Midnight’s Edge recently conducted an interview with Alan Dean Foster, and here are a few of the takeaways which I’m paraphrasing.
At about the 53 minute mark Alan says he as asked to do the novelization for The Force Awakens. Disney asked him to take things out that he thought would improve the story. He felt that Starkiller base was really dumb and worked to fix the science of it. He was asked to take out the development of relationship between Rey and Finn that he put in because he thought they were going to become a couple.
At about the 1:00:00 mark he says he thought The Last Jedi was a terrible film, and a terrible Star Wars movie. So he wrote a partial treatment for Episode IX that sought to retcon or correct the damage of Episode VIII. No one at Disney would look at it. In the treatment he tried to explain, how Rey has more force powers than anybody.
Alan liked Episode 7, hated 8, and thought 9 good but not great. He doesn’t blame JJ for Episode 9 because he had to fix so many crazy and ridiculous things from The Last Jedi.
He said Kathleen Kennedy was wrong when she said there is no source material. He said you don’t want to piss all over everything that’s gone on before because it shows contempt. He said you can’t fool fans with nonsense like that.
The full interview can be seen here:
Originally published here.
