his spirit or soul, but a projection made by Yoda.

 

Star Wars Isn't Science Fiction, Says Mark Hamill

"I have to say that difference between Star Wars and Star Trek to me, is that Trek is classic science fiction, with humans going out to space and encountering aliens," Hamill told Men's Journal. "Star Wars was purposely set in a galaxy far, far away because it is fantasy, not science fiction."

"I have been asked on multiple occasions about a rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek, but I have to say I feel like it is really apples and oranges. You can like either or both, or none of them."

 

 

Very wise words. It's perfectly fine to like both Trek and Wars. Star Wars is space fantasy, not science fiction.  

 

Before anyone shits themselves, I posted this because it really paints a vivid picture of exactly how insulting Finn's portrayal was, and what a horrible mistreatment of John Boyega it became despite having great potential. Worse, it was a bait-and-switch that left him as the butt of every joke, and more or less made him a disposable red herring.

Hell, when your main character in Star Wars is more of a farce than Jar Jar Binks, you know Disney screwed up.

 

I totally get where he's coming from, and I sort of agree. Star Wars definitely has a strong fantasy side and inspiration to it, whereas Star Trek is a bit more grounded and less fantastical.

Personally, I prefer to stick to the broad genres when categorizing fiction. If you split hairs too much, you could call Star Wars science fantasy, space western, space opera, space/romance, or space/military (considering it takes strong inspiration from WW2 fiction). Which begs the question which of these subgenres should it be considered? Both Star Wars and Star Trek exist in outer space and feature spaceships and laser guns and robots and aliens and whatnot...all staples of the sci-fi genre. Therefore I tend to just lump both under the broad label of "Science Fiction". I tend to think about how it would be categorized in a bookstore or a library. They don't really have sections for each subgenre, they just lump things into the broad genres (science fantasy is a subgenre of science fiction, therefore Star Wars books would be in the science fiction section). But I don't think calling it "science fantasy" is incorrect by any means.

 

Yeah, SW is space fantasy. It is set in space, but there's no point in comparing it with ST.

 

After Disney discarded the original Lucas treatments, but before Arndt screwed the pooch trying to write his script, there were story planning sessions where Lucas, Abrams, Kasdan, and others sat down to brainstorm a replacement story outline together. Lucas had pretty similar meetings with Kurtz and Kasdan while he was developing the original trilogy, so things were still pretty normal at that point. The art and concepts @Rodimus Prime shared are from those. It seems to have gone through a few iterations, and they toyed with several alternate ideas simultaneously, so it's hard to get an exact picture of what Episode VII would have looked like at this point. Especially when the leaks about it have been selective and incomplete. Episodes VIII and IX do borrow several ideas from these story planning sessions, but they're pretty broad. Like "Luke is at the first Jedi temple and in a bad mood" but Rey/Kira would already have been his student and her mission would be completely different, etc. Had Arndt not taken the story completely off its rails, the alternate version of VII would still be very different from the version of VIII we actually got.

As an aside, I suspect this is part of why Lucas felt betrayed. It would already have been a bit of a blow when Disney rejected his original treatments outright. But then he worked directly with people he knew and trusted to make a new story that everyone liked and was happy with... and then they tossed that out too.