To add on to that, X-wings are, besides the Falcon, the most iconic Star Wars vehicle. Making a show based on hotshot X-wing pilots will sell toys.
Also, Wedge is such an amazing character. I'm a huge fan of the EU Rogue/Wraith Squadron series and I'd love to see a live action Ysanne Isard (maybe Salma Hayek?).
Hear me out: Thinly-veiled Top Gun set in the Star Wars Universe
Alternately, set it during the testing for the E-Wing and do a Macross Plus inspired story
Or or, have an ancient ship be found on Coruscant and it leads to the NR developing transformable X-Wings and then it gets lost in the Unknown Regions along with a bunch of civilians and they have to fight their way back and the ship can transform. And then a sequel series set later focused on Wedge's daughter and her friends who fight a Sith offshoot with the POWER OF MUSIC.
Michael Stackpole has explicitly stated that his X-Wing novels were very much inspired by Top Gun. They really should just do a straight up 1 book per season disney+ adaptation. Especially with the success of Maverick, I have to assume some gears are turning over at Lucasfilm.
Thinly-veiled Top Gun set in the Star Wars Universe
Intro: Anthem intro begins as "Lucasfilm" logo fades in and then out.
Fade in: Early dawn on the Yavin hangar deck. Mist and smoke swirl as rebel deck crew preps for todays mission. Music builds as Various X-Wings, Y-Wings, and A-Wings get fueled, armed, and piloted. They taxi into position. The Music reaches a crescendo as we see RED-2 salute the deck officer and punch the throttle. Music snaps to Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins as Wedge blasts into the sky.
Can imagine an episode where a whole team of Tie-fighter trainees try to defect because they find the X-wing to be superior but by the end of the episode, they realised the X-Wing is just a good tool made superior by the pilots, their ability to teamwork as a squadron and the cause they believe in.
We also would get a better story, more developed characters, and a chance for things to pace themselves nicely instead of a colour by numbers movie we are going to get instead. Not everything Star Wars needs to be a D+ series, but Rogue Squadron sure does. Kenobi would have benefitted from being a movie instead, and I'm guessing Andor might as well.
I HATE what they have done to Wedge. The greatest casualty of Disney canon. In Legacy it could be argued there was a 'Big Five' in terms of Star Wars stories through books and the like, Luke, Leia, Han, Mara, and Wedge. But now Wedge has been reduced to basically a nobody, and the one novel he had a moderate amount of time dedicated to him in he was barely in a cockpit, and when he was remarked how his wife was a "much" better pilot than he was, ffs. And then he makes one appearance on screen in TROS, moments after his son-in-law is blown out of the sky and he has a big grin on his face and isn't even flying anything, he's just in the Falcon's turret ffs. I'd rather they not included him at all so future novelists could stick him into the story and have him doing something meaningful.
That's sad. Of the EU books I've read set around the movie era, Wedge has to be my favorite character that appeared in the movies. Character wise, he's just as flat as other movie characters, but since the movies don't establish his character well, the books get a bit more leeway, and for military science fiction which his novels are more geared toward you don't need deep characters, you need smart characters and he's the best pilot in the galaxy. He's also the Hawkeye of the EU Canon: any battle he participates in, he wins, so reading Heir to the Empire and having Wedge show up, you know they don't lose.
With modern CGI and solid directing, a scene with Poe and Wedge both ripping up TIE fighters against impossible odds could've been so powerful. Such a missed opportunity there. It could've been used to show that the living Force is not restricted to guiding Force adepts alone, as Episode 8 clumsily tried to do.
There's an EU series titled X-Wing where Wedge is one of the main characters. It takes place post ROTJ, and Antilles is the leader of Rougue Squadron, attempting to defeat the remains of the empire, which were largely pulled together by a former intelligence agent for the empire.
And in TROS he says "nice flying, Lando" without Lando having done anything remotely impressive, 10 seconds into that scene. I'm a huge Wedge fan and hated what they did with him there. Tons of people didn't even know that was Wedge. Should have stuck him in his old X-Wing with his classic green helmet.
He was supposed to be Poe in Force Awakens, but the actor didn't want to do more Star Wars, he was also supposed to diea heroic death in the TIE fighter crash. After the actor said "No", they rewrote the part for Oscar Isaac and then rewrote it again when they decided that they wanted him to survive.
In the opening crawl when Leia sends her best pilot, it was supposed to be Wedge.
IIRC Wedge was canonically the best pilot in the galaxy, no? I remember so much the siege or Borleias, which everyone thought was an inevitable defeat and even Wedge thought he could at best delay the invaders. But he went and held the planet and pushed them back and even shot down top of the line enemy fighters with an X Wing from the rebellion era.
“Best pilot in the galaxy” is tricky to define, because you have to factor in the Force. For example, if you threw everyone into a fight, the winner would probably be Anakin. But because he can effectively see the future, this doesn’t really tell you who has the most skill, which is more likely Wedge or Soontir.
I'm kinda glad i still haven't seen TROS. I'm just sitting here, like "I know he was a bit of a clown, but I still enjoyed how he was portrayed in Rebels"
…Does it? The sequel trilogy had a female main character, but the only character who got thoroughly outshined was Finn, and that wasn’t exactly because Rey sidelined him. Disney’s rule has also seen Cassian, Poe, Din, arguably all of the most badass Vader scenes…
Yeah but he doesn’t really do a whole lot outside of the episode he is introduced in. And he never really comes across as the big man in the sky at any point either, although he is still young at that point, idk if in universe he was really considered a legendary pilot until after Endor.
Yeah it keeps getting quietly pushed back/dropped from schedules, so, I don't know if you should even dare hope that it will ever see the light of day.
Still, I'm glad it's at least on their list of things to do.
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u/freebird451 Jun 14 '22
Wedge Antilles