Alan Dean Foster has a place in Star Wars history as the man who wrote the original novelization of the original Star Wars film, as well as the first Star Wars novel not based on a movie, Splinter of the Mind's Eye. However, while Alan Dean Foster might be one of the first Star Wars fans on record, he's less than thrilled with one particular entry in the franchise. You can officially add Foster to the club of people who really didn't like Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Alan Dead Foster recently appeared on Midnight's Edge for a length conversation about his career writing in various film universes, as well as some of his own. Foster wrote the novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens as well, which he says he liked overall, though he found some of the elements, like Starkiller Base to be a little wild. However, he has no such reservations when it comes to The Last Jedi. He says that he thought Episode VIII was so bad that he actually wrote his own treatment for Episode IX that would have retconned and explained away all the various elements he thought didn't work. Foster explains...
Well, Episode VIII was out, it was a done deal. And I went and saw it. I thought it was a terrible film. I thought it was a terrible Star Wars movie, and there's no need to go into why because every fan already has. I thought, 'How can this be retconned? How can we fix as much as possible from Episode VIII in a proposed Episode IX?' And I wrote a partial treatment for that, attempting in that storyline to explain a lot of the really silly things that happened in Episode VIII.
That treatment is available online in various places, but he mentions during his interview that among the elements he came up with, is the revelation that Rey would have been discovered to have a partially droid brain, which would explain why she's able to learn things so quickly, and why she's able to communicate so easily with other droids.
Needless to say, nothing ever came of Alan Dean Foster's treatment, but he says he never really expected anything would happen with it. He wrote it for himself and other fans who shared his issues with The Last Jedi. Foster continues...
My media representative couldn’t get anybody at Disney to look at it, probably because the film was already, well at least the script was finished, the film was already in production. But I did that for the fans. I never expected Disney to do anything with that. One hopes.
Certainly, Alan Dean Foster has a lot of company in not caring for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The movie seems to create nothing but a passionate response. People either passionately love it, or they passionately hate it.
Alan Dean Foster made headlines recently when he brought an ongoing issue with Disney public. It seems that the author has never been paid royalties on any Star Wars books he wrote since Disney purchased Lucasfilm. The same thing began more recently as royalties based on his Alien novelizations stopped after Disney purchased 20th Century Fox. Disney has said a review is ongoing, but it appears that Foster is one of many authors in similar circumstances.
