Leslye Headland, the showrunner of Disney+'s upcoming series Star Wars: The Acolyte, has said that her show will take inspiration from the first entry of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Little is known about The Acolyte so far, except that the show will take place during the waning days of the High Republic era (an era which begins roughly 200 years before the Skywalker Saga films) and that it will be a mystery-thriller. Leslye Headland was announced as the series showrunner last December during Disney's virtual Investor Day event.
The High Republic first made its way into Star Wars canon earlier this year as a multimedia narrative project spanning various publishing mediums, such as novels and comics. While the project is still in the first phase of its planned three-phase rollout, The Acolyte will be showing audiences the final days of the era leading up to the era that the prequel trilogy takes place in. Star Wars publishing is beginning to flesh out the time period before the saga films, but the movies and shows have yet to do so. As a result, the Acolyte will be unique in that it will be the first live-action Star Wars project to break this tradition.
In a recent interview with The Wrap, Leslye Headland discussed the impact of The Phantom Menace on her while developing The Acolyte. She recalls asking questions like "what happened to lead up to this [film]?" and "why are the Jedi like this?" after watching the movie for the first time in high school. You can read her complete account below:
I kind of wondered, but what happened to lead up to [The Phantom Menace]? That’s kind of where my ‘Star Wars’ fan brain went was like, ‘How did we get here?’ And why are the Jedi like this? When they are in power, why are they acting this way and how is it that they’re not having the reaction that you would think they would to Anakin’s presence and what Qui-Gon Jinn is saying about how passionately he feels about training him and bringing him into the fold. It’s like, even the discovery of Darth Maul is kind of met with this like, ‘Hm, interesting’ kind of feeling. So I just think for me, my brain has always buzzed around that area and wondered what’s going on here — or what has been going on here.
The Star Wars prequels were largely panned upon release but have since accumulated a solid base of fans who genuinely enjoy the films and their contributions to Star Wars lore despite their faults. Lucasfilm has been attentive to this, gradually implementing more and more aspects of the prequel films into their newer projects like The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now, with an entirely new era of Star Wars storytelling in its infancy, Star Wars creatives seem to be taking inspiration from across the franchise's history rather than just the original trilogy.
With Deborah Chow's Obi-Wan Kenobi series set to serve as a direct successor to the events of the prequel trilogy, Headland's series may conversely serve as a direct predecessor. In that way, the two series will act as two neat bookends to the oft-maligned trilogy. Hopefully, Headland's The Acolyte will contextualize The Phantom Menace in a way that will help detractors view the film less harshly.
Source: The Wrap
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