Old Republic is a great game and offers a unique setting in that there are a literal ton of Sith running around. That's something none of the Rule of Two or post-Vader settings can offer.
The Last Jedi had a real chance to lead into a unique setting with no Jedi or Sith, but then they just kind of didn't. Reports that the next Rey movie would be about her running a Jedi academy left me really cold. It felt like just more of the same.
So yeah, ancient days where they're just establishing the rules of being a Jedi, Old Republic with literal armies of Jedi and Sith, or some future day with no Jedi or Sith. Something different from what we got in the Prequel and Orig Trig would hold my attention.
@fletch This was probably obvious to most, but I never fully put together what might have been their motivation/goal for the ST and for classifying the Expanded Universe as Legends. But thinking about it, based on what they are doing with Thrawn, with the concept of the canceled Rangers of the New Republic, even the clone Emperor from Dark Empire comics back in the day, and now Rey starting up the New Jedi Order - it isn't that they didn't want to do those stories, but they knew they couldn't with Luke, Leia, Han and to a lesser extent Lando, Wedge (Rogue Squadron) in the protagonist roles without recasting them. So instead, they created replacements.
So what they are trying to do is shift some of those old EU stories/characters to new time periods (post-ST instead of post-OT) or to new leads - Ahsoka et al vs Thrawn instead of Luke et al vs Thrawn; Rey taking over for Luke in heading up the New Jedi Order; they probably wanted Oscar Isaac to lead a Rogue Squadron-esque storyline post-ST, then pivoted to Cara Dune as post-OT, only for that to fall apart.
Anyway, I think a non-Jedi v Sith story in Star Wars is going to be like a Marvel or DC film without a superpowered bad guy and final fight. It might happen but is going to be rare and wonder what the reaction would be. It is possible that Skelton Crew will do that.
IMHO a Star War series without Jedi or Sith(or force users) isn't worth watching or playing.
People expect those when you mention "Star Wars"
Kids love lightsabers! Jedi are the equivalent of space ninjas. Guess what? Kids still love ninjas.
Expecting Disney to not include a core component in their media would be like them shooting themselves in the foot.
See what happened to Star Wars Outlaws.
@goldbug I would say that, but it's hard to when something like Andor exists, without a single Jedi or Sith present. And most of Rogue One is sans either too (and wasn't the hallway scene with Vader a late addition anyway?) I know it's quite divisive, but I loved Solo as well, which is basically free of either (a quick Maul holo-cameo not withstanding) There certainly can be stories without them (and I'd argue should be), it's just a matter of them being done by someone who knows what they're doing. I haven't made it through the entirety of Outlaws yet, but story aside, there were certainly people who doomed it to a cruel fate long before it ever came out.
You definitely don't need force users to be a Star Wars movie. Rogue One and Solo were great (and people keep saying they enjoyed Andor, so I'll count it). I was 100% on board with Jenkins' X-Wing show before it got cancelled and I loved the Ewok Adventure movies when I was a kid.
However, force users are distinctively Star Wars. I can understand the perceived need to at least include lip service to it. Mandalorian, fer instance, picked a really fun "what's a Jedi" stance (at least for a bit.)
Me personally, I'm really bored of Jedi. Acolyte was a little better than expected, but that's only because I'd never seen anybody headbutt a lightsaber before. Other than that, I'm not eager for any more Jedi Order vs Rule of Two Sith characterizations or conflicts.
I think the farther away in time (storywise) you get from the OT and PT, the more the touchstone of some Jedi/Sith stuff might help ground it as Star Wars.
Andor, Solo, Rogue One work without Jedi because of touchstones to the main story in other ways in terms of the Empire, or OT and PT characters, etc.
I wonder if Star Wars not linked to the OT and PT by time frame, characters, lineage or Jedi/Sith would feel like Star Wars.
@fac All we might have at that point are ships (since the Old Republic ships kinda fit in with every other era), or locations.
Finally! Tatooine: A Star Wars Story.
But I firmly agree about Jedi and Sith being a solid touchstone when you're thousands of years away from Luke.
IMHO a Star War series without Jedi or Sith(or force users) isn't worth watching or playing.
Andor is literally the best piece of Star Wars content produced since Empire and there isn't a single Jedi or Sith anywhere near any of it. So my opinion is wildly divergent from yours.
In fact my favorite Disney era Star Wars content is Andor, Rogue One and Solo - which together feature less than a minute of combined Jedi/Sith appearances.
And frankly, Mandalorian season one was pretty damn awesome and while the foundling is clearly jedi-related, the jedi factored into that story minimally as well.
All of that said, I really like the idea of Dawn of the Republic era story where the galaxy hasn't coalesced into a unifying coalition of governance and the Jedi are sort of a self appointed sect of peace keepers that roam the spaceways trying to keep conflicts from getting out of hand and trying to make sure inter-planetary conflicts don't mushroom into system spanning wars.
There is SO much room to work. They could go full Game of Thrones style conflict stories (obviously without the hard R rated stuff). Jumped up warlords aspiring to build empires; idealistic leaders hoping to build a utopian coalition of planetary agreement; grifters and criminals grabbing what they can in the margins; multiple factions/religions accessing The Force with the Jedi growing as the most influential of those. So many directions for good stories - so many threads to pull.
@panthercult I like Andor, Rogue One, and Solo a lot too, but as was stated before, the further away you get from that period without force people, the less it may feel like star wars. Because those movies/shows, as well as the first season of Mandalorian, still have Stormtroopers, Tie Fighters, star destroyers, the Falcon etc. you still get a very star warsy baseline. So doing something thousands of years before without force people may end up being so different as to not feel at all star warsish
So doing something thousands of years before without force people may end up being so different as to not feel at all star warsish
I get what you are saying, but it doesn't have to be THE central focus, either. Like I said in the second half of my post - if we were to delve into a sort of "Game of Thrones" style story telling of the early days of trying to build "The (Old) Republic" the Jedi could be a part of that story without having to be the entire focus of that story.
There are things we could learn about the early civilization on Mandalor, the development of politics on Coruscant, the first interactions between off-worlders and Wookies... All of that stuff is quintessentially Star Wars and easily recognizable to Star Wars fans without actually needing Jedi.
Again, I'm not saying the Jedi should be ignored or written out. But they don't have to the be sole focus of Star Wars narrative, even if they were at the center of the Universe when Lucas created it. That's all I'm trying to say.
There are things we could learn about the early civilization on Mandalore, the development of politics on Coruscant, the first interactions between off-worlders and Wookies... All of that stuff is quintessentially Star Wars and easily recognizable to Star Wars fans without actually needing Jedi.
That's fair, stuff doesn't need to be centered on the Jedi, but any Star Wars I do think will need some connections to the "current era" - all of those might work for that reason as there is enough of a touchstone. But they also would work well with Jedi on the edges.
I think going into the past is more fertile ground, because a story can connect and inform with what we know just enough to be of interest. I feel like going too far into the future starts to lose its grip and could become generic sci-fi/sci-fantasy.
(I came up with the absolute worst Star Wars idea ever by the way - one of the clones of Palpy, in hibernation on some small ship, gets shot out into space and lands on modern Earth! He of course takes over the planet - until the Force Ghosts like Anakin, Ahsoka and Rey train some humans to become real Jedi to take him down!)
I think the farther away in time (storywise) you get from the OT and PT, the more the touchstone of some Jedi/Sith stuff might help ground it as Star Wars.
This is a smart observation and you're probably right. There are a lot of uniquely Star Wars elements that would anchor a time period, like a Mandalorian or a Wookiee, but force users is probably the most iconic.
Still, that doesn't call specifically for a lightsaber-wielding Jedi. I can imagine a story set in "a more civilized time" when everybody used lightsabers, fer instance. Or a story where Mak'bef gets a prophecy from a Dathomir witch. I personally think Mandalorian was at its best when it was all "what's a Jedi?" My only point is that I'm not against more movies about Jedi, I'm just lest interested in stories about Jedi that are the same as the Jedi we've already seen.
I have long, long wanted something Star Wars associated that is practically dripping with lightsabers and lightsaber fighting with both Jedi and Sith at the absolute peak of their powers. When the prequels came along and introduced the rule of two, that seemed to have neutered what I really want to see, outside of that one scene in that video game.
The problem with that is the amount of fight choreography that would go into it, and nowadays that can veer wildly in two directions. The Sequel fighting was terrible, the Acolyte's was good, Ahsoka's was pretty bad. I'd rather watch something animated that went completely balls to the wall--like Palpatine Vs. Savage and Maul in Clone Wars--than something so obvious count by numbers "swing and clang and swipe and splat" like some of the modern fights.
But on the other side I do agree that Jedi/Sith/Force don't necessarily have to be a part of Star Wars for it to be Star Wars. It just takes a bit of work to keep those elements out and still feel like Star Wars. Mandalorian did that well. Andor--which has been described as "Star Wars for adults" which makes my eyebrow twitch--might have veered too far in the opposite direction, because even though it was well done, there was a certain...almost generic quality to the story. That's kind of why I stopped trying to read "expanded universe" Star Wars novels a long time ago, because the few I read felt a little like generic Space Opera stories with Star Wars references laminated onto them. Like when Zach Snyder made his one viewing of David Lynch's Dune impregnate his aborted Star Wars screenplay and pooped out Rebel Buttcheeks and Rebel Buttcheeks part 2: the Clenching.
The upcoming Skeleton Crew almost looks like it could be a Star trek project as easily as it could be a Star Wars project, but that's entirely based on trailers, so judgment withheld until watching. But "feel" is very important and Star Wars has to have that feel, Cult Raveswords or not.
The Sequel fighting was terrible, the Acolyte's was good, Ahsoka's was pretty bad. I'd rather watch something animated
Just between us, I think lightsaber duels peaked with Ryan vs. Dorkman.
Jedi have become so superhuman over the years that no group of ordinary people can stand against them, which I think is a loss to the franchise. Anybody remember how we lossed our minds when Luke deflected blaster bolts? And now we have Vader just pulling space ships out of the sky.
These days I'm actually way more interested in mixed fights like between Jango and Obi-Wan or what I'd thought was going to be an awesome fight between Din Djarin and Ahsoka.
Latest Post: GI Joe Classified Series Our newest member: aajs Recent Posts Unread Posts
