Before the outpouring of Project Luminous information yesterday, I was skeptical as to whether or not the build up to this event would be worth it. I feel in todays modern era of nerd culture, these big initial reveals from any franchise often miss the mark and leave many fans disappointed and wanting more. This was not the case for Project Luminous at all. The project is a massive endeavor with incredible potential and with that of course, comes speculation. I feel it is only necessary to talk a little bit about everything.
So, what exactly is Project Luminous you may ask? I'll tell you, it is a magnificent collaboration of story tellers coming together to tell one, interconnected story across multiple mediums for every audience in the Star Wars fandom. The main creative minds behind this project are none other than Claudia Gray, Charles Soule, Justina Ireland, Daniel José Older, and Cavan Scott, all of which have worked on previous Star Wars projects. While the team has worked to create this new corner of the universe together, they will each be working on their own individual projects to tell the connected story.
The events of Project Luminous will be taking place 200 years before the events of The Phantom Menace, in the era known as the High Republic. They will explore a new kind of Jedi, one at the height of peace in the galaxy. The two driving forces behind the creative's desires to tell these kind of stories were the quote from Obi-Wan in A New Hope, "For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic." as well as the idea, what scares the Jedi?
The main conflict seems to be coming in the form of the Nihil, a group best described as "space vikings" who are said to be able to use hyperspace in a dangerous way. They were purposefully designed to look much different from any villain seen before in Star Wars. This idea of a lawless, chaotic band of savages being a villain rather than a political opposite or galactic oppressor is beyond interesting to me and probably the thing that I am most excited for as this new era of Star Wars gets under way.
There is tons more information on the actual events and characters in this new set of of stories, more so than I can fit into a single article. I now move the focus to how these stories are going to told. As I mentioned, they will be told over a variety of mediums including comics, novels, children's books, and likely more along the way. There will be stories for everyone, young adult novels, children's stories, adult novels, you name it, Project Luminous has it. This feels like the start of something truly special at Lucasfilm, with a new EU of sorts brewing, one that's incredibly connected and meticulously thought out.
I feel that the possibilities of something like this are truly endless. The team has been working on Project Luminous since 2018, Pablo Hidalgo even says that they have been in conception and design processes in the same way that they would a movie. The way in which this team built a universe, and then went on to tell the stories set in that universe gets me really excited. This seems to be a really well planned and thought out vision being brought to life by an incredibly passionate group of individuals.
It was also mentioned at the press event that the projects talked about were part of "phase one" of Project Luminous, meaning there is going to likely be many more stories to be told beyond what they are talking about now. One project in which I would personally love to see come to life is an animated series. We know Project Luminous is only written works at this point, but who is to say they haven't had discussions, or even have began development on projects like an animated or live action show, video game, or even film? The possibilities seem to be endless, and this is truly the beginning of a whole new chapter in the Star Wars story.
The first novel in Project Luminous, The Light of the Jedi, written by Charles Soule is set to release in August of 2020 with many more projects to come shortly after. With more information on the novel and Project Luminous before then, it is a great time to be a Star Wars fan.
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