*"Through myriad Star Trek novels, Captain Kirk will be just like James Bond -- eternally 35 years old.

The same thing goes for Han Solo."*

I don't know about kirk, Xenophonz, but as for star wars, Han Solo is aging along with the rest of the cast. The last novel I read (and didn't finish) in the star wars novel line (or expanded universe, as its commonly referred to), was Vector Prime which takes place approximately 25 years after the events of ROTJ, and in which Anakin "jr" and the twins are adults, Luke is married to Mara Jade and Han is in his mid to late 50s. Oh, and chewie's dead (which was approved by lucasarts). There have been several other novels written since VP, that take place afterward but I haven't gotten to them yet. So, as far as the star wars plots go, the characters do progressively age. And for those of you out there who don't consider the novels to hold any barring on the films, all the star wars novel plots are conceived by lucasarts and assigned to select authors. Once in a while a rogue author will present a manuscript and if its approved by lucas it gets published. Back in the 80s and 90s when star wars got a new boost in the writing world, i believe more of the manuscripts were conceived by rogue authors on their own and then presented for approval, but now it is the reverse. And because of this progressive aging of the main characters in the novels, it makes perfect sense for lucas to do the 3rd trilogy. Ford, Fisher and Hamil are all of the same age as their characters in the books. Well, give or take, and their children are adults. Lucas said the story was to cover 3 generations of the skywalker family. And the original cast were all signed at one point to do a 4th film, that was never written. Lucas wouldn't even have to think up a new plot for the 3rd trilogy, its already been written for him, and would most likely be far better than anything he could come up with... Which is probably what he's afraid of... Sam Jackson mentioned the 3d re-release the other night on the Letterman show. And I am almost certain that lucas mentioned it himself in his Q/A with Hayden Christiensen on moviefone.com - Lucas is not about to let the star wars empire die out now. What else does he have to do? they already pulled the plug on the 4th installment of indianna jones.

E.D. Message edited on: 05/20/2005 12:50