The following is a copy of the Facebook post and replies in which I explored the formation of the idea for the Star Wars-based movie or series currently titled “SOLO.” I’ll be continuing here and future posts shouldn’t be so poorly formatted. I wanted to be sure I kept the ideas in one place for reference. For those of you following on Facebook, I will still post noteworthy updates, but I’ll try to keep the little details contained here. Feel free to follow here and share with other friends.
Before I continue, I’ll mention that at present this is fanfic, a tribute. If I can keep it going and complete the first story, I’ll likely be contacting LucasFilm to see if their people have any interest in the idea. Never know if you don’t ask…
LM
August 23, 2012, 4: 51 p.m.
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August 17, 2012 at 10:26am
What if the Star Wars and TRON universes had a baby? I don’t care about making a believable story, though in theory there’s no reason there couldn’t be a Grid universe that includes non-human styled programs. LEGO is having a good (and crazy profitable) run with remodeled universes…why not TRON?
Light Sabre is far too direct..
.where I’m going with this is i.e., Light-X-wing, Light Falcon, Light Coruscant, Light Troopers, L3PO, L2D2, and let’s not leave out the LIGHT DEATH STAR. O.O
I wonder what a Wookie ISO would look like. (Besides crap-your-pants scary.)
I love blowing my own mind. There WILL be more on this. I may or may not share the awesomeness that is this idea with Disney, lol. (Who knows, they may jump on it.) Later.
…now I REALLY don’t want to go outside. 😦
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I thought Flynn had become very Yoda-like in his old age…take that full-circle, this would.
August 17 at 10:33am
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Voltis Alan Dylen Naturally, after I wrote all of this, the story started writing itself in my head…
August 17 at 11:13pm
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Voltis Alan Dylen So. If we follow the general style of TRON and look into George’s intentions with New Hope, I conclude that the primary name of the move may have to be SOLO.
JEDI isn’t really a person and seems too easy of a title. SITH…nah. Same problem, only eviler. Han, however, is a problem solver who knows his way around his universe, including how to defeat or get around the big oppressive regime.He’s the secondary character who guides the new person we relate to through said universe and leads him towards his goals, even though he isn’t in control of that universe like say, Palpatine or MCP.
August 17 at 11:23pm
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Voltis Alan Dylen …remind you of anyone? Of course it does, if you’ve been paying attention. (Tron, if you haven’t.)
Han also has plenty of story on his own, to deserve the honour of being a title character. From Chewbacca (CHU-E? No?) to Lando to Leia, Han’s story is very closely wrapped in the rise and fall of the Empire, as Tron’s story is inseperable from that of the MCP and the Flynn family. (Flynns = Skywalkers…see!?)
It holds up…and as it is with the new Star Trek series, doesn’t necessarily need to have the same story arcs as its predecessor. All those nifty fan ideas out there and cannon and semi-cannon ideas from the Star Wars books would be usable ingredients for this new SW franchise.
SOLO…give it some thought. I’ve got a -good- feeling about this.
August 17 at 11:39pm
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Voltis Alan Dylen Seriously…the digital wookie in my head is starting to scare me.
August 17 at 11:40pm
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Voltis Alan Dylen Daft Punk’d SW theme…you know you like it even though it doesn’t exist yet.
August 17 at 11:46pm
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Voltis Alan Dylen I’m wondering…especially since my bias against seeing my own name (the real one) on screen clouds my judgement… Should Luke be the lead or co-lead character?
Some people love him, some people I’m sure thought some of the same things that were loudly expressed about all of Phantom Menace: Lose the cute kid. He’s not badass enough to be the center of the universe’s attention.
This has been reflected in the SW games as far as I’m aware…I’ve not heard of any (unless they specifically played out the movie events) that featured Luke as a lead character. They went for rougher figures.
If he’s not the lead, it may well make sense to make Luke & Leia ISO’s, born not just from the Skywalker program “bloodline,” but of the Force. (Force = Grid…it goes on forever, really.) This makes room for a new lead character…a user, who will also learn the ways of the Force that makes up everything around him.
Perhaps said user is a hacker who stole some of VAD-R’s code (Vader is Sarc…keep up,) and rewrote it into programs that would fight the system…at least he started writing it, before the programs took on their own presence. This gives Palpatine LOTS of reason to digitize the kid’s arse and drop him in an arena with a SAR-LAC.
(Edit: It was late and I was tired…I believe I was thinking of a RAN-COR…)
August 18 at 12:04am · Like.
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I’ve been thinking…and Sam Flynn’s first impression with the Light Cycle baton kind of confirmed it…in this universe, it might be appropriate to use identity rods, rather than disks. Many of the same features of the disks could be derived from a rod.
They can be held much the same way, offer similarly impressive posturing. They can also serve as the handle of a blaster for those who prefer the security of a distance weapon and haven’t the patience and control of a JED-I class program. Hip-mount or back-mount, I don’t know…I’m leaning towards back to help the bridging of the universes for the audience. Ninja-style back drawing of a sword is pretty cool, too. 😀
Uh…Amanda K. Yepiz…I think I just found a use for that blog.
August 18 at 12:14am
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I’d want this story to be able to stand on its own, as well as let the two existing audiences enjoy it. Not just a LEGO-style kitbash of what’s already been done in SW, though that was part of the inspiration. (Or Robot Chicken, or Family Guy, or Mickey & Friends…)
August 18 at 12:18am
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Amanda K. Yepiz replied:
It’s like in the movie Amadeus. You’ve gotta write it down, it’s no use to use in your head. 🙂
August 18 at 12:40am
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*glances around…whispers* Incom…Encom…
August 20 at 3:07pm
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Back to the story writing itself…eventually I’ll clean up my browser tabs enough to start that blog. Anyhow…
If in TRON, users equate to gods, programs equate to people, bits and bytes I suppose would equate to insects or low-level pets…that leaves a gap, when translating a galaxy also populated by intelligent machines — the droids. ISO’s certainly aren’t less than the average program…they’d be closer to Force sensitives. I don’t see any equivalent in TRON for droids.
Droids are made by people…or other droids. So, how do we translate this to the digital world? “File” sounds lame and doesn’t really infer much about the thing’s nature, beyond it being a “thing.” A rock in the outlands could be a file (or perhaps a file fragment)…as could an ocean. I don’t really see a word in common computer jargon that feels like a droid. So…
A droid, while an individual entity, is also a reflection of part of its creator, be it user or program or droid. So…let’s go with “Derivative.” I think it works well and like “android,” the full word, can be shortened to a new term I’ll coin. “Driv,” as in the first half of “driven.”
“Hey — we don’t serve their kind.”
“Huh?”
“Your drivs — we don’t want them here.”
Yep, it works.
Dummy working title for Episode I: “Derivatives Can’t Dance.”
August 22 at 10:58pm
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Amanda K. Yepiz replied:
Yes, excellent. Very clever. I’d like to read more. Looks like you’ve started already, in a way. What’s next?
Augutst 22 at 11:35pm
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My head is just pouring ideas out and I don’t even have time to write all of them down…stupid real life… Anyhow, some of it is stuff that’s being shuffled or changed as my brain processes. One thing I’ve forgotten to mention is the grid…that is, grids.
I’ve not found a word I like to describe extra-planetary space or a galaxy, but the TRON grid is a reflection of a universe contained on one planet. (Physically, one computer…neither the Encom nor the Flynn grid computer was connected to the internet. Maybe that’ll be an expansion in T3. Could get scary, especially if lolcat isomorphs are involved.)
SW expands to more planets, so there will be multiple grids, each with its own climate and physics, within certain ranges. Not all grids will support programs. The obvious equivalent we have before us for space is the internet. It needs another name within the digital realm, however…I’m very good with names so that’ll come, but I’m certainly willing to read suggestions.
Some of the ideas are visual ones…things that don’t really translate to words, or at least I can better express in 3D, eventually. I’m not totally decided on the visual style…TRON had a huge upgrade in style when Flynn made his grid in his own image, as it were.
It’s just occured to me that perhaps different grids in the broad system could have different technological levels. Perhaps a WOOK-E’s bowcaster would be in a style similar to TRON ’82, but advanced Corellian ships would look more in-line with Legacy. Each grid would presumably be overseen by different users with different tastes and abilities.
August 23 at 12:08am
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There’s also the issue of where all this is actually happening. Surely a planet (the “real” one within the story) such as Coruscant would have some sort of internet?
August 23 at 12:11am
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Really undecided on that. I don’t know if I’ll be happy with simply dropping this digital universe inside an existing one, either SW or ours.
August 23 at 12:13am
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Seems like there must be a way to really make it interesting…the challenge is making it logical.
August 23 at 12:14am
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”Not quite as long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…a computer system was fashioned to study historical events, in order to avoid repeating past conflicts…” *shrug* This part is not flowing, lol.
August 23 at 12:16am
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The SW books evidently trashed a lot of what the movies made familiar, when they expanded the universe after the Battle of Endor. Evidently nasties came from another galaxy and started a war that destroyed planets…and let’s just say that some of our favorite characters didn’t live through that kind of thing.
August 23 at 12:20am
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Did a lot of reading online the last few days…I think I remember that Coruscant was destroyed, or came close. Might not be a feasible place for a historical War Games system.
August 23 at 12:22am
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Also, none of the characters we know really equate to the computer-using types we see in TRON or say, The Matrix. Palpatine would sooner blow up the planet a computer was on, than sit at a desk and type for more than five minutes. That’s a story hurdle I need to solve at some point.
Looking at the historical study angle, perhaps the Jedi are the way…they lean towards tech-savants, surely there must be one or two who were extra nerdy. So a padawan history buff has a self-appointed off-time project and recreates the figures we know as AI programs, (in a computer where they can’t hurt anybody — ha! — but they can…) perhaps with some tweaks or guestimates, along with the occasional clerical error, offer us some new characters and story arcs to explore.
And then he or some other sap gets sucked in…I think the Force can believably lead us to having some scanning device that would make Encom proud and it certainly opens up the possibility of a conversion between matter and other forms, i.e., ethereal. Why not digital, too?
August 23 at 12:36am
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*smacks self* Jedi are always the way, silly.
August 23 at 12:37am
Star Wars: Grids of Force 