Arslan Aladeen said:
Mario 1, he's tripping on some mushrooms. Mario 2, it's a dream. Mario 3, the game starts with a curtain rising. Conclusion, Mario makes a play based on all his trippy visions. Super Mario World, every area is named after a food, ergo Mario has the munchies.
Scars Unseen said:
Do I want the Sequel Trilogy to be an adaptation of EU stories? No, that's silly. I want a new story, not a rehash of one I could buy from Del Rey. On the other hand, I also believe it would be pretty bad to ride roughshod over the entire existence of the EU. Sure, it isn't all award winning literature, but there is some good stuff in there, and I would hate for the new trilogy to pretty much say that none of the characters in those stories exist at all.
Incidentally, the timing of these movies is eerily in sync with the current progression of the post-RotJ EU fiction. The Fate of the Jedi series ends up at about 40 years after the Emperor takes his swan dive into a reactor core(or whatever that was), and by the time Ep VII comes out it will have been about 32 years since RotJ hit theaters. If Ep VII took place a couple years after that storyline you would have a Skywalker just coming out his teens, a Solo on the Jedi Council, and another Solo preteen on whom the balance of the Force may turn. Not to mention the Empire has just had its first general election, there are at least two different sects of Sith out there somewhere, and the Galactic Alliance(formerly the New Republic) is reeling from a catastrophe on Coruscant.
I could think of several possible stories one could tell with that cast and setting.
They have to ride rough shod over pretty much the entirety of the post RotJ EU stories. It's pure math and accounting and aging. There is NO other option. It all gets thrown in the scrap heap.
Here is the problem
Fans of the Star Wars Movies = 2+ BILLION Human beings. These people are familiar with Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, etc etc etc.
Fans of secondary animated materials, ie The Clone Wars = 10+ Million. These are people (and young primary desired consumers) Who are well versed with the stories of Captain Rex, Asoka Tano, the 501st during the Clone Wars etc. Not a bad fan base as a starting point for anything new. Plus the entirety of this story takes place between movies 2 and 3, so does not require any knowlege past the third prequel. Solid still usable backstory and characters, to a point.
Now comes the 800lb Gorilla in the room that no one is talking about. Fans of the EU novels and printed stories. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 (at best, and even then only trending that high for the older stories like the Zahn stuff). (OK OK Maybe a bit more for the three Thrawn books only). At best estimate, maybe, just maybe some of these might peak close to a million. But the typical production run for the novels is 1 or 2 hundred thousand, if that. Heck Dark Horse would be thrilled to get anywhere near those numbers for the comics.
Now add to that the shear volume of material in those EU books that would occur in the 30 years between when we last saw our primary cast, and what the current age of your primary character actors now is. There is no possible way to compress any of that information to make it viable for use on screen. Certainly not without pissing off the 2 billion movie fans. Three words to illustrate the problem. "Death of Chewbacca". "Oh by the way fans, we callously killed off one of your favorite characters 10 years ago as a publicity stunt in a book that less than 1% of you even knew the existence of." And if you think that's bad, try explaining something like the stupidity that is the Yuuzhan Vong to your Uncle Louie who waited in line for 6 hours the summer of '77.
So when faced with the choice between pissing off maybe a hundred thousand fanatic nerds, or pissing off over a billion fans who wish not to be betrayed or confused, well Disney's gonna hold themselves a good old fashioned book burning. They simply cannot base any of the story around needed background knowledge and backstory that only 10's of thousands of fans actually know.
The best the EU fans can hope for is to maybe get some cameo's of some well liked characters. Much as they did in the Prequels. I would not rule out seeing or having some reference to Thrawn. I would not rule out some cameo of Coran Horn or Red Squadron. Mara Jade will not be seen. As much as a cool hot redhead would work well on screen, the whole "Married to Luke Skywalker and mother of his kids" thing pretty much stops that cold.
