There is a fervent — yet, to my mind, deeply misguided — young man at Ars Technica who has written an op-ed rejoicing at the news that Disney will be axing the majority of the Star Wars EU continuity titled, accurately enough, “Op-ed: Disney takes a chainsaw to the Star Wars expanded universe: And good riddance, because almost all of it is crap.”
I could not let this stand.
Star Wars is sacred to geeks. Characters in Kevin Smith movies refer to it as “the Holy Trilogy,” and for almost as long as Star Wars has existed, fans have wanted to know more about the universe outside of the movies—and the canonicity of all the elements of that universe is the subject of almost ecclesiastical-scale debates. The movies are unquestionably official—they are the foundational elements of Star Wars, even Episodes I-III. However, the combined mass of video games, board games, tie-in novels, cartoons, and anything else branded with a Star Wars logo occupies a lesser tier in the hierarchy: all these things are still “official” in that they carry the logo, but they are merely part of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
The Expanded Universe—the “EU”—sprawls like a bloated dead thing with tentacles stretching in all directions. Everything is in there: Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn series (which introduced the eponymous Admiral Thrawn, as well as fan favorite Mara Jade, the former Emperor’s Hand-turned-smuggler who overcame her hatred of Luke Skywalker and became his wife). Clone Wars and The Old Republic. The Yuuzhan Vong and the death of Chewbacca. Kevin J. Anderson and all the unspeakably, unreadably bad literary atrocities for which he’s responsible.
Listen, I may have my own well-documented quibbles with the Jedi Academy series, but Kevin J. Anderson was the editor for Tales From Jabba’s Palace. Show the man some goddamn respect.
A sci-fi universe with as long a tail as Star Wars can be death for new stories, though. Finding space among the EU to make a mark without being hamstrung by established ideas is difficult, and even keeping the EU somewhat organized is challenging. Its growth has been cancerous—like a tumor, it has no plan and no organization—it simply expands, blindly, as the collective fan engine shovels in new material.
And like a tumor, Disney is going to rip it out.
Sir, I may hate what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Word began trickling out over Twitter last week that Disney will be drastically redefining the state of the Star Wars lore, eliminating the bifurcated mainline/EU arrangement and in its place constructing a single official canon. All things that are part of the canon are “real,” as far as Star Wars is concerned; all things not in the canon are “not real.” This eliminates the quasi-real EU tier—going forward, things will either exist officially, or not at all.
Lucasfilm employee Leland Chee, who currently maintains the internal Lucasfilm database that tracks the different elements of the canon, will be one of the folks making this decision. He tweeted that “Star Wars Canon is now determined by the Lucasfilm Story Group,” which he and fellow Lucasfilm employee Pablo Hidalgo are part of. When asked specifically whether the group’s goal was to eliminate the mainline/EU canon arrangement and its tiers of official-ness, Chee respondedwith a definitive yes. “More so than ever,” he said, “the canon field will serve us internally simply for classification rather than setting hierarchy.”
Now, no longer will there be a complex multi-level hierarchy of canonicity—there will simply be canon, and not.
YOU ADVOCATE FOR TYRANNY, SIR.
One gives the name of tyrant to the sovereign who knows no laws but those of his caprice, who takes his subjects’ property, and who afterwards enrols them to go to take the property of his neighbours.
One distinguishes between the tyranny of one man and that of many. The tyranny of many would be that of a body which invaded the rights of other bodies, and which exercised despotism in favour of the laws corrupted by it.
Under which tyranny would you like to live? Under neither; but if I had to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the least hard, and never does it bestow favours.
If I have only one despot, I am quit of him by drawing myself up against a wall when I see him pass, or by bowing low, or by striking the ground with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying if one’s hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky the man who escapes these alternatives!
The slap-dash, anyone-can-add-to-it nature of the existing Expanded Universe and its tiers is great for detail-oriented fans who want to write a Mary Sue fanfic that includes a perfectly accurate depiction of the seven prime forms of lightsaber combat, but it’s absolute poison for Disney. The company will be releasing their next Star Wars movie in 2015, and the giant swamp of the EU stretches out before them, threatening to ensnare and swallow up any potential ideas they might try to include. They need to be able to re-launch the franchise in a direction that they control, and that requires the freedom to let Empire Strikes Back writer Lawrence Kasdan pen the script without worrying about stumbling over years’ worth of baggage. In fact, Kasdan’s unfamiliarity with the EU is a strength here—and one that Disney is capitalizing on by drastically reducing the number of things he has to worry about.
Most of the EU is simply layers and layers of garbage. It’s filled with thinly veiled Mary Sue characters, ludicrous minutiae, and a ponderous and plodding history (past AND future) of the galaxy. It’s creaky under its own weight, and Chee’s pruning is a welcome change. In him, Disney has a person who intimately understands the core elements of what makes Star Wars, Star Wars.
It’s unclear at this point what in the EU will be pitched out into the trash, and what will be promoted to canon. When asked, Chee himself responded that he can’t say when fans will be able to see the results the trim’s impact on the universe’s lore. Still, it’s a safe assumption that every single bit of EU story set after The Return of the Jedi will have to go—and, for the most part, good riddance to it, because almost all of it is terrible.
Ironically, nuking all post-RotJ material would remove Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy, which Lucasfilm authorized and provided limited collaboration on. Zahn’s three books are easily the best of the often-literally-vomit-inducing tie-in novels, but they also are set shortly after the events of RotJ and deal specifically with the aftermath of the fall of the Empire. Losing them would mean losing some of the best content the EU has to offer; it would also, however, mean considerably more latitude in following up Episodes IV-VI.
Regardless of what gets kept, the chainsawing of canon is unequivocally a good thing. It’s time to dump the EU into the garbage chute and feed it to the dianoga.
In no particular order:
1. Let us ban “Mary Sue” from our vocabularies in 2014, along with Manic Pixie Dream Girl and “problematic,” as these are phrases that have lost all meaning (unless you wish to continue saying them, in which case feel utterly free to do so; I am no advocate for tyranny, unlike some people [some people named Lee {some people named Lee who write op-eds advocating for tyranny}]).
2. Lee is probably right inasmuch as Lucasfilm was never ever going to use the Thrawn trilogy as a basis for the new movies, no matter how much we secretly hoped they would, so they might as well honestly axe all the continuities they’re never going to use.
3. No minutiae is ludicrous; how dare you.
4. Oh God, does this mean that Shadow of the Empire is still canon because it’s set pre-ROTJ? You cannot take Admiral Thrawn away from me and make me keep Prince Xizor. That is cruelty beyond the limits of human endurance.
5. “Often-literally-vomit-inducing.” Sir, I oppose you with every fiber of my being but damn it all, do I love your enthusiasm, you feisty thing.
6. “Dianoga” here seems purposefully obfuscating, for someone who claims to want to trim the fat. Just call it the trash compactor monster; if you seek to be the vox populi, come by it honestly.
Please consider this an open thread for every feeling you have ever had about the Star Wars Expanded Universe continuity. Use strong language and GIFs wherever possible. Remember that I have loved you all.
[Image from Furious Fanboys but also it’s just the cover of one of the EU books so I think it’s fine to use]
Tags: ars technica, canon, debate, fury, opinions, righteous fury, secret voltaire quotes, star wars expanded universe
Related Posts
Your Feelings Are No Longer Considered Canon And Have Been Marked As Spam
Unusual Woman Hates Hospitals
The Dropout Rate of Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Praxeum Concerns Me
You’re Not Watching Enough Blade
Almost Asatru, or “I was into Loki before he was cool”
Impossible Movie Remakes I Demand To See Nonetheless
If they choose to make a movie that diverges from the Thrawn storyline, I think I will be okay with that, but if they declare him to be not-canon, I fear I may have to declare Star Wars as dead to me.
Fandom’s obsession with canonicity (not just Star Wars fandom) is fascinating to me. It’s like watching early Christianity forming at an Information Age pace.
I’m actually impressed they were able to keep this machine going as long as they did without just giving up and opting for either some ridiculously baroque comic-book-style multiverse or the loosey-goosey Star Trek style continuity, held together by lampshades and string, which only the most insanely dedicated fans would dare try to piece together into a coherent whole.
Or doing like DC does and occasionally resetting reality by having someone punch it really hard. Literally.
oh, comics
Yeah, I get that it’s fun to argue about canonicity, but I have never particularly cared about what’s officially canon and what isn’t in sprawling fictional universes like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who. Like, it’s a lark trying to fit the Eighth Doctor Adventures, Eight Doctor audios, and the actual show into the same continuity, but it’s also pretty much impossible to assemble a coherent canon out of fifty years of Doctor Who shows, a movie, tie-in novels, comics, Big Finish audios, shit Doctor Who writers have said, etc. Pick and choose your canon, it’s what the new creators of it are doing already anyway.
I don’t really have strong opinions about the issue at hand, but this gentleman lost me completely when he implied that things characters in Kevin Smith movies do = things that real people do.
Also, clearly the best fans of all are the ones who believe? pretend? that the media is actually a documentary about a real place/series of events, and so all the “mistakes” are just due to the exigencies of TV and film production. (The second best are the ones who construct fan universes for sitcoms, Sunday comic strips, arcade machines, diaper commercials, and other media whose creators never gave a moment’s thought to such things.)
Didn’t Tolkien basically do this to himself by retroactively pretending Bilbo wrote The Hobbit and lied about what happened in Gollum’s Cave in the first edition (when Bilbo and Gollum part amicably?). That’s my favorite No Prize, retcon justification of all time – because it worked.
I swear to god that this (the original) was the version I read first, but darn it, the book which I thought was the same one I read had the revised version of the tale.
http://www.ringgame.net/riddles.html gives a side-by-side comparison, for anyone who’s interested.
The existence of people playing The Great Game with Sherlock Holmes canon for a century is probably one of the best things about that fandom.
The next best thing is Johnlock ‘shipping.
I’m trying to assign a percentage kidding/serious ratio to my previous statement but I find myself unable to do so.
I never ventured too deeply into the post original trilogy EU, but inter-prequel EU was my absolute favorite thing as a middle-schooler. Looking back, those books were probably terrible but I’m too emotionally attached to let them go.
Sidenote: Heard about Leia getting Jedi training and having a yellow lightsaber in the EU and if that is nixed out somehow then I will be REALLY UPSET because I REALLY LIKE THOSE IDEAS
Also I doubt they will ever make an Old Republic movie of any kind but that would be a EU movie I’d be more interested in than post ROTJ.
OLD REPUBLIIIIIIC.
ETA: That was a cry of joy.
AGREEMENT
You already mentioned that you didn’t get deeply into the post ROTJ EU. Leia doesn’t get a yellow lightsaber… ever… except in a picture on a novel cover which was coloured incorrectly.
I am not terribly passionate about Star Wars, but I am passionate, in a favorable way, about the usage of increasingly nested parentheses as a kind of syntactical joke. ([{<⟨｢«»｣⟩>}])
The obsession with canon in STAR WARS always seems funny to be given how A NEW HOPE was written and released before Lucas settled on Vader being Luke’s father, and because of that the story from Ep. 4 to 5 doesn’t make a whole lot of sense* (I mean, as everyone has said, who hides a Dark Lord’s son with the Dark Lord’s relatives, on the Dark Lord’s home world, and lets him keep the Dark Lord’s last name? “Where shall we hide Sauron Jr.? In Mordor, with a Balrog? And keep calling him Sauron Jr.? PERFECT”)
It’s always been make-it-up-as-you-go, as it should be. It’s a big universe out there, and I’d rather have Admiral Thrawn and evil, extragalactic plant monsters than “Anakin created C3PO”
*What I’m saying is EMPIRE and JEDI are non-canon. Only A NEW HOPE is canon. Also, come to think of it, the brilliance of how you explain Obi-Wan’s story about Luke’s father in ANH isn’t “a wizard did it” but “a wizard lied about it.”
“Only A NEW HOPE is canon.” I like the cut of your jib.
But wasn’t the subtitle “A New Hope” already a retcon?
I wasn’t watching movies in 1977, but my understanding is that it was originally released as “Star Wars”, and then when 1980 audiences saw “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back”, Lucas went back and subtitled SW IV: ANH…
I can’t help but mention the EU’s rather flimsy justification for this (I forget which author was responsible): Obi-Wan and Yoda intentionally let Luke grow up with his real last name, with his real aunt and uncle, to set a trap for Darth Vader (i.e. when Vader looked up Luke on the Star Wars-equivalent of Facebook, and went out to Tattooine to find him, Obi-Wan would be there waiting to kill him). Kind of ridiculous, but it probably makes the most sense out of anything you could think of.
Uh, spoiler much? Vader is Luke’s father??
The day after Harry Potter Book 6 came out, I was in Chicago’s Grant Park for the “Movies in the Park” event they used to do. There were thousands of people there. Right before the movie started, one dude went walking nonchalantly through the crowd shouting “SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE” (uh, spoilers, btw). At the time I thought he was an ass. But in these dark days when spoiler phobes stand ready to cry foul over spoilers for old books and shows they’re just now streaming, I think of that man as a Hero.
That man will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
I’m an unrepentant spoilerer (not that I intentionally go around shouting plot twists, but I’m not really going to go into contortions trying to avoid talking about major plot elements in a discussion just in case someone within earshot hasn’t watched/read it). If something’s been out for over 3 months, I feel like it’s long enough that there’s no crying foul if you learn the plot. And I say that as someone who almost always waits until a movie/tv show is out on dvd to watch, or a book makes it to paperback to read it.
Umm…luke was on Tatooine because Anakin was too emotionally scarred to ever go back. Notice how he lands on Hoth, Bespin AND Endor but not Tatooine? There is a reason, he was never going back there, he’d rather blow it all to hell than go back. Plus Skywalker was a moisture farmer on a planet furthest from the bright center of the galaxy, who would think to look there for a Skywalker or a great fighter? Meanwhile his daughter lived in the bright center and was famous and nothing happened.
During the long (long, long) Star Wars phase of my youngest (he’s 14; there are still framed movie images on his walls, the Star Wars throws still cover our feet) I was first exposed to all the EU stuff.
(And yet! And yet part of his parental legacy was my own vast collection of figures, the metal lunch box, a latch-hook-yarn portrait of R2 & C3PO which has sadly since been destroyed by an unfeeling 4-legged beast I love despite that.)
And yes, some of it is… less than beautifully crafted. We never actually vomited while reading any of it, but hey, maybe we never picked up the right stuff. I don’t care.
First of all, Jude Watson is a hero in our house, so whatever she writes is cannon, full stop.
But here’s what bugs me: the bloody arrogance. The top-down snottiness of Lucas & his minions. The expectation that after 37 years of engaging the imaginations of millions of people, it’s okay to throw a hissy fit about ‘too much EU!’ and ignore that the millions of people have made you millions of dollars because they clamored for more and more EU, whatever the quality of it.
But… but Thrawn is the actual best.
Also, I second the ‘let us ban the term Mary Sue forever’ thing. I mean if you describe Batman without saying his name, it’s exactly what would get a woman with the same traits pegged as a Mary Sue. Exorbitantly wealthy, super smart, physically above what is a normal human peak of fitness, hyperattractive, with an angsty backstory… come on.
But Batman’s a boy,* so it’s not dumb like girl stuff is dumb.
(I am aware that many characters that fit the description of a “Mary Sue,” but mysteriously I don’t feel like the percentage of condescension they draw is entirely proportional)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MartyS… man so sad they don’t have examples, I wanted to see if Batman was actually there (because it’s spot on).
Batman and Wolverine are both there (paragraph 2 under “Common Marty Stu Traits”).
My general problem with using Mary Sue/Gary Stu to describe characters is that there are so many different subtypes that I can’t really use it as a shorthand any more. It requires more explanation as to what makes the character a Sue/Stu. Is it their super beauty/strength/skill? Is it that everyone lurves them? If I want to say that the character is underdeveloped, then it’s generally easier just to say what makes the character underdeveloped.
Whoops, Ctrl+F fail.
Yeah, I think that’s the case with a lot of the overloaded tropes (and a good way to ditch any associated misogynist baggage).
An explanation that mostly works for fanfic but can sometimes work for original works is that the world bends around them -main characters are fascinated by them, plot points and McGuffins roll into their hands, only they can resolve the situation due to their improbable blend of characteristics.
That’s an awesome explanation for fanfic Sues! I’ll be using that one.
I vote we replace Batman with Arrow, because Arrow at least has fun and is surrounded by smart people (WOMEN!) telling him he’s an asshole and to quit dadding it up all the time.
The semi-managed “single EU canon” model was showing signs of strain back when I read the books (late 90s – early 2000s) — the fringe benefit of declaring all EU storylines non-canon is that future works will get to skip the endless callbacks to other EU works: “Gosh, I can’t believe it’s been five years since our marriage adventure on Dathomir! And three years since the New Republic defeated Grand Admiral Thrawn, and a year since Admiral Daala, and…”
Whoops I generally hate the EU so this news is sweet sweet music to my ears.
I mean, this sounds (sort of) like going forward it’ll be similar to Star Trek? Like the TV shows/movies are “Level A” canon – the novels are there if you want them and some are very enjoyable (Imzadi!!), but not a part of the canon proper.
“Problematic.” *shudder* I disagree that it’s lost all meaning; its meaning has shifted to “this person has nothing worthwhile to add but would like an SJ cookie anyway.”
I find that statement really problematic, you should really check your vocab privilege.
I mean, Disney could make a movie that didn’t follow canon, but I just can’t believe they have the power to actually declare it void…
They own it all now, so apparently they can..?
I am frankly delighted that there is literally a guy whose job is to maintain a database of Star Wars continuity. I mean, I’m sure he has an official boring, neutral job title like “database administrator,” and that his job is actually mostly boring stuff like coordinating between the various arms of LucasArts. But from where I’m standing, it looks like he has the nerd dream job. He is being paid to do what hundreds of fans would do for free on amateur websites!
I can say with the full authority of someone who spent the entirety of her adolescence as an EU fangirl: this man is very bad at his job. Continuity in the EU was almost as bad as continuity in The X-files.
YOU WILL NEVER TAKE GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN FROM ME, EVER!!!
For me, I was always a selected canon follower when it came to EU, as in, everything that happened before they killed Chewbacca=canon. Everything after (including the actual death)=TOTAL BS. I had to stop reading them because I was too heartbroken. Not because they were terrible, but because they hurt my fragile heart.
There was an interesting article out about who owns a fandom (re: Sherlock) and this makes me think more about that. Because once it’s out there, it’s real, right? So Lucasfilm/Disney et al can’t invalidate it. Because Specter of the Past/Vision of the Future gave 14-year-old me HOPE that LOVE was out there for me someday, and you can’t just make that disappear, right?
Also, nailed it about the dianoga. Who does this guy think he is? 🙂
#4 is the one that gets me the most. I read Shadows of the Empire at the tender age of 10 and definitely was not ready to be exposed to Prince Xizor. I had honest-to-Force nightmares about a sex lizard trying to get into my pants.
Ugh, and the way he used his weird pheromones to trick people into doin’ it with him. Shudder.
Honestly the worst thing about that book was that because Han was in the cryptonite, they invented some faux-Han to play his role. The fact that I remember that his name was Dash Rendar makes me very ashamed of myself.
If y’all haven’t read “The Complex & Terrifying Reality of Star Wars Fandom” from 2005, you should. I’d link it but I can’t find the original online anymore; it is quoted in in full in several places though, so with some googling you can find it easily. Very relevant.
This is timely, because my partner and I rewatched the prequels this weekend. Good GOD, they’re so terrible. Like, not even good terrible. I know everyone knows this, but the horror is still fresh in my mind. (I’m not really a fan of the original trilogy, either, but at least Empire Strikes Back has Lando in a cape, which makes up for a lot.)
We had gone to see Revenge of the Sith on our first actual date, so there was a nostalgia factor. I still laugh hysterically at Ewan McGregor’s delivery of “I saw a security hologram of him…killing younglings.“
It’s amazing how just that one word, younglings, managed to deplete all the horror and sadness out of the revelation that the protagonist of the movie just hacked apart a bunch of school kids with a laser sword.
My opnion of the prequels is that they are much, much, MUCH better with the sound turned off. Make up your own dialogue, bya all means. It’s going to be better in most cases. But they are absolutely stunning to look at.
Or, if you prefer, allow Google Translate to make new dialogue for you: http://misc.thefullwiki.org/Star_War_The_Third_Ga…
Who wants to talk to me about liking Corran Horn and the X-Wing series? Guys, I loved Corran Horn and Mirax Terrik so much.
So, I put Michael Stackpole in the top 3 best EU authors, but … how stereotypical are his female villains? Ysanne Isard and Leona Tavira are both incompetent and unhinged (though in Tavira’s case she just believes in weird conspiracy theories rather than KILL THEM AND ALL THEIR FAMILIES at the drop of a hat), and Erisi is the temptressy Veronica to Mirax’s Betty [not that Mirax is actually that much of a Betty {OMG nested parens}]. And this despite him being ostensibly one of the more progressive EU authors of the 90s, having characters like Iella, Mirax, and Asyr, and devoting entire subplots to exploring inter-species prejudice (the Krytos virus, vratix rebellion, Gavin/Asyr)
Though to be fair he was hardly alone. Every female Big Bad of the early EU is an idiot (Admiral Daala? Loses every battle, allows THE SUN CRUSHER to be stolen [I repeat, THE SUN CRUSHER]); the smartest is Gethzerion, and she still managed to SPOILER her spaceship right into a SPOILER. Whereas male and/or robot villains in the EU had a chance to be even smarter than the heroes (Thrawn, Fliry Vorru).
And the internal monologuing! SO MUCH INTERNAL MONOLOGUING. Corran probably narrates like half the series in those italics by volume.
Also, is anyone fan enough to have read Michael Stackpole’s original X-Wing comic series?
MIrax and Corran are amazing. (A good friend cosplays as Mirax and I go as Mara: we have a whole photo shoot dedicated to them getting up to no good)
Also: for pen and paper RPG players who also like Star Wars, let me recommend the “Edge of the Empire” system. It’s super fun and avoids a lot of the tedious min/maxing and building the “perfect” character that seems to happen in D&D derived systems (I love you, Pathfinder, but you make me do so much damn WORK to play a game.) The adventure I ran for my friends was so much fun!
I have no idea what a Manic Pixie Dream Girl even is but I’m fully on board with banning the word “Mary Sue” for all of 2014, since I’ve decided that any hero ever is, to an extent, a Mary Sue, and SERIOUSLY WTF IS WRONG WITH THAT IT HAS MADE FOR SOME GREAT BOOKS.
Also, also wik, I have not read of the EU, but I’m a big fan of the original Trilogy (and still want to erase I-III from existence if it weren’t for Liam Neeson with the hair and the lightsaber and the keeping a straight-face saying “midichlorians” into a silver-painted razor.)
I am so bummed that the best of the SW EU (anything by Tim Zahn and the X-Wing Novels) probably won’t make it into canon.
And if Mara Jade is no longer canonical, I think she needs a proper funeral where those of us that loved her can grieve.
What if Wraith Squadron movies????? I would die of happiness.
My dream is Wraith Squadron TV Show.
Oh, no. Oh nononononononononono. This cannot stand. The EU has done many wrong things, but to throw it into the void? To destroy it entirely? No. That would be throwing out the good parts of my childhood and teenager-hood, and, alas, much of my college-hood. That would be jossing my own life, like for real. What? WHAT???????
I knew this Disney thing was going to be bad, I just didn’t know how bad. (AM I GOING TO LOSE JAINA SOLO??????????????????????????????)
I’d much rather keep the EU and scrap movies I-III.
Here for contemplative, conflicted feelings about the Brian Wood SW comic and how much I love it and how bad I feel giving him my money and how I could be happy that it’s ending because the comics rights are going to Marvel and then I could get an awesome Marvel creative team for a SW comic (sayyyy Felipe Andrade and Marjorie Liu) and I can stop giving Wood my money except he writes for Marvel too so it’s not inconceivable that he’d keep writing it, which would be good because it’s A GOOD COMIC BUT BAD BECAUSE REASONS
sigh.
ALSO if the rumor about Obi-Wan’s descendent is true, would that not be excellent?
I cannot care for this. As soon as I heard that the new movies would not fulfill my quietly-cherished dreams by being Jude Watson Jedi Apprentice series movies, I laid my Star Wars-related hopes in their grave. I will see the new movies. But I will not summon passion for them.
(Real talk, here: Liam Neeson still looks exactly the same. Why can we not do this. Why.)
I guess I’m not overall too concerned that some stuff won’t be official canon anymore, as it still all exists in my head and in my books. They can’t take it away from me by making the fictional stuff that I love slightly more fictional. It doesn’t work that way.
That said, Mallory, you say things I wish to say way better than i can say them, especially the bit about Thrawn and Xizor. Thrawn is a must.
One thing. Like it or not, Shadows of the Empire *is* canon. It was an official multi-media project by Lucas as an “interequal” between TESB and ROTJ. 🙂
We’re it up to me, I think I would keep some of the more central characters (the Solo kids, Benjamin, Mara Jade) but dump their stories. Certainly everything from NJO on could be jettisoned, and quite a lot before that as well.
I see nothing wrong with the core concepts of the characters, and in fact most of these concepts fit very well with what we know of Disney’s plans. It was only in their execution (in some cases, literally) that they have become problematical, so by freeing them of their EU story lines they immediately become more useful for Disney’s purposes while still not antagonizing the fans who have come to enjoy them.
Keep in mind, we’ve already seen this sort of adaptation to some extant. The Barris Ofee of the Clone Wars TV series is slightly different from the one in the novels and comics (younger, for one thing). I can see them doing much the same with the Young Jedi bunch – keeping the bare outlines the same, but reshaping them to fit their needs.
Problematical, nice.
I wasn’t really expecting any of this to be EU-compliant, so I’m not really surprised, but I am secretly kind of disappointed — I grew up on the EU books (I had many adolescent Feelings about the Young Jedi Knights series in particular and once nearly ended a friendship over ship wars involving Jaina) and I would totally love to see them as movies.
That being said, honestly as long as they keep their sticky mitts away from Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, I’m cool. (Is this an appropriate venue to talk about Kreia? Because omg Kreia!!!)
Yeah, if Jaina Solo is gone then I am done with Star Wars forever and ever, amen. I’ve been reading those shitty novels for TWENTY YEARS. Damned if they’re going to take them away from me.
As long as Pride & Prejudice fan fic stays canon.
How did you get through all that “Mary Sue” and vomit-inducing stuff without bringing up Aaron Allston? He killed Jacen Solo, and opened his X-Wing series with the paragraph about how all Michael Stackpole’s team was a miserable failure that had to be replaced with new Allston-brand characters.
How did you get through all that "Mary Sue" and vomit-inducing stuff without bringing up Aaron Allston? He killed Jacen Solo, and opened his X-Wing series with the paragraph about how all Michael Stackpole's team was a miserable failure that had to be replaced with new Allston-brand characters.
From the moment I found out that Disney bought SW I felt it was inevitable that they will bring the axe to EU. In the end of the day I don’t care. Whatever happens my emotional attachment to characters like Thrawn, Mara Jade, Revan or the Solo family and their tragedies is just too strong… Sure, some of the stories from EU are crappy. There is no doubt that the Yuuzhan Vong invasion could have been written much better etc. But nothing is going to change the fact that those stories, however badly written have deepened my appreciation for the galaxy far far away. Thanks to those stories Star Wars has become a living universe for me, a universe of imagination and a myriad of possibilities I can dive into at anytime. I guess it will be painful to watch how Disney simply deletes the inconvonient EU characters and stories just so they can create and control their own “fresh” cannon. In the end of the day its all about the money right? Oh don’t get me wrong I am sure the movies will be a huge cash success and will be very entertaining.
It’s a bit like with the Star Trek reboot: The new movies are definitely fresh and are very enjoyable to watch but that’s it. The new Star Trek is yet another big budget mega sci-fi production design to dazzle with effects and witty lines and gone is its unique and geeky philosophical dept of the past.
I am glad they are putting an end to wanking Luke and the rest of post episode VI pseudo-universe. It has been cancerous indeed. I would much rather Disney do a trilogy akin I-III than allow all this fanfiction crap written for 20-year-old teenagers. The Old Republic era should have been the only period open for fan content, as it doesn't interfere with the official movies to a great extent.
They had BETTER not touch the young adult line of novels (which includes the Jedi Apprentice, Jedi Quest, Boba Fett, Last of the Jedi, and Rebel Force books). No matter what any smug and probably hypocritical fans who sneer at “kiddie fic” say, a proper analysis will reveal much of them to be extremely well written works that add a lot of depth to the flat world of the prequels. Take those away, and there’s pretty much nothing aside from the cartoons to make those films worthwhile in the greater context of the Star Wars saga (however much I enjoy Episode II).
Yay, I always liked Luke but almost killed myself when they turned him into a ‘force god’ wtf was that all about anyway? I disagree with most of EU, but there is a selected few that I do not wish to see removed from cannon.
Oh well $4.08 billion gives you the right to fuck up any fictional universe.
I know I will get bashed for this but: I loved Episode I-III. I grew up with it, what can I say?
All I care about is that the Pre-TPM Eu is still canon.
You’re not wiping KOTOR and Dawn of the Jedi from my canon goddammit.
I love EU, especially the old republic. but damned them if they take away Fate of the Jedi.
I spent many many lonely, geeky teenage years reading EU novels and comics, and have therefore dedicated a significant amount of my gray matter to its memorization. Disney, since you are so casually expunging these events from canon, please have a heart and lobotamize all my EU memories to ease my broken heart.
If they are going to write new books, I hope they draw a lot of inspiration from the old ones. Give generations of geeks something common to discuss and relate with.
I’m pretty disappointed about this, but it occurs to me that there are dozens and dozens of Star Trek novels out there that were never officially canon the way that the Star Wars novels were, and they are still enjoyable.
Also, I’m looking forward to the fan theories on alternate universes/timelines that make everything still work.
Disney made an enemy out of me when they nuked the Expanded Universe.