I'm pretty sure they can find a way to tell a story after The Rise of Skywalker, it's not like the whole Star War galaxy ceased to exist the moment the movie ended. They did say at the end that they still dealing with surviving members of The First Order, so that right there is a pretty nice opening for this movie. Patty Jenkins has confirmed that this will be an original story, but that it will also acknowledge things from other versions of Rogue Squadron. Not surprised to hear that, since that's pretty much how they've been handling stuff from the old EU since Disney took over.
Hence after the sequel trilogy. Side movies like this won't or shouldn't focus on any of the main characters and if it's after TROS then it's a completely blank slate. As to having Wedge... if this is the time period, then Wedge would be as old as Luke, Han, Leia, and Lando. He'd be in more of the ground based commander or instructor role I see the "Roque" in squadron has already been answered. "Rogue One" was the call sign for the stolen Imperial shuttle our heroes used as they took off for Scariff toward the end of R1.
Yeah, but isn't the whole point of Rogue Squadron that they do quick and daring raids when they don't have support from larger ships? I.E., Rogue Squadron only really makes sense if the good guys are the underdogs, so to set it after the ST would mean that even the defeat of the First/Final Order wouldn't result in galactic peace. And that would be madness.
I'm not sure you need an enemy/galactic war on the level of the Rebellion, or from the Sequel Trilogy in order to tell the Rogue Squadron movie story. Ask many people what their favorite 'fighter pilot' movie is and Top Gun will get a lot of votes and there was no massive war taking place for it. Patty Jenkins Father died as a fighter pilot, but it was in friendly manuevers/training. So it doesn't actually have to be a 'band of brothers meets X-wing pilots" type thing.
Not to draw too much from early promo material, but if it were set in the ST-era, wouldn't they be using a modern X-Wing in the logo and announcement video instead of an OT-era one?
More than likely, yeah. But if they wanted to get Denis Lawson in the project, it could be a flashback as he trained a new generation of X-Wing pilots.
The old version is more iconic, so they could be going for that just for the recognition, even if it's not what's actually in the movie. Even if the big bad is gone, there are probably still little bads that need to be dealt with, like pirates or gangs, or if this is set a while after The Rise of Skywalker, they could introduce a new big bad.
Not really a crowded field, though, is it? There's Top Gun, Stealth, Flyboys... Red Tails... and that one Top Gun ripoff with Nic Cage and helicopters? Lucky for Top Gun Peter Jackson hasn't remade The Dam Busters yet. And, obviously, in a fictional universe, there's no decisive reason why this movie couldn't take place in/after the ST era. But, given that the GCW is the one part of the franchise that hasn't been revisited on the big screen or Disney+ since RotJ, I think it'd be silly to set it during/after the ST.
Yeah, I think if they are going to do smaller stand alone movies after The Sequel Trilogy, I would rather see them just deal with smaller one off threats.
Well the thing about the aftermath of the Rise of Skywalker is that there are no remaining Galactic governments. Both the Republic and First Order have fallen. The Resistance is not a government, so the Galaxy will have to rebuild from scratch this time around. The previous times there was a government in place to take over (the Old Republic to the Empire. The Empire into the New Republic, the First Order being the Empire in exile taking over after destroying the New Republic. But with the destruction of the First and Final Orders, all galactic government has ceased to exist. All that remains are the regional governments and planetary governments. Sure they will probably recreate a Republic of some sort, since that was the dominate form of government for millennia, but it will take time to rebuild all the governmental system that were destroyed by Starkiller Base blowing up the Republic's capital as an opening shot. Rogue Squadron though. That seems more like it would fit in with the Mandalorian era. If Grand Admiral Thrawn is the big bad, it could make sense to do an actual film with him as well as the three or so TV series.
The first/final order wouldn't have all been destroyed in a short time, even after the Emperor was killed it was over a year till the battle of Jakku. Even after, as shown by Mando, is that there are still the occasional fiefdom, and petty warlord in areas of the galaxy. After RoS, Rogue squadron could go after some remnant, or possibly some new type of threat. Even in the High Republic era of galactic peace, there were areas of unrest. Could have a guy/girl that gets control of some type of superweapon, or some of the Planet killer lazer of the final order. Though that might be another "Deathstar" maybe like the suncrusher? Or just maybe the bad person is holed up in some impregnable station and they have to devise a plan to go in and destroy it?
One of the things that I did enjoy about the Sequels was just how unprepared for the size of the First Order and the Final Order the heroes were. I get that there was a lot of expectations around the Emperor dying and the Death Star scattering the Imperials to panic and regroup. But, the New Republic didn't count on people hiding and plotting and building back up. The Unknown Regions would be prime territory to go explore and find where the First Order manufactured and possibly discover a new threat that had taken over some of the resources.
Those are separate issues. If rejecting a recasting is due to the drama surrounding a movie, you'd think the other major recasting in the same film would have produced a similar reception. Perhaps the issue with Ehrenreich is that he hardly resembled Harrison Ford while being noticeably shorter and having a voice with a completely different pitch.
To be fair, in "Star Wars", even Harrison Ford had a voice with a completely different pitch - specifically, the scene between Han and Leia in the Falcon cockpit after the Death Star escape/TIE fighter battle. What the hell, was there helium in his cigarettes that day?!?
There doesn't even need to be any particular "threat". After all, what was the "threat" in Top Gun, really? A bunch of faceless guys in MIGs, mostly. The movie wasn't about who they were fighting, it was about the pilots themselves, and I feel like that's more than likely the direction Jenkins will take as well. Yes there was some mention of the geo-political stakes before the live theatre engagements, but doesn't anyone really remember and care what that was about? Does it even come to mind when you think of that movie, or do you just picture magic hour shots, the volley ball scene, the stunning aerial photography, 'Great Balls of Fire' & 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling?' It could be pirates, could be First Order/ex-Imperial hold-outs, the New Fett/Djarin Mandalorian Empire getting funny ideas about conquest. It could be Isard. Probably doesn't matter. Most likely just going to be a bunch of faceless TIE pilots, same as ever...
Plenty of storytelling ideas here. It's similar to where The Mandalorian galaxy is but actually a bigger mess. The Republic ran things (badly) for 30 years, then the First Order came in and retook some of the galaxy, then they got beat before really having a chance to consolidate and expand further. So, I see the post-TROS era as a political basket case in the galaxy. We could be right back to where we were in AOTC, with half the galaxy wanting to form some kind of government and the other half wanting to go do their own thing. Somewhere in all that will (I hope) be Rey, playing a role similar to Asokha in Mando.
The best thing they could have done here was turn it over to Favreau / Filoni, set it in the immediate post-ROTJ era, and bring in Mike Stackole and Timothy Zahn as the writers. Take what was some of the hands-down best material from the EU and re-canonize it the way Favreau /Filoni are slowly starting to do with characters like Thrawn through Rebels and The Mandalorian. Taking the concept of 'Rogue Squadron' and moving it entirely outside of its own milieu in the SW universe just seems like using cheap name-recognition for a product that will having no relationship with the original other than the name. Just like they did with Tom Clancy's character of Jack Ryan in the new series that bears the name. If it's set post ST, they realistically won't even use X-wings because presumably there would be something more advanced by then. Why bother to call it 'Rogue Squadron?" If they want to move into an entirely new era, they should make something entirely new.
Even if we do entertain this hypothetical scenario where the movie were directed and produced by Favreau and Filoni instead, Stackpole and Zahn would not be writing it at all. They're prose writers, a major studio tentpole blockbuster film is not going to be written by novel authors.