After the Sequel Trilogy Concludes... Then What?

What is everyone hoping for (or expecting) from the franchise once Episode IX is released?

My greatest hope - especially if the ST is of high, near-OT levels of quality - is that Disney-LFL will remake the Prequels. Not an especially realistic hope, I admit (particularly if Lucas is still alive and kicking in the 2020's), but a nine part Saga whose first third is of such drastically lower quality than its latter two is a property that is practically screaming out for repair. I can't imagine they'd let it linger in such a state for very long, especially with "reboots" being a pretty standard facet of modern genre moviemaking.

Apart from that, my other great hope is that they do not make a "Second Sequel Trilogy." Not counting Lucas' very early flirtations with the idea of 12 episodes, and his later PT-era six episode "Tragedy of Darth Vader" BS, the Star Wars Saga has ever (conceptually) existed as nine episodes - a Trilogy of Trilogies, which naturally reflects a three-act story structure on three levels (individual film, individual trilogy, whole saga). It just makes sense. I would hate to see that compromised by the tacking on of an entirely superfluous Episodes X-XII, which would actually be what the PT fanboys wrongly accuse the ST of being.

I'm fine with non-episodic, one-shot and spinoff movies, as the potential to explore the SW universe through films like that was hinted at by Lucas back in the OT days. But the Saga proper should be left alone after the ST is finished (or the PT is remade).

If more episodic, epic storytelling is desired (which the franchise does naturally lend itself to), then I'd hope they'd start an entirely new Saga from scratch. The Saga we now have could be re-branded "Star Wars: Saga I" and the new film could be marketed as "Star Wars: Saga II - Episode I" and could cover another multigenerational arc set at, say, the dawn of the Republic. The concept of "The Journal of the Whills" could be pulled out of the mothballs to make the whole thing seem a little less unwieldy.

Anybody else have such specific hopes and / or expectations for the difficult-to-see, always-in-motion post-ST future?

Akton said:

After the Sequel Trilogy Concludes... Then What?

Then this.

Akton said:

If more episodic, epic storytelling is desired (which the franchise does naturally lend itself to), then I'd hope they'd start an entirely new Saga from scratch. The Saga we now have could be re-branded "Star Wars: Saga I" and the new film could be marketed as "Star Wars: Saga II - Episode I" and could cover another multigenerational arc set at, say, the dawn of the Republic. The concept of "The Journal of the Whills" could be pulled out of the mothballs to make the whole thing seem a little less unwieldy.

Something in the depths of my soul leaps at the thought of this - a vast primordial epic set in the Star Wars universe without any references to other movies. I feel like Star Wars has the ability to tell much more mythological stories and embrace its darkness and wonder. Here's to hoping it happens!

I agree that soon after the ST, the "numbered" saga films should end. Cameos and guest appearances are fine, but I feel that once the torch is passed to the new generation, the story we began with the original Star Wars has been told. But the good thing about having nine movies is that there are going to be a ton of stories to tell between and around them.

If we look at Rogue One, for instance, they're drawing from the opening crawl of Star Wars. Even just going through the crawls of the OT, there are at least two other big stories to be told there: the founding of Echo Base between SW and ESB and the search for Han Solo between ESB and ROTJ.

Beyond all of that, there are references to dozens of possible movies within the films themselves: the abandoned Rebel base on Dantooine, the bounty hunter on Ord Mantell, the Battle of Tanaab. I'm sure the Rogue One model for taking these references to build films from will be their main source until they run out of them.

But that's just stuff that's related to the films, there are thousands of potential stories in this huge galaxy. Wookiees, Mandalorians, Stormtroopers, Jedi, Sith, popular Legacy characters... the Cantina is full of potential stories. It'll be like the "Tails From..." books, I'm sure. It's all very exciting.

I've said before that it is a 100% certainty that Disney will remake the PT...

...and the OT... and the ST... and then the PT again... from now 'til the end of the universe LOL

I think the best we can hope for the PT is more or less what we're getting: marginalization.

It's never going to go away, and we'll have to live with aspects of it, some more obvious than others, but Disney doesn't seem to be going to great lengths to force prequelisms into their current content.

That doesn't mean they're going to great lengths to ignore the PT, either, and it's definitely acknowledged when it comes up, but they certainly aren't shoehorning references to the PT into every piece of content they produce now.

I don't think that it would be too hard to re design the PT while keeping all the necessary links for the story to hold up, you just need what GL lost a long time ago... imagination! (AND ALSO YOU NEED THE SW RIGHTS PLUS A HUGE QUANTITY OF MONEY)

dclarkg said:

I don't think that it would be too hard to re design the PT while keeping all the necessary links for the story to hold up, you just need what GL lost a long time ago... imagination! (AND ALSO YOU NEED THE SW RIGHTS PLUS A HUGE QUANTITY OF MONEY)

It's not a question of could they, it's should they. And I don't think that is the right approach. I again defer to Atrus on this one:

I know now that we can't escape the past. Nor can we rewrite it, hoping to lessen our pain. The best we can hope for is to continue to learn, to take from the past only that which is good, and move on. Perhaps in the process, we will build a brighter future." - Atrus

The PT is so full of jarring discrepancies and displays such a cavalier, wanton disregard for OT-established facts about the era it purports to cover, that one simply cannot accept it for what it claims to be (the canonical first three episodes of the Saga). Looking at the saga as an extended history laid out in a tome like The Journal of the Whills, one would have little choice but to consider the PT apocryphal; a gloss added so long after the fact (and so clumsily) that its historical veracity must necessarily be doubted.

That said, the route for remaking the PT that I think Disney could feasibly take is this: Present it as an "alternate" telling of the events - a "What If" or "Elseworlds" type of thing... One that just so happens to be in perfect accord with the PT-era references in the OT and which respects the plot twists of the OT and flows like a proper story when viewed chronologically. They could even leave the episode numbers off of them and treat the remake as though it were the apocryphal version (but, wink-wink, nudge-nudge we'd all know it represents the proper version of the events). That way the PT, TCW, Rebels and all that other crap can stay "on the books" as the official "canon" and we can have our PT which everyone but us would ghettoize as a "Legends" story.

OT-ers are happy. PT fanboys are happy. Disney makes money.

I doubt it could happen before, say, 2030... But as long as it happens and I get to see it, I'll be satisfied. 

NeverarGreat said:

It's not a question of could they, it's should they.

 Yes, they should!

darklordoftech said:

Why get bogged down in a story that's already been told when there's so many stories that haven't been told? There's a whole galaxy and a thousand generations of history to explore.

 I'm not saying that it should be a priority but it would be a nice bitch slap to Lucas.

They could do a trilogy between the PT and the OT as well, there are enough years to explore between the ROTS and SW to make something epic about the early years of Vader and the genesis of the rebellion... at least dreaming is free (for now).

PT remakes just aren't going to happen. Speculation is pointless.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Akton said:

The PT is so full of jarring discrepancies and displays such a cavalier, wanton disregard for OT-established facts about the era it purports to cover, that one simply cannot accept it for what it claims to be (the canonical first three episodes of the Saga). Looking at the saga as an extended history laid out in a tome like The Journal of the Whills, one would have little choice but to consider the PT apocryphal; a gloss added so long after the fact (and so clumsily) that its historical veracity must necessarily be doubted.

That said, the route for remaking the PT that I think Disney could feasibly take is this: Present it as an "alternate" telling of the events - a "What If" or "Elseworlds" type of thing... One that just so happens to be in perfect accord with the PT-era references in the OT and which respects the plot twists of the OT and flows like a proper story when viewed chronologically. They could even leave the episode numbers off of them and treat the remake as though it were the apocryphal version (but, wink-wink, nudge-nudge we'd all know it represents the proper version of the events). That way the PT, TCW, Rebels and all that other crap can stay "on the books" as the official "canon" and we can have our PT which everyone but us would ghettoize as a "Legends" story.

OT-ers are happy. PT fanboys are happy. Disney makes money.

I doubt it could happen before, say, 2030... But as long as it happens and I get to see it, I'll be satisfied. 

Of course, not every OT fan agrees on how a proper PT should play out. I for one know things I'd like to see featured in an alternate PT would be reviled by other fans and vice-versa. Do we then start making multiple alternate PTs to suit the tastes of everyone?

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to not be the irredeemable pile of shit that the present PT is.

I think there are a few more or less universally agreed upon demands:

- Don't introduce us to Anakin as a little kid.

- Don't contradict anything established in the OT.

- No Jar-Jar type stupidity.

- Make the Clone Wars the backdrop of the entire Trilogy, as the Galactic Civil War was for the OT.

- Figure out a way to preserve the plot twists in the OT.

- Make Obi-Wan, and not Anakin, the protagonist of the Trilogy (as Lucas stated he'd be back in the OT days).

It doesn't have to satisfy each and every one of our pet preferences about lightsaber colors or use of "Darth" as a title or what have you... No doubt the ST will have things here and there that will annoy us, or that will not meet up to our expectations. In both cases, it just has to be a solid effort that respects the OT as the Foundation that this whole thing is built upon, and does not insult our intelligence by presuming we'll eat up any old contradictory, half-baked, barely thought out story shat out at the last minute by a fat, passionless, cynical billionaire, just so long as a few lightsabers are ignited and some spaceships go "pyoo pyoo." 

Tyrphanax said:

PT remakes just aren't going to happen. Speculation is pointless.

Five short years ago, pretty much everyone would have said the exact same thing about the Sequel Trilogy. Never say never... especially when greedy corporations are involved.

Tyrphanax said:

PT remakes just aren't going to happen. Speculation is pointless.

 I wouldn't keep my hopes down, the PT makes so many continuity errors that it would be foolish of Disney not to address them in some way, maybe they'll do their own edit or special edition of them.