Update: Bad Robot JUST ANNOUNCED TODAY that Michael Arndt was out and JJ and Lawrence Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back) were taking over writing duties. I think someone likes my little Star Wars 7 treatment. :)
A month ago I proposed the idea that it’s impossible to write a Batman vs. Superman movie. It’s too hard to mix the tones of the characters. Any attempts to have them working together or fighting each other would feel forced. It’s simply not the kind of setup that’s easy to turn into a movie.
But the difficulty of writing that film pales in comparison to the pressure of writing a new Star Wars film. I mean come on. That’s gotta be the tallest screenwriting order in Hollywood, maybe, EVER – right? Imagine sitting down and fading in on “A long time ago in a glaxy far far away…” It’s sort of like being asked to write a new Bible.
But since it’s happening, the folks at Bad Robot may want to keep a few things in mind, starting with something every Star Wars lover seems to have forgotten (even George Lucas!): The two most popular films in the series were steeped in urgency. In Star Wars, the Empire was chasing after our characters the whole movie. And in Empire Strikes Back, the Empire was chasing after our characters for the majority of the movie. “Slow-build” was a term nobody used back then. It was always go go go. Return of the Jedi at least tried to do this. The prequels, however, dismissed the approach entirely, attempting to go the “epic” route instead.
And there is our first lesson when writing sci-fi movies: sci-fi movies cannot be epic.
WHAT! Blasphemy, you say. Of course sci-fi movies can be epic! Well, think about it for a second. How many of your favorite sci-fi movies are “epic,” or even complex? Star Wars – it’s a heart-pounding chase movie. Empire – another chase movie. The Road Warrior – one man helps good guys beat bad guys. Aliens – contained horror. The Matrix – Guy finds out he’s living in a fake world and fights bad guys. The Terminator – A chase movie. Terminator 2 – A chase movie.
Now look at some attempts to be epic sci-fi. Star Wars Episode 1 – A wandering never-ending story about a Trade Embargo. Star Wars Episode 2 – A half-mystery half-planet-jumping fiasco where there was no time limit for anything. Star Wars Episode 3 – A long slow journey about Darth Vader’s rise. Matrix 2 – This was so confusing, I have no idea what it was about. Matrix 3 – Um, Neo turns into Jesus? Dune – I’ve seen this movie three times and I lose track of what’s happening by the 15 minute mark every time.
There are always going to be exceptions (you can make the argument that Avatar was epic) but the truth of the matter is, sci-fi works best when there’s some kind of immediacy and simplicity to the storyline. When the goal is big and clear and the timeline is contained, it’s much easier for the audience to enjoy the story. Once you start stretching your sci-fi timeline out over months (or, god-forbid, years), chances are you’re going to bore us to death.
So the trick is to do what movies like Star Wars did. You look for ways to MASQUERADE as an epic, even though your narrative engine is simple. Star Wars is jumping from ships to planets to space stations, making it SEEM epic. But all that’s driving the story is a chase. The whole thing takes place over a few days. The Matrix seems kind of complex, but that comes from the dual-world switching – the grimy underworld versus the Matrix world. But the story itself is about Neo learning he’s special and using his powers to fight the bad guys. Simple and easy. It also takes place within a few days.
So bringing this back to Star Wars 7, that’s the first thing we should hope they got right. And you’d think they would. Screenwriter Michael Arndt (our Ep 7 scribe) knows about contained timeframes, having written Little Miss Sunshine (a race to get to a beauty pageant) and Toy Story 3 (a race to save our main character’s friends before his owner leaves for college). He’s a guy who knows how to keep a narrative hurrying along.
However, even if they do get that right, they’ll run into another issue: You can’t just remake Star Wars. You can’t just put a young clueless hero on an abandoned planet. You can’t just build a new rising Empire. You can’t have our hero discover they have the force and were meant for bigger things, then pull them into the war, where they take on a new Dark Villain.
We’ve already done that. And no. Switching Luke Skywalker’s character to a girl (hinted at with the Star Wars 7 casting sheet) doesn’t change this. You have to do something new (For the record, I think the clever Abrams placed the female character on the top of that call sheet specifically to mislead the media about the plot).
So if you can’t redo Star Wars and you’re steering clear of the “epic” trap George fell into with the prequels, what story do you tell? My gut tells me that it’ll be something like this: A new type of evil is spreading throughout the galaxy. It is happening unexpectedly and quickly. Han and Leia have been living peacefully on a faraway planet with their son (now a young adult).
With fear gripping the galaxy, the aristocracy asks of Han and Leia what they’ve been fearing ever since their son was born. He is one of the last Jedi. And they need him to fight. The son is brought into this war, likely to try and stop some immediate threat, such as the takeover of a key strategic planet (think the fights over key Japanese islands in WWII – George loves WWII) that will allow the baddies to set up a launching point to take over the entire galaxy (which will happen in successive movies). Luke will likely be brought in to train him for the job, and possibly even join him as his master.
The “strategic planet” thing is a vague guess, as they need SOME big goal for the characters to go after. The problem with creating a script goal here is, Star Wars wrote itself into a corner when they used “destroying the Death Star” as a goal in the original film. There has never been a force more devastating than that. Which made the stakes higher for Star Wars than any of its sequels or prequels by far. They lucked out in Empire and Jedi as they’d created such strong characters with such big unresolved issues (Luke and his father) that those substituted for the lack of a giant universe-threatening weapon (even though they tried to re-do the Death Star in a smaller capacity in Jedi). But since our current film knows it can’t replicate the Death Star with anything (How do you get bigger than a weapon that can destroy a planet??) they’ll probably go with something simpler, like taking control of a key planet.
What do I think of this storyline? It could be okay, I guess. There are ways you can play with it. For example, you can have this new evil force’s army come in and slaughter Leia and Han, forcing their son into the war, which would feel different from Star Wars in that Leia is royalty. She’ll be living large. So the slaughter would likely be on a much grander scale with further-reaching implications. That, however, brings up another problem. The favored Jedi son of a celebrated war hero and queen isn’t exactly an underdog. And that’s what made us love and root for Luke Skywalker so much. He was the biggest underdog of all (Scriptshadow Master Tip: Underdogs are the most likable heroes you can create!). So should they really base the movie around Han and Leia’s son? The Star Wars equivalent of an entitled Trust Fund baby? I don’t know. Something feels wrong about it.
I’m also curious how Luke is going to factor into all this. Does he have a son as well? Or maybe a daughter? Do his daughter and Han and Leia’s son hang out? Do they like each other? Or maybe they both have sons and they dislike each other. Maybe they’re on completely different planets and have never met, leaving one offspring to head to the dark side while the other takes the light path. The trilogy would follow their ascension up the ranks of the good guys and bad guys, with a final showdown in the third film. That might be cool.
But what about if I were writing Star Wars 7? What would I do? I can tell you (and Disney and Bad Robot) are just dying to know. So here goes… Personally, I think it’s all about the main character, and I’d want to play around with mine. My hero wouldn’t be related to anyone from the past (I’m on Team No Old Trilogy Characters). I’d make him troubled, a kid growing up in the slums (imagine the streets of Bombay). He’s a young criminal of sorts, a kid who took the wrong path and hangs out with the wrong crowd because that’s all that was available to him (think any young kid growing up in South Central). This is a guy who all he cares about is his next score, about making it through the day. And then as this new evil force starts spreading throughout the galaxy and someone finds out he’s a Jedi, he’s called upon to either help or lead the fight against them. The most unlikely hero is asked to be just that, the hero.
See, to me, the problem writers make when they think about sci-fi, is they think about the plot or the worlds or the gadgets or all these things that are ultimately window dressing. You have to come up with interesting characters first and Star Wars has always been about this common theme of fighting that war within yourself – choosing good or bad. If there’s one flaw in the Luke Skywalker character, it’s that I never really believed he was going to turn bad. So despite that battle going on inside of him, we always knew he was going to choose the right path.
Then with Anakin in the prequels, we knew he would choose the wrong path because we saw the original trilogy and knew he’d become Darth Vader! So in both cases, picking good or evil was never in doubt. With a new character like this, someone who came from a bad place and tough circumstances, we’d truly wonder, during the 7, 8, and 9 trilogy, which path he was going to choose. This is a character we’ve never seen before in Star Wars. He’d have that original underdog quality Luke had. Plus he’d have a little bit of rebellious Han in him. He wouldn’t be whiny like Anakin. He’d be tough. He’d basically be the best of all worlds!
So once I had that character, I could build the plot around him, and it probably wouldn’t be too far off what I’m assuming they’re going to do now. If they had to bring in old characters, Luke could be called in to train this guy, who doesn’t listen to anything he says. And our new hero is thrust into a key first film battle that our good guys must win in order to stave off the bad guys strategic play for the entire galaxy.
But alas, I am not writing Episode 7. Like many fans, I will be waiting on the sidelines to see what they come up with. Which leads me to my next question – What would Star Wars look like in your hands? What would your plot be for the next film in the favored franchise?
