Star Wars: Episode IX may have been the end of the Skywalker Saga, but it's now become the beginning of an entirely new conversation. Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow was originally supposed to write and direct the final episode in the Skywalker Saga, and while he was replaced by J.J. Abrams and the story was taken in a new direction, in recent days we've begin to see some of the ways in which the original concept for Episode IX would have been quite different.
It started with a review of what was, apparently, the final script Colin Trevorrow submitted to Lucasfilm before leaving the project. That script revealed, among other things, that the movie was to be called Duel of the Fates, and now Trevorrow himself has spoken up on Twitter to confirm that was his original title, and to also confirm that some concept art going around was, in fact, part of his vision.
The concept art gives us four very different moments in time from the movie Colin Trevorrow himself refers to as Duel of the Fates. The first shows a woman in white, possible Leia, giving something to BB-8, in a shot reminiscent of the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope.
The next shot gives us Rey, in an outfit similar to what Luke Skywalker wears in The Return of the Jedi, having just dispatched a number of Stormtroopers with a double bladed blue lightsaber. Item three is the one Trevorrow remarks on, where R2-D2 has taken significant damage from something, but the writer/director assures us he would not have died. And finally we get a scene that has been referenced as being in the Duel of the Fates script, Kylo Ren battling a vision of Darth Vader as part of his training with Tor Valum, the Emperor's teacher.
There's a lot of hat tips in these scenes, but that's not too surprising, since they were only concept art from before a final script was even completed. Whoever did the work likely used the previous films as inspiration if only because it made the work easier to do, it doesn't mean the film itself would have actually looked like this when it was all said and done.
Colin Trevorrow has remained mostly silent on the topic of Star Wars since he left Episode IX, and especially since the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It's probably for the best, it likely isn't the happiest of topics, and there's not much point. While there are certainly elements of Duel of the Fates that are quite intriguing and would have been potentially amazing on screen, we'll never know, and so there's no point in dwelling on it.
At the same time, a lot of fans are quite positive on what they've seen and read regarding this alternate version of Episode IX and that's probably something of a bright spot in the entire Star Wars experience for Colin Trevorrow.
