Star Wars: Underworld
Recently, producer and Star Wars/ Lucas cohort Rick McCullum has been talking about Star Wars: Underworld. It’s going to be a live-action adult-oriented TV show based in the Star Wars universe. When I first heard this, I wasn’t all that excited to be honest.
And I love Star Wars. I still want to be Han Solo when I grow up.
When I was 7 or 8 I went to see the original Star Wars and it utterly blew me away. For two years if you so much as played the sound track, I would run around hyperventilating with excitement. I then saw Empire Strikes Back and my little impressionable mind was blown all over again. I loved Return of the Jedi almost as much. The one thing that grated was the stupid bastard little ewoks. If Empire troops can be defeated by a teddy bear dropping a rock on their heads, then fuck ’em, they deserve to lose. Standards had clearly slipped.
The new ones? Well you can probably guess what I like or don’t like about them. Some scenes were awesome such as: the water planet with the clones followed by the fight between Jango and Obi Wan, the final fight on the lava world, the pod race, the fight with General Greivous, the Arena battle and subsequent desert battle, and so on. Epic believable worlds with excitement and adventure. Some scenes were bad: anything that appealed to a younger audience – Jar Jar and general slapstick. Empire Strikes Back was probably the darkest of the movies and it has been my favourite since I was a child, there’s no need for cutesy crap.
Am I going anywhere with this, or just having a Star Wars rant? Yes to both actually. What got me excited about Star Wars: Underworld were McCallum’s comments that the show is “The Empire Strikes Back on steroids!” and that it will be even darker than the movies. This is all good. I hope it is a Firefly type crew set in the Star Wars universe but with epic worlds and non-cute aliens. McCallum goes on:
“Obviously, we changed it for where we couldn’t go in terms of language. It was to be serious performances, very complicated relationships, unbelievable issues of power and corruption, greed, vanity, pride, ego manifesting itself at levels that only equal the world that we live in now, but, as I said, on steroids.”
My only concern is that it will be too political. The senate is a bit dull. Another concern is that they go too gritty and it’s like Battlestar Galactica without the hot Cylons.
Who knows? It bodes well that McCallum adds that “if you do a character like Gollum or Jar Jar or any major digital character, that costs twice as much as having Tom Cruise in a movie.” So no Jar Jar. And probably no Tom Cruise.
Even though McCallum is talking like it’s a done deal, it’s not due for a few years so maybe it won’t happen at all. In which case, sorry I bloody mentioned it.
For the source of the quotes see: