Lucasfilm's Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, this gave a glimpse of the Jedi Order at its height - and it has gone on to sow the seeds for their downfall.
Star Wars has always been something of a transmedia franchise - the first official tie-in novel, Alan Dean Foster's The Acolyte. The range has been a phenomenal success, with the flagship books becoming New York Times bestsellers.
Claudia Gray's latest novel, Fallen Star, launches the next phase of the initiative. It's an emotional rollercoaster of a story, taking full advantage of readers' increasing familiarity with the era; though some of its major twists have been well-telegraphed through promotional images (and are even featured on a variant slipcase for the book), the events still pack a considerable emotional punch. The success of this story-telling, while enjoyable in its own right, also serves to highlight many of the mistakes made by the cinematic Star Wards sequel trilogy. Not only did the films overly rely on fan service, but, ultimately, they failed to bring anything new and original to the saga. Here's how Star Wars: The High Republic shows what the sequels were really missing.
Star Wars: The High Republic Is An Original Vision Of The Force
Star Wars: The High Republic may be set 200 years before Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, but there's something remarkably fresh and original about it. In part that's because of the creative team's view of the Force; they've recognized that each Jedi has a different relationship with the Force, perceiving it differently. To quote Charles Soule's Light of the Jedi:
"What [Avar Kriss] heard as a song, Elzar Mann saw as a deep, endless, storm-tossed sea. The Wookiee Burryaga was a single leaf on a gigantic tree with deep-dug roots and sky-high limbs. Douglas Sunvale saw the Force as a huge, interlocked set of gears, made of an endless variety of materials from crystal to bone. Bell Zettifar danced with fire. Loden Greatstorm danced with the wind... All of the Jedi were the Force, and the Force was all of them."
This isn't just a simple matter of aesthetics, though; the different perception of the Force allows each Jedi to interact with the Force in different ways. Avar Kriss, for example, is able to sense the "songs" of other Force-s and harmonize it, in what the old Expanded Universe called a Jedi Meld; the harmony means the Jedi can use their power in concert, achieving great feats that would be beyond an individual Jedi. All this means the books and comics exploring different Jedi all feel like essential reading. By contrast, the sequel trilogy ultimately failed to provide much, if any, new information about the nature of the Force.
Star Wars: The High Republic's Stakes Are Tremendously High
In theory, the story of Star Wars: The High Republic should be predictable. After all, the Sith are in hiding, the light side is dominant, and the Republic will stand for another two centuries. But, for all that's the case, the stakes feel higher than ever - simply because the writers are taking advantage of readers' foreknowledge of the Republic's fate. Fallen Star centers upon the destruction of Starlight Beacon, the Jedi outpost on the Outer Rim; while it feels rather early to destroy such a great piece of the High Republic's status quo, in truth it's something readers were always expecting, simply because Starlight Beacon isn't there in the prequel era. But Claudia Gray cleverly uses the inevitability of the station's destruction to build tension over the course of the story; she makes sure readers are invested in the individual Jedi, so with every page that's turned they are wondering who will live and who will die. The fall of Starlight Beacon may be predictable, but fundamentally it matters on the most personal level. Conversely, the repeated narrative arcs and characters that define the sequels feel even more shallow by comparison.
Meanwhile, Star Wars: The High Republic's diverse view of the Force has opened up an opportunity to tell different tales - with the Jedi confronting threats that force them to redefine themselves in the Force. The Drengir seemed to be the greatest threat of the High Republic Era, carnivorous plant creatures born of the dark side and ancient allies of the Sith; now they've been replaced by mysterious Force predators, as yet unexplained, that seem to consume midi-chlorians and can strip Jedi of the Force. The philosophical questions that come with the Drengir and these new monsters, initially called Levelers in Cavan Scott's The Rising Storm, have shaken the Jedi to the core.
Star Wars: The High Republic Reveals The Flaws Of The Sequel Trilogy
The sad truth is that Star Wars: The High Republic confirms the flaws of the sequel trilogy. When Lucasfilm launched the sequels, they deliberately attempted to play the nostalgia card by doing a rinse-and-repeat of the original trilogy. Kylo Ren stood in for Darth Vader, Return of the Jedi.
The approach with the Jedi and the Force is particularly illuminating. Star Wars: The High Republic has stressed the individuality of a Jedi's relationship with the Force, and in doing so it's created so many storytelling opportunities. In contrast, although the sequel trilogy attempted to expand viewers' knowledge of the Force - most notably through the Force Dyad, one of the sequels' most interesting ideas - it made only a half-hearted commitment to it. In part this was a result of the general rinse-and-repeat approach, which necessitated another Jedi Purge and thus only a couple of major Force-sensitive powers - but, as Star Wars: The High Republic shows, a story doesn't need only a couple of rookie Jedi to be impactful.
This isn't the first time Lucasfilm Publishing has blazed the trail for Star Wars. The launch of the old Expanded Universe in 1991 led to a resurgence of interest in the franchise, with George Lucas taking advantage of this to launch the prequels in 1999 - and he incorporated some of the best ideas from the EU, including the ecumenopolis of Coruscant, into his films. This time round, though, Lucasfilm Publishing is showing Disney how to reinvent the franchise after the poor conclusion of the sequels and the collapse of the anthology projects. It's not just a matter of exploiting the time period that's been opened up by Star Wars: The High Republic - it's also a matter of recognizing what has worked, and figuring out how to repeat those successes on both the big and small screens.
