There was one last piece of advice I wanted to give Disney about their purchase of LucasFilm and Star Wars, which I didn’t really think about until after I had hit the “submit” button of the previous post on the subject. That piece of advice has to do with Episode VII, and it is simple:
Don’t make it about Luke, Leia, Han, Etc. At least, not directly.

For one thing, there’s the practical matter that the actors from the original trilogy are, well, old now. It’d be one thing if this was 20 years ago, or if this was a cartoon instead of live-action, but it’d probably be next to impossible to do any immediate follow-up to the original films. To actually recast the films would be to court disaster (although, then again, James Bond does it all the time). There have been countless video games, books, etc. that have been made that serve as de-facto sequels to the movies, so it’s not like there isn’t stuff out there already, I guess. And, finally, George Lucas has long said that, as soon as he started doing the prequels, that Star Wars was ultimately about Anakin Skywalker, his fall, and how his son went on to defeat and redeem him. Everything else was basically window dressing. So, basically, the story is done.

But what if the story became the story? Yes, the story of Anakin Skywalker and son may be done, but then again, things are never truly done. WWI and WWII have long been over, but the ramifications from them are still felt today. Great religious figures and philosophers may have been gone for centuries, but they remain important due to their teachings or deeds.

So, I think Disney should do this: it’s a “long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, but it’s not quite as long ago. Instead, it’s been centuries since Return of the Jedi. Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, Han Solo, R2-D2, etcetra have faded into myth and legend, the Force has been all but forgotten, and the galaxy is no longer ruled by an empire or republic, but instead split between a half-dozen nations (none of them particularly nice), nations which are caught in seemingly endless cycles of war over resources, trade routes or simple hatred. Our protagonist would live under the rule of a draconian space-country, an heir to the Empire of the original trilogy, with a dash of North Korea in for good measure. He (or she) would be a teenager who hoped to have a better life but who was drafted into the Empire’s military. Growing up, he and his friends turned to tales of “The Skywalkers” (a family of heroes and villains who ultimately brought on a new hope and unified the galaxy). However, there is no room in the empire for such stories of rebellion and freedom, and so everyone, even our hero, have it drilled into them that they are just that: silly stories, with no place in reality. But the hero, deep down, still believed in them, and as a child had even said to have seen the Skywalkers and their allies as “ghosts” in his dreams. That, however, was years ago…

But then, one day, after being forced to lead an attack on a innocent civilization, our hero comes across an interesting spoil of war: a small android with a faded white and blue paint-job. Thinking it would make a nice mechanic for his I-Wing fighter, he takes it. But then, as he fiddles with it, the ancient droid sends out holograms at him of grand battles in space, of princesses and smugglers and light-saber fights, and then, finally, the droid shows him a hologram of an aged Jedi Master who says: “My name is Luke Skywalker, and I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

The hero realizing that the tales are true, and that perhaps he can make a difference. He practically begs the droid to show him more, and show him how, even calling the droid “Threepio” (the legends of the Skywalkers had gotten a bit confused over the centuries). The droid, after correcting him by showing a hologram of the real C-3PO identifying him as R2-D2, then displays a map (presumably to some sort of location from the Skywalker legends) and dispenses a “gift” to the hero: a light-saber.

And so the adventure begins…
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I’d totally watch a movie like that.