Earlier this week, word broke that Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss left their Star Wars project with Lucasfilm, seemingly over their split duties between that and their recent overall deal with Netflix. Now, a pair of reports point to tensions between the pair and LFL, and indicated that their new trilogy project would have been about the origins of the Jedi.
Variety published a lengthy post about the tensions between the pair and Lucasfilm, noting that they had been promised some measure of creative control over their trilogy. The pair reportedly “had ambitious plans to take the Star Wars universe in a new direction, one that would exist apart from the Skywalker family saga that comprised the franchise’s centerpiece nine-film series,” Variety says. Notably, the pair were “interested in exploring was how the Jedi came to exist. However, Lucasfilm executives and the creators begin to see their visions for the films diverge during meetings last summer.”
Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter notes that “Benioff and Weiss’ exit has been brewing since August. Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy is said to have been unhappy with the Netflix deal, inked just as they were scheduled to being work on Star Wars.”
The origins of the Jedi are a huge jump away from where the Skywalker saga sits in the franchise’s overall chronology, potentially tens of thousands of years in the past. It’s territory that Lucasfilm has explored before, however, and one common refrain from fans whenever a new project is announced is that an adaptation of Knights of the Old Republic should be adapted as a film.
It’s not hard to see why: set 4000 years prior to the events of the main franchise, the game allowed players to fight against a Sith Lord named Darth Malak as he unleashed a massive attack against the Old Republic. The 2003 roleplaying game earned considerable acclaim from reviewers and players for the scale of its story, and it’s remained a beloved classic amongst fans.
Lucasfilm has over the years delved even deeper with the franchise’s earliest history. Kevin J. Anderson and Tom Veitch penned their Tales of the Jedi comic series in 1993, setting up a story about a cataclysmic war between the Jedi and Sith set 4,000 years prior to A New Hope, while Tim Lebbon’s 2013 novel Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void and Jan Duursema / John Ostrander’s Dawn of the Jedi: The Prisoner of Bogan comic series were set a whopping 25,793 years before the first film. KOTOR provided plenty of tie-in novels.
When Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, those stories were rendered non-canon to free up any constraints on J.J. Abrams and other filmmakers. That left plenty of fertile ground for authors and artists to rebuild the story. Notably, Lucasfilm has focused on the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens with books such as Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath trilogy, Claudia Gray’s Bloodline, Delilah S. Dawson’s Phasma, and others. But the franchise’s deep history remains untouched, presumably to allow for some freedom of movement for future film directors.
https://reactormag.com/2016/05/04/star-wars-bloodline-should-definitely-be-a-movie/
Since 2012, Lucasfilm and Disney have had some huge ambitions for the Star Wars franchise, but what’s emerged since then is a story of a clash between Lucasfilm’s desire to hold tightly onto its story and canon, and the creative freedom that it gives directors. Benioff and Weiss became the latest set of directors to depart the franchise, following in the now well-trod path left by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Solo), Josh Trank (Boba Fett standalone), Colin Trevorrow (Episode IX), and Gareth Edwards (Rogue One).
The story has remained fairly consistent: creative differences between what Lucasfilm wants and what the directors want. It’s easy to see why there might be some clashes between the two groups when it comes to a story that’s set thousands of years prior to the films that we’re already familiar with: any story would be distantly removed from the Skywalker Saga, but would presumably carry with it some impact on how the world came to be. Figuring out the right story and characters is a tall order.
Furthermore, the era comes loaded with the expectations of fans. The desire for a specific adaptation means that fans want a specific thing, something that Lucasfilm will be intrinsically unable to deliver — no adaptation of KOTOR will match the image that exists in the minds of fans, and straying too far from the concept will undoubtably bring howls of pain from certain quarters of the internet.
At the end of the day, it seems as though there was just too much sand in the gears: between the huge deal with Netflix and diverging visions for what the next big Star Wars franchise should be, it seems as though Lucasfilm is starting over. They certainly have plenty of material to work with — Kevin Feige is developing a Star Wars film, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is working on a trilogy of his own, and the company has a handful of Star Wars TV projects in the works. And, it seems that LFL is looking to bring in new writers — Variety says that it’s “begun taking general meetings with other writers,” presumably to start and figure out what the next steps for the future of Star Wars looks like.
The desire for a specific adaptation means that fans want a specific thing…
Some fans want a specific thing. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking all Star Wars fans want any particular thing. Even the best-selling Expanded Universe books sold fewer copies over twenty years than any Star Wars movie sold tickets in its opening weekend. Only a minority of fans are attached to the EU; I’ve been a fan since 1977 and the EU never felt like Star Wars to me.
I certainly hope any Old Republic story doesn’t look like it’s set on Cloud City with slightly blockier droids, as KotOR did; I want thousands of years ago to look different.
I loved those old Tales of the Jedi comics. Something set in that era would be great. And like @1 says, I would want a distinctly different look for that era.
It’s not that the fans want a recapitulation of the old EU (although I’m sure many would have appreciated not having it tossed out). They want new, innovative, GOOD stories – as the high points of the EU were. Lots of people, myself included, don’t feel that the latest offerings were up to snuff.
No matter what way they go, there will be upset and vocal fans. I saw Star Wars in its 2nd release, in 1978, and it formed my deep abiding love of sci-fi & fantasy. I recorded SW when it first aired on HBO, and proceeded to watch it until the tape physically broke. So, speaking as a long-time fan, I enjoyed Solo, and really loved Rogue One (my fav. is still the original, as nothing will knock that off the top of the list, but RO comes very, very close). They were blasted by people that hadn’t actually seen it at the time they made their displeasure known, and generated campaigns dedicated to destroying the movies for reasons. All while professing their devoted love to SW as “true fans” or whatever nonsense they spouted. I have been told that I actually didn’t like either movie and was a paid shill. So there’s a very toxic element inside the SW fandom that will be upset no matter what the studio does.
Gareth Edwards did not depart Star Wars. You could say Lucasfilm was not happy with his version of Rogue One and ordered Tony Gilroy to do reshoots, but it’s not a situation comparable to that of the Solo directors, who were fired mid-shoot.
Same goes for Josh Trank, his Fett project never got anywhere near pre-production.
@3 I agree that new stories set in the old days should simply not be retellings of the Tales of the Jedi or Knights of the Old Republic. But if they can capture that spirit, the stories could be a lot of fun.
@6: But the spirit of the old stories is a creative one – that is, inventing new people, places, and ideas, and incorporating them into the tapestry that is the Star Wars mythos. Artists putting themselves into the work – or from another perspective, making at least part of the wider universe their own.
I acknowledge there’s a tightrope to walk here. Because at least some of the recent problems stem from artists putting their personal stamp on SW in ways that don’t harmonize with the greater work and create problematic inconsistencies. Having one powerful controlling artistic vision isn’t necessarily great, either – Lucas was far from perfect, and we now know that the original trilogy was revised by others making the film. When Lucas eschewed contributors modifying his ideas, we got the prequels, which pretty much everyone acknowledges as being artistically flawed.
Ideally we’d have people who generated fresh, new ideas and felt free to incorporate them, but who would work to make those ideas and their expressions consistent with the greater work. The old EU had many examples that were remarkably successful, and losing them hurts, particularly when new content doesn’t manage to pass the hurdles that past achievement raised very high.
Excess conservatism is a problem. I think everyone recognizes that The Force Awakens was a very conservative film, duplicating many of the themes and concepts of A New Hope, and no matter what we think of the film we can understand why people considered that a flaw. With the criticism arising from the deviations in The Last Jedi, I’d expect even more conservatism in response. Extended-universe works often give artists little creative freedom, expecting them to just “color within the lines”, and they frequently become mere ways to generate revenue from fans so eager for content they’ll purchase almost anything. It’s a problem that beset many cherished series – at worst it results in artists who hate what they’re making but economic pressures force them to continue. See L. Frank Baum, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie for famous examples.
The best of the old EU, I think, managed to escape that trap. It’s going to be hard for new stuff to avoid falling into it. Personally, I’m cautiously pessimistic. But we can always hope.
Who’s criticism of TLJ? Because the majority of the public probably liked it, there’s a small, noisy section of fandom that decries it.
If TRS is conservative, it’s because it’s directed by JJ Abrams, not because of backlash to TLJ.
It’s funny because to me, while TFA is indeed ‘conservative’ in some ways, for me I felt like it departed so strongly from what for me was the heart of Star Wars that I never truly warmed up to it (and I lay any problems that TLJ had at its feet).
Anyway. I’m not heartbroken over Benioff and Weiss leaving per se, due to their own history, but I do think this could have been a really interesting place to read. Some of Clone Wars/Rebels HAS borrowed imagery/themes from the EU from that time (in fact, I think Hamill even voiced Darth Bane in an episode). I loved the EU (mostly, lol) and while I don’t want to see it regurgitated (and I was fine with them starting fresh, honestly) there ARE lots of good ideas to take inspiration from in there.
I loved those Kevin J Anderson comics…especially because (granted some of this is due to the timing) they show us a time when the Jedi weren’t bound by all the same precepts as what we see in the Old Republic. I still am disappointed we didn’t get to see more of that in this new trilogy – Luke discovering/incorporating more history and other Force traditions into something new.