Star Wars: New Jedi Order screenwriter George Nolfi has dropped the first hints about the movie... and I'm convinced they point to a 74-year-old sci-fi story as inspiration. Two years ago, Daisy Ridley took to the stage at Star Wars Celebration as Lucasfilm announced Rey's return at the head of a New Jedi Order. It was one of the most memorable moments from the event, a reminder that online discussion doesn't always reflect reality, because I well the surge of excitement.

Progress on Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy has hinted the galaxy is unsure whether it needs - or wants - the Jedi, given the chaos of the last few decades. Screenwriter Steven Knight left the project, and he's just been replaced by The Bourne Ultimatum scribe George Nolfi - perfect timing, because Nofli's doing the rounds promoting his newest project, and he's just dropped our first real hint.

George Nolfi Is Following George Lucas' Own Inspiration

It's early days for Nolfi, but he was willing to talk a lot about his general approach. Most intriguingly, Nolfi noticed how some of George Lucas' themes inspire the New Jedi Order movie he's working on:

"If you think about George Lucas, the six movies that he did, and the universe that he created, it’s actually very steeped in broad notions of politics. It’s not talking about today, per se, but there’s the Empire’s Nazism slash Roman Empire. The democracy of the Roman Empire collapsing and becoming an empire and the perennial story of human beings organizing themselves and against chaos, and then the tools that help human societies tamp down on chaos become oppression.

"So that is really very core to what I think George Lucas was trying to talk about. And one of the wonderful things about science fiction and Star Wars – which is more almost science fantasy or space opera – is that you can raise the deepest issues without it feeling like a philosophy class, or a political science class, or something I read in the newspaper today…

“It can be about real things, deep things.”

Nolfi is right. Star Wars has always been political; the opening crawl of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace feels oddly prophetic given the whole world is currently buzzing about tariffs and trade disputes. But, although Lucas drew inspiration from contemporary politics, his genius lay in his ability to tie these into something timeless. Lucas took a lot of inspiration from Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

That said, I freely it that I'd never thought about it in the way Nolfi does here. When I think of cycles in Star Wars, I tend to focus on the battle between the light and dark sides of the Force; here, though, Nolfi explores the idea on a galactic scale. In his view, the story of Star Wars is one of organization versus chaos, with the very Republic that created organization becoming a tool of oppression. This even fits with the New Republic, which split apart and allowed many member planets to fall away and form the First Order.

The Galaxy Is Entering A Time Of Chaos

Now, I do want to stress that I don't associate the light side with order and the dark side with chaos; that's too simplistic an interpretation. The Rebel Alliance is surely rooted in the light side of the Force, and yet it undoubtedly represented chaos, bringing down the totalitarian order that Palpatine had established. On the flip-side, though, it's surely not a coincidence that the origin of the Jedi is clearly tied to the dawn of the Republic, some 25,000 years before the Skywalker saga.

Still, I've long wondered whether the Star Wars galaxy would tip into a place of chaos after the end of the sequel trilogy. Galactic government had been tried, and it had failed, leading to so much death and destruction. Yes, the galaxy had gathered to oppose Palpatine at Exegol, but it's easier to unify when you're fighting against something; I couldn't imagine the galaxy uniting around a new vision of democracy. There's been too much pain, too much suffering, for this to seem reasonable.

It's easy to see why the Jedi would feel outdated, anachronistic, unnecessary, and out of place.

Nolfi's comments feel like a hint that my instincts were right. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe divided into a patchwork of smaller kingdoms, with only the Byzantine Empire retaining a more centralized power structure. Assuming that Star Wars is drawing from that idea, I can't help wondering how the Jedi - traditional guardians of the Republic - would operate in a time of galactic division. It's easy to see why the Jedi would feel outdated, anachronistic, unnecessary, and out of place.

Is Nolfi Drawing Inspiration From Another Science-Fiction Classic?

This seems very much reminiscent of another science-fiction franchise I love, one that actually influenced George Lucas himself; Isaac Asimov's Foundation. We tend to forget that Lucas' story was in dialogue with other tales of the time, and Asimov's award-winning 1951 novel Foundation is a perfect example. There's a Galactic Empire with a city-planet at its heart, after all, and even some of the science is the same; think hyperspace.

Asimov's Foundation includes a planet called Korellia - a name Lucas clearly liked, given Han Solo's homeworld in Star Wars is Corellia.

Foundation has been adapted into a fantastic science-fiction TV show over on Apple TV+. Back in 2021, I had the opportunity to interview star Lee Pace about Foundation, and he described its themes perfectly:

And what [Asimov has] done here with Foundation, is he's looking at the Roman Empire which surrounded the Mediterranean for a certain period of time, and it's very storied rise and fall, and he's expanded that to encom the entire Milky Way galaxy, and you've got a mathematician - Hari Seldon [Jared Harris] - who predicts with mathematical certainty that my Empire is going to fall. And he's creating a Foundation to help humans survive the Dark Ages that follow.

So the premise alone I find enormous, this isn't a world with magic, this is a world with math and probability, and the measure of time and how time changes people. Really, I suppose, I would say that the show is really about change. It's about the inevitability of change, and the courage to embrace change... The side of the story that I'm responsible for are the people resisting change. Because we're the ones who are holding the balance in check, we're the ones who are carrying the burden of management of civilization, and so we don't want things to change. I think we're gonna fight like Hell to see that Hari Seldon's prophecy doesn't come to .

The parallels are far from exact; I don't think you can call Star Wars "a world without magic," after all. Still, I can't help wondering if something similar is happening on a galactic scale; if the fall of the New Republic and the First Order has brought about what we still tend to refer to as the Dark Ages. If this is the case, then Rey's quest to reform the Jedi takes on new significance, because they are guardians of knowledge and ideals that must be preserved.

In Foundation, the forces of balance are charged with trying to maintain the status quo - to resist the inevitability of change. That is not what balance means for the Jedi, but the Jedi of the prequel era had undoubtedly slipped into that role, and it would be so easy for Rey to reform the Jedi with all those failings. Instead, Rey would be wiser to try to create a New Jedi Order that chooses carefully what needs to be preserved, while also recognizing the value of change. That kind of discussion would surely be controversial and divisive among the Jedi.

All this is pretty high-level, of course; these are the themes and ideas that I think Nolfi is playing with. But you have to add the characters into this, the heroes and - most importantly - the villains who will choose to take advantage of this time of chaos. Nolfi has given us our first clue for Star Wars: New Jedi Order, but it simply allows us to paint in the background, to predict the kind of story he's trying to tell. The rest? We'll find out as Lucasfilm move on with the project.