Update: The news of stand-alone Star Wars films has now been confirmed by CEO Bob Inger in an interview on CNBC.
News is coming today from Harry Knowles at Ain’t it Cool that, in addition to the Star Wars sequel trilogy, stand-alone character-centric Star Wars films are also in the works. Knowles is claiming the first of these stand-alone movies will focus on Yoda, with other character-specific movies to follow. No source is being specifically cited and even aside from that the news seems a little weird, seeing as a project like this would likely head into potential prequel territory, a sensibility the now Disney-owned Lucasfilm probably wants to avoid. What could this mean? Do we want this?
If a Yoda movie did tell the story of Yoda’s entire life, we might be dealing with some kind of weird biopic like Lincoln or Ray. Perhaps this movie would reveal the real story of Yoda’s life and why he made so many wacky decisions on the Jedi Council. Maybe he was addicted to a Star Wars space drug—like spice or death sticks—and actually wrote up all those prophecies about “balance to the force” when he was blasted out of his mind. In this scenario, a film called Yoda: A Life would also show that the Jedi Master had known Chewbacca for several, several years before Revenge of the Sith, and the Wookie was in fact his dealer. Also, Yoda once did talk normally, but after centuries of hitting the space drugs too hard he became a total weirdo. Maybe he didn’t even used to be green. You don’t know!
I’m kidding here, but the point is the desire to reveal things about Yoda, could easily ruin the character. Meanwhile, other articles are suggesting this Yoda movie might make way for a stand-alone Boba Fett movie, to which I say: the Boba Fett backstory has been messed up enough already, right? Let’s try to remember him at his best: when he was just an awesome cool guy with the slick helmet tricked-out jetpack, and very few lines of dialogue. This would be a similar challenge with Yoda. Sure we love him, but maybe we don’t want to know much more about than we already do.
While it seems possible these stand-alone movies could happen, I think it’s unlikely and Lucasfilm would be better off developing a sitcom about Dexter Jettster called You Wanna Cup of Jawa Juice?
Ryan Britt is a staff writer for Tor.com and worries everyone is getting delusions of grandeur.
