There are rumors and then there are rumors. And the validity very often comes down to their source. Today we’re getting a rumor from a source, BadAss Digest, I think has a fairly good track record on these sorts of things. Sure, its editor Devin Faraci seems to place a fair amount of pride in being one of the internet’s chief curmudgeons and I think that is why I would credit his reporting with more veracity than I would certain other sites.
With that in mind, here’s the what Faraci has to report on what could be the plot for Star Wars: Episode VII. Obviously, potential spoilers –
Imagine the standard Star Wars crawl, and when it ends the camera pans up to the stars. But instead of a spaceship zooming into frame we see… a hand! A severed hand, tumbling through space. A severed hand gripping a light saber.
That hand falls onto a desert planet, where it is discovered by characters who will be our heroes. One is Daisy Ridley. The other is John Boyega, who is playing someone trying to change his path in life (again, I’m keeping it vague here). They recognize the light saber as a Jedi relic and decide to return it to the proper people.
Their quest takes them off world, and they meet up with Han Solo and Chewbacca, who aren’t flying around in the Millenium Falcon anymore but are piloting… well, that could be a spoiler. I’ll leave it. Anyway, Han and Chewie recognize the light saber as Luke’s, and they say they haven’t seen their friend in thirty years, since the events of Return of the Jedi.
So begins a quest to find the missing Jedi Master. Meanwhile, on an ice planet, nefarious forces are building a super weapon, one capable of destroying not planets but entire solar systems…
In many ways this plot of Episode VII is an echo of A New Hope. Instead of R2 coming to Tatooine it’s a hand falling from the sky, but the basic sweep of the story is similar, and intentionally so. But things that seem familiar may not be as familiar as you think – don’t assume that every ice or desert planet in the galaxy has already been visited, if you know what I’m saying.
Some interesting food for thought. But I do have one question that is raising a warning flag with me. In Empire Strikes Back, we see Luke’s hand fall down into the air shaft in Cloud City where it presumably either got stuck in some pipe or fell all the way into Bespin’s atmosphere. So how did it wind up in space? Gravity, presumably even in the Star Wars universe, doesn’t work that way. Mark this one as possible for right now.
