RandV80 said:
You know it almost makes sense what he's saying, but then you just know that the end result is going to be something ridiculous.
Going by what happened with "Star Trek" that's right on the money. Though I can hold onto some vague hope here simply because he's doing a sequel, not being given the authority to reboot the entire franchise.
That said, I think we just saw the death of Star Wars in JJ's comments, before much in the way of solid production has taken place. The thing is that Star Wars is a proven brand, people who like Star Wars know what they want, they do not want to be handed something different in the name of a mystery or see the status quo shaken up simply for the sake of a new creator putting his mark on things. Most people have a basic idea of where this entire thing is going, and it's less a question of people wanting to be surprised, and more a question of people wanting to see it done well.
To be honest ignoring the so called "Expanded Universe" is pretty much expected, it's a mess to put it bluntly, and a lot of people writing for it pretty much managed to get their personal fan fictions published without much in the way of oversight. Even some of the more popular characters from the EU like Mara Jade come with a lot of contradictory baggage attached to them, not to mention some horrendous writing towards the end of their story arcs.
The biggest problem with Star Wars is simply that finishing up the story told in the first six movies results in a real downer of an ending. You need to move substantially into the future (by thousands of years) to see things start to turn out on a high note again.
While it's less exciting when spelled out this way, Star Wars is pretty much a universe without free will as we understand it. It's a universe that is guided through cycles by a metaphysical entity known as "The Force" where good and evil both get their turns ruling, with a period of balance in between when one cycle ends and another begins. The Force users are merely puppets by which the universe directs it's will, and presents the illusion of free will, sort of telling a story for it's own amusement. Even the mitochondria revealed later feed into this, where it's sort of like points of articulation on a puppet, the more important someone is to guiding the cycle, the more the force works through them directly, and thus the more of this they have.
The Star Wars storyline works entirely based off of a prophecy, which is quite simply about Anakin bringing balance to the force. He's even arguably created by The Force itself to work it's will as opposed to being born in a traditional fashion (Immaculate conception). The thing is that before Anakin's arrival, the galaxy was in a cycle of peace and prosperity, there was no real need for standing armies, there was little need for the Jedi other than as investigators and mediators assisting the police, and they were few in number. In the end with good ruling the universe the only place for there to be "balance" is for good to go down. This is mentioned directly in the movies where some Jedi are cautious about the prophecy, while others argue that it's meaning is that Anakin is intended to defeat the return of the Sith (who were so badly destroyed previously to the point where nobody knew much about them). This was not the case. Papaltine also made a similar mistake, by thinking Anakin was supposed to bring down The Jedi, and he was indeed closer, but again it's time for balance, not evil, so Anakin ultimately kills him too. While it was disappointing to a lot of movie goers who saw the redemption of Darth Vader as an awesome moment, and saw him "replaced" by a confused, angsty kid, that was always the way it was supposed to be, Vader was the very definition of a tool.
Now, it's a testament to the horrible writing and acting ability of some of the people doing the prequels that this is not more obvious. The point of some of the "WTF" scenes was that Anakin really wanted to be a good guy, but the universe was literally stepping all over his will and making it so he would do specific things. This is the point of him getting his ducks in a row (so to speak) right before he finds his mother getting gang banged to death by sand people, the point of which was that it was instrumental in why he started channeling some serious dark side by engaging in a very un-jedi like slaughter in the name of revenge.
This is also why some of the odder moments in the series happen, like Obi-Wan pretty much pulling his victory against the much superior seeming Darth Maul out of his posterior. Obi-Wan was needed, and more favored by prophecy. Like most similar duels, nobody really "beat" anyone else, The Force more or less had already dictated the outcome. You also see this in various scenes in both prequels and "original trilogy" where when it would be convenient the force suddenly goes "cloudy" preventing people from finding what they need, and the Jedi themselves mention at least once I believe that they feel the force weakening in them, which is in part why they are so concerned about The Sith (their time is actually ending). This is also how Sidious is able to beat multiple Jedi Masters, including Mace Windu, which is pretty much the same "Obi Wan improbability" from the opposite direction.
The point of this explanation is that the original series pretty much ended on as high a note as possible, something which Lucas in his toy-crazy obsession doubtlessly did intentionally. The over all resolution of the story arc would be Luke's fall to the dark side (which is why images of him doing so were so common and popular even before the EU writers considered it) and the birth of an new age of evil ruled by The Dark Side. Sort of like "The Empire Strikes Back" (the most popular of the series) but without the knowledge that it was just a cliffhanger. This is also probably why George Lucas was so resistant to doing sequels, and also fairly dismissive towards the EU at times in talking about what he considered "Canon".
Now there are TWO ways this can end on a high note, later movies showing the end of a cycle of darkness with Jedi coming up as a tiny force against a galaxy-wide Sith empire and throwing them down again. This would be thousands of years in the future. The OTHER option is a little more complicated:
While the game wasn't especially good due to problems with rushed development, "Knights Of The Old Republic 2" was apparently based on Lucas' writings and he allegedly ghost wrote parts of it for all intents and purposes. In KoToR2 the basic theme is free will, it's all about you being manipulated by a former Sith named Kreia into pretty much destroying The Force itself. How she planned to achieve this was never revealed due to the rushed ending, but her first step was to pretty much wipe out all the big time Jedi and Sith (probably to limit the intermediaries The Force would work through). She dies before we ever find out how she planned to destroy a metaphysical entity, but of course the ending also lends some doubt as to whether it could have been done, she might have just been another tool, as before he death she starts spouting prophecy about the future (the force showing it to her). A big part of the surprise being that the actions in the KOTOR games, put the Sith empire (the dominant force in the galaxy) on a collision course with the Republic, something which ends badly for The Sith and leads to their total destruction and the end of their long standing reign, leading to the massive period of peace and prosperity (a new cycle) which is just ending with the movie series.. in theory however if someone DID manage to find a way to destroy The Force itself (in effect ending all force users and other methods of less direct metaphysical manipulation) and restore free will before the new cycle of evil actually starts, the series could still end on a high note without needing to move forward thousands of years.
Sure, JJ is right, when it's all spelled out there in black and white it's a bit less mysterious, however that's fundamentally what Star Wars is, a sort of dark fairy tale with space ships and blasters, which is all about a prophecy and it's fulfillment. Mess with that and it's not Star Wars anymore. In JJ's case it's his job to write now that the mystery is out of the bag without being able to use the unknown as a crutch like he did with "Lost".