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George Lucas's Sequel Trilogy — Page 2

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Shows a little promise with the aspect of there being a power vacuum but you can already see the warning signs “I don’t want any human characters to get killed”

Also it is evident he did not understand the little things, the snippets of Nostalgia that appealed to us, the generation that made Star Wars successful.

The Sequels got things off amazingly well with TFA, completion opposite to the shallow prequels with obvious green screen backgrounds (although Hal’s re-edit of TPM showed there is a good film there in Episode 1), but why Rian Johnson ballsed things up with a bizaare story of spaceships going ‘just about fast enough’ to stay out of target and whilst that’s going on, lets have other characters leaving the ship and going on a merry adventure. Bizarre they even green lit his idea!

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Stardust1138 said:

Whose to say they’re seperate treatments? They could be part of the same story treatment as the Whills storyline but he didn’t feel the need to address it further since he already discussed it with James Cameron.

It’s certainly possible, but we know of at least three entirely separate, completely unconnected and contradictory sequel trilogy ideas he’s had over the years that have been very publicly known to be separate, and were thought up at very different times, decades apart. Plus, we know there are more than just those three, ones that we just don’t know the details about.

It would be really weird if they were spending the whole book dancing around a core concept of this sequel trilogy, it’s more believable that this is just a fourth idea.

Rodney-2187 said:

I love George and thank him immensely for creating something that’s brought me so much joy my whole life, but in my opinion Star Wars is at its best the more other people are allowed to play in his sandbox.

100% agree.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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NeverarGreat said:

This is so strange to me. Are aliens and clones not people to George? Besides, what about everyone Luke blew up with the Death Star? I guess as long as we don’t see their faces, their death doesn’t count. And what about the good dozen Rebels gunned down by Stormtroopers in the first scene, or Captain Antilles who had his neck crushed, or crispy Owen and Beru…

Like, I don’t want to say this flippantly, but this seems like an artist in willful denial of the content of his art.

My thoughts exactly. Especially Owen and Beru, that is some tough sh*t, especially for children. Not to mention the genocide on Alderaan, by the way. Or the X-Wing pilots you see blow up in the final battle.

To the topic: I remember having read a long, long time ago in a book (!) that Lucas wrote down ideas for 12 movies in the early '70s but stripped it to 9 and later 6. If that’s true, it would be interesting to see these original drafts. They surely weren’t inspired by the Iraq War.

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Rebel trooper battle scene and Owen and Beru BBQ is old 1970s George, not modern family man George.

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I prefer the worldbuilding and general premise of this trilogy over the sequels we got, by a large margin. However, bringing Maul back would have been a big mistake and would’ve been very confusing for people who are only familiar with the movies. He’d been absent since Episode I, as far as most people are concerned. Him showing up again, and audiences having to watch an animated series to fill in the gap, would be very off-putting for people.

In a way, I’m glad George’s sequel trilogy didn’t get made, since if it was written and created by the man himself, it would be harder to disregard. And he didn’t seem to have a firm idea of what he even wanted the sequels to be (though neither did Disney and Lucasfilm, to be fair). I think a sequel trilogy was something George would toy with and write notes on every few years, but I doubt he ever would have gone through with it, since he’s getting up there in years, wants to spend time with his family, and ultimately, he had more of a story to tell going backwards in time than forwards.

It reminds me of how J.R.R. Tolkien actually started writing a sequel to Lord of the Rings. He wrote the first couple chapters, then scrapped the project when he realized

a) It was depressing and ruined the bittersweet ending he had created

b) It wouldn’t contribute anything substantial or insightful to the Middle-earth mythology. The story was complete. Anything post-LotR would have been anti-climactic.

I think, on some level, George knew his sequel trilogy was never going to happen by his own hand. It was all just ideas and notes. But he did certainly feel blindsided when he realized Disney wasn’t using his treatments (whatever those treatments entailed). Bob Iger himself made that clear, and I’m sure he softened George’s reaction when he described it. I imagine George was fuming. The fact is, Disney didn’t want to spend any time pondering or formulating what their sequel trilogy was going to be. They wanted to push it out as quickly as possible. It was never about the story to them.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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Mocata said:

Rebel trooper battle scene and Owen and Beru BBQ is old 1970s George, not modern family man George.

That can’t possibly be true… George Lucas told us he’s a visionary who planned out all six movies he was involved with all the way back in 1973.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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PressFireToPlay said:

Shows a little promise with the aspect of there being a power vacuum but you can already see the warning signs “I don’t want any human characters to get killed”

Also it is evident he did not understand the little things, the snippets of Nostalgia that appealed to us, the generation that made Star Wars successful.

The Sequels got things off amazingly well with TFA, completion opposite to the shallow prequels with obvious green screen backgrounds (although Hal’s re-edit of TPM showed there is a good film there in Episode 1), but why Rian Johnson ballsed things up with a bizaare story of spaceships going ‘just about fast enough’ to stay out of target and whilst that’s going on, lets have other characters leaving the ship and going on a merry adventure. Bizarre they even green lit his idea!

Agreed. Some critics complain that TFA had too many mystery boxes with no idea how to resolve them…but that’s what you WANT with part 1 of a new trilogy that needs to get people’s interest. Everyone was speculating on Rey’s parentage or what Luke was up to or who Snoke was…and that’s good. You want the audience invested. The fact that JJ had no idea what to do is not a bad thing in the sense that they had 2 more films to get a good writer to tie up the plotlines. Rian’s “unexpectedly throw them all away” answers were not good for part 2 of a trilogy OR part 8 of a bigger narrative–it’s as if Rian childishly wanted to make his own trilogy and thus forced the narrative to start over with his own version of the sandbox.

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Funny enough it seems much of the intrigue for Lucas’s original ST vision is itself a mystery box as fans can only speculate what might have been, searching for clues and answers.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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JadedSkywalker said:

So Lucas wanted to do his own version of the EU. Sounds like with some edits like Luke neither being married or having any children. No wonder Disney threw those treatments in the trash. None of these are new or original stories or ideas he was just cribbing EU characters and plots. Maybe even worse than Disney in a way, more lazy at least for the most part Disney didn’t use the EU as a template.

Darth Maul being the main villain is a joke.

This isn’t what we waited 35 years to see. We waited for the continuation of the OT characters and their story where it left off, as original stories. Not some weird amalgamation of Filoni Clone Wars and EU.

Sorry for the late reply, but I think you have this backwards. It isn’t George cribbing on the EU and Filoni, it was his guidance to the EU authors and his instructions to Filoni that would have created a unified tale. Filoni resurrected Maul at Lucas’s instruction.

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I think one of the things a lot of fans mistake is how movies get developed. You don’t draft an idea (a treatment) and then write it as a script and then film it. That id not what happened with the original film. In the idea presented you see the origins of Snoke, the First Order, and Luke in exile. Sure it is Maul, Stormtroopers, and Luke trying to find himself, but it is the same kernel of story that we ended up with. Trevorrow’s script similarly has the same general story beats as the final TROS. But for anyone familiar with how movies develop from idea to final film, these are all steps along the way. From what we know of Lucas’s ideas before he sold LFL to Disney, they started with his treatments and developed them from there. They changed things that weren’t working and kept things that did.

So under everything is the treatment that Lucas sold to Disney. You have a remnant of the Empire that is now large enough to fight back. You have their evil leader. The main focus went from mobsters and guerrillas to a well organized remnant of the Empire, which was the main focus of Zahn’s trilogy. But as we see, that was a piece of George’s idea. They dumped the politics that so many didn’t think worked for the PT.

Things that did not change:
A remnant of the Empire
Luke in exile
girl padawan
Han Dies
Luke Dies
A new pair for the Dark Side (Maul/Talon not really sith to Snoke/Kylo not sith)
Leia is a significant leader
Leia’s son falls/fallen to the dark side

So the ST is very much based on what Lucas had in mind. It just was not developed from there by him. It was developed much as he might have. We can see that wide variety of options in how Empire and Jedi developed. Had Lucas done the ST himself, it would look nothing like what he has described because it would have gone through the same story development as the OT and PT did. So this idea that these tidbits are exactly what we would have seen is not very accurate. Same with Trevorrow’s script. That was the first draft and it would have changed before the final draft and would have changed even more during filming. So these pieces of development do not equate to what we would have gotten in a final film or trilogy. It is fun to speculate, but that is the same as The Star Wars comic adaption of the early script.

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While obviously events would have played out differently, I love the idea of Maul surviving being cut in half only to eventually die by being cut in half again.

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in my opinion Star Wars is at its best the more other people are allowed to play in his sandbox.

As a universe perhaps but as a Saga, I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to have single writer-director from start to finish. Not necessarily Lucas, just anyone. Hell, what if they’d been shot back-to-back?

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Hal 9000 said:

What if Snoke had been Maul? Hmm…

Certainly would have made for a more compelling and interesting villain.

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I shared it on another thread but I’ll share it here too as it feels a bit more relevant.

George had more to say in Paul Duncan’s Prequels book about his planned Sequels.

For Anakin’s origins:

“The midi-chlorians started the birth process in Anakin’s mother. The Whills communicated the command to the midi-chlorians, which activated the DNA that germinated the egg. That’s why Anakin doesn’t have a father. He was in a bizarre and metaphorical way touched by God, but in this case they happened to be one-celled animals.”

For Sifo-Dyas and the Clone Army:

He said that Sifo-Dyas was Palpatine’s apprentice before Darth Maul and he ordered the Clone Army while pretending to still be a Jedi the entire time. It explains so much honestly and adds another layer to his relationship with Count Dooku. I like the idea of them both being tools to Palpatine’s plan to see who is more worthy of leading the Separatist Movement while also being deceived into doing the dirty work.

It’s interesting as well because he remarked in the commentary of Attack of the Clones that the Clone War is very, very important to the whole epic. I always felt Dave Filoni was hinting at there being more to the story during this retrospect for The Lost Missions too.

https://youtu.be/KGBdRW7jjUk

I like how the previous trilogies would’ve connected in his Sequels to create as cohesive as possible nine part epic. That’s something I find is very lacking in the Sequels we got.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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jedi_bendu said:

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose, eh? I think you’re right. We’re in the spinoff show era now.

At the same time, I WOULD love comic adaptions to give unused stories like Lucas’ sequels and Colin Trevorrow’s episode IX the recognition they deserve.

I’m sure you’ve seen it by now but someone did a comicbook adaptation of Colin’s Episode IX.

http://awinegarner.squarespace.com/duel-of-the-fates

I’ve only skimmed through it but it’s pretty good for the most part. It feels like a proper continuation and conclusion to what happens in The Last Jedi.

I wish I had the resources as I’d go about making an animated adaptation of George’s Sequels.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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Treverrow’s script felt like a Game of Thrones-level middle finger (albeit with some good ideas), while the GL sequel trilogy would need extensive revision (getting rid of Midichlorians and the microscopic stuff). I’m not keen on what we got, but I feel slightly reassured knowing it could’ve been so much thrashier.

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BedeHistory731 said:

Treverrow’s script felt like a Game of Thrones-level middle finger (albeit with some good ideas), while the GL sequel trilogy would need extensive revision (getting rid of Midichlorians and the microscopic stuff). I’m not keen on what we got, but I feel slightly reassured knowing it could’ve been so much thrashier.

I actually think exploring Midi-Chlorians and the Microbiotic World would have been so engaging and interesting. It’s very much Star Wars to me as it has lots of roots in Joseph Campbell’s philosophy. I like how it’s exploring the lore further and enriching it. It gives us a greater understanding of how it’s split between the Cosmic Force and Living Force. Most of all it would’ve given us an explanation of how Anakin came to be and how it connects to the Whills giving the command. The Whills are some of the oldest known lore in Star Wars. I’m very curious how the Whills are possibly connected to the Ancient Order of the Whills mentioned in the Revenge of the Sith junior novelization. R2-D2 is said to have recounted the story of the Skywalker Saga to the Keeper of the the Whills of the said order.

I feel without these things there’s a gaping hole in the narrative that doesn’t have closure and are considered “plot holes”. Same with how George planned to address the mystery of Sifo-Dyas.

Most of all it would’ve made each trilogy distinctive. They’d each serve a different function and purpose within the greater whole but still feel connected.

It reminds me of a quote from George in the 80’s:

“If the first trilogy is social and political and talks about how society evolves, Star Wars is more about personal growth and self realization, and the third deals with moral and philosophical problems. The sequel is about Jedi Knighthood, justice, confrontation, and passing on what you have learned.”

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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I like how the ST we got downplayed the PT (the PT being one okay movie (TPM) and two shit ones (AOTC/ROTS). The PT’s version of the force is too sci-fi for me and the proposed ST seems to double-down on that. I don’t see any Joseph Campbell in “the microbial world.”

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BedeHistory731 said:

I like how the ST we got downplayed the PT (the PT being one okay movie (TPM) and two shit ones (AOTC/ROTS). The PT’s version of the force is too sci-fi for me and the proposed ST seems to double-down on that. I don’t see any Joseph Campbell in “the microbial world.”

Quotes from Joseph Campbell:

“Between mythology and biology there is a very close association. I think of mythology as a function of biology; it’s a production of the human imagination, which is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating against each other. These are the same in human beings all over the world and this is the basis for the archetypology of myth. So, I’ve thought of myself as a kind of marginal scientist studying the phenomenology of the human body, you might say.”

"I would say that all of our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives the spiritual import – what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about, as understood today. There’s no real conflict between science and religion. Religion is the recognition of the deeper dimensions that the science reveals to us. What is in conflict is the science of 2000 B.C., which is what you have in the Bible, and the science of the twentieth century A.D. You have to disengage the messages of the Bible from its science. "

“What I’m trying to say is that the structuring of a mythology is conditioned by the science at that time. There’s no use constructing a mythology based on an archaic science. I wouldn’t know what to do with an atom, but I do recognize that when we had a Ptolemaic cosmology there was a whole interpretation of the relationship of the earth to the different planes of the universe that was mythologized. What happened to that was it was given an ethical and moral value, the stages of a ladder of the heavens represented the stages of the psyche.”

George also said:

“I read a lot of books about mythology and theories behind mythology; one of the books was The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but there were many others, maybe as many as fifty books. I basically worked out a general theory for the Force, and then played with it. The more detail I went into, the more it detracted from the concept I was trying to put forward.”

“Of course, I’m coming from the point of view that it was the bacteria that helped create the mitochondria and then the mitochondria that helped create multicelled animals.”

“And then the mitochondria, if they got enough energy, they could make two cells, and then once you make two cells, then you can make this whole world.”

“But it’s…about symbiotic relationships. I think, personally, one of the core values we should have in the world, and kids should be taught, is ecology, to understand that we all are connected. Forget the mystical whatever. It’s all just very plain. We’re all connected. What you do to somebody here, it affects somebody there, there, there, there. It comes back to you. You have understand that you’re part of a very big picture. You’re just one little part. You’re a gear. You’re just a little gear in this big picture.”

“The thing that I liked about the whole idea was that, yes, we are ruled, and the conquerors of the universe are these little one-celled animals. But they depend on us, we depend on them. And the idea was, the Force–we say it surrounds you, it control us, we control it–it’s a two-way street.”

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Midichlorians-Are-Not-The-Force/id/84084/page/1#1432204

It very much feels to me like George was exploring these concepts and discovering his own philosophy of how it all connects together into a greater whole.

I personally hate that the Sequels we got ignored the Prequels. It leaves such a large void to pretend like they never happened.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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Another reason I would have loved to go microbial is getting to see an alien world within an alien world, fits in with Lucas talking about circles within circles in Cloud City, I imagine some wild 2001 stargate visuals to accompany cosmic depictions of the ethereal realm, especially after the mostly stale visuals we got from the ST all these things people called Lucas a mad man for I would have dearly loved to see, unrestrained use of CGI, inter-cutting between multiple intersecting side plots, a truly explosive finale, everything but the kitchen sink!

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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act on instinct said:

Another reason I would have loved to go microbial is getting to see an alien world within an alien world, fits in with Lucas talking about circles within circles in Cloud City, I imagine some wild 2001 stargate visuals to accompany cosmic depictions of the ethereal realm, especially after the mostly stale visuals we got from the ST all these things people called Lucas a mad man for I would have dearly loved to see, unrestrained use of CGI, inter-cutting between multiple intersecting side plots, a truly explosive finale, everything but the kitchen sink!

The great thing about the circles within circles aspect is that you see it in not only with Cloud City but other planets as well. It’s a reoccurring motif. Geonosis is probably the best example I can think of with another world he explored this circular technique. It would have been mindblowing seeing it take a step further into something unknown and yet connected to a simple but innocent conversation between Qui-Gon and Anakin in The Phantom Menace.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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Stardust1138 said:

BedeHistory731 said:

I like how the ST we got downplayed the PT (the PT being one okay movie (TPM) and two shit ones (AOTC/ROTS). The PT’s version of the force is too sci-fi for me and the proposed ST seems to double-down on that. I don’t see any Joseph Campbell in “the microbial world.”

Quotes from Joseph Campbell:

“Between mythology and biology there is a very close association. I think of mythology as a function of biology; it’s a production of the human imagination, which is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating against each other. These are the same in human beings all over the world and this is the basis for the archetypology of myth. So, I’ve thought of myself as a kind of marginal scientist studying the phenomenology of the human body, you might say.”

"I would say that all of our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives the spiritual import – what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about, as understood today. There’s no real conflict between science and religion. Religion is the recognition of the deeper dimensions that the science reveals to us. What is in conflict is the science of 2000 B.C., which is what you have in the Bible, and the science of the twentieth century A.D. You have to disengage the messages of the Bible from its science. "

“What I’m trying to say is that the structuring of a mythology is conditioned by the science at that time. There’s no use constructing a mythology based on an archaic science. I wouldn’t know what to do with an atom, but I do recognize that when we had a Ptolemaic cosmology there was a whole interpretation of the relationship of the earth to the different planes of the universe that was mythologized. What happened to that was it was given an ethical and moral value, the stages of a ladder of the heavens represented the stages of the psyche.”

None of this has anything to do with Midichlorians

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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SparkySywer said:

Stardust1138 said:

BedeHistory731 said:

I like how the ST we got downplayed the PT (the PT being one okay movie (TPM) and two shit ones (AOTC/ROTS). The PT’s version of the force is too sci-fi for me and the proposed ST seems to double-down on that. I don’t see any Joseph Campbell in “the microbial world.”

Quotes from Joseph Campbell:

“Between mythology and biology there is a very close association. I think of mythology as a function of biology; it’s a production of the human imagination, which is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating against each other. These are the same in human beings all over the world and this is the basis for the archetypology of myth. So, I’ve thought of myself as a kind of marginal scientist studying the phenomenology of the human body, you might say.”

"I would say that all of our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives the spiritual import – what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about, as understood today. There’s no real conflict between science and religion. Religion is the recognition of the deeper dimensions that the science reveals to us. What is in conflict is the science of 2000 B.C., which is what you have in the Bible, and the science of the twentieth century A.D. You have to disengage the messages of the Bible from its science. "

“What I’m trying to say is that the structuring of a mythology is conditioned by the science at that time. There’s no use constructing a mythology based on an archaic science. I wouldn’t know what to do with an atom, but I do recognize that when we had a Ptolemaic cosmology there was a whole interpretation of the relationship of the earth to the different planes of the universe that was mythologized. What happened to that was it was given an ethical and moral value, the stages of a ladder of the heavens represented the stages of the psyche.”

None of this has anything to do with Midichlorians

It does indirectly as it shows he like George saw a connection between mythology and biology as I shared with the link to my other post and how George would’ve created links between the two when exploring the Whills, Force, and Midi-Chlorians.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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SparkySywer said:

Stardust1138 said:

BedeHistory731 said:

I like how the ST we got downplayed the PT (the PT being one okay movie (TPM) and two shit ones (AOTC/ROTS). The PT’s version of the force is too sci-fi for me and the proposed ST seems to double-down on that. I don’t see any Joseph Campbell in “the microbial world.”

Quotes from Joseph Campbell:

“Between mythology and biology there is a very close association. I think of mythology as a function of biology; it’s a production of the human imagination, which is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating against each other. These are the same in human beings all over the world and this is the basis for the archetypology of myth. So, I’ve thought of myself as a kind of marginal scientist studying the phenomenology of the human body, you might say.”

"I would say that all of our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives the spiritual import – what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about, as understood today. There’s no real conflict between science and religion. Religion is the recognition of the deeper dimensions that the science reveals to us. What is in conflict is the science of 2000 B.C., which is what you have in the Bible, and the science of the twentieth century A.D. You have to disengage the messages of the Bible from its science. "

“What I’m trying to say is that the structuring of a mythology is conditioned by the science at that time. There’s no use constructing a mythology based on an archaic science. I wouldn’t know what to do with an atom, but I do recognize that when we had a Ptolemaic cosmology there was a whole interpretation of the relationship of the earth to the different planes of the universe that was mythologized. What happened to that was it was given an ethical and moral value, the stages of a ladder of the heavens represented the stages of the psyche.”

None of this has anything to do with Midichlorians

Exactly. While I misspoke earlier with Campbell, I stand by my point of not wanting the microbial stuff involved in it. That just takes it too close to sci-fi and gets way too “in the weeds” within the story. I’ll take what we got over the big microbial adventure.

Heck, I’d have loved a straight retcon of Midichlorians as a symptom of larger issues within the Jedi Order. Saying they were a bullshit idea the Order adopted in their decline as a means of selection for child abduction.