AdapNation: Guardians of the Force

In which I make the case for film and TV adaptations, sequels, crossovers and remakes.

I think that it's pretty clear by now - in case it wasn't in years past - that Disney likes making money.  It's a really out-there concept, I know, but it's true.  They love it, in fact.  Why else would they have continued with their essentially money-printing princess movies since the 1930's?  Why else would they have bought out Marvel or Lucasfilm?  It's because with great fandoms come great profit margins.

So far, Papa Disney's been perfectly content with continuing their newly acquired franchises without much meddling (although certainly with more than their fair share of prodding).  It's pretty much been business as usual for the MCU, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  Hammer out roughly half a dozen movies across all of their tributary franchises each year and watch the money roll in.

But while they can pretty much indefinitely maintain this game plan and enjoy the profits that come with it, there's a surprisingly obvious way that they can radically increase their franchises' cash intake with very little in the way of risk.  The answer, of course, is inter-franchise crossovers: applying Marvel's monstrously successful formula to most - if not all - Disney-owned properties.

The beauty of the MCU is that with its rotating roster of franchises, no single hero ever outstays his or her welcome.  You're pretty much guaranteed to see every bankable Avenger going at it in a solo movie once per phase, but never any more than that (Iron Man 2 notwithstanding).

This means that while you only see a Thor or Captain America movie every couple of years, you can still go and see Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man in their down-time.  People who may not really care for The Incredible Hulk will still see his movie in order to be caught up for The Avengers and people who saw Age of Ultron will want to figure out what the Hell happened to S.H.I.E.L.D.  It's a shockingly effective way to keep demand for individual franchises high while cross-promoting the shared universe's other movies.

So why shouldn't this same cross-promotional template apply to other Disney-owned properties as well?  Why not tie Big Hero 6 or The Incredibles or even Indiana Jones to the MCU in a way that would get non-Marvel fans to care about the Avengers or, conversely, to get steadfast Marvel fans to care about these ancillary franchises?  There's an obvious Venn Diagram of crossover interest, but why not broaden their appeal as much as possible?

There's as great a wealth of crossover potential waiting to be tapped into now as there was with The Avengers, and we all know how well that went over with the general public.  More than any other company on the planet, Disney as the means, motive and popular franchises enough to make this plan work.  And the way that I see it, no two franchises have a greater potential to mesh together as Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars.

Think about it.  Between Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel's charged head first into the cosmic side of their stories.  And while Thor is certainly more fantasy-based than anything, Guardians of the Galaxy is pure science fiction.  In fact, in my review of the franchise, I went as far as to say that it's basically Star Wars by way of Indiana Jones.

The technology levels of the two franchises are roughly on par with one another, so there'd be no concerns about needing to nerf or amp up either one of them.  While Guardians may be a bit more comic and Star Wars a bit more epic, they still tonally sync up about as well as could be hoped for (and better than most of the other Marvel properties going into The Avengers).  Both have a wealth of characters and story lines that are left nebulously hanging around between the wholesale abandonment of Star Wars' Expanded Universe and Guardians' radical reimagining from their initial comic run.

Whatever happened to the Lost Tribe of the Sith?  What about the Yuuzhan Vong?  What's going on with Red Harvest or Death Troopers?  What about the Force Witches of Dathomir or the seemingly omnipotent Abeloth?  These are exceptional characters and narratives that have boundless potential in either franchise, but are inherently hampered by how closely tied to the original trilogy's characters they are (given how long a period has elapsed since those first three movies and how old the actors have gotten in the interim).

The thing is, though, that there are pretty solid analogies between the original trilogy's cast of characters and those of Guardians of the Galaxy.  While he might be a touch more immature than Luke, Starlord fills that same youthful, protagonistic role.  Just as Leia was in the first round of movies, Gamora is a tough-as-nails warrior with less incestuously-charged romantic ties to the series' foremost star.  Han and Chewie are represented on the Marvel side of things by foul-mouthed Rocket and the "limitedly vocabulistic" Groot.  Almost everything that you could do with the first set of characters you could similarly do with the second (plus Drax too, I guess).

I've long speculated that Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is going to be a big screen adaptation of Planet Hulk, and that would be the perfect place to seed the Star Wars universe into Marvel.  Planet Sakaar features great gladiatorial arenas where prisoners of a thousand species are forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the masses.

Traditionally, this is where Hulk comes in: proving to be the greatest warrior that the planet has ever seen.  In my numerous speculations, this is likewise where the Guardians themselves come into play: Banner's fellow captives that must either fight alongside one another or die as separately.

The thing is, however, that they have to fight against somebody.  This role was originally filled by a combination of generic monsters and Marvel cameos (like Beta Ray Bill), but I don't see either of these being especially awesome to the casual observer.  Generic monster men are, well, generic, and Beta Ray Bill is hopelessly obscure from the outside looking in.  I like to think that I'm pretty up to date with most things Marvel, and even I had to do some digging to find out who the horse-faced Thor was.

Why not throw a Sith Saber into the mix: light saber and all? Why not throw in Boba Fett, who in the Expanded Universe escaped the Sarlacc Pitt on Tatooine and reclaimed his role as a big player in future stories?  You can throw in a troop of Wookies or some Twi'lek warriors as subtler nods to a much larger shared universe.  You could even toss in some Storm Troopers for a much less subtle nod to a greater universe being at play.

Just start throwing things at the wall and see what sticks.  If the references are met enthusiastically, then proceed with it.  If they're less unfavorably received, maybe you back down on those plans just a touch.  It's basically what Marvel did with Guardians of the Galaxy: transforming it into a hub for everything cosmic from Thanos to Nova to Howard the Duck.

The other option would be to run with the concept in a much more balls to the wall fashion.  What if instead of threading in a few ideas and then picking them up much further down the line, it's one of the Solo twins that have been tossed into the arena?  Surely the Sword of the Jedi (Jaina) and the future Darth Caidus (Jacen) would make for some good sport against the Hulk and Starlord.

The theory behind the recent changes to the mainstream Marvel universe has been speculated to have just as much to do with upselling the MCU's franchises (and subsequently downplaying those that they don't own the film rights to) as it does with making the comics a test market for future movies.  It's actually pretty brilliant when you stop to think about it; you can test out story lines and ideas that you want to adapt into upcoming movies, gauge the reader's response to figure out what - if anything - needs to be changed and not have to worry about those pesky characters that you don't own the film rights to getting in the way.

Because Disney understandably loves keeping as much in-house as possible, Marvel's gotten the exclusive rights to publish Star Wars comics.  It also bears keeping in mind that Marvel has traditionally incorporated as many of their comics into their mainstream continuity as they could possibly justify, which explains why the Conan the Barbarian comics are a canonical part of Marvel's ancient history.  Why wouldn't they do the same thing to Star Wars?  And if Star Wars does enter into the Marvel fold, who would be better for them to interact and cross over with than the Guardians of the Galaxy?

Maybe the Nova Corps?

If there's money to be made with the idea, Disney'll be sure to look into it.  They're not ones for leaving money on the table, and both Marvel and Star Wars are sure to be their two biggest cash cows.  What do they really have to lose by throwing everything into the mix together?

Would you want to see Star Wars and Marvel combine into an even larger shared universe?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trailer Park: The Force Awakens Teaser Trailer #2

In which I discuss the latest movie trailers.

Now this is what a trailer should be.  It doesn't spoil itself or over sell its premise.  It's terse, to the point and thoroughly awesome.  It knows exactly what it is and how to sell itself to an extremely eager audience.  Check it out here:

It's amazing how everything that I want out of a trailer - or at least a trailer for the latest movie in an established franchise - can usually be taken care of in about 90 seconds.  The Force Awakens is no exception.  We got iconic callbacks to the original trilogy, a measured look some fan favorite characters and a few quick action clips to round things out.  We were already sold on the idea of another Star Wars, all this did was remind us of why.

After seeing the trailer, I'm convinced more than ever that The Force Awakens is going to be a loose adaptation of Heir to the Empire.  Sure, Carrie Fischer's a bit too old to be pregnant, so that particular subplot's out of the running.  And sure, it's been a bit too long since Return of the Jedi for Luke to be struggling with the nuts and bolts of reestablishing the Jedi Order, let alone Obiwan becoming "one with the Force" (his ghost passing on to whatever afterlife awaits him).

Strip away the subplots and time frame, and you're left with a perfectly viable story for a latter-day Star Wars.  After being forced into hiding at the far end of the Galaxy, the Imperial Remnant, led by master strategist Grand Admiral Thawn, resurfaces to bring the rest of the Galaxy into the Imperial fold.  His secret weapon is the deranged clone of a long-dead Jedi Master, whose powers perfectly compliment his own martial prowess.

The big question that the trailer leaves us with is who Luke is talking to in his dramatic voice over.  It's clearly somebody gifted in the Force, which leaves us with several possibilities to choose from.  Given all of the film's apparent ties to Heir to the Empire, it very well could be Mara Jade - "the Emperor's Hand" - who was driven from a position of power and influence within the Empire to the dregs of the Galaxy after the Emperor's death.  This may be a glimpse into one of his many confrontations with Jade over the course of the trilogy, in which he urges her to abandon her hatred and lust for vengeance.

Given all the time that's elapsed since Return of the Jedi, however, he could be talking to one of the Solo twins.  It can't be glossed over just how family-oriented Luke's words were: "the Force is strong in my family.  My father has it.  I have it.  My sister has it.  You have that power too."  And given how prominently the children factor into the later Star Wars novels, having the older generation pass the torch to the younger one is ripe with cinematic and franchise possibilities.

Jaina Solo - known as "the sword of the Jedi" for her prowess in battle - features prominently in many of the Expanded Universe novels.  The girl that keeps cropping up in these teaser trailers (see above image) fits the bill pretty well.  She's the right age, wearing the appropriate Jedi-styled tunic and seems to be holding her own in all the action.

Jacen Solo is a grimmer matter entirely, as he eventually becomes Darth Caedus.  Considering how a large part of the Thawn narrative was Master C'baoth trying to lure Luke and the newborn Solo twins to the dark side, it would be a perfectly natural progression to pass off that portion of the narrative to Jacen: streamlining his fall to the dark side by joining it with C'baoth's scheming.  The film, then, could feature the lure of C'baoth's teachings compared to the harder moral path of a Jedi.

The final option is, of course, Ben Skywalker: Luke and Mara's Jedi son.  While he also features prominently in the Legacy era novels, and would fit into the implicit blood ties of Luke's speech, he's a far less likely candidate.  For him to work, either Mara is already a part of the Star Wars narrative at this time of the movie or Ben is simply too young to factor into the movie all that much.

It's amazing how, even after only 90-odd seconds of footage, it's immediately obvious that this is a J.J. Abrams movie.  While we weren't subjected to the excessive lens flair he seems so fond of, the opening sequence is an extreme wide angle tracking shot of a vehicle speeding across the desert.  It starts to pass a downed X-Wing in the foreground before we see an even more impressive Imperial Star Destroyer looming behind it in the background.

This immediately calls to mind the Kirk's arrival to the spaceport to begin his Starfleet training.  He races across a dirt road on his bike - fields in the foreground, Starfleet buildings in the background - before coming up to the docks looming in front of him.  Just compare the above image with the following:

Needless to say, I'm stoked for this movie.  It has a proven sci-fi director who has not only brought the original trilogy's cast back into the fold for another round, but has made a point to do as much in-camera as possible: physical sets, makeup and puppetry to bring the aliens to life, even the new R2 droid from the first trailer is a physical prop.  They have so far done everything right, and I can promise you that I'll be the first one in line to see this.

So what did you think of the new Force Awakens teaser trailer?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Throwback Thursday: The Retro Blockbusters of 2015

In which I revisit old articles from Filmquisition and Unreality.

Is it just me, or do all of the films that are coming out this year look really familiar?  This isn’t me whining about how Hollywood’s running out of ideas, nor about how there are too many sequels or remakes or reboots.  I like sequels, or at least the good ones.  While the first film of a franchise is generally worried about laying out the ground rules and setting up the world, sequels are free to bend (and sometimes break) those rules and explore those worlds.  Even reviled sequels (like Alien 3) usually bear at least some worthy fruit (like the Xenomorph’s ability to appropriate physiological traits from those it impregnates). 

I’m commenting on the oddly specific type of sequels and remakes that are coming out in 2015: developing on or revisiting the same group of Generation X blockbusters that were ubiquitous throughout my and many others’ childhoods.  We’ve gotten latter day Star Wars, tired Jurassic Parks and increasingly convoluted Terminators before, but never quite like this and certainly never all at once.  They all seem less concerned with moving their various franchises forward as much as they are about returning to square one: exploiting what made the original films so appealing to begin with.

Take Jurassic World, for instance.  The series’ first film presented the absolute marvel of genetically engineering dinosaurs and putting them together in a high tech zoo.  Sure, there was corporate espionage and chaos theory thrown in for good measure, but the soul of the film was the simultaneous wonder and terror of bringing Earth’s most ancient monsters into the 20th Century.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park‘s concern wasn’t so much replicating the success of Jurassic Park, but on-upping it.  It wasn’t enough to revisit the theme park, they had to bring them to the mainland and let them run amok in downtown San Diego.  Despite its better intentions, Jurassic Park III was born of the same “one-up the original” mindset (although let’s face it, the God-awful script didn’t do it any favors).  It wasn’t enough to have the Tyrannosaurus Rex – an animal whose name translates into “Tyrant Lizard King” – as monster to beat.  They instead had to go with the Spinosaurus, a dinosaur that few people knew, let alone cared, about.

While it might appear on the surface to be following the exact same pattern of “Jurassic Park, only better” that the other sequels went with, what we actually see is a return to form for the series.  Despite their names, what was the one thing that none of the other sequels had?  A park.

Jurassic World begins with a functional, sustainable, dinosaur-laden theme park that has been around for so long that the novelty of its existence has worn off.

The eventual result of this – that the corporate powers that be engineer hybridized, designer dinosaurs – is more in line with the spirit of the first film than either of the sequels.  The reason why the dinosaurs were able to break free and terrorize the film’s protagonists was that splicing dinosaur DNA with sex-changing frogs resulted in giant, carnivorous lizards to spontaneously change their sex in order to reproduce at an unregulated rate.  Purposefully making them more dangerous is simply the next step in human stupidity.

While the problems with the Star Wars prequel trilogy are far too numerous to address here, suffice it to say that they largely boil down to the same general point: the films did not resemble the originals.  The set and ship designs were too slick, the CG too obvious, the action too omnipresent and the characters too obnoxious.  It was so focused on what it could do with modern special effects that it forgot what it was supposed to be doing with it: telling a compelling story with likable characters.

If the series’ creator couldn’t do Episodes 4-6 justice, what chance do a bunch of Disney executives looking to make back the more than $4 billion investment that they made on the franchise?  As it turns out, a really good one.  It’s easy to forget that between the billions spent to buy the rights to the series and the hundreds of millions spent to produce, advertise and distribute each film, Disney won’t make anything back if people do not like the movies enough to sit through all of the sequels and spin-offs that they have planned.

As a result, Disney has been hell-bent on making a product that people not just want to see, but will pay through the nose in order to do so (in many cases two and three and four times).  That’s why the film (and its surrounding marketing) have gone back to the series’ basics.  The trailer prominently features Tatooine; the ships and droids very closely resemble what were in the first films; the last twenty-odd seconds was completely devoted to an aerial dog-fight between Tie Fighters and the Millennium Falcon.

Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker are all reprising their roles from Episodes 4-6 and Abrams has been a broken record about the use of puppets and physical props throughout The Force Awakens‘ highly publicized production.  Disney knows exactly what Star Wars fans want to see and has no problem selling it to them at $10 a ticket.

The Terminator franchise has been so focused on moving the story of John Connor into the future that its creators seemingly forgot that series owes its whole existence to time travel.  Why have a lone robotic assassin attack one person along a linear timeline when you can send the second (or third, or fourth) one(s) to reinforce the initial one whose mission failed?  Why not send it back to just after the events of the first movie, when Sarah Connor is weak, alone and pregnant?  Why not revisit the same night again and again and again, like every Back to the Future film seems to revolve around November 5, 1955 in Hill Valley.

Obviously there are very good reasons to not do this, but my point remains: if your central premise is something as wibbly-wobbly as time travel, why not bend the franchise back in on itself?  Why not make it entirely about its own existence?  After the disappointing reception of Terminator Salvation, the stewards of the franchise must have finally asked themselves this same question.

Terminator Genisys turns the franchise into a temporal ouroboros: taking the present-day timeline (now the post-apocalyptic future of the first film) and bringing it back to that fateful night when Kyle Reese landed in 1984, only things aren’t quite how we remember it.  Something went wonky in the timeline, so now Sarah Connor is already the badass that she would become in Terminator 2,  with the Schwarzenegger Terminator in tow, and the T-1000 (or at least some approximation of it) is the opponent that they have to square off against.  It’s basically the premise of the first film meets the characters from the second one which, from the outside looking in, looks to be all kinds of awesome.

2015’s blockbusters aren’t concerned building off of the past successes of their franchises as much as they are about outright reliving it (literally, in Terminator Genisys‘ case).  It’s not about being the next film in the series, but about keeping as closely to the first as possible.  It remains to be seen exactly how well this year’s trend will pan out, but I expect that we’ll be seeing a lot more of it in the summers to come.

So what summer blockbuster are you most looking forward to this year?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Extra, Extra!: Disney to Release The Unaltered Star Wars Trilogy on BluRay

In which I report on the latest in entertainment news.

Ever since Disney bought out Lucasfilm, we all knew that it was only a matter of time before this happened.  Star Wars is worth too much money to too many people to allow this to slip by.  According to multiple reports that hit the internet late last week, Disney will release the original cut of the original Star Wars trilogy on BluRay sometime before Star Wars: The Force Awakens' December 18th theatrical release.  Now that's what I call one Hell of a marketing tie-in!

Ever since George Lucas took it upon himself to "improve" the decades old trilogy, the franchise has been mired with controversy.  Die-hard fans hated all of the changes made to the movies that they had devoted their child and adulthoods to.  Most infamously, Lucas re-edited A New Hope so that in Han's famous confrontation with the alien bounty hunter Greedo - a scene which tells us so much about the lovable rogue's character - Greedo shoots at Han first.  While later releases had the two firing at the same time, fans still famously insisted that "Han shot first."

After that and other changes were made to A New Hope, Lucas cut down on the alterations to the classic films.  The Empire Strikes Back included hardly any altered material, while Return of the Jedi limited itself largely to the end scenes, where it tied into the content of the prequel trilogies.  This included replacing Sebastian Shaw as the ghost of Anakin Skywalker with Hayden Christiansen and showing the planets Coruscant and Naboo celebrating the fall of the Empire.

While I definitely appreciated the improved visual quality of the films, Lucas' tampering with them - especially when there was no alternative to the "improved" editions - illustrates the risks of messing with beloved classics: people care.  They invest their time and energy into these films and are understandably upset when they can only see bastardized versions of them at home and can only share those innately "wrong" cuts with their children and family members who never had the opportunity to see the original versions.  And yes, while I actually like the changes that they made to Return of the Jedi, I've always had to close my eyes when Han squares off against Greedo in Mos Eisley.

This will mark the first time that the original versions of Star Wars were made available on BluRay.  And discounting a poor quality transfer as part of the special features on  a limited edition DVD set, this is the first time that they'll be made available on any of the modern home video formats.  And regardless of whether or not I already own the current BluRay version of the films (I do), I'll be first in line to get the real Star Wars when they do come out.

So the next time that you hear somebody rail against corporate greed, just remind that that greed is good.  Greed works.  Disney's greed is the only reason why we're getting Star Wars - the real, unmolested Star Wars - on BluRay sometime this year.

So which of the original Star Wars trilogy films is your favorite?

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Ask questions or share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Unreality Companion: Speculating on Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

Technically this article is a day late (and a dollar short).  Due to my new work schedule, I turned in my Unreality article this week a day early, meaning that it was published yesterday.  That setback aside, I found that settling on the subject of this week's Unreality Companion especially hard: do I review the animated Planet Hulk film?  Do I provide further speculation into Guardians of the Galaxy 2?  Do I tackle another Phase 3 topic, for which there are many to choose from?

So, in the end, I decided to focus my speculation onto a tangential, Disney-owned franchise.  Speculation about the new Star Wars' tight-lipped production has been rampant since it was announced, and has only exacerbated since this week's announcement of its official subtitle: The Force Awakens.  Many fans of the franchise's recently defunct extended universe are doubtlessly disappointed that it's not Heir to the Empire (taken from perhaps its most celebrated paperback storyline), but I'm still not entirely convinced that it's not.

Heir to the Empire, book one of the Thrawn trilogy, is set five years after the fall of the empire.  Luke struggles with trying to reform the broken jedi order, especially when the spirit of Obiwan Kenobi, his beloved mentor from the original film trilogy, passes on: becoming one with the Force.  As the fledgling New Republic is beset by not only internal political strife, but the military campaign of Imperial Remnant, lead by the uncannily brilliant Grand Admiral Thrawn, Leia Organa-Solo is pregnant with Jedi twins.  But Grand Admiral Thrawn's recruitment of the cloned Jedi-cum-Sith Master C'baoth gives him a direct interest in the Solos' unborn twins, which he promises to the Sith Lord in exchange for his services.

It's no wonder why Expanded Universe fans are so fond of the trilogy.  Thrawn is a chilling villain who is far more tactical than Vader's rage-driven menace.  It covers critically important events of the post-Return of the Jedi struggle between the former Rebel Alliance and the defeated Empire - not just their return to galactic power and the formation of the New Jedi, but the birth of Jacen and Jaina Solo, who factor heavily in the decades of events which follow.  The unhinged C'baoth is a perfect counterpoint to the idealistic Luke: not just for his moral alignment, but his lack of meditative control over himself and dangerously unpredictable behavior.  It also introduces fan favorite character Mara Jade - the former Hand of the Emperor and future wife of Luke (and mother of their Jedi son Ben Skywalker).

The problem is, however, that Disney de-canonized everything in the EU - declaring that only episodes I through VI actually happened.  Additionally, Abrams specifically stated that there were no plans to directly adapt any EU properties into films, even if some choice aspects from them might be plucked for use in later films.  And while this does rule out a direct adaptation of the Thrawn trilogy for episodes VII, VIII and IX, it never made sense for those to be truly faithful adaptations anyway.

Simply put, every one of the principle actors in the film (Mark Hamill, Carie Fischer and Harrison Ford) are too old for their Thrawn trilogy counterparts.  The novels take place five years after the Battle of Endor, whereas it has been over thirty years since Return of the Jedi.  Carrie Fischer cannot be convincingly pregnant - one of the central narratives of the three novels - and the political strife of the nascent Republic wouldn't make sense after such a long period of time.

But that does not mean that The Force Awakens is not loosely based on the trilogy.  On the contrary, the evidence seems to suggest that the opposite is true: that the new trilogy, although based on Thrawn's resurgence of the Imperial Remnant's military power, takes place in the so-called Legacy timeline, in which Jacen and Jaina are young adults and growing into renowned Jedi in their own right.  Just look at the film's cast:

It's pretty obvious who Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer, Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels will be playing (Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbaca, R2D2 and C3P0).  While there is no official word on who the others will be playing, their ages and acting ranges seem to suggest characters from the Thrawn trilogy.  Oscar Isaac and Gwendoline Christie strike me as the perfect embodiment of the twins Jacen and Jaina, while Max von Sydow seems a likely candidate for Master C'baeoth - exuding nearly as much ancient menace as Christopher Lee (who would have been my first choice for the role).

Although a bit of a left-field casting, Lupita Nyong'o, who won Best Supporting Actress at last year's academy awards for her portrayal of a sexually abused slave in 12 Years a Slave, more than has the requisite range and emotive talents to play Mara Jade.  While a bit younger than I would have preferred, Adam Driver's oft-displayed charisma seems perfectly suited for the smooth-talking, Tatooine-based smuggler Talon Kard, who's become top dog in the planet's world of organized crime after Jabba's untimely death.  And Domhnall Gleeson, with his boyish demeanor, is spot-on how I imagined Slicer (hacker) Gent to look.

The only real question mark is Andy Serkis, whose famed penchant for motion capture performances could allow him to literally be any conceivable character.  But by process of elimination, the answer is obvious: the blue-skinned, otherworldly Thrawn himself.  Having already given The Lord of the Rings trilogy what is easily its most memorable performance, I wouldn't expect any less of him to be entrusted with the same in the latest Star Wars trilogy.

Now, this is all obviously speculation, although it is not baseless by any means.  The Thrawn trilogy has long been considered a highlight of the franchise, both in terms of its films and novels (and comics, and video games, etc...).  It only makes sense that the franchise wouldn't completely malign its more dedicated fan base, nor disregard pre-existing and highly well received story lines and are ripe for adaptation.  So don't be so quick to discount Heir to the Empire' cinematic potential just because not all of the pieces are perfect for this latter-day trilogy.  It may not be "faithful" to every aspect of the novels, but it will be a reasonable and exhilarating interpretation of it.

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