Star Wars: Eclipse is set in a scenario that Disney has been building for years: in the High Republic. And it’s being scolded quite unfairly
It’s so easy to make fun of Star Wars. Always could, just think of the Holiday Special from the 70s, the crying Ewok mountain from the 80s – and don’t even get me started on super violent General Jar Jar. Hey, I joke about the sequels all the time myself, because I kind of have to process how bleakly this mindless swan song threw my childhood heroes Leia, Han and Luke down the rubbish chute.
But quips are, at times, treacherous. They shorten debates, tempt people not to really engage with an issue. And in the Star Wars world, that’s currently true of nothing so much as the High Republic.
For months, the internet has been throwing tomatoes at Star Wars: The High Republic. Disney’s gigantic multimedia project was supposed to usher in a new era in Star Wars in 2020. Numerous books, comics, audio plays have been published in the meantime, telling diverse stories that take place almost 200 years before the events of the old Star Wars films. With The Acolyte, the High Republic even gets a full-fledged series, and with the freshly announced Star Wars Eclipse a genuine triple-A game.
Lucasfilm is creating a huge ensemble of new Jedi, new threats, new locations, new twists and turns – and the community has been ranting for weeks about the fact that one of the new characters is a rock. For months now, people have been mocking every new character, every new story twist, on YouTube.
And hey, I’m not standing here at all to dismiss every criticism or claim The High Republic is perfect. Have enough batuu chickens to pick with the new era myself, especially as Lucasfilm once again succumbs to the utter delusion that the world needs more new lightsaber varieties. Lightsabers are the double-breasted jacket of science fiction: timelessly good designs, as simple as they are perfect – no one needs lightsaber whips, rotating propeller lightsabers or those weird fold-out double clubs. Terrible.
But as someone who has devoured almost all of the High Republic books and comics, I want to make a stand today: Star Wars Eclipse’s scenario not only bleeds potential, but it’s exactly the chapter the Jedi have been missing. It retroactively makes the original films and prequels better, it answers completely different questions than Knights of the Old Republic, and that’s precisely why it’s so important to the big picture.
And besides, the living stone Geode is the funniest Star Wars character in ages, so I said it and now let’s go over the three most important points.
1. The High Republic fills a void
The Jedi of the Star Wars films are not shining heroes. The whole brouhaha about the light and dark side of the Force deliberately leads you down the wrong path in the prequels. Palpatine can only rise to galactic emperor at all because the Jedi Order is more off course than the Millenium Falcon in the bowels of a space worm. The Jedi suppress human feelings in their padawans, they forbid love, squat unworldly in their ivory tower and let themselves be radicalised by the Clone Wars to such an extent that Mace Windu wants to strike down the defeated Sidious in Episode 3 in cold blood before Anakin gives him feedback on the idea with his laser sword.
Obi-Wan rhapsodises to Luke in Episode 4 about how nobly the Jedi have kept peace, joy and probably pancakes in the galaxy for a thousand generations, but we never see more of it than the corrupt last days of a failing Republic. How could it have come to this? It is precisely this open question of the Star Wars films that the High Republic answers a little more with each new story.
But more than that, High Republic shows me for once, a Jedi philosophy that really works By the time of Star Wars Eclipse, a Padawan doesn’t fall to the dark side every ten minutes because he has to smother every surging teen feeling in his pillow at night. The Jedi of the High Republic are strikingly similar to the new Jedi Order Luke Skywalker is building in the old Expanded Universe: Jedi are allowed to love, to cuddle with each other, but are supposed to keep themselves from obsessions through meditation, lest they think about murdering problematic students with a lightsaber some night. Because that’s not what well-written Jedi do.
The Jedi of the High Republic are not action heroes, but pacifists who only whip out the lightsaber in absolute emergencies – and in general I could rave all day about how competently all the actors in the High Republic act. Chancellor Lina Soh governs with heart, mildness and understanding, the Senate is not only made up of corrupt saboteurs, instead I experience an old republic here in which many things are really good. At least in appearance.
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2. The High Republic is wonderfully slow
You know what I like best about the new Dune film? That it takes so much time. Sure, I like fast-cut Netflix fireworks like Arcane, which blasts through one spectacle after another at an insane pace instead of palavering on forever – but an epic that unfolds gradually over umpteen episodes, heck, there’s just a magic all its own in that. The High Republic is just that, and that’s why it’s attracting so much criticism.
Not much happens in the first books. The big threat – space pirates called Nihil – starts out looking like a Hard Rock Cafe full of convicts, and the second big bad – the Drengir – is basically a bunch of angry trees. They scare timid landscapers at best, but that’s exactly what The High Republic plays with. Because the Jedi Order and the Republic also think they are safe, promptly achieve their first victories against the Nihil, everything is easy. Only in the later stories does it become clear that there’s more to it than that. And as a fan I also know that somewhere in this galaxy there are at least two Sith.
Just like in The Mandalorian, it will take years for the big picture to unfold in the High Republic. The first phase comes to an end in early 2022 after more than two years, The Acolyte and Star Wars Eclipse may not even be set until phase three. And I love that the storywriters are really taking their time in between to spread out their huge ensemble of characters on the holo-chessboard. Because even though I’m really deep into the High Republic, I see so many unknowns in the Eclipse trailer.
Yes, at minute 01:30 you probably spy the Nihil, but I have no idea what, for example, the drummer dudes and the slime mate at the end are all about, what role Cato Neimoidia and the droid control ships play, what army marches up at 01:37 and, and, and. There are still so many unknown players in the High Republic, because it’s guaranteed that it won’t always come down to the same clash between Jedi and Sith.
3. The High Republic has fresh ideas
The High Republic is not Lucasfilm’s first multimedia storytelling project. In the 90s we had Shadows of the Empire with its legendary first Hoth level, in the 2000s The Force Unleashed wowed as one of the last great Lucasarts games. There were comics, action figures and novels for both – and I highly recommend the Making Of for Shadows of the Empire, even if you usually find Making Ofs stupid:
But The High Republic goes even further, creating a whole new universe with fresh ideas that Star Wars frankly desperately needs. It starts with the little details. For example, Jedi in their starfighters have to stick their lightsaber into the dashboard like an ignition key, so that no one else can abuse the Jedi technology.
But there are also great new ideas, for example the terrible disaster at the very beginning of the story. It’s not a spoiler either, because it happens in the first few pages, so don’t worry: a starship is ominously destroyed during a hyperspace jump, causing wreckage to crash into planets all over the galaxy at faster-than-light speeds. Compared to these detonations, the meteorite the dinos had to deal with back then was a pebble.
What does all this mean for Star Wars Eclipse? Fortunately, I don’t know, because there really is something new emerging here. For me, the finale of Mandalorian’s second season was the best Star Wars moment of the last 20 years, no question about it, but even so, the makers are of course working with a lot of set pieces from the past here. Thrawn, the Empire, the Dark Troopers, Boba Fett’s rise after Episode 6 – I’d give my most prized possession, the glittering glurak from the Pokémon trading card game, to see the old Expanded Universe on the big screen, and that’s exactly what Disney is delivering peu à peu right now.
But still, we need new ideas too. Really fresh concepts that continue the Star Wars story beyond the Skywalker saga. Star Wars Eclipse, Acolyte and the High Republic want to be just that. And I’m so excited to see where the journey goes in the next few years. Even if you find Disney’s Star Wars to be creepy: Give the books a chance. And let me know what you think.
