5 Reasons We Should Be Worried About Star Wars Episode IX

Now Abrams is back in charge, but that initial roadmap is essentially useless. Does Abrams press forward with all of Johnson's changes, or will he attempt to "course-correct" and return the trilogy to his original vision? Abrams might create all sorts of terrible half-twists, like "Just kidding, Kylo was lying about Rey's parents, and actually Snoke embedded his soul in BB-8 so he's not really dead," or "Surprise, the Resistance fleet wasn't mostly destroyed. They actually had some spaceships hidden in Random Sand Planet #74, and they all work," or "Luke's force ghost can function just like a living body, so his death was really just a technicality!"

However, what kind of footage will this be? Are we talking about full scenes, with dialogue? This isn't like the Paul Walker situation -- he had at least shot some of the footage for Furious 7, and then crews just had to patch in the rest (which was still an astounding feat, by the way). We're talking about clips from the cutting room floor of a completely different movie with a completely different plot, somehow cobbled together to seamlessly create an epic, emotional sendoff for one of the most iconic characters in pop culture history.

I'll say this: If they pull it off, they deserve all of the awards. Not just the ones for movies. All of them.

I wouldn't be surprised if in their desperate attempt to reestablish Star Wars, Disney plays it safe by cranking out a solid, boring Return Of The Jedi soft remake. That's probably why they brought Abrams back in the first place -- he is nothing if not risk-averse. The Force Awakens and the Star Trek reboot were both basically rehashes of A New Hope, and both were incredibly successful. Let's see if the first trailers mention them building a new Starkiller Base.

Keep in mind, three out of the last four directors in this franchise have been booted partway through production. Disney (and Star Wars overlord Kathleen Kennedy) weren't exactly working with a broad margin of error before. There is a sprawling merchandising empire at stake, and a whole new theme park on the way. It's easy to imagine that the primary directive here will be "Don't screw this up."

The point here is that the direction of the franchise is still very, very wide open, which means the ending of Episode IX has to leave them with options. Can they wrap up this relatively aimless story in a way that feels conclusive but also leaves room for future films? Also, which characters can be killed if nobody's sure whether they'll be needed again? Hell, Felicity Jones' Jyn Erso was very clearly vaporized at the end of Rogue One, but Jones still has a contract option for a potential sequel, just in case. Imagine how complicated The Return Of The King would have been if while writing it, the rest of the Inklings pitched Tolkien dozens of ideas for origin stories, like how that Gothmog orc got his fucked-up melted head. The movie would need at least another 30 minutes of crying and waving goodbye.

So let's do what I do every day at 4 p.m. and think about The Dark Knight Rises for a minute. It too was tasked with concluding an epic trilogy while also hinting at potential future films. Batman retires, but Robin discovers the bat cave and ... four years later it's all gone and Ben Affleck's screaming about his mom. DC conveniently reboots their franchise whenever they want to ruin their legacy a little more, but Star Wars doesn't have that luxury. Whatever happens in a Star Wars movie becomes canon forever.

OK, so Chris Terrio's written some garbage films, but he also wrote Academy Award winner Argo. He's not just some terrible writer; if anything he simply tries way, way too hard. For example, he once claimed the notoriously stupid Justice League was "the most rigorous intellectual exercise I've had in my writing life." Dude, if coming up with a plot focused on people in ridiculous costumes punching parademons pushed your brain to the limit, concluding 42 years of Star Wars movies will probably give you an aneurysm.

But Terrio is nothing if not a serious man, and he found Batman v Superman to be quite "dramaturgically arduous." To whit:

"I began to think Batman and Superman occupy different parts of the mythic imagination. In superhero stories, Batman is Pluto, god of the underworld, and Superman is Apollo, god of the sky. That began to be really interesting to me -- that their conflict is not just due to manipulation, but their very existence. In the end, there's a common humanity which I think is discovered at a certain moment in the film."

Honestly, Terrio sounds like a script-writing robot that understands certain dramatic needs, but with no knowledge of how real humans operate. He's aware his story requires rapport between Batman and Superman, and he's heard that some humans love their mothers, so of course the sudden realization that both characters have a mom named Martha works as an emotional turning point. He plugged in all the numbers, and the math checks out!

He's also working under the understanding that no matter what creative choices he makes, half of the fans will hate it. The Last Jedi made that clear. So, uh, good luck with all that.

Jordan Breeding also writes for a whole mess of other people, the Twitter, and a weird amount of gas station bathrooms.

You could probably write a better Episode IX if you tried, so maybe grab a beginner's guide to Celtx and give it a shot.

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For more, check out 5 Reasons It's A Miracle That 'Star Wars' Got Made At All and 6 Ways The Star Wars Movies Were A Total Nightmare To Make.

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