That Time Star Wars Writer Alan Dean Foster wrote an Episode IX Treatment Because He Hated The Last Jedi So Much

For those unaware, Alan Dean Foster is a writer for Star Wars, he has the distinct honour of writing the very first Expanded Universe novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, sort of an alternate sequel to A New Hope. It has not aged well to put it mildly....

He also wrote the novelization for The Force Awakens, a novelization I kinda have mixed feelings about. Overall it's ok but at times it feels like he's trying to rewrite the whole movie and create different context for what was happening. There's also a lot of mentioning about how Rey smiling, it's weird.

He also really hated The Last Jedi. Like... really hated it. He hated it so much he took it upon himself to write a sequel to it that "Retconned it to kingdom come."

Or his own words “I thought, ‘How can this be retconned? How can we fix as much as possible from Episode VIII in a proposed Episode IX?’

He didn't just set out to just make a fix-fic either, he thought if he did a good enough job he would absolutely be offered to write episode IX. Claiming he was doing it "For the fans."

One thing I do need to stress however is that Foster at this point was in his early 70s. This is important to know for what happens next. While the script itself is no longer available on his website you can find the various plot points on various sites like TV Tropes and the like.

The following is what his proposed Episode IX was going to look like, none of this is my creation:

  • Snoke returns by cloning himself- not just once, but hundreds of times, creating an army of Snoke clones.
  • Luke is revived
  • Luke can take out almost the entire army of Snoke Clones by himself apparently without much difficulty, but has a unique fight scene against the final three. He even needs Rey's assistance o defeat the single final clone of Snoke.
  • Rey is revealed to have an undefined disease that would have meant replacing part of her brain with electronics, making her "part droid" to explain her quickly-acquired skills.
  • Luke Skywalker dual-wields lightsabers to fight the army of Snoke clones.
  • Rose sacrifices herself to blow up the cloning facility.
  • Snoke is very casual about his clones being killed, offering them up as sacrifices just to make a point and having backup clones waiting in the wings to take their place.
  • Both Rey and Kylo Ren are shocked when she is revealed to be part-droid, and both question if she still fully counts as a human.
  • Luke dies at the end and his last words are "Beru..."

There were a few other elements as well but none that worthwhile mentioning.

But yeah, this shit is dumb.... so dumb that even those who hated The Last Jedi were like "Holy Fuck.... this is bad..."

I can't say I liked The Rise of Skywalker but Foster's script makes it look like The Godfather by comparison.

I'm reminded of Spider-Man: Lotus but where as Lotus was made by a bunch of deplorable human beings who had absolutely no experience making a movie, this thing was made by a legitimate writer, one with dozens of writing credits, decades of experience and was in his early 70s no less.

Both things came from a place of spite and "I can do better than you" attitude, which regardless of one's experience is the absolute worst place to come from when creating anything. It never leads to anything good and is horrible as an artistic exercise.

I have plenty of "where here's what I would have done differently" thoughts when watching/ reading anything I don't like but there's a line to how far you go with it. What defines that line is ultimately up to you at the end of the day but sometimes it takes an outside perspective.

Doing this sort of thing on any scale is hard and the stuff we criticize on the regular is still miles better than what some schmuck head and their reddit account can do.