Star Wars sequel trilogy

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Star Wars sequel trilogy begins with a confession George Lucas made in 1976, before the first film had even opened. He told Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker, that he was planning three or four entire Star Wars trilogies. He even suggested Hamill might have a cameo in Episode IX, which he imagined filming by 2011. A Time magazine story in March 1978 went further, quoting Lucas as saying there would be ten Star Wars films after The Empire Strikes Back. Then, by 1981, Lucas canceled the whole plan. He said the story ended at six films. He said it again in 1997. He said it in 2008, on record, with finality. And yet, between December 2015 and December 2019, three more films arrived anyway. What happened in the years between that cancellation and those release dates is a story about ownership, creative control, and what it means to hand your life's work to someone else. The trilogy that resulted grossed over $4.4 billion worldwide, with each film breaking the $1 billion mark. It also sparked one of the most openly divided audience responses in modern cinema history. The questions worth asking are not just what these films are, but how they came to exist at all, what was lost in the making of them, and why the gap between ambition and outcome proved so hard to close.

• 2. Lucas's Original Vision

  ›

  In a late 1980 interview with Jim Steranko published in Prevue magazine, Lucas laid out the architecture of his larger plan. He described how an overlong screenplay had been divided into three stories, and how that split generated not just the original trilogy but two more that he intended to follow it. "I had three trilogies of nine films," he explained, "and then another couple of odd films. It's a nine-part saga that has a beginning, a middle and an end." By the time The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980, he had written story treatments for all nine episodes.

  Gary Kurtz, who produced the first two films, was already familiar with proposed story elements for Episodes VII through IX before 1980. In 1999, Kurtz revealed brief outlines of those treatments. Episode VII was to be the first part of a trilogy continuing Luke's story as a Jedi. Episode VIII would have featured a sister for Luke who was a distinct character from Leia. Episode IX was to introduce the Emperor and depict Luke's ultimate confrontation with him. In the version Lucas described, Luke and Leia were not related.

  Author Dale Pollock, who researched Lucas's biography in the early 1980s, was allowed to read the plot outlines of a twelve-film saga on the condition of signing a confidentiality agreement. Pollock said the sequel trilogy drafts would "involve Luke Skywalker in his 30s and 40s" and described them as "the three most exciting stories" with "propulsive action, really interesting new worlds, new characters."

  The stress of producing the first three films, combined with pressure from his wife Marcia to step back, changed the direction. By 1981, Lucas had decided to make only one Star Wars trilogy. Elements originally planned for the sequel trilogy were folded into Return of the Jedi instead, including Luke becoming a full Jedi knight, the introduction of the Emperor, and the revelation that Leia was Luke's sister.

• 3. The Long Cancellation

  ›

  From the early 1980s through 2011, Lucas gave a long series of contradictory statements about whether any more Star Wars films would be made. In 1992, he announced his intentions to produce a prequel trilogy, but when asked about the sequels, he repeatedly said no. At a press conference for the 1997 Special Edition release, he stated plainly: "I don't have scripts for the sequel trilogy. The only notion on that was, wouldn't it be fun to get all the actors to come back when they're 60 or 70 years old."

  Also in 1997, Lucas said the whole story "has six episodes" and that if he ever went beyond that it "would be something that was made up." In 2002, he described an offhand remark about a possible return as "a joke." By 2008, after all six prequel and original films were released, his position became categorical. "I've left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features," he told an interviewer. "There will definitely be no Episodes VII through IX. That's because there isn't any story. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader."

  Timothy Zahn, who had written the Legends non-canonical Thrawn trilogy of novels, was briefed years before the Disney sequel announcement on what Lucas had once planned. Zahn confirmed in 2012 that the sequels were never meant to adapt his Thrawn books. His understanding of Lucas's original concept was generational: the original trilogy, then the prequel trilogy going back to Luke's father, and then a third trilogy following Luke's children.

  Lucas in 2007 acknowledged that some of his earlier comments had been "off-the-cuff" remarks that were "misconstrued as absolute statements." The record is genuinely mixed. What is clear is that no active development was underway until a breakfast meeting in May 2011 changed everything.

• 4. The Disney Acquisition

  ›

  In May 2011, Lucas was in Orlando, Florida, for the opening of Star Tours at Walt Disney World. Disney CEO Bob Iger invited him to breakfast and asked whether Lucas would be willing to sell his company. Lucas had begun thinking about retirement but was not ready at that moment. Over the following months, he thought seriously about his options, at one point considering directing Episode VII for a May 2015 release before handing off the franchise. By January 2012, he announced he would step away from blockbuster filmmaking.

  Also in early 2012, disappointed by the performance of Red Tails, Lucas told The New York Times he planned to retire. While in New York, he asked Kathleen Kennedy to lunch and proposed that she become co-chair of Lucasfilm, with the intention of transferring full leadership to her within about a year. She began working for him on the 1st of June, 2012. Lucas then proposed they work together on the sequel trilogy, and brought in Michael Arndt to write a draft of Episode VII based on Lucas's synopsis. Lawrence Kasdan, a Star Wars screenwriting veteran, was hired to support Arndt.

  After appearing at Star Wars Celebration VI in late August, Lucas took Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to lunch and asked if they would reprise their roles. They agreed. Harrison Ford agreed after being promised that Han Solo would be given meaningful closure.

  By June 2012, Lucas had agreed to sell, provided Kennedy would replace him as Lucasfilm president. Iger accepted, while insisting Disney would have final say over future films. Lucas's final stipulations were that his story treatments would be used and that access to them would be limited. He gave Kennedy the final draft of his story treatments during the October 2012 sale. That same month, the acquisition and plans for the trilogy were announced publicly, along with a 2015 release date for the first new film.

• 5. What Lucas Planned

  ›

  At a story briefing held at Skywalker Ranch in January 2013, Lucas outlined the characters and plot of the as-yet untitled Episode VII. A fourteen-year-old female Jedi Padawan named Taryn would be the protagonist, though Lucas also considered the names Thea and Winkie. Another teenager named Skylar, who carries a blaster and befriends the protagonist, would ultimately become Finn. In at least one conception, Skylar was the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa who fell to the dark side, a plot development that was retained in altered form for Ben Solo/Kylo Ren.

  The main villains in Lucas's version were Darth Maul, who would return with robotic legs as established in The Clone Wars, and a female Sith apprentice named Darth Talon, drawn from the Star Wars: Legacy comic book series. Lucas described Talon as "the new Darth Vader" and said that "most of the action was with her." Maul would have become "the godfather of crime in the universe" as the Empire fell. Darth Vader's castle, which Lucas had been developing since the preproduction phase of The Empire Strikes Back, was also meant to be part of the story.

  Luke's role in Lucas's outline was to rebuild the Jedi Order from scratch, tracking down children aged two or three to train over the following decades. Leia's role was to rebuild the Republic, fighting off criminal enterprises left by the Empire's collapse. By the end of the trilogy, in Lucas's telling, Leia would become Supreme Chancellor and "the Chosen One." Lucas planned for Luke to die in Episode VIII, though Mark Hamill later said Lucas's original vision for Episode IX's ending had Luke die then instead, leaving Leia as a Jedi.

  The overarching philosophical concept Lucas most wanted to explore was what he called the "symbiotic relationships" among the Jedi, the Force, midi-chlorians, and the Whills, microscopic creatures he described as the actual source of the Force. Lucas explained in 2018 that his sequel trilogy would have ventured into "a microbiotic world" and that the Whills "are the ones who actually control the universe."

• 6. Discarded and Rebuilt

  ›

  In April 2014, Lucasfilm announced that Episodes VII through IX would not adapt the Expanded Universe's post-Return of the Jedi storylines, clearing the field for an entirely new narrative. The only existing material recognized as canon going forward would be Episodes I through VI, along with The Clone Wars film and series.

  In 2015, Lucas revealed that his story outlines had been discarded by the production in order to, as he put it, "make something for the fans." J. J. Abrams later confirmed that Disney had given him a mandate to discard Lucas's story and "start from scratch." Bob Iger's memoirs, published in 2019, recount that Lucas was upset after hearing the plot of The Force Awakens in meetings, specifically because elements he found derivative of the original 1977 film. Lucas felt betrayed by Iger and Abrams.

  The collaboration between Abrams and Rian Johnson, who directed The Last Jedi, produced both creative gains and unresolved tensions. Johnson's initial response to the Force Awakens script included suggestions that Abrams credited with improving the ending. Abrams had intended BB-8 to help Rey search for Luke; Johnson changed it to R2-D2 on the grounds that R2 was Luke's droid. Abrams had planned to show Rey finding Luke lifting rocks with the Force; Johnson changed that to fit his portrayal of Luke as someone who had severed his connection to the Force entirely.

  The Rise of Skywalker's path to completion was turbulent. Colin Trevorrow, originally announced as director in August 2015, stepped down in September 2017. Abrams returned to direct and co-wrote with Chris Terrio. Carrie Fisher, who died on the 27th of December, 2016, appeared in the final film through unreleased footage from The Force Awakens. Composer John Williams, who had scored the entire sequel trilogy, announced in February 2018 that Episode IX would be the last Star Wars film music he would compose.

• 7. Reception and Aftermath

  ›

  Critics and publications reviewing the trilogy together generally praised its emotional weight, lead performances, and visual effects, including its use of practical effects alongside digital work. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi both received positive reviews; The Rise of Skywalker drew mixed notices, with criticism focused on its perceived reversal of The Last Jedi's narrative and thematic choices. Retrospective assessments frequently described the audience response as divisive, with CNBC and Paste Magazine among those criticizing the decision not to use a single showrunner to oversee the trilogy's overall story.

  George Lucas, in an interview with Charlie Rose, compared selling Lucasfilm to a divorce and described his previous six films as his "children." He criticized The Force Awakens for having a "retro feel" and said he had "worked very hard" to make each trilogy "completely different, with different planets, with different spaceships." He later described The Last Jedi, in 2017, as "beautifully made." Marcia Lucas, who edited all three original films and won an Academy Award for her work on the first, criticized the Disney sequels for what she saw as a failure to understand the franchise, particularly the deaths of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.

  At the box office, the trilogy earned over $4.4 billion worldwide, with The Force Awakens alone grossing $248 million in its North American opening weekend, surpassing the previous record held by Jurassic World by $39 million, and becoming the first film to reach $1 billion in just twelve days. The Force Awakens ranks as the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time.

  At Star Wars Celebration Europe in 2023, a new film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was announced that will follow Rey as she attempts to rebuild the Jedi Order fifteen years after the events of The Rise of Skywalker, with Daisy Ridley set to reprise her role.