There has been a lot of action recently around the Star Wars franchise: Disney bought all things Lucas Arts, writers were hired, Michael Arndt writer of Toy Story 3 for Episode VII, Lawrence Kasdan writer … of well … Star Wars for a spin off, and J.J. Abrams to direct Episode VII. I just thought I would give my two cents on it all, and what I think they should do. After all I am on the internet so I must be right.
Disney is ridding on a lot of good faith from the great job they have done with the Marvel franchise, but with that they were just smart enough to follow the plan created by Kevin Feige. With Star Wars they need to make their own plan. It is good to see they brought Lawrence Kasdan back, after the horrible messes of Episodes I through III it will be nice to have a good writer involved again, but the big question is what are these writers are going to write about. What stories does Star Wars have left to tell via film.
The Star War universe is huge now. Lucas decided to open it up and allow a lot of good writers and not so good writers to expand the universe in so many different ways. It now spans thousands of fictional years, and has so much back story that I think Disney would be foolish to ignore it all. I think they should embrace it, and maybe even set the spin off in a different era with a different cast of characters. I would push for the Knights of the Old Republic time frame.
The Knights of the Old Republic is set about 4,000 years before the movies, and would allow the writers to do pretty much whatever they wanted. They could have massive Sith vs. Jedi battles, or they could just focus on a small group trying to navigate the Wild West of the Star Wars universe, and they wouldn’t have to worry about how they interacted with previously created movies.
But the most important thing they should do: Is just make a good movie, and I think the J.J Abrams hire was perfect for that. He proved with Star Trek that he was more interested in a good movie then sticking to the Star Trek canon. This may have made a few Trekkies mad, but the movie was great and it became the most successful Star Trek movie ever. If he keeps the same frame of mind with Star Wars, we should be in for a treat.