Filed Under » pokemon

10) Star Wars Post-Quels (Episodes 7/8/9)

This has long been a big dream for nerds, even if the prospect has faded considerably as of late: a new trilogy of films that would pick up where Return of the Jedi left off: the Empire has fallen, the New Republic has risen from the ashes, and Luke is about to restore the Jedi Order. The exciting thing about actual sequels (as opposed to the prequels) is that we wouldn't already know what happens (unless they used the many post-original trilogy books as inspiration, which they probably wouldn't). The reasons this dream is dead are:

• No one wants to see George Lucas create three more mildly underwhelming (I'm trying to keep it civil, okay?) Star Wars entries.
• George Lucas did not like the reception the prequels got, and has been quoted as saying he was done making Star Wars movies because he didn't want to go through that again.
• George Lucas is not going to let anyone but him create canonical, live action films. For a while, it looked like Spielberg might direct one of the prequels – George squashed the idea quickly, refusing to let one of the best directors of our generation and his good friend even touch the series.
  

So maybe it's a blessing in disguise: we don't have to watch the internet get crazily worked up over new Star Wars films that would never live up to expectations no matter how good they were and we can always let "what happens next?" live in our imagination, which is probably better than whatever the reality would be. Plus, can you imagine Harrison Ford as a cranky, elderly Han Solo? I don't think anyone wants to see that. Then again, Mark Hamill could probably use the work.

UPDATE: We were wrong. We were so wrong.