Star Wars to Redefine Storytelling; Plus Are All The Rumors About Episode VII Bogus?

By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS)

Pretty big week for Star Wars news! First up is a story reporting that Disney and Lucasfilm have some major plans for the future of the Star Wars franchise.

An anonymous source at Lucasfilm allegedly told Badass Digest:

We're going to redefine longform storytelling.

The details of that redefinition is that the next trilogy of the Star Wars universe is going to be planned in detail, and will affect the stories told across all media that will be produced. Marvel Studios has already proved you can link all their franchises into one cohesive cinematic universe with their films and several television shows already on the air, or on the way.

Both the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies were never planned in detail. In an older version of Empire Strikes Back, for example, Darth Vader was not even Luke’s father — that came in a rewrite. This time out, the creative team knows the major beats of the story which means they can tie in elements of other media (such as games, television shows, comics and books) into the overall tapestry of the universe as it unfolds.

Do you need to read all the books and play all the games? Not really. But if you do, you’ll get a more complete experience out of watching the next trilogy. Now we know why Lucasfilm uncanonized the current Star Wars Expanded Universe, and hired a story group to oversee the new canonized stories (including movies, TV shows, and comics). It will be their job to align all of the media to remove as much inconsistencies from the franchise as possible. It’s like having a writers room for a television show writ large.

But what will Episode VII be about? Possible spoilers to follow!

Rumors, Rumors, Rumors

If you’ve been following the plot rumors they have gone something like this: A girl finds a lightsaber which sends her on an adventure and pits her against a dark Jedi with a cybernetic jaw. StarWars7News noticed some of the similarities between the rumored Episode VII plot and the plot for Star Wars Legacy: Volume 2 which they describe as the following:

Star Wars: Legacy is the story of what goes down in the Galaxy Far, Far Away over a century and three decades after the end of Return Of The Jedi. The Jedi Order formed, grew, and was scattered, the New Republic became the Galactic Alliance and decayed into the Fel Empire (a more benevolent version of the Imperial order that preceded it), and the Sith are back in substantially greater numbers. The Sith then take over the Fel Empire, leading to a civil war between the Sith Empire, the Galactic Alliance, Fel Loyalists, the Jedi, and several other parties. While Legacy, Volume 1 and Legacy -- War focus on the adventures of Luke's descendant, Cade Skywalker, Legacy, Volume 2 focuses on Han and Leia's descendant, Ania Solo.

There are a lot of similarities between the two stories which could mean one of three things.

1. The rumors are pretty broad that they look similar on the surface but are really very different in execution.
2. The story is at least partially based on Star Wars Legacy Vol. 2
3. The plot for Star Wars Legacy Vol. 2 is being leaked as the story for Episode VII either deliberately to throw off spoilers or it somehow got mixed up somewhere down the line.

I’ve always had my suspicion that the rumors surrounding the plot of Episode VII were false. There are things that just don’t seem to add up in my mind and I really hope to be completely surprised when I sit down in theaters to watch the next Star Wars film. It would be a nice change of pace to not know what’s going to happen in a movie before I watch it.

Star Wars: Episode VII will premiere December 18, 2015.

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