I am working on a rewrite of the Star Wars sequels to address many shortcomings, missteps, and missed opportunities that I saw in those films. My critiques are not those of a certain subset of SW fans who believe the films were too “woke”. In fact, the things I have planned for my rewrite would probably give those guys a heart attack.
I understand that I will never be able to monetize this, otherwise the big Mouse will drop a Death Star on my head.
My intent is to start with completing a written treatment of my vision of Episode 7 and then produce that in video format using my own art assets and non-copyright music that sounds John Williams-esque. Once I get some response to that, I think then I would like to flesh out the ideas I have for Episodes 8 and 9.
I’m happy to share concepts and bounce ideas if interested! One of the main througlines of this trilogy is an armed Droid Revolution.
Since you said rewrite I feel compelled to bring something obvious to your attention: You need to think about how the galaxy got here from RotJ.
The legends was, in a nutshell, civil war and warlords. Disney said all way well until the empire 2.0 appeared out of thin air. [or vacuum whatever] My suggestion would be a limited new Republic that was forced to make uneasy truces with a bunch of warlords that still control large swathes of the galaxy. Whatever you do, I doubt you could do worse than disney.
For a change, maybe don’t give the sith the limelight, at least for the first film. I know a star wars saying sith/jedi are gone forever only to being them back isn’t the best trope, but it’s infinitely better than “you thought the empire/emperor is gone, but here they are with a repaint, now with stupid buffs we’ll have to write around”.
You’ll need big evil things to destroy, at least two. It’s star wars, you can’t not have it. If you want to go smaller scale, it can be just about anything that’s important enough to call it a day upon destruction. If it’s going to be big scale, and the end of 9 needs something big scale, I only ask that you be original. Planet sized death star that did 9/11 times a hundred was just creatively bankrupt and it got worse after that. It can be a place of the dark side, some ancient magic thing that does bad things etc. Just keep in mind that the first death star fucked the galactic markets and the second one would’ve bankrupted the empire even if it was finished.
The big bads. Again, the mastermind+enforcer is a decent formula and shows the multiple facets of the villains much better than a single big bad. If you want to mess with this one, you’ll have to work hard to make it good.
Best of luck!
Awesome input. Yes I agree. I am trying to make a plausible backstory for my neo-Imperial baddies. Any backstory at all would be better than what the Mouse had to offer (nothing). In the backstory I have thus far, the Rebels liberated Coruscant from Imperial control in 6 ABY, founded the New Republic the same year, then fought the remnants of the Empire for a couple of years before eventually agreeing to a ceasefire in 8 ABY.
One promise I am going to keep is that Palpatine does not come back in any way shape or form. Not a clone or a ghost or anything like that. He is history. There is another bad guy, he has a loose connection to Palpatine, but he is not Palpatine.
One of the main plot points of Episode 7 is that the New Republic has constructed a giant terraforming space station, in an effort to create new habitable land to house the countless refugees created by the various extractive and oppressive activities of the Galactic Empire. It’s not intended to be a good guy equivalent of a “death star”, but in the wrong hands it can do just as much damage.
One of the ways I set out to make the conflict more interesting than the Disney films’ was to work with the fact that a post-Palpatine galaxy is going to be a much more complex place.
There is more than one set of bad guys in this trilogy, and for a brief time it’s up in the air who the “good guys” even are. I’m hoping to do a better version of what Rian Johnson was going for, not to spoil too much. This is what Episode 8 will focus on, so for now it’s on the backburner while I hammer out the details of 7.
I love you. You have all the warm fuzzies I can send your way.
I think you can set up the chekov’s not-a-gun by showing the machine failing or almost failing. Since it’s not intended to be a weapon some old fart (Peter Cushing forgive me) telling us it can destroy planets might not suffice.
Anyway, I can’t wait to see your title crawl!