Star Wars New Jedi Order has just found another writer with George Nolfi, and a lot of fans are hoping this one sticks around this time.
We don’t know much about how he’s going to be tackling the story, but he does have an interesting take on George Lucas and how he uses politics in Star Wars to explore themes of fascism and oppression. Talking to FilmStories, Nolfi explains:
“If you think about George Lucas, the six movies that he did, and the universe that he created, it’s actually very steeped in broad notions of politics. It’s not talking about today, per se, but there’s the Empire’s Nazism slash Roman Empire. The democracy of the Roman Empire collapsing and becoming an empire and the perennial story of human beings organizing themselves and against chaos, and then the tools that help human societies tamp down on chaos become oppression.
So that is really very core to what I think George Lucas was trying to talk about. And one of the wonderful things about science fiction and Star Wars – which is more almost science fantasy or space opera – is that you can raise the deepest issues without it feeling like a philosophy class, or a political science class, or something I read in the newspaper today…
It can be about real things, deep things.”
Admittedly, saying something like ‘Star Wars is political’ is likely to draw toxic fans like moth to a flame, but it does seem like Nolfi is being very pragmatic with his statement and is just trying to point out how elegant the original films were in portraying politics without really shining a light at it.
As someone who was a big fan of The Last Jedi, it was kind of disheartening that The Rise of Skywalker would go and embrace legacy again, but hopefully Lucasfilm has already learned its lesson when it comes to fan-pandering. No doubt the box office of The Mandalorian and Grogu could be an indication of what the next 10 years of Star Wars is going to look like.
For now, no release date has been set for New Jedi Order, but fans are hoping for a 2026 release.
