Mashable has landed some interesting quotes from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, who doesn’t reveal too much about his brand new Star Wars trilogy. Johnson goes on to dismantle the idea his movies will be influenced by existing franchise stories from the expanded universe, mainly, The Old Republic video games. Something I think we all assumed as the video games might be great fan-service but they were ever intended to be made into live-action films.
“Oh, they love Knights of the Old Republic.”
“I played that game when it first came out and it was like, god, I loved it. Yeah, that’s a fantastic game. And I understand it, the instinct to automatically go to something that you know and love, that you’ve already seen.”
“To me,” he says, “what’s really fun is the notion of what new stuff are we gonna see, what new stories can we tell?”
“For me,” he says, “the possibility in a new story told over three movies, go anywhere, do anything, sky’s the limit, in Star Wars? That’s so exciting.”
“I’m in the very, very beginning phases of trying to think about it so I don’t know yet,” he says. “I’m still figuring out what it’s gonna be.”
However, Mashable takes a mile with only an inch of info presented by Rian, who obviously isn’t ready to start confirming what this new trilogy is actually about. Their own speculation seems to be that this somehow confirms that Johnson has zero plans to tackle the Old Republic. To me, it sounds like he deflected the question entirely by stating his trilogy won’t be incorporating existing material from the video games (along with novels and comics), seemingly answering another question that wasn’t asked.
He doesn’t come out and say this won’t be set in the Old Republic, that seems to be Mashable’s own spin on the quotes.
Well, if you really listen to what he exactly says here. Rian brings up the video games which have their own established stories and characters from certain eras within the Old Republic. I don’t think anyone actually believes Lucasfilm will ever adopt the video games for live-action features.
Again, if Johnson wanted to explore his original version of the Old Republic it would be a blank canvas and could create something fresh (including new mythology). This era has never been covered in the films and like we said earlier these Old Republic games and comics are from the Expanded Universe taking place outside of canon. I think from the point-of-view of the casual Star Wars fan they would assume the Old Republic is directly tied to video games, not really the case, as the era itself is what fans are actually asking to see here not a literal adaption of dumb video games and the era has been kicking around for decades unused.
Then again, I’m all for something even more original but to declare that Rian has closed the door on The Old Republic completely is a bit disingenuous.
SOURCE: MASHABLE