Fans have begged for a revival of the Knights of the Old Republic, be it in a remake of the beloved RPG, a reboot, a sequel to round out a trilogy, all of which have either gone unanswered or have been shrouded in secrecy under an icy blanket of development hell. Fans have even dreamed of a big screen adaptation of KOTOR, dreams that have largely gone unrealized … until now.
The first ever live action, feature length realization of Knights of the Old Republic is finally here with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Escape from Taris! Helmed by Austin Parenti, the Executive Director of Studio 70 at King’s Academy in West Palm Beach, Escape From Taris has taken the online fan community by storm, giving fans hope for KOTOR but also resparking the demand and conversation around. For the first time Parenti discusses the production process and narrative decisions in the movie.
This is the second of a three part article series: Part I focusing on the production side of everything, Part II focusing on breaking down the film, and Part III focusing on our inner Star Wars fans. While the interview has been edited for length and readability, seen in its entirety here. You can also watch Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Escape From Taris here!
Josh Esiley: The pacing on Taris really worked for me. It went by fast in a way the game doesn't always. How did you decipher what to keep and what to drop?
Austin Parenti: That was the real art of this movie, the pure raw art of adapting something into another art form. That was the biggest challenge of the film. What I remember doing is writing out everything that happens in the A-plot - what do I remember having to do to get through Taris. Then I checked it with my writing teammates to make sure I didn't miss anything. Zelka Forn, for example — I know the game religiously, but as far as needing to go to him for anything. Taris is the weirdest thing. You get there, need Sith uniforms to take an elevator down, find out Bastila isn't even there, get directed to the Undercity, learn she's been taken by the Vulkars, so you need Mission who first needs you to free Zaalbaar, it becomes this very convoluted graph where your characters are trying to go here, but the game pushes you 60 miles this way first. So how do we keep this moving without losing the character work?
Josh: I think it worked really well. The moment it clicked for me was when the launch codes and Bastila's rescue were happening in parallel. Two things that happen sequentially in the game but here they're simultaneous. It makes them feel like a team working together even when geographically separated rather than people that hang out in my apartment or my ship.
Austin: Credit for that goes to Loganverse, who did KOTOR Machinimas years ago on YouTube. He was intercutting Mission and Zaalbar doing something while the main heroes were doing something else.
Josh: A lot of characters feel recontextualized. Carth's distrust has motivation behind it now, and Mission reads more like Gadon's right hand than just a street kid. What informed those decisions?
Austin: Getting the characters right was my biggest worry, they're the most important. I remember being deeply put off by Carth on my first playthrough because he was so distrusting. In video games that's manageable because there are utilities that help you cope with a difficult companion. In film, you almost never want the audience to be blatantly annoyed by a character for very long. So a major tenant of writing this was how do we make these characters true to who they were, but likable faster? For Carth, the key was finding real motivation for his jealousy and distrust. In the game it seems somewhat random. But in the movie seeing Gadon's favoritism [for the Engineer] over him, his exceptionalism at the swoop race, the Jedi Council wanting to speak with him and not wanting Carth in the room. Those things build a character the audience can genuinely empathize with. So when he confronts Bastila about it, I hope the audience thinks, "Yeah, this totally makes sense," and all the more reason to be inspired by him when he chooses to stay and swallow his distrust. We also deliberately aged him noticeably older than Dante, our lead. In the game the characters look somewhat similar, but if you actually listen to the dialogue, Carth is a veteran of the Mandalorian Wars with a wife and a son, he should be older. That age gap let us have a different dynamic where Carth is clearly the mentor until the role reversal happens, which then begets jealousy.
Josh: Another recontextualization that got a lot of attention was Juhani, specifically making the choice to have her die. What motivated that?
Austin: I think it comes down to two principles. One is that we are not setting out to make the canon version of what happened. What I wanted to do is write a trilogy that accurately reflects what someone's first time playing might look like. I'll never forget my first playthrough killing Juhani, going back to the council and they're like, "You screwed up." I literally had the same reaction that our actor Dante had: "What? Wait, I could have saved her?" For the rest of the game I was haunted by her silhouette on the character menu, wondering where she would have stood on the Ebon Hawk. And then you get to Korriban, meet Uthar and Carth's son, and have an opportunity to do it right. That was so powerful — to start thinking before I act because the game is going to punish me if I don't. I wanted to give our main character that same potential arc.
Josh: Is that a little bit of foreshadowing when we get to Korriban?
Austin: Me and the writers have constantly been talking about where the opportunity will appear for him to get redemption for that, and will he succeed. We're looking at Uthar, at Dustil, and ultimately Bastila herself is really the crème de la crème of that opportunity. We haven't started structuring the third film yet, but that's what we're aiming toward.
Josh: It almost always reminds me of Sam walking toward Frodo at the precipice of Mount Doom.
Austin: Yes. And Lord of the Rings has actually been our compass. That's really been our guiding light for how far to take creative liberties.
Josh: The protagonist is just referred to as "the Engineer" rather than soldier, scout, or scoundrel archetypes from the game. Where’d that choice come from?
Austin: When we started thinking about what sort of character our PC would be, you've got two options. You either make him realistically Revan, a brooding Keanu Reeves type, which is what the fan community has worshipped for years, or you do the complete opposite, because that's the way the Jedi would have programmed him and it makes for the most dramatic irony in the long run. What if he's afraid of combat, antisocial, and never talked to a girl? The Jedi programmed him to get along better with robots than anything. But you can still see Revan's tactical mind in there, it just surfaces unexpectedly. I kept coming back to "engineer" as a generic word for somebody who's a nerd in the Star Wars world.
Josh: I think Dante plays that balance really well. The aloof, socially awkward nature but then sprinkles of competence, like his programming is failing at times.
Austin: Balancing that was really tough in the script. I remember talking about the first Gadon scene a lot - is it premature for him to take charge of that conversation? I gave Dante a note: start as if you're not sure about what you're saying, and as you're collecting your thoughts, grow in confidence. That's the take we went with. He's behaving out of a place of his programming, but every now and then he catches the wave of who he truly is and is able to land the plane.
Josh: KOTOR is very predicated on choice and branching storylines. How did you navigate adapting something where players have a lot of agency into a medium where they're just along for the ride?
Austin: Frankly, that's the worst part of the movie, that you're not Revan, Dante is. The most powerful feature of Knights of the Old Republic is that you are him. Our trilogy will always be weaker than playing the game because it's not a first-person piece of literature anymore. So I knew we shouldn't even bother trying to replicate that. That's why I wasn't a fan of the blank canvas approach. Searching for an actor with a neutral enough presence that audiences could project their identity onto. That's the game's strength, and it's always going to be better for it. Instead, the best we can do is feature the choices and the consequences. Both positive, and negative, to in a spirited way remind the audience of the choices they made. That's been one of the most delightful things in the Discord — seeing people say, "Now that you mention it, I do remember my first playthrough and this is how I handled Juhani, and I learned this."