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Hypothetical: Star Wars set in a "classic fantasy" setting with minimal plot changes

EdReedFan20

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So, as many of you probably know Star Wars is not really science-fiction, but is fantasy that just happens to be set in space. So, having said that, I've often wondered what would happen if you took the plot of Star Wars and transported down to terra firma with minimal changes to the story. I'm mainly focusing on A New Hope as that has the classic Hero's Journey trope. So my question is, how would you translate the story of A New Hope to make it a classic fantasy. One thing that comes to mind is the Death Star would instead be a massive mobile trebuchet of sorts (or some similar medieval weaponry). Maybe the different planets would simply be kingdoms with castles. Perhaps the Jedi Knights would be more like traditional knights (with regular swords?). This would probably be dumb (though, maybe cool), but what if the X-Wing/Tie Fighter analogs were dragons? Any other thoughts?

Now, instead of me posting another thread, how about this: What about the inverse? What would Lord of the Rings be like if you set it in space?
 
MMarston

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And if you can't dig the still half-sci-fi ness of that, well you still got Eragon I guess.
 
Doctoglethorpe

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Str Wars is space opera. Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction. Star Wars is science fiction.

Having said that, yes it would be fairly easy to remix it into a fantasy setting. I'd imagine the Death Star being like a giant tower that can channel magic energy and send it across the world to whatever target, like a massive wizard staff basically.
 
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EdReedFan20

EdReedFan20

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Doctoglethorpe said:
Str Wars is space opera. Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction. Star Wars is science fiction.

Having said that, yes it would be fairly easy to remix it into a fantasy setting. I'd imagine the Death Star being like a giant tower that can channel magic energy and send it across the world to whatever target, like a massive wizard staff basically.
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Would the Millennium Falcon be a boat?
 
DeaconKnowledge

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This exercise removes the one thing that made Star Wars remarkable in the first place - space. Remove that and any of the million King Arthur movies would be an easy replacement.
 
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EdReedFan20

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DeaconKnowledge said:
This exercise removes the one thing that made Star Wars remarkable in the first place - space. Remove that and any of the million King Arthur movies would be an easy replacement.
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What about the other exercise then? There's a lot of fun that can come from a Lord of the Rings set in space. Sure there'd be some obvious parallels to Star Wars, but it'd still be an interesting thing.
 
Dream Machine

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George RR Martin referred to this genre stuff as the furniture rule. Basically just the trappings and expected tropes change, but there's effectively no difference between science fiction and fantasy.

Change the different planets into different countries on the same planet or different realms you travel to with mystic portals, change the robots into rock golems animated by magic, keep the wizard knights, make the death star a castle and the spaceships dragons, find/replace every instance of "alien" to "creature", and turn the glowing swords into glowing swords.

In the end, who gives a shit, it's all the same thing with a different coat of paint.
 
Sephzilla

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I've always stated that Star Wars isnt sci-fi but classic fantasy
 
sphagnum

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It wouldn't take much to change it but it would sink into the morass of other fantasy media. The space fantasy setting is what sets it apart.
 
TheXbox

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Boats for space travel, horses for dogfights. The Death Star is a flying castle with magic crystals that blow shit up. Jedi Knights are... knights. Lightsabers are unchanged save the mechanical bits.
 
fick

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Actually a Disney-budgeted Star Wars "what if?" fantasy spin-off would be awesome.
 
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EdReedFan20

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fick said:
I've always hated these books and their success just because of the lazy goddamned name. Dude took fucking Dragon and went 1 higher on the D. Fuck.
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Maybe it was simply a typo that turned into something more.

fick said:
Actually a Disney-budgeted Star Wars "what if?" fantasy spin-off would be awesome.
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I'd simply take a novelization or maybe comic book series. As for Disney fantasies, they recently acquired (or have been long sitting on) the full rights to The Chronicles of Prydain. The second book in the series is The Black Cauldron, which Disney released as an animated movie in 1985 (it flopped badly). However, they are apparently adapting the full series (five books) as a live-action set of movies. The last time Disney tried a live-action fantasy series was The Chronicles of Narnia and they gave up after two movies. Fox did the third one (which I guess Disney will assume ownership of soon). A fourth movie was in the works, but was cancelled and Netflix is instead rebooting the franchise.
 
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HP_Wuvcraft

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Dream Machine said:
George RR Martin referred to this genre stuff as the furniture rule. Basically just the trappings and expected tropes change, but there's effectively no difference between science fiction and fantasy.

Change the different planets into different countries on the same planet or different realms you travel to with mystic portals, change the robots into rock golems animated by magic, keep the wizard knights, make the death star a castle and the spaceships dragons, find/replace every instance of "alien" to "creature", and turn the glowing swords into glowing swords.

In the end, who gives a shit, it's all the same thing with a different coat of paint.
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Which brings us to the Magicians, which has aggressively shown us that the different planes of reality usually associated with magic are literally different planets.

So, is the Magicians science fiction?
 
Zoc

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This reminds me of a poster on the old place who made a fortune, he said, by self publishing books on Amazon that were written with a simple formula: take the characters from one popular movie (with new names), the plot from another, and change the setting.

So, for example, the plot from Star Wars with the characters from Buffy, set as high fantasy. Or Harry Potter as Spider-Man, set in the old west.

He said he could write a finished novel with that method in less than a week, and had a pretty reliable set of fans of his work.
 
Bee.Cups

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fick said:
I've always hated these books and their success just because of the lazy goddamned name. Dude took fucking Dragon and went 1 higher on the D. Fuck.
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I'm just still mad at the ending of the series.
Bad guy:"Mwahaha, I have discovered the name of everything and now have the power of God! None of you can stop me"

Bad half brother: "Guess again, even though I've already explained that you cast 50 spells on me that make me unable to betray you, I heard you say the name of everything one time when you weren't paying attention so now I also know the name of everything and am all powerful and am therefore betraying you!"

Eragon: "I have dragon eggs and now you are sad because of my sad magic that came from dragon souls!"

Bad guy: " fuck, I'm a bad guy? The heck? I'm dead now." *Dies*

Arya: "I'm here too lol. Also I still won't date you Eragon."

Eragon: "heck, I'mma go be a dragon riding incel and find hot girls on another continent! GOSH!" *Leaves the entire planet somehow*
 
SugarNoodles

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In a fantasy setting the deathstar wouldnt need to be mobile. Just a city that can shoot magics.

Mainly it would just bog stuff down with geography which doesnt really matter in space.
 
Reven Wolf

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SugarNoodles said:
In a fantasy setting the deathstar wouldnt need to be mobile. Just a city that can shoot magics.

Mainly it would just bog stuff down with geography which doesnt really matter in space.
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Basically, I imagine it would play out as am assault on some fortress or location, to a certain extent I imagine it would be like Return of the King, one last ditch battle that will destroy the big magic McGiffin.
 
Pantaghana

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This is something I pondered about years ago, and tried to re imagine the setting.

Planets -> cities
Spaceships -> flying ships
Fighter planes -> can't decide between dragons or just smaller flying boats like dinghies
Jedi/Sith -> magic knights with enchanted swords
Droids -> golems
Death Star -> Flying castle that rains fireballs

The plot stays mostly the same because none of it really relies on technology as a plot point, though the script would need some updates.
 
SugarNoodles

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Reven Wolf said:
Basically, I imagine it would play out as am assault on some fortress or location, to a certain extent I imagine it would be like Return of the King, one last ditch battle that will destroy the big magic McGiffin.
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But the death star is a new construction and it's difficult to justify that logically in a single planet fantasy setting because why wouldnt you just put your laser in the middle of a big city?

Oh, duh, the death star would just be a flying fortress.
 
Aranjah

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fick said:
I've always hated these books and their success just because of the lazy goddamned name. Dude took fucking Dragon and went 1 higher on the D. Fuck.
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...I've found my embarrassing thing I just now realized that I should have known a long time ago, for that other thread.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

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EdReedFan20 said:
So, as many of you probably know Star Wars is not really science-fiction,
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I will fight you to the death on this point, but go on.

So, having said that, I've often wondered what would happen if you took the plot of Star Wars and transported down to terra firma with minimal changes to the story. I
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It's literally Eragon. That's what the book / movie Eragon is. Your dream already exists, and you're welcome. I'm sure nobody said this in the thread, but why bother checking first.
 
Rassilon

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What does it take for something to transcend to 'hard' science fiction?

Something like a classic Asimov/Clarke story that uses a narrative to expolre a specific scientific theory/component?
 
durrrklin

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Nyxeria said:
I'm just still mad at the ending of the series.
Bad guy:"Mwahaha, I have discovered the name of everything and now have the power of God! None of you can stop me"

Bad half brother: "Guess again, even though I've already explained that you cast 50 spells on me that make me unable to betray you, I heard you say the name of everything one time when you weren't paying attention so now I also know the name of everything and am all powerful and am therefore betraying you!"

Eragon: "I have dragon eggs and now you are sad because of my sad magic that came from dragon souls!"

Bad guy: " fuck, I'm a bad guy? The heck? I'm dead now." *Dies*

Arya: "I'm here too lol. Also I still won't date you Eragon."

Eragon: "heck, I'mma go be a dragon riding incel and find hot girls on another continent! GOSH!" *Leaves the entire planet somehow*
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Actually, this is pretty apt. That ending really was a stinker.
 
The Emperor

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And the prequels can be like game of thrones where kings landing is coruscant.

It would certainly be possible. Jedi can have swords but also magical powers that are grounded.

Or they can be a ninja/monk tribe.

Jedi's are mostly based off of monks
 
Keldroc

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Doctoglethorpe said:
Str Wars is space opera. Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction. Star Wars is science fiction.
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Nope, Star Wars is pure fantasy. Not a single science fiction element exists in the original trilogy. It's wizards and castles and dragons and magic swords dressed up in space opera trappings. That setting is what sets Star Wars apart from the rest of the fantasy genre (or did in 1977), and science fiction is not a setting, it's a genre that does a specific thing, which Star Wars does not do. The sole science fiction element of the entire Star Wars film series is midi-chlorians. And we all know how well that went over.
 

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EdReedFan20 said:
What about the other exercise then? There's a lot of fun that can come from a Lord of the Rings set in space. Sure there'd be some obvious parallels to Star Wars, but it'd still be an interesting thing.
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Lord of the Rings in space... Hmm...

I guess in this instance the One Ring would be more like a device or virus that interfaces with other technology and "enslaves" it. Perhaps in this universe, there's an edge of cyberpunk? Like Sauron offering cybernetic implants to various leaders in the galaxy, which he would use the One Ring to then enslave and corrupt. From there a lot of people had similar implants installed into their bodies and it wasn't until later that they realised Sauron was using it against them.

You'd need a wise and extremely advanced alien race who feel as though their time is up in the universe and just want to nudge it in the right direction before they die out, like the Asgardians in Stargate. They would have accepted Sauron's gift but had technology advanced enough to stop him affecting them.

Then the Fellowship itself would need to be filled with members of different races from wildly varying planets, and I'd assume that humans would take the place of the Hobbits and the role of humans would be instead taken by Vulcans or something. Basically a race that isn't too different from humanity, but are much more advanced and the race the above "Elves" hope will take the lead in the future of the galaxy.

Humanity would of course be seriously lacking in advanced technology, but that would be our strength as well as our weakness - perhaps they were the only race that were never offered any because they weren't advanced enough as a race.
 
JonnyDBrit

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I imagine it'd be a wuxia, though maybe with dashes of a xianxia. The Death Star would be a giant monster/demon/dragon that's so big you mistake it for a mountain at first glance. Star Destroyers would be these massive warships, where the likes of the Tantive IV would be more of a pleasure boat or merchant vessel. Starfighters would probably just be cavalry, but with differing load outs corresponding to the 'Wings'. So Y-Wings would have saddle bags full of bombs, X-Wings are armed with muskets, so forth. The Millennium Falcon is a chariot pulled by some exotic beast Luke has never heard - or maybe just the beast, like a Roc - and is incredulous over. The escape from the Death Star is now an escape from a fortress on the giant monster's back, from which Imperial Magistrate Tarkin plots the end of the rebellion against the Emperor. Lightsabers are either empty hilts which summon a flaming sword, or solid swords made from meteoric iron. Either way they are depicted as cutting through just about anything, except each other.
 
Reven Wolf

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SugarNoodles said:
But the death star is a new construction and it's difficult to justify that logically in a single planet fantasy setting because why wouldnt you just put your laser in the middle of a big city?

Oh, duh, the death star would just be a flying fortress.
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I mean the bad guys having a fortress of evil is pretty common.
 
Glasgow Mega-Snake

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Nyxeria said:
I'm just still mad at the ending of the series.
Bad guy:"Mwahaha, I have discovered the name of everything and now have the power of God! None of you can stop me"

Bad half brother: "Guess again, even though I've already explained that you cast 50 spells on me that make me unable to betray you, I heard you say the name of everything one time when you weren't paying attention so now I also know the name of everything and am all powerful and am therefore betraying you!"

Eragon: "I have dragon eggs and now you are sad because of my sad magic that came from dragon souls!"

Bad guy: " fuck, I'm a bad guy? The heck? I'm dead now." *Dies*

Arya: "I'm here too lol. Also I still won't date you Eragon."

Eragon: "heck, I'mma go be a dragon riding incel and find hot girls on another continent! GOSH!" *Leaves the entire planet somehow*
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Accurate!

also:

Remember Eragon's cousin/step brother? Wasn't it cool how he became a leader and inspired his whole village to journey through half a continent and join the rebels?
Wouldn't it be even cooler if he turned into a videogame character who can literally kill 200 men single-handedly and win a battle on his own? Also, he could fight an orc-equivalent with bare hands!

Too much? Ok, now let's watch him conquer every inconsequential city on the way to the capital one after another! They won't ever be mentioned again and the rebels can't possibly have the resources to hold them, but this is a sound military strategy!

I actually liked the first two as a 14-year-old. And suffered through the last ones years later because I wanted to know how it ended
 
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