How Would You Make Episodes 7-9?

A few days ago I give a fairly sizeable post about my thoughts on the newest main movies in Star Wars. So what I would like to know is how you would have done them. Same people as before but everything else is fair game to mess around with.
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For me, I would make Finn the main focus of the movie and not drop the whole good stormtrooper idea that lasted all of five minutes in episode 7. The attack on the village at the start of the movie still happens of course because that's the turning point for him. He would still meet up with Rey but unlike in the movie he is at least useful and is able to deal with one or two bad guys before being overtaken and saved by Rey.

As for Rey, she takes longer to get the Millennium Falcon fully under her control and she doesn't pull the million-to-one stunts shown in the movie. We get Han Solo but we remove the whole he returns to being a bad guy thing because that makes no sense and he helps her fly the ship. Han Solo becomes like a father to her and tells her stories of the old days.

The First Order are now what is left of the empire and not a wannabe empire ruled by an emo kid with family issues. The super death world is stopped before it blasts the new government and Rey is beaten and left to die by Kylo Ren. She is saved by Flinn who goes with Rey to find Luke. Luke is slow to train them in the ways of the Jedi but does so after a few days. Both Rey and Flinn are slow but are seen mastering their fighting over days. The movie ends with a zoom-out as the pair train with Luke watching over them both.

I wouldn't make a sequel trilogy. People who want more stuff after episode 6 are trying to hang on to a story that has already ended. It's okay for things to end. People need to learn to move on and discover new things.

If you put a gun to my head and told me to make a sequel trilogy, maybe I'd adapt the NJO, but I'd set it at least hundreds or thousands of years after episode 6 so as to not to undermine that movie's happy ending. The NJO is not yet another story about fighting Imperial Remnants #2137. The Yuuzhan Vong bring a breath of fresh air into the setting.

Val the Moofia Boss said:

I wouldn't make a sequel trilogy. People who want more stuff after episode 6 are trying to hang on to a story that has already ended. It's okay for things to end. People need to learn to move on and discover new things.

If you put a gun to my head and told me to make a sequel trilogy, maybe I'd adapt the NJO, but I'd set it at least hundreds or thousands of years after episode 6 so as to not to undermine that movie's happy ending. The NJO is not yet another story about fighting Imperial Remnants #2137. The Yuuzhan Vong brings a breath of fresh air into the setting.

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I agree that episodes 7-9 did do a fine job at undermining the old school movies of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s I disagree that you couldn't use the new cast for a better story.

I'm much more a movie/game fan so that's what I would likely pull from if I were asked to do such a thing. I haven't really bothered with most of the book stuff. I have read bits of some of them but nowhere near enough to even try to use them for story ideas. But I still think we could've had a story set post-episode 6 that wasn't a complete and utter train wreck narratively specking. Had Finn save some more stormtroopers in episodes 7-9. Have Han and the old crew not die or be otherwise tossed aside for the new cast. Have Rey not be this God-level Jedi who fails at nothing is perfect at nearly everything.

The First Order were a joke and so were the people in it. They were so much a joke that even the people making the movies didn't view them as anything but a means to hopefully get people to laugh at their expense.

I actually made a thread about this already.

Captain X said:

I actually made a thread about this already.

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I have taken a look and while it is mostly the same I still hold the view that mine is still a new thread for one basic reason. It's about how you would redo the episodes, not how you would make a whole new thing.

It's kind of why I give my thoughts in the opening post. In other words, how would you have made episodes 7-9 if you had the power to do so. What would you have fixed?

Well, yeah, I discuss that in my own OP and in another post downthread.

First off, highest priority is to re-hire the old authors and continue writing more books set in the old and vastly superior EU canon. Just have some kind of label declaring that the books and movies take place in separate canons and ignore the changes the new movies make if necessary.

Step #1. Ditch all actors from the original trilogy on grounds of age, contracts demanding they leave after one movie and ridiculous pay requirements. Hire new no-name actors who look similar to the original trilogy actors in their prime. Basically Star Trek 2009's trick only be even smarter about it and try to recruit from the existing Star Wars fandom to ensue familiarity and willingness to work for lower pay on the condition of literally starring in their favorite franchise.

Step #2. Create an adaptation of Heir to the Empire with Timothy Zahn in charge of writing the script and Mark Hamill as director.

Step #3. Continue adapting the rest of The Thrawn Trilogy.

Episode VII - Heir to the Empire
Episode VIII - Dark Force Rising
Episode XI - The Last Command

Next comes a standalone young Han Solo movie which is either an adaptation of Scoundrels or Han Solo at Star's End.

If Disney hasn't kicked me out yet, next will either be a Yuuzhan Vong Wars trilogy with a more H R Giger aesthetic than the "everything is made of lumpy coral, spikes, tentacles or some combination of the above" used in canon or a Knights Of The Old Republic prequel trilogy.

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If Disney refuses to let me do this and insists on an original story, I've also got a few miscellaneous ideas.

New characters:

Rey
A war orphan living on jakku and scavenging wreckage from the same battle which caused that state of affairs. During the attack on her home, she used the force for the first time in self-defense. Along with the chaos caused by Finn's defection, this is the only reason which there were survivors of the jakku attack. Simultaneously one of the only witnesses to the jakku attack and a potential jedi candidate. Also a potential problem if her first force use was something destructive like strangling a TIE Bomber pilot midflight and now she has an un-jedi desire to take revenge for the attack.

Poe Syndulla (yeah, this guy with a green wig and name change to avoid licensing fees from the old EU)
One of Luke's new jedi, sent to investigate the attack on jakku, thus providing an actual explanation for his extremely non-military hotheadedness and tendency to treat orders as more like suggestions, he's not actually part of the new republic military.

Finn
All of Finn's best scenes as a character were the ones playing up his woobie nature, general unwitting heroism and adorkable lack of otherwise-common knowledge caused by having been abducted as a child during a prior raid as an unwilling stormtrooper "recruit". Furthermore what he meant as a character, effectively humanizing the stormtroopers while simultaneously making them back into a credible threat to protagonists. Having him suddenly start cheering on takodana when Poe is shooting down TIEs was completely out of character and the supposed deleted scene from TLG where he tries to convince stormtroopers aboard the Supremacy to likewise defect before Phasma killed them should have happened. His knowledge of the imperial remnant makes him extremely important.

Kylo Ren
The concept of Kylo Ren was one of the few genuinely clever moments Disney's writing team had. They knew everyone would be constantly comparing their villain to Darth Vader so they made that his chief characterization from an in-universe perspective. He's not Darth Vader, he's a mashup of an imperial equivalent of Luke's experiences in ANH, Cosmo Lavish but with Lord Vader instead of Vetinari and a crazed Darth Vader fanboy. He's got a homemade lightsaber and cosplay outfit, he tries to act as Vader-ish as possible, etc. If SB/SV have holonet equivalents, he's probably an active poster.

Making him the child of Han and Leia was the mistake. His parents should have been new characters, low-level bureaucrats in the Imperial system. When the empire was defeated, they were either killed in retaliation for prior abuses of their power or simply as collateral damage in the general chaos inevitable whenever a government collapses. Possibly go with some of the unused concepts for Rebels that had a relationship between Captain Vult Skerris and Arihnda Pryce to flesh out the universe and justify Pryce’s seemingly unprofessional hatred of Hera. His childhood was full of propaganda about how good the empire was and his experiences of life under the empire vs post-empire life effectively confirmed them for him.

Then the self-appointed Supreme Leader of the imperial remnant found him and more specifically, found that he was force-sensitive and offered him the opportunity to become like the "heroes" in his propaganda-fueled fantasies. The Supreme Leader doesn't think of him as an actual, proper sith, just as a useful idiot aimed at the Supreme Leader's enemies by fake praise.

His character arch throughout the trilogy is casting aside this joke of a character premise, killing the Supreme Leader and ruling in his place as a proper sith lord.

The Supreme Leader
Not "Snoke". Sith No One Knew Existed jokes aside, it was a stupid name. Besides, he isn't a sith or any kind of force user. He's a former imperial navy captain turned pirate, unable to surrender to the new republic since he's committed enough war crimes already he'd inevitably be executed. His "empire" is literally just a single deteriorating star destroyer which he keeps supplied by pillaging sparsely-defended minor planets and shipping and this is going increasingly wrong for him as his antique equipment continues to wear out and Luke's new jedi order mops up enough of the galaxy's more major threats to start prioritizing hunting down people like him. His only hope of getting out of this situation is Kylo Ren who thinks he's actually qualified as a sith lord and a bunch of fragmentary documentation about sith including a holocron he can't actually activate on grounds of not being force sensitive with which to maintain this deception and try to train Kylo enough to make him useful, not enough that the Rule Of Two comes into play.

TR-8R
A stormtrooper in Finn's former squad a bit upset about the whole abandonment and betrayal thing. Restores the generic enemy minions to being genuine threats. Based off how powerful jedi were in the prequel trilogy and some of the worst EU novels, Obi-Wan shouldn't have needed to sneak around Mos Eisley and hire a pilot but could have simply singlehandedly killed every stormtrooper in the place and hijacked a star destroyer. Survives the movie, although he loses an arm in the process. Will be back in the next movie, even angrier and with a prosthetic incorporating his anti sonofabitch stick.

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Jakku shouldn't be yet another desert planet. The moon of a gas giant, the gravity of which leads to absolutely massive tides. The star destroyer shipwreck goes from entirely submerged to exposed on a sudden beach. Imagine it encrusted with barnacles.

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No more superweapons. Fire any directors who are incapable of writing a plot without needing to resort to them.

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Ditch the inferior R2D2 knockoff, or if the marketing team absolutely insists, he needs to be redesigned. Yes I know there was a physical prop, but BB8 looks like bad CGI. Which is actually kind of impressive, given that it's a physical prop, but still, not something I want in my movie.

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No redesigned imperial equipment. Most of it looked stupid and the imperial remnant should barely have the resources to keep what they've got functional, let alone build bigger versions.

Maybe that could be the Superweapon. Not a doomsday device that can destroy a planet from across the Galaxy but a mobile automated factory that sucks in raw materials and produces weapons and equipment? Self repair, self replicating. It leaves shattered planets in it's wake.

The empire can't control the damn thing but they sure do benefit from it. Thus why they have new gear. The damn thing was part of Operation Cinder.

Typhonis said:

Maybe that could be the Superweapon. Not a doomsday device that can destroy a planet from across the Galaxy but a mobile automated factory that sucks in raw materials and produces weapons and equipment? Self-repair, self-replicating. It leaves shattered planets in it's wake.

The empire can't control the damn thing but they sure do benefit from it. Thus why they have new gear. The damn thing was part of Operation Cinder.

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To be fair I think a new superweapon that isn't a clear knockoff of the death star would have been a far better idea than what we got in episode 7. It was just lazy to have death star 3.0 but it's made into a planet.

I'd make the Thrawn Trilogy

So I put a bit of thought into this.

For starters, I'm working for Disney and I need to stay in their good graces, this means family-friendly and woke. Getting the original actors in their original roles was a huge draw so I need that, but the old actors also can't overshadow the story and they made a lot of problems.

So the obvious solution is to get clever with the advertising. I'll state that the old actors are in the movie, and that the main characters will be Han, Luke, and Leia but not mention that the old actors aren't playing those characters. Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford will all play background stormtrooper cosplayers who get killed in the first scene which will suit Harrison Ford's demands. In-story, Han, Luke, and Leia all three became trans and got gender reassignment surgery in between trilogies so I can use new actors and nobody can complain that they look different. The surgeries also simply made them younger looking so the new actors playing the old characters can be younger, Daisy Ridley will simply be playing Luke Skywalker and be even more hypercompetent because she's now a Jedi Grandmaster with decades of experience. This will shut all the nerds up about power levels or being too perfect or such because she's Luke after becoming even better via Transition. Meanwhile Laura Dern will play Han Solo and and Leia will be played by Oscar Isaac.

This can naturally feed into the major plot of the movies, we don't need to rehash the sequels or prequels so we can make it a slice-of-life/politics drama. Kylo Ren is a disturbed youth who grapples with why his parents transitioned, and his transphobia leads him to the Dark Side and turns him evil like all transphobes. The First Order will wear distinctive red hats, chant slogans, misgender people, and cause riots with their racism and transphobic behavior while the heroes bravely show them a better way to live.

Finn is a foot soldier for the First Order who cosplays as a Stormtrooper wearing a red hat to show his true loyalties. However he's conflicted about how evil the world around him is, and when he sees a five-year-old drag queen crying because Kylo called her "him" Finn comes to realize how evil the organization he's in is. He ultimately realizes he himself is trans and at the conclusion of the movie, gets gender reassignment therapy and the actor is replaced by Viola Davis. Meanwhile, Kylo is increasingly marginalized, nobody listens to him or comes to the First Order speeches, they get no followers on the holonet, and ultimately they're forced to realize they're obsolete and their ideals will die with them, unmourned and nothing but a footnote in history.

Roll Credits

I actually agree with Val the Moofia Boss though for a different reason. I don't mind the idea of a story going, but as much as I hate to admit it, Star Wars fan's would never have been happy regardless of what was on the screen. Now, for a controversal take that is likely to get people to send Boba Fett after me...

....

Star Wars fans were not what kept Star Wars alive after Episode VI. Decentralized licensed merchandising was what kept it alive. You look at the late 80s and early 90s the amount of licensed Star Wars merch was insane, everyday toys comics books, paperbacks, video games all were coming out by the bucket loads and if you didn't like one particular product or story, here Take a look at these other half a billion products. We have something you'll like. The idea of a major coherent cannon really wasn't a thing till after the prequals when internet access became common place.

If Lucas handled Star Wars in the 90s the way Disney handles it now, where only a few major products are allowed to come out a year and they all must tightly fit into a canon with all roads leading to the prequals. then Star Wars would have been a dead product then just as it is now. (I don't think zoomers realize just how hated the prequals were.)

Frankly if I had to run Star Wars, I'd be bringing back the infinities line and embracing the multiverse in spades. Acknowledge that the movies have to be different from the books (as much due to practical reasons as anything. Even if you adapted a legend story, you'd have to change a lot to make it fit the big screen) but acknowledge that the legends do exist albeit in a different universe and let authors still make stories within that universe. Not only would that allow me to continue to make money off of licensing the expanded universe, but I can make even more license money by allowing people to create their own universe free from "canon" restraints (Disney is starting to do this now with Visions but it's about a half decade too late) Assigning a number to these different universes ala marvel comics and putting them into a easy to get archive would be no more difficult than trying to squeeze nearly every existing Star wars story into a coherent timeline which was exactly what Leland Chee's job was prior to the Disney buyout, and if some of these alternate universe characters and stories really took off, that means even more doors are open for some sweet sweet merchandizing.

Heck if you really want to bring in "brand synergy." Introduce some Marvel elements into some Star Wars stories like the skrulls or the kree. Heck have Luke or Ahsoka Tano discover an ancient force temple that is essentially a giant library of all of these different potential alternate realities and it's The Watcher (or at least the Watcher of that universe) that explains to them what the multiverse is. (I'm doing a premise on fanfiction that is doing just that.)

in the end, I'm happy as a company because I make oodles of money from merch and licensing, the fans are happy because they can essentially make money off of their fanfiction and fan art for the price of a cheap easy to obtain license and Star Wars doesn't end up as a dead brand.

Edit: Peeing off fans and getting political hasn't helped Star Wars. but what killed it was not feeding it and letting it starve to death. by the time they tried feeding it again (ala visions and the book of Boba Fett), it was already dead.

KilroywasNOTHere said:

I actually agree with Val the Moofia Boss though for a different reason. I don't mind the idea of a story going, but as much as I hate to admit it, Star Wars fans would never have been happy regardless of what was on the screen. Now, for a controversial take that is likely to get people to send Boba Fett after me...

....

Star Wars fans were not what kept Star Wars alive after Episode VI. Decentralized licensed merchandising was what kept it alive. You look at the late 80s and early 90s the amount of licensed Star Wars merch was insane toys, comics books, paperbacks, video games all were coming out by the bucket loads and if you didn't like one particular product or story, here take a look at these other half a billion products. We have something you'll like. The idea of a major coherent cannon really wasn't a thing till after the prequels when internet access became commonplace.

If Lucas handled Star Wars in the 90s the way Disney handles it now, where only a few major products were allowed to come out a year and they all must tightly fit into a canon with all roads leading to the prequels. then Star Wars would have been a dead product then just as it is now. (I don't think zoomers realize just how hated the prequels were.)

Frankly, if I had to run Star Wars, I'd be bringing back the infinities line and embracing the multiverse in spades. Acknowledge that the movies have to be different from the books (as much due to practical reasons as anything. Even if you adapted a legend story, you'd have to change a lot to make it fit the big screen) but acknowledge that the legends do exist albeit in a different universe and let authors still make stories within that universe. Not only would that allow me to continue to make money off of licensing the expanded universe, but I can make even more license money by allowing people to create their own universe free from "canon" restraints (Disney is starting to do this now with Visions but it's about a half-decade too late) Assigning a number to these different universes ala marvel comics and putting them into an easy to get archive would be no more difficult than trying to squeeze nearly every existing Star wars story into a coherent timeline which was exactly what Leland Chee's job was prior to the Disney buyout, and if some of these alternate universe characters and stories really took off, that means even more doors are open for some sweet sweet merchandizing.

Heck if you really want to bring in "brand synergy." Introduce some Marvel elements into some Star Wars stories like the skrulls or the kree. Heck have Luke or Ahsoka Tano discover an ancient force temple that is essentially a giant library of all of these different potential alternate realities and it's The Watcher (or at least the Watcher of that universe) that explains to them what the multiverse is. (I'm doing a premise on fanfiction that is doing just that.)

in the end, I'm happy as a company because I make oodles of money from merch and licensing, the fans are happy because they can essentially make money off of their fanfiction and fan art for the price of a cheap easy to obtain license and Star Wars doesn't end up as a dead brand.

Edit: Peeing off fans and getting political hasn't helped Star Wars. but what killed it was not feeding it and letting it starve to death. by the time they tried feeding it again (ala visions and the book of Boba Fett), it was already dead.

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I agree with you that a lot of what kept Star Wars alive was the copious amounts of merchandise. I grew up on Episodes 4-6 and watched the newer movies as they came out in the late 90s to the mid-2000s. I was never a hater of the movies though I never cared for Jar-Jar. He was always an oddity in the first episode and him being shown less as the newer movies came out was a welcomed sight. He was an idea that failed and I'm happy they picked up on that and fixed it.

But more to the point of this thread if I were asked to make a sequel trilogy I would set it maybe 300 years after the events of episode six. The Jedi Order is back but all the issues that plagued the order before have all been fixed and a new threat now threatens the galaxy. New worlds and races never before seen could be shown. You could drive more into the Sith seeing as the prequel movies focused primarily on the Jedi Order and the original trilogy focused primarily on the Galactic Civil War. The sequel Trilogy could focus primarily on the Sith not necessarily with the main star but as a backdrop. Hell maybe even have a Jedi turn Sith. If moving forward isn't your thing why not go back to the height of the Jedi Order. I'm sure many a story could be made in that era.

Thrawn Trilogy with some modifications.
Obvious we will need to gender-bend him so that a hot Asian woman with big boobas can play the role.
You know, to keep up with the times and get some PoCo points.

I've talked about my idea before, but here is it again:


My idea for rebuilding the sequel trilogy was primarily about making it all about the star forge.
Also Rey would be the last Red Sith, a Zuguruk to be exact. She doesn't know her race, but has such a talent for alchemy that they can use the basics of it without any training.

The super weapon in the first movie uses a combination of component of the star forge used to extract solar plasma and hyperspace gate to destroy planets in distance star systems. While obsolete and rare, hyperspace gates are still known about and used in a few rare places such as respulsorlift factories due to their ability to work inside of gravity wells that prevent hyperspace drives from functioning. The heroes race to find the controls to the hyperspace gate of the super-weapon, and then open the hyperspace gate to a waiting Republic fleet allowing it to come in under the planetary shields.

The second movies is instead a rescue run on a New Order Gulag. One of the prisoners is still loyal to the New Order and sabatagues the hyper drive. Rey is able to use the force the hyperdrive to work despite the sabotage, but it is draining and makes her more snappy and irritable as time goes on. Also the hyper-drive is still leaking fuel and leaving a trial that anyone with a military sensor could follow. At the finally of the movie, the mega star destroyer appears. Snoke confronts Rey, revealing that she is the last of the Sith species, he has sensed her use of alchemy -a power that draws from the dark side of the force- making it easier for his fleet to follow them, and beckons her to join him so that he can train her obvious talents in the dark side of the force. Meanwhile Finn comes up with a plan: although large and intimidating, the Mega star destroyer is actually a thin skinned logistics vessel, and if they ram it with all power being poured into the forward particle shields and inertial dampeners, they should be able to board it and steal one of the ships being worked on inside.

The third movie they discover that the New Order does not have full control of the star forge, they lack the master control key and are using slicer droids and retrofitted control rooms. Luke returns with some clues to the location of the master control key of the Star Forge, which takes the form of a ritual dagger. Luke wants them to use it to activate a self destruct sequence, but Rey has her own plans: she wants to steal it and use its cloning facilities to revive her species from extinction. Rey convinces high command that multiple search parties would be more effective than one, and flies off in search of the ancient artifact, racing against Luke and agents of the New Order.

Agent23 said:

Thrawn Trilogy with some modifications.
Obvious we will need to gender-bend him so that a hot Asian woman with big boobas can play the role.
You know, to keep up with the times and get some PoCo points.

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My mind ran with what you're saying.

Mon Calamari-with large chest.
Hutt-with large chest.
Rancor-with large chest!

Simonbob said:

My mind ran with what you're saying.

Mon Calamari-with large chest.
Hutt-with large chest.
Rancor-with large chest!

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Dunno, Thrawn would look nice gender-bent, and who doesn't like an exotic waifu you can talk to about military strategy and weapons?


Mon-cals would look really cute if done like this:
It is decided, all the aliens and monsters in my alternate Star Wars Epsiode 7 -9 are to be character developed by the people that did Monstergirl encyclopedia.

Because everything is better with anime waifus!

Finn would be an interesting character to examine. Strong, confident but...but he is a slave soldier to the First Order. Events have conspired to break the hypnotraining that ensured his loyalty. He helps Poe to escape so he can escape himself and find out who he really is. The first of a new breed of Jedi. Yes, he has a hard journey ahead of him but it can draw parallels to Luke's own journey of discovery.

It also allows us to see behind the mask. See the humans that make up the Stormtrooper corp.

Typhonis said:

Finn would be an interesting character to examine. Strong, confident but...but he is a slave soldier to the First Order. Events have conspired to break the hypnotraining that ensured his loyalty. He helps Poe to escape so he can escape himself and find out who he really is. The first of a new breed of Jedi. Yes, he has a hard journey ahead of him but it can draw parallels to Luke's own journey of discovery.

It also allows us to see behind the mask. See the humans that make up the Stormtrooper corp.

Click to expand...

IMHO it would have been a better idea to have Finn be slightly older and more jaded, and also make him hate the New Republic, at least initially.
maybe because of some second order consequences brought upon by the empire falling and anarchy reigning supreme across parts of the galaxy.
Or just have his parents be Empire loyalists that got killed by the Rebels when one of those many SDs blew up.
At first things go as planned, but then all the Sith start doing idiotic shit and he decides to switch sides because he doesn't like shooting civilians.

Agent23 said:

IMHO it would have been a better idea to have Finn be slightly older and more jaded, and also make him hate the New Republic, at least initially.
maybe because of some second order consequences brought upon by the empire falling and anarchy reigning supreme across parts of the galaxy.
Or just have his parents be Empire loyalists that got killed by the Rebels when one of those many SDs blew up.
At first things go as planned, but then all the Sith start doing idiotic shit and he decides to switch sides because he doesn't like shooting civilians.

Click to expand...

Thirty-year time separation between Endor and FA? He joined the First Order so that his remaining family would have a better future. Mother and Sister took by slavers working for a Hutt. Homeworld was in the grey area between Republic and Empire. Neither side had the resources to properly protect it so it was a target of opportunity.

Enlisted at a young age because the recruiter told him he could make a difference in the Galaxy. Empire managed to take Finn's homeworld and protect it. He has risen through the ranks to be a senior squad leader and is entrusted with people to lead. However he has seen, first hand, the excesses the Upper leadership has gotten up to and it sickens him. He joined up to help people. Not shoot some thief who was stealing food because the Governor was hoarding the supplies.

The last straw was being sent to bumfuck nowhere because someone reported a Resistance fighter landing on the planet. He saw the report....no visual confirmation, no back up data, it feels more like the Boss wants to annext the land the village is on than a proper Rebel hunt.