There's Only One 'Star Wars' Time Period 'Thrones' Creators Should Use
Let's talk about the Westeros of the Star Wars galaxy.
The creators of HBO’s Game of Thrones series just got their own trilogy of Star Wars movies, and the best story they could possibly adapt comes from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Whenever a new Star Wars series or trilogy gets announced, a portion of hardcore fans hope it’ll retell the story of Revan and Darth Malak thousands of years before the original film trilogy. We saw such hopes rise when Lucasfilm announced Rian Johnson’s upcoming trilogy. But whereas Rian Johnson’s better suited to creating novel stories that defy our expectations, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss excel at adapting feudal fantasy stories — like their Game of Thrones series on HBO.
Even if a lot of people think Benioff and Weiss are bad for Star Wars, they’ll probably be great at this.
Why?
Knights of the Old Republic is already the Game of Thrones of the Star Wars universe.
Darth Malak and Darth Revan, two of the scariest Sith to ever exist.
The original Knights of the Old Republic offers a complex narrative of interwoven storylines riddled with betrayal, shocking twists, and lots of death. The game focuses on a few core characters, but it largely features an ensemble cast of characters.
Much like other Star Wars stories, it’s also fundamentally about good versus evil, and how that relates to the internal struggle of its characters and the large-scale wars it presents. There might be hordes of Sith and armies of Jedi alive in this time period, but the lines between good and evil are never so blurred as in this era. Jedi don’t always do the right thing, and Sith aren’t always the bad guys, which only makes it resonate even more with Westeros.
Especially because it’s set 4,000 years before A New Hope, it truly is the ancient times where Jedi Knights seem more like, well, knights. The whole vibe is more archaic and lore-filled. The lightsabers might look remarkably similar, along with many of the ships, droids, blaster, and locales, but The Old Republic’s visual aesthetic is very much the feudal times of the Star Wars universe.
The Knights of the Old Republic (2003) game follows an amnesiac former Force-wielder that comes to in the midst of a massive Sith raid on the galaxy, as led by Darth Malak. The protagonist gradually learns the ways of the Force in typical Star Wars fashion, teaming up with allies and growing stronger all so he can eventually save the galaxy. There’s a shocking twist that happens at the midpoint of the story and along the way the option to edge toward the Light or Dark side of the Force — or somewhere in between.
The epic scale and length of the tale would be perfect for a film trilogy, but the Old Republic is rife with other stories it can pull from.
Promotional art for 'Star Wars: The Old Republic' an MMO sequel to 'Knights of the Old Republic'.
Knights of the Old Republic spawned a sequel focused on a former Jedi hero from the Mandalorian Wars, but there’s also a series of Knights of the Old Republic comics that takes place before the first game and focuses on completely different characters.
Even if they don’t specifically rehash the story presented in Knights of the Old Republic, the era of the Old Republic is rife with good stories to mine, even if it’s only tangentially related to the potential source material.
But we’ve seen Benioff and Weiss thrive by adapting pre-existing material, so why would they even go for something original?
This new Star Wars trilogy has no release date announced so far.
Here’s a video of Arya and Brienne dueling with lightsabers to get you excited for the prospect of Benioff and Weiss’s trilogy:
