In a recent interview,  Joss Whedon made a statement about the upcoming ‘Star Wars’ trilogy and on how he would approach the project had he been given the job to direct. His view greatly disagrees with how JJ Abrams is doing things on a few key points.

While Whedon’s explanation shouldn’t be taken as controversial, it does bring up an interesting point of view that could be explored. So we’ll delve into that, but first here’s Whendon’s take on what he’d do:

You know, I wouldn’t go back, I’d go forward. I would want to create characters that would resonate the way that they did.

In Joss’s view, we would be having an entire new series set in the ‘Star Wars universe’ that didn’t have anything to do with the original cast or characters. I’m sure there would be references of some sort. Little winks to the audience of plants, character mentions or events that occurred but nothing of the actual original characters.

Whedon is probably my favorite science fiction writer and director at the moment. What he did with ‘Firefly‘ through ‘The Avengers‘ has me dying to see what he’s going to do next in the field, but for two very key reasons I’m going to disagree with his vision of ‘Star Wars’. While I can see Luke, Han and Leia not being the main characters, losing the chance to have them appear at all is wrong and here’s why.

The first reason… and I’m going to go in on the realist side… is that it all has to do with one thing: Money.

Disney just paid 4 billion dollars to own the ‘Star Wars’ franchise. Sure they get more of a return being able to have Lucasfilm at their disposal, and you can bet that they are going to recover that quite easily. However, until they recover the money spent to aquire the company, they are going to need to stack the deck to make sure that they do so as soon as possible. With that in mind, while they still have the actors who played those iconic characters alive, they need to use them and will if at all possible.

Even if they aren’t the main characters and are used to introduce other characters,  they are going to use them. Hell, even if it is just a cameo – they are going to use them! I don’t think for a moment that Lucasfilm’s new mouse eared owners wouldn’t insist that they at least put an attempt into it.

The second reason is from a fan point of view: I want to see the original characters back in the saddle.

Don’t get me wrong, I do want new adventures in ‘Star Wars’. I want new characters as well, so I won’t totally disagree with Whedon.

While there is a LOT of source material from the ‘Expanded Universe’ (the book series) that the filmmakers could tap in to, there is another route they can go – they can have them mentoring in the next order of main characters. I’m perfectly fine with either one of these happening.

It didn’t work in ‘Indiana Jones’ that well, but it COULD work here. Luke could run the Jedi Academy. Leia could be a Queen and part of the new Senate (or whatever they call it from this point on). It would be easy to see them as influential characters that weren’t the main cast.

I absolutely adore Whedon’s work. Everything he has put together so far for me has been gold, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m glad to see he’s busy with ‘The Avengers 2‘ (which I want to see) and not working on the next ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. Maybe they can have him work on the one after when we won’t need to see a return of the original cast.

 

Source: Digital Spy