Despite two of the three Star Wars Anthology movies confirmed to take place before the events of A New Hope (or, you know, just plain ol’ Star Wars to us older sorts), Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy has stated that the standalone Star Wars movies are not prequels.

If you’re not aware, the first Anthology movie will be Gareth Edwards Rogue One, a film that takes place before the first Star Wars movies and sees a group of Rebels on a mission to steal the plans for the Death Star (sound familiar?). The second Anthology film, to be helmed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, will focus on a young Han Solo and explore how the famed scoundrel become the loveable rascal we first met in 1977’s movie. At the last count, the third of these three Anthology movies is to focus on Boba Fett, a character who was last seen, in chronological terms at least, meeting an ultimately end courtesy of the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi. Of course, there are numerous theories on how Boba could’ve survived that incident, but the general speculation is that any Fett film will look at Boba’s transition from the young clone we saw in Attack of the Clones to becoming one of the most feared bounty hunters in all the galaxy.

During a recent press junket for this week’s (!!!!) Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, as reported by Slash Film, Kennedy explained, “The standalone films can be a wide variety of genres inside the Star Wars universe.” On how the film will different from other existing Disney properties, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, she added, “It is definitely in the genre thinking, but Star Wars is very different than Marvel in that they basically build their stories around characters, and then they seed those characters in different stories. Star Wars, you know, is a place, it’s a universe, so those stories are constructed a little differently than Marvel.”

Moving on to whether the Anthology films will just be prequels, Kennedy said, “No, no. It just so happens to be Rogue One is the precursor to New Hope, and, yes, this Han Solo idea, but I would not argue that we are setting up any kind of prequel notion with these standalone movies. I think that’s so far just coincidence. And to be perfectly honest, we have changed the order of those at the last minute, so that’s not the intention at all.”

Changing to the topic of how the films will all tie together, she concluded, “George allowed that expanded universe to really go its own way. And some of it was extraordinary and really well done. And some of it, less so. But it didn’t follow any narrative structure and we felt, with all of the development that was going on in all of these different areas, that would make things too chaotic. And we didn’t abandon it because we thought something was wrong with it, we abandoned it because it had gone in too many different directions without any oversight by George, and that’s different something we’re trying to rectify. So the concept of the expanded universe is similar to what we’re continuing to do, but within a bit more structure.”

Just in case you’ve been living in a cave for the last little while, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is released this Thursday.

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