66-year-old Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy reveals what they'll do after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Kennedy says that streaming "is a really important transition... What we've been focused on these last five or six years is finishing that family saga around the Skywalkers. Now is the time to start thinking about how to segue into something new and different."

Kennedy also blames the poor box office of the 2018 movie Solo on the release of too many Star Wars movies too quickly, and remembers getting Disney's okay on a "pause" before future films. "We're literally making this up from whole cloth and bringing in filmmakers to find what these stories might be," Kennedy said. "It can take a while before you find what direction you might want to go. We need the time to do that." The next "Star Wars" film is expected to arrive in 2022, and that's essentially all that's known about it. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has an idea for a "Star Wars" movie, but it's in the early stages, according to Kennedy. Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed "The Last Jedi," is also developing more "Star Wars" films.

Kennedy said she plans to make key decisions about the direction of the franchise in the coming weeks. But some things she already knows. While the "Skywalker" saga is ending, the company won't abandon the characters created in the most recent trilogy. Additionally, she said, the plan is to move beyond trilogies, which can be restricting. "I think it gives us a more open-ended view of storytelling and doesn't lock us into this three-act structure," she said. "We're not going to have some finite number and fit it into a box. We're really going to let the story dictate that."
The article also notes that George Lucas complained there was "nothing new" in The Force Awakens, according to Bob Iger's recent book The Ride of a Lifetime. And though that film was a commercial and critical success, the Times also writes that "Debates over the franchise persisted." "The Last Jedi," for example, was criticized in some circles for going too far in subverting "Star Wars" tropes. Kennedy says the company heeds feedback from "Star Wars" fans. For example, Lucasfilm decided to revive "The Clone Wars" TV series for Disney+ following a prolonged campaign by viewers. "It does matter what they say and what they care about," Kennedy said. "All of those things play a role in our decision making."

Aside from films, Lucasfilm has ample "Star Wars" material in the works, especially for Disney+. The studio is working on shows starring Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Diego Luna as his rebel spy character from "Rogue One." Additionally, the company is experimenting with new formats. Lucasfilm's ILMxLab, a virtual reality and augmented reality unit founded in 2015, this year released a VR series called "Vader Immortal" that puts users face-to-face with Darth Vader and trains headset users to wield a lightsaber.

Anticipating next week's release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, 20 fans are already camping out in front of Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatre, reports Cinema Blend: The tight-knit group of fans have brought along their sleeping bags, tents and Star Wars pajamas to the location for 20 years (since 1999's The Phantom Menace) to get ready for the release of another Star Wars movie. They pass the time by playing games, working on Star Wars LEGO sets and raising awareness for the Starlight Children's Foundation.

Check out one camper's update on Twitter. He's been hanging out in Hollywood for four days and is prepared to wait six more...

The superfans have set up a Death Star rug over handprints of iconic celebrities and are playing a game of Sabacc... [A] little over 100 more are expected to join them in the coming days. The stars of The Rise of Skywalker are expected to walk a red carpet close by on Monday when the world premiere takes place. One fan hopes Disney invites the campers into the screening as the studio did back in 2015 when The Force Awakens premiered.

In 30 minutes an exclusive clip from the yet-to-be-released Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will premier in the videogame Fortnite.

An anonymous reader quotes the Verge: We've known about the clip premiere since last week, but Epic disclosed some more concrete details Thursday night at the Game Awards. The studio says it'll open the gates of its virtual world starting at 1:30 p.m. EST. The clip will start airing at the Risky Reels drive-in movie theater at 2 p.m. EST. Speaking with Game Awards host Geoff Keighley yesterday, Epic's worldwide creative director Donald Mustard hinted that there would be some sort of involvement from director J.J. Abrams. We don't know if that means a live pre-show, or perhaps the director himself will intro the clip before it airs.
UPDATE: CNN has a report on the event, while also noting that its start was delayed 15 minutes "because of issues with logging in and making purchases.

"Even after 2:15 pm, players still took to social media to complain the game was crashing or they couldn't even open it."

Fortnite is also offering skins of Star Wars characters Rey and Finn, according to the article, with Mustard envisioning Fortnite as a world where all intellectual property "can live together." The Verge also predicts that the clip will eventually be available elsewhere online, while Business Insider believes "countless" Fortnite players will stream the event live on YouTube and Twitch.

Meanwhile, J. J. Abrams has also asked Lucasfilm to release the original Star Wars trilogy in its original pre-Special Edition format, according to Nerdist.com, but "I've been told that, for reasons that I quite don't understand, that that's not necessarily possible."

"The Walt Disney Co. is asking exhibitors worldwide to warn moviegoers that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker may pose a seizure risk to audience members with photosensitive epilepsy," reports Deadline: In an unusual move, Disney has sent a letter to theater owners and operators worldwide with a recommendation that special steps should be taken to alert moviegoers about the visual effects and flashing lights in the J.J. Abrams-directed interstellar adventure. "Out of an abundance of caution," the letter opens, "we recommend that you provide at your venue box office and online, and at other appropriate places where your customers will see it, a notice containing the following information: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker contains several sequences with imagery and sustained flashing lights that may affect those who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or have other photosensitivities."

The Burbank-based Disney is also working with the Epilepsy Foundation, which issued an advisory of its own and commended the studio for taking the initiative on the audience safety issue. About 3.4 million Americans have epilepsy and about three percent have photosensitivity issues that puts them at risk of seizures triggered by flashing lights or other visual patterns.

In a Quartz article, Adam Epstein writes about the filmmaking technology used to film The Mandalorian on Disney+: Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) -- the Lucasfilm subsidiary George Lucas founded in 1975 to make the visual effects for Star Wars -- deployed a real-time 3D projection system called "Stagecraft" on the Disney+ series that could, eventually, replace green-screen as the film industry standard for rendering virtual environments. The company has been testing Stagecraft for five years -- most recently on the Star Wars spin-off movie Solo in 2018. But The Mandalorian, the flagship series on Disney's new streaming service, likely marks the most extensive use yet of the new system.

Stagecraft's chief innovation is that it can project a 3D visual environment around the actors that changes in real time to match the perspective of the camera. When the camera moves, the background moves too, simulating the experience of filming in a different location. It's a significant upgrade from green-screen technology, which requires the filmmakers layer in a static image or footage after filming in front of the blank backdrop. [...] The tech has a wide range of benefits. For starters, it can draw better performances from the actors, who don't have to imagine the environment they are in, as they do when filming in front of green-screen. They can instantly be transported to any location, real or made-up, and feel as though they are there. And that's another big advantage: Stagecraft allows films and TV shows to simulate environments without actually having to send an entire production there to film. "One downside is that the displays used in Stagecraft require liquid crystals that take several years to grow," the report adds. "Growing and maintaining these crystals, which are the backbone of LCD (liquid crystal display) screens, can be expensive and time-consuming, perhaps complicating the attempts of other companies to adapt the technology."

This video from Unreal Engine shows a smaller scale version of the tech in action.

Freshly Exhumed shares a report from The Guardian: George Lucas, whose departure from all things Star Wars seems to have been greatly exaggerated -- appears to have yet again doctored the famous Greedo scene in 1977's Star Wars [prior to it being shown on the Disney+ streaming service]. The scene depicts the Mos Eisley cantina in which Harrison Ford's Han Solo is confronted by an alien bounty hunter and winds up shooting him dead in a brief flurry of blaster fire. It has been much discussed over the years, largely because Solo shot Greedo in cold blood in the original, "Han shot first" 1977 cut, while in later versions Lucas re-edited the footage to depict Greedo as the aggressor, with Han returning fire in self-defense. Many fans have speculated about what effect that subtle change had on Han's transformation in the original trilogy from cold-hearted hustler to hero of the resistance. Now Lucas has tinkered all over again, to further muddy the waters.

As seen on new streaming service Disney+, the scene features Han and Greedo shooting at roughly the same moment -- to be fair, this is a change introduced several years back. But now, Greedo appears to utter the phrase "MacClunkey!" before succumbing to his wounds. Reports suggest Lucas made the changes some years ago, perhaps around the time he sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion, in 2012. Celebrities such as Stephen King and Patton Oswalt have speculated about what the re-edit means for the future of Star Wars, though nobody seems to have much of a clue.

Luke Skywalker wasn't going to be the only Jedi in the final Star Wars movie, reports Yahoo Entertainment: In the original version of the ninth and final installment, The Rise of Skywalker, his sister, Leia (played by Carrie Fisher), was going to emerge as a full-fledged Jedi warrior, complete with her very own lightsaber. That's according to no less an authority than Fisher's real-life brother, Todd Fisher, who filled us in on what the plan was for his sister's iconic character prior to her sudden death in December 2016. "She was going to be the big payoff in the final film," Fisher reveals exclusively to Yahoo Entertainment. "She was going to be the last Jedi, so to speak. That's cool right....? People used to say to me, 'Why is it that Carrie never gets a lightsaber and chops up some bad guys,'" Fisher says, noting that Alec Guinness was roughly the same age when Obi-Wan Kenobi battled Darth Vader in A New Hope. "Obi-Wan was in his prime when he was Carrie's age...!"

Unfortunately, a version of The Rise of Skywalker where Leia picks up her father and brother's chosen weapon can only exist in our imaginations. After Fisher's death, her alter ego's arc had to be re-conceived by returning director J.J. Abrams, who previously directed the actress in 2015's The Force Awakens. "The truth is that J.J. Abrams was great friends with Carrie... he had an extraordinary sense of love for her," her brother says. It was that love that led the filmmaker to make a bold, and creatively risky decision: take unused footage of Leia left over from The Force Awakens and make it part of The Rise of Skywalker. "They had eight minutes of footage," Fisher tells us. "They grabbed every frame and analyzed it... and then reverse-engineered it and [got] it into the story the right way. It's kind of magical."

An anonymous reader quotes an analyst for the Motley Fool: With so many industry worrywarts and Star Wars purists taking a dim view of Disney's bicoastal Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge expansion, I figured I'd check out Florida's version on Saturday afternoon. Would I get pelted by drifting tumbleweed while slurping down some blue milk? Would my voice echo in a barren Droid Depot? Would I leave accepting that the first phase of what initially seemed like a slam-dunk expansion has turned into a colossal flop for ages?

If you read the headline you know my answer. In my sixth visit to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge -- four to the original Disneyland version this summer and now my second visit at Disney World, but the first since it officially opened -- I have never seen the 14-acre addition as busy as it was this weekend. The wait for the high-capacity Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run was 85 minutes. A mobile order at the Docking Bay 7 eatery was filled quickly just past the lunch rush block, but finding an empty table proved challenging. The stores -- and more importantly, the registers -- were thick with tourists. It's early October, which is historically when the theme park industry hits a lull. However, it seems the one-two punch of the recent media blitz across most of Disney's media networks and last week's opening of the Skyliner gondola system that connects two of Disney World's parks with several of its hotels is doing the trick.
Hours later, Disney announced they were closing the Skyline gondola system, after it stalled Saturday night, stranding passengers in the air "for about three hours," according to passengers interviewed by CNN.

"Passengers who were stranded were compensated with free park tickets and gift cards."

Tablizer shares a report from SFGate: Visitors to Disney's new Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge attraction, can choose from more than 1,000 unique items to take home as souvenirs. But if they plan on flying home, they'll have to leave at least one behind -- a specially designed "thermal detonator" Coca-Cola bottle the company made especially for the new attraction. TSA has told fans that the bottle, which retails for $5, looks too much like a replica explosive and therefore won't be allowed in carry-on or checked baggage. Fans, not surprisingly are not pleased with the decision. I hope they don't take away my lightsaber.

This weekend Disney revealed more details about Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a cruise-like experience which promises "a two-night, all-immersive adventure," inviting visitors to "live your very own epic Star Wars story."

Gizmodo reports: Like a cruise ship, everyone boards at once and everyone leaves at once. How that works though is, you arrive to a special terminal in Orlando to check in. From there you get on a "launch pod" that blasts you into space. That's where you meet up with the Halcyon, the ship you'll be on the next two days, as you travel through space. Now, when I say "launch" and "travel through space" that's just the illusion, obviously. Disney didn't explain how they will achieve it but, probably lots of screens and different animations to try and make you feel like you are in a real space.

Once you get on the ship, how you experience the adventure is up to you. You can relax and watch the stars fly by as the Halcyon travels through space. Or you can take place in all manner of different activities to learn how to be a hero. You can use a lightsaber, you can help pilot the ship, or you can learn about the ship's defenses so that, just in case the First Order drops by, you'll be able to help. (They'll be dropping by.) The crew will be comprised of "aliens," every window has a view into space (including the one in your cabin), and characters new and old (they showed Chewie, Rey and Kylo) will be part of the experience. An experience that has one stop on it -- Batuu and the Black Spire Outpost, aka Star Wars Galaxy's Edge.
The Disney Parks blog promises the starcruiser "will fully immerse guests in a galaxy far, far away."

In 2014 Esquire argued that great movies like The Matrix "predicted a revolution in film that never happened," adding "We are in many ways worse off now than we were 15 years ago as a culture. We seem to have run out of original ideas."

This week two film critics debated whether 1999 was in fact cinema's last great year. Slashdot reader dryriver writes: Notable films of 1999 are Fight Club, Magnolia, The Matrix, Eyes Wide Shut, Three Kings, The Sixth Sense, EXistenZ, Being John Malkovich, Man On The Moon, American Beauty, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Office Space, Boys Don't Cry, Election, Rushmore, Buena Vista Social Club, The Virgin Suicides, Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, Girl Interrupted, The Iron Giant and Toy Story 2.

According to Nicholas Barber, 1999 also was the beginning of the end for quality cinema:

"The release of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace proved that long-dormant series could be lucratively revived. Toy Story 2, the first ever Pixar sequel, proved that cartoon follow-ups needn't be straight-to-video cheapies, but major, money-spinning phenomena. The Matrix proved that digitally-enhanced superhero action could attract audiences of all ages. And The Blair Witch Project proved that found-footage horror in particular, and microbudget horror in general, could be a gold mine. As wonderful as those films may have been -- The Phantom Menace excepted, obviously -- they taught Hollywood some toxic lessons. Instead of continuing to bet on young mavericks, studio executives twigged that there was a fortune to be made from superhero blockbusters, Disney sequels, merchandise-friendly franchises and cheapo horror movies. And that's what we get in 2019, week after week."
He also writes that the boom in DVDs in 1999 had "encouraged studios to fund offbeat projects," ultimately concluding 1999 was "the year when everything began to go wrong." He argues that today it's a different technology driving innovation. "In the 21st Century, streaming platforms have made the small screen the home of fresh ideas, as well as for conversation-starting communal cultural experiences."

But film critic Hannah Woodhead counters with a line from the 1999 film Magnolia: "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."

"Nostalgia is often the enemy of progress when it comes to pop culture. We have a tendency to look back fondly on what came before, ironing out the flaws in our memory until the past is something that seems truly great, and even aspirational."

The teaser trailer for Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker has been viewed 13,665,350 times since its release Friday.

Collider reminds us that while George Lucas oversaw the original Star Wars trilogy and worked on its prequel trilogy, the final three movies in the franchise had moved ahead without direct involvement from the 74-year-old director: To recap, Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, setting Kathleen Kennedy as the new head of Lucasfilm and handing over his treatments for Episode VII, Episode VIII, and Episode IX -- the final three films in his Skywalker saga. Kennedy and J.J. Abrams reportedly threw out much of what Lucas handed over (much to the Star Wars director's chagrin) in favor of charting their own path, and Lucas has been pretty mum on the new direction of Star Wars under Disney thus far -- save for high praise heaped on Rogue One and a visit to the set of Solo after Ron Howard took over the director's chair.

But it appears everything has come full circle, as Abrams revealed at Star Wars Celebration in an interview with IGN that when he signed on to direct Star Wars 9, he consulted Lucas before beginning work on the script. "This movie had a very, very specific challenge, which was to take eight films and give an ending to three trilogies, and so we had to look at, what is the bigger story? We had conversations amongst ourselves, we met with George Lucas before writing the script," Abrams revealed...

Having seen the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer, this makes sense. The film looks to be leaning heavily on the original trilogy given the inclusion of that medal, the Death Star, and of course the return of Emperor Palpatine. And given Abrams' comments here, it sounds like he was very strongly thinking about Star Wars 9 as a conclusion to the entire Star Wars saga.
After that conclusion, Disney CEO Bob Iger says, "There are movies in development, but we have not announced them. We will take a pause, some time, and reset because the Skywalker saga comes to an end with this ninth movie.

"There will be other Stars Wars movies, but there will be a bit of a hiatus."

It's now easier than ever in France to act out Star Wars fantasies. The country's fencing federation has officially recognized lightsaber dueling as a competitive sport, granting the weapon from George Lucas's space saga the same status as the foil, epee and sabre, the traditional blades used at the Olympics. From a report: Of course, the LED-lit, rigid polycarbonate replicas can't slice an opponent in half. But they look and sound remarkably like the blades that Yoda and other characters wield in the blockbuster movies. The physicality of lightsaber combat is part of the reason why the French Fencing Federation is now equipping fencing clubs with lightsabers and training would-be lightsaber instructors. Like virtuous Jedi knights, the federation sees itself as combatting a Dark Side: the sedentary habits of 21st-century life.

"With young people today, it's a real public health issue. They don't do any sport and only exercise with their thumbs," says Serge Aubailly, the federation's secretary general. "That is why we are trying to create a bond between our discipline and modern technologies, so participating in a sport feels natural." In the past, Zorro, Robin Hood and The Three Musketeers helped lure new practitioners to fencing. Now, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader are joining them. "Cape-and-sword movies have always had a big impact on our federation and its growth," Aubailly says. "Lightsaber films have the same impact. Young people want to give it a try."

Disney's Han Solo movie was the first Star Wars movie to lose money. But is there a larger problem? dryriver writes: Comic book news website Cosmic Book News reports that even though Disney put bucketloads of Star Wars out there in 2018, revenues from all things Star Wars have actually fallen, according to Disney SEC filings. Disney made more Star Wars money in 2017 -- when only Rogue One hit cinemas -- than in 2018, when Solo, Last Jedi and SW Battlefront 2 were released.

A Rian Johnson-led Star Wars trilogy appears to have been delayed or cancelled entirely. Rumored spinoff movies for Bobba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi appear to have been put on the backburner or cancelled. Disney's CEO has confirmed that the Star Wars movies are being slowed down.

A Star Wars fan named "Toos" told Newsweek he'd spent $150,000 of his own money on a fan film about Darth Vader -- and what happened next: Before the camera started rolling Toos said he contacted an employee at Lucasfilm [and] claims Lucasfilm gave him permission on two conditions: he couldn't crowdfund and he couldn't monetize the fan film on YouTube. Toos agreed to those conditions and shot for three full days in September. They ran post-production up until the release of "Vader Episode 1: Shards of the Past" on December 20. Star Wars fans, a notoriously tough group to please, had overwhelming praise for the video, which gathered more than six million views in one month and 40,000 likes.

On January 14, music group and corporate collective Warner/Chappell filed a copyright claim against the video. After filing the claim, the company (publisher for the Walt Disney Music Company) began to collect ad revenue for Toos' video by claiming that one of the songs used a rendition of "The Imperial March"... If Toos attempts to appeal and Warner/Chappell refutes his claim, he could get a copyright strike on his channel and lose complete ownership of the video...

Fan response on Reddit has been massive, with the post about Star Wars Theory and the strike reaching over 90,000 upvotes... In a new video on the StarWarsTheory channel, Toos told his fans that the claim on his video had been lifted due in part to the intervention of LucasFilm."They stepped up and told Disney or the other company that this wasn't okay, that this wasn't going to stand."
Newsweek points out that Disney doesn't own Warner/Chappell. "The music group merely licenses their music" -- and has been accused of making erroneous claims before.

They're the same group that claimed they owned the music rights on a YouTube clip from Star Wars with all the original music removed.

Sphero's hinted that it's getting out of the licensed product game, but this week CEO Paul Berberian confirmed that the company is clearing out its remaining licensed inventory and won't be restocking the supply. From a report: That means the company won't be producing any more BB-8s, R2-D2s, Lightning McQueen cars, or talking Spider-Mans. The listings for all the toys list them as "legacy products" that are no longer in production. App support will continue for "at least two years, if not longer," Berberian says. The Disney partnership lasted three years, but ultimately, the licensed toy business required more resources than it was worth, Berberian tells The Verge. These toys sold well when released with a movie, but interest waned over time as the movie became more distant, he says. Still, the company sold "millions" of BB-8s, although company data shows that the toys weren't used much after initial play time and eventually sat on shelves.

Andrew Liszewski, writing for io9: Casting anyone other than Harrison Ford in the role of Han Solo just feels like sacrilege, but since Ford is now 76 years old, playing a younger version of himself would be all but impossible. Or at least impossible if you rely on the standard Hollywood de-aging tricks like makeup and CG. Artificial intelligence, it turns out, does a pretty amazing job at putting Ford back into the role of Solo. The YouTube channel "derpfakes" has been posting videos that demonstrate the impressive, and at times frightening, capabilities of image processing using artificial intelligence. Using a process called deep learning, an AI analyzes a large collection of photos of a given person, creating a comprehensive database of them in any almost any position and pose. It then uses that database to intelligently perform an automatic face replacement on a source clip, in this case replacing actor Alden Ehrenreich's face with Harrison Ford's.

bestweasel writes: The Hollywood Reporter highlights an academic paper which finds that half of the criticism aimed at director Rian Johnson over Star Wars: The Last Jedi was politically motivated. From the report: [Researcher Morten Bay's paper] titled Weaponizing The Haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation, examines the online response to the movie that has come to be considered controversial amongst the larger fanbase of the franchise. Bay suggests that reputation may not be earned, and instead "finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments." He continues, "The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation."

The paper analyzes in depth the negative online reaction, which is split into three different camps: those with a political agenda, trolls and what Bay calls "real fantagonists," which he defines as genuine Star Wars fans disappointed in the movie. His findings are fascinating; "Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human," he writes, noting that only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie had been negative in the first place. "A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls," Bay writes of the negative tweets. In response to a tweet announcing the release of the paper, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson shared the tweet, adding, "Looking forward to reading it, but what the top-line describes is consistent with my experience online."

Disney is reportedly having trouble buying back TV rights to "Star Wars" movies from AT&T's Turner Broadcasting so that it can offer them on a new streaming video service it is working on. Bloomberg reports: Disney made a preliminary inquiry about regaining the rights, but met resistance. Turner has the rights to show the films on its cable networks, which include TNT and TBS, and online until 2024. The programmer would want financial considerations and programming to replace the lost films. Disney sold certain rights to Turner in 2016, before it completed plans for the streaming service.

In an interview with James Cameron, George Lucas reveals what he'd planed for the final three Star Wars films: "[The next three 'Star Wars' films] were going to get into a microbiotic world," he told Cameron. "There's this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force...." In terms of his storytelling, Lucas regarded individuals as "vehicles for the Whills to travel around in... And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force."

Lucas is confident that had he kept his company, the Whills-focused films "would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did 'Phantom Menace' and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told."
Lucas acknowledges in the interview that "Everybody hated it in 'Phantom Menace' [when] we started talking about midi-chlorians," prompting one Ars Technica editor to add "Because it was a really dumb idea." He speculates that if the final three Star Wars movies followed Lucas's original plan, "Imagine, if you can, our heroes shrinking down like the Fantastic Voyage to go meet some midi-chlorians."

Knowing Lucas's plans for the franchise "should make every Star Wars fan send a note of gratitude to whoever at Disney decided to buy the franchise and take it away and out from under Lucas' control."