New Star Wars Trilogy Should Be Knights of the Old Republic

billions of people have grown up with star wars in their lives. this decade, we were reintroduced to that world with star wars: the force awakens (directed by j.j abrams), the beginning of a new trilogy, building a new history after disney basically threw out decades of growth seen in numerous novels, comic books and video games. the current star wars canon essentially just has stories concerning the republic or rebellion fighting the empire. that's fine, but it's also very limiting and not as exciting as some of the stories that have now become a part of star wars legends, the official name for everything that was retconned after disney bought the property.

that's why the recent news that rian johnson is set to direct a whole new trilogy is so exciting. it will feature a new story, with new characters and new places, which means that there's a lot of potential. kathleen kennedy, president of lucasfilm, said, "rian will do amazing things with the blank canvas of this new trilogy," and we're compelled to agree. however, we also think that this completely new story should take place in a time many fans are already familiar with: the old republic era.

for those who are really more fans of the films than the world outside of them, the old republic is an era set rougly 4000 years before the events of the current film saga, in a time when the galaxy was ruled by, a the name would suggest, a republic. this era had been vaguely touched upon in several comic books and novels until it became a popular setting after the video game, star wars: knights of the old republic (often shortened to kotor), developed by bioware.

the game, which was released in 2003, introduced several new planets such as the manaan the ocean planet, the ancient lehon and taris, which is pretty much a the poor man's coruscant in more ways than one. it also created grand histories for places that had only been mentioned in the films, such as dantooine, which was first mentioned in star wars: a new hope as a planet that had formerly been used as a rebel base. star wars: kotor showed us that dantooine once had a history as a jedi enclave which protected the settlers of the planet.

dantooine is still in the official star wars canon. it was the setting for multiple episodes in star wars: clone wars as well as star wars: rebels, the latter of which featured yet another planet, malachor, a planet first introduced in star wars: knights of the old republic ii, developed by obsidian. the video game introduced the planet as a world once dominated by the sith and dark jedi, and the canonical animated series seemed to stay faithful to that history, evidenced by its mentioning in the star wars: rebels episode "missing in action" (written by brent friedman).

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the old republic era also introduced a variety of events that helped shape the star wars universe. there were the mandalorian wars, the great sith war and the jedi civil war, all of which helped to define the relationship between different races as well as the relationship between the jedi and the rest of the galaxy, something we don't often see in the films or series.

as you can clearly see, there are plenty of elements from the old republic which have already appeared in the new canon in one way or another, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for rian johnson's new star wars trilogy to utilize some of those elements and expand them once again, maybe even reintroduce some of the characters and stories that had already won fans over years ago, such as darth traya, a shadowy, complex sith lord from the video game, star wars: knights of the old republic ii with a background and a character that is arguably far more captivating than the film saga's villains, such as darth sidious or darth vader.

the old republic era is full of characters such as her, with an abundance of depth and complexity ripe for adaptation to film. the reason that era is so full of them is that it focuses more on conflicts between the jedi and the sith, which really hasn't been explored all that much in the films. not outside of the skywalker family, anyway. both of those factions were quite powerful during the old republic era and there's a lot of potential there for epic lightsaber battles, complex relationships, profound character development...pretty much everything that made the old republic such a long lasting fan favorite. there was even an effort by fans to petition the lucasfilm and the walt disney company to create an old republic netflix series.

while that effort may have failed, it's still worth hoping that rian johnson will introduce the old republic in his new trilogy. we know that the story will be separate from the skywalker family and the characters and places that we've seen in the films thus far. what that means is that there's a good chance it'll cover the history of the jedi and the sith, the origin of the conflict, perhaps even the fall of the old galactic republic.

you might wonder why that's even necessary, but if you take a look at the film saga, you'll notice that they really only revolve around two things: the skywalker family and the death stars. we're tired of that. we love them, but it's high time we look at something else in these films. star wars: the force awakens was a great addition to the story, but it was still pushing it with starkiller base. even if it did have an admittedly awesome name, it was still just a third death star. it's also become quite tiresome seeing small variations on the same kind of technology, soldier and characters. a shift to the more ancient eras of the star wars universe would allow for a change in aesthetic without veering too much from the general atmosphere of the world we've come to know.

using an established era as a basis is also useful because there are always high expectations when it comes to star wars films and in recent years, the pressure has become evident. changes to scripts, last minute reshoots, delays and other issues have shown us that these films are certainly no small thing. no one wants a repeat of the prequel trilogy. if rian johnson were to build from loose adaptations of legends events and characters, fans would be more open to changes and far more forgiving of mistakes than say they would be of mistakes made to characters such as han solo or boba fett. the reason being, many of fan favorite old republic characters came from the video games, which were role-playing games and allowed player choices to affect the development of these characters.

aside from the announcement that rian johnson will direct a new star wars trilogy, we don't know much else. there is no real indication as to its setting, there are no casting confirmations or rumors and we don't even have some kind of a release date. of course, we can pretty safely assume that it'll be a long way away since the current trilogy will only end with star wars ix, set for release in 2019, though kathleen kennedy has said that they are planning star wars films for the next ten years.