*sigh*

Tell us more, George.

I recently finished reading Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars and was delighted to learn that midi-chlorians had been a part of Lucas' ideas for Star Wars nearly since its conception.

Yep; from the begining just like the Whills. Maybe, Luke's exile in Lucas' Episode 7 is due to his discovery of the Whills?

Someone please leak Whill concept art. It exists at Lucasfilm somewhere.

Lucas' ST would have been a lot different approach than Disney's rehashing of the Rebels vs. Imperials story from the OT. I suppose it could still happen cinematically. It's just that Luke, Leia, and Han won't play a part in the story.

As an admitted unconditional George defender, I'll say anything he'd do with Ep. 7-9 would be utterly fascinating and compelling to me. This direction is completely fresh and unexpected, and very much plays to George's avant-garde filmmaking roots.

Doing The Clone Wars clearly reinvigorated George. Every indication I got from him in 2005, just as Revenge of the Sith was released, was that he was content that his story was finished. Considering how well-done Clone Wars were, he got his creative juices flowing again, and it seemed to naturally lead him to contemplating Ep. 7-9. Back in the OT era, he'd go back and forth as to whether his overall Star Wars series had 3, 6, 9 or even 12 films. Documented interviews show him vacillating between those numbers, so the existence of Ep. 7, at least in his mind, was there throughout the years.

Basing films on the microscopic level removes several potential problems: he isn't reliant on aging and grumpy actors, he's basically totally freed up in terms of his story "sandbox" (something Ep. 7-8 seriously fucked up IMO) and he can present his story using all of ILM's talents and create a pure animated experience.

My guess is the tone and story of his sequel trilogy would have nicely dovetailed off the brilliant Yoda arc that concluded The Clone Wars. That seemed to deal directly with these concepts, particularly the conversations between Yoda and Qui-Gon on Dagobah. Those floating glowing balls that represented Qui-Gon's presence on Dagobah may very well have been a way to tangibly represent the Whills, as they were a vessel for Qui-Gon's ability to communicate with Yoda. The Force Priestesses might be connected to the Whills as well.

I'd pay an obscene amount of money to see his detailed outline for Ep. 7-9. And I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy every bit of it.

I thought of the final Clone Wars episodes as well. Maybe, Filoni will be allowed to tackle this subject through Resistance?

Here's the full exert:

Lucas: Everyone hated it when we started talking about midichlorians in The Phantom Menace. A whole aspect of this film is about symbiotic relationships. It’s about recognizing that we’re not the boss. There is a whole ecosystem there.

Cameron: There’s a whole ecosystem called microbiome inside that we’ve just started getting to know.

Lucas: The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But 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.

Cameron: You were creating a religion, George.

Lucas: Back then, I used to say it means we’re just the cars, the vehicles of the Whills they’re traveling around with. We are the vessels of Whills. And the connection is via the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones who communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in the general sense, are the Force.

Cameron: But in fact you’re just drawing a surface, a facade of science around an idea that is timeless, namely, the mind, the soul, the sky, the cause of all being. In your world, you’re accessing the basic archetype, the mind, a deity, and all that.

Lucas: I worked this whole concept with the Force, the Jedi, and everything from beginning to end. I just never had the chance to finish it and tell people about it.

Cameron: It’s a creation myth, and without a creation myth you can not build a world. Every religion, every mythology is based on it.

Lucas: If I’d held on to the company, I could have done it, and then it would have been done. Of course a lot of fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would have been told.
Based on Lucas' general comment, it's hard to tell how much of the film would take place "microbiotically" or how the human protagonists would interact with this world.

I'm not sure of philosophic significance either. What do the Whills get out of their machinations? Do they literally control everything in the GFFA? Does this mean that the true enemy is the Force itself? Is Anakin a conceptualized device of the Whills or an unforeseen aberration? Is Force-Ghost Anakin the only hope for destroying the Whills control?

I have 100 questions - all of which are much more intriguing than wondering about Rey's parents, whether Poe will become a true leader, whether Finn and Rose end-up together, whether Kylo finds justice and/or peace of mind, etc. I'm interested in those questions too. But, Lucas' comments have got my brain on fire in the classic Star Wars sense much more than anything Disney has originated.

That being said, I have new found sympathy for Igor and Kennedy. I realize that it's not easy to turn-out a profitable general audience-pleaser based on a microbiotic premise.

I do wish they had the nerve to try. Is Arndt's episode 7 script based on Lucas' vision?

After Solo's disappointment, there will probably never be a Star Wars movie with this high-minded a concept.

Star Wars is DONE.

Kennedy/Johnson/Abrams/Hidalgo have KILLED it with their political machinations and outright propaganda. There is no going back. They blew it to smithereens, and there's no conceivable way to undo the clusterfuck that they gleefully created. They have gone WAY out of their way to ATTACK THE FANS, calling them racists, misogynists, etc., when the overwhelming majority of them clearly aren't. Are those fans, or fans who think similarly, EVER going back to the franchise?

Hell no!

BILLION$ in ea$y profit$, FOREVER LOST.

Lucas has always been a left-winger. But he never beat anyone over the head about it. His eye was always on the BIGGER picture, telling important truths that no one could argue against regardless of their own personal political beliefs. Smart man.

That said, his execution of the midi-chlorians was ham-fisted, and that is a major issue of the prequels. It doesn't mean that the idea itself was bad though. I rather like the idea of defining what the Whills are, what their goals are, and how it impacts the macro-scopic actions of our heroes and villains.

The odds of us ever seeing the above? Just about zero.

Solo is going to have lost $100+ million dollars. What was once unthinkable, has happened.

Ep. IX is going to be even worse. Virtually everyone I know not only has NO interest in it, they WANT IT TO FAIL because they're/someone they know is being wrongfully accused and belittled by the films' creators. Those that still "like" The Last Jedi, are constantly kept on their heels, trying to defend the enormous and obvious machinations of that film. Those fans are going to be so bruised by the time that Ep. IX comes out, can you imagine how much enthusiasm they're going to have for it? What a mess! There is no coming back from this. None.

Way to go Disney!

Are we all reading the same thing here? If the sequels featured midichlorians, the world would have fucking revolted.

People talk about TLJ bastardizing Luke's journey, well according to this treatment there was no free-will to begin with. This would have been to Star Wars what Prometheus was to Alien: answers to questions nobody really cared about. Well, I guess Solo just did that too.

The sequels have plenty of narrative problems - chief of which is that there is no compelling continuation of the story that ended with ROTJ - but this would have been disastrous. Daring, but disastrous.

Star Wars itself came way out of left field in the '70s. No one expected it, knew they wanted it or cared to make anything like it but here we all are. Let's not forget that.

I never eye rolled with the midi chlorians explanatiom in TPM,I saw it as the expanding on understanding of the force that logically the Jedi Order would've attained given their time to study the force and the tech existent in the GFFA.

Yoda speaking of the Force as he did in ESB and ROTJ was of course more vague but mystical (which is cool as) but was because the OT was meant to be a piece in a multi trilogy story/saga I understood this to be exposition.

Just like Anakin was spoken of as this great Warrior and Pilot who had once been a good man,we did not see that till the PT.

I can't stop thinking about how amazing this could have been. I highly suspect that the microbiotic world hinted at would have been intercut with the more conventional plane of the story (of spaceships, lightsabers, planets, etc.). But I get a cold, solemn, detached, ethereal vibe resulting from what could've been Luke's intense study of and devotion to the Force, post-ROTJ. I'm combining these words from Lucas with the slight bit of concept art he had commissioned from Chiang. Also, from the Mortis stuff in TCW and Rebels.

I think we missed out on a conceptual hat-trick from ol' Georgie boy. But that's just the cross we bear.