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Star Wars VII - Open spoilers

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I'll miss EU, this Washington Post "eulogy" hits exactly what I'll miss most about it including X-Wing/Corran Horn, Mara Jade, and Jaina. I'll be the first to admit that some of the most recent offerings in the main SWEU timeline are weak, but man will I miss those memorable characters -

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/04/30/disneys-biggest-star-wars-mistake/

 

Now my mission will be to raid my local used books store and fill in the gaps of my EU collection. I'd guess I'm 70% of the way there, might as well finish the job as long as the storyline is "complete".

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I don't know why you wouldn't mine the expanded universe for its best ideas. That's what it's for. That's why you have an expanded universe: sell new shit to the fans, and if anyone comes up with good ideas in the expanded universe, swipe it. At this point half of Batman's drawing from ideas from 'non-canon'.

 

As I'm catching up on the Clone Wars cartoon series that is now one of the few actual canon things, I think that the series was more or less a way to preserve the best ideas - stuff like the Mandalorians, witches of Dathomir, Father/Son/Daughter/Chosen One, etc. If these kinds of elements manage to launch similar/improved versions of the events in the EU, I'll be quite satisfied.

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Are they going to force Kenny Baker into the R2-D2 can again? That seems like a cruel thing to do to an 80-year-old man.

 

Definitely rooting for John Boyega as the lead, he was amazing in Attack the Block. It'd also be nice for Star Wars to be at least somewhat progressive!

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The handwringing over the EU has actually struck me as a bit strange.  Disney will use whatever they want from the EU, whether it's characters, planets or plot lines (they said as much in the announcement).  They just aren't going to feel any compunction to not contradict the EU.  Which is exactly what Lucasfilm would have done if producing new movies.  And they don't appear to be killing off the EU, they are rebranding it SW: Legends.  They're still getting their feet under them on how to manage what may be the largest fictional universe there is in terms of total things that have been created for it (I suppose the Marvel Universe may be bigger).  Lucas allowed EU content to be made because it made money.  Disney will likely take the same attitude towards Legends content, provided there is a profit at the end of it.  Profitable EU content will remain in print/distribution so long as it is profitable. 

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The handwringing over the EU has actually struck me as a bit strange.  Disney will use whatever they want from the EU, whether it's characters, planets or plot lines (they said as much in the announcement).  They just aren't going to feel any compunction to not contradict the EU.  Which is exactly what Lucasfilm would have done if producing new movies.  And they don't appear to be killing off the EU, they are rebranding it SW: Legends.  They're still getting their feet under them on how to manage what may be the largest fictional universe there is in terms of total things that have been created for it (I suppose the Marvel Universe may be bigger).  Lucas allowed EU content to be made because it made money.  Disney will likely take the same attitude towards Legends content, provided there is a profit at the end of it.  Profitable EU content will remain in print/distribution so long as it is profitable. 

 

I think what discomfited people is an announcement invalidating canon. It made me uncomfortable, just because it seems to devalue some stuff that I once loved, even though you're right that nothing's actually thrown out.

 

I've been wondering the past few days what the relative advantages are about releasing such a statement versus just invalidating the canon with no warning when you make a new movie? I know the vast majority of people who like Star Trek consider the new movies to be the alternate-universe spinoff, but maybe Disney was hoping to skip that adjustment period?

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I think what discomfited people is an announcement invalidating canon. It made me uncomfortable, just because it seems to devalue some stuff that I once loved, even though you're right that nothing's actually thrown out.

 

I read the Zahn stuff, and a bit of other EU things in high school, but was never super invested in it.  So maybe that's part of the reason it doesn't bother me.  And I always figured that canon existed solely at the whim of George, who was free to validate or invalidate anything as it pleased him.  So there was little reason to regard anything as being truly canon, arguably even original film releases given his willingness to go back and mess with them. 

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I will absolutely give Star Wars Ep 7 a chance to win me over, despite my interest in the SW universe having dipped below freezing temperatures in recent years. Oh, who am I kidding, as soon as I hear the John Williams fanfare and see the first wacky CGI alien made to appease children and sell toys, possibly based on a racial stereotype I'll be giddily jumping up and down in my seat.

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The invalidation of the EU as canon thing made me laugh.  I've only ever read 2 Star Wars books (Shadows of the Empire and Truce at Bakura which I stopped reading halfway through) so the loss means basically nothing to me, but I can totally see some hardcore fans interpreting the move as a giant middle finger.  "Hey, you know all that stuff you've been reading for the last 2 decades or so?  Well none of it REALLY happened.  Here's what actually happened..."  That is of course a gross exaggeration but it amused me to think of it that way.

 

As for the movie itself, I'm about as excited for it as I am any other movie blockbuster.  I'll probably watch it at some point but I'm not more vested in it than any other film series that probably should have stopped years ago.

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So... who DID shoot first?

 

Apparently the story behind that was the re-release would get re-rated if they kept Han shooting first. Lucas figured the rating was more important than one scene.

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Apparently the story behind that was the re-release would get re-rated if they kept Han shooting first. Lucas figured the rating was more important than one scene.

 

That sounds like it might be Hollywood apocrypha? Lucas has said in several interviews (enough to give the issue its own Wikipedia page) either that he changed his mind about whether Han should have shot first or that he'd always intended for Greedo to shoot first but wasn't able to show it clearly with the scene that was shot. Lucas has made multiple other changes that eliminate moral gray areas in his characters' actions, presumably without prompting by the MPAA, so I don't know why this one would be different, let alone why he'd lie about it repeatedly when the lie is already so ridiculous.

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Heh, it's so weird how these changes are made over so many years. I just can't imagine that happening with many other big film series.

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It must be horrible for the people who've read all the Star Wars books, and suddenly someone decides that the books are wrong. Just imagine if someone did that to Lords of the Ring or whatever.

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I dunno, I do see it a lot like comic books in that there are numerous different continuities and each has its own canon, including the movies. It should be pretty easy for most people to separate the two I imagine, just like how nobody really expects the Marvel movies to incorporate the comic canon (including comics that were partially based on the Marvel movies).

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It must be horrible for the people who've read all the Star Wars books, and suddenly someone decides that the books are wrong. Just imagine if someone did that to Lords of the Ring or whatever.

 

Except Lucas has consistently referred to them as non-canon all these years, right?

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It feels to me that the EU was reinforced to be "the real thing" over the years because 1) it filled a huge gap of real-life time between Episode VI and Episode I, making it a de facto thing and 2) the second trilogy was a prequel, so it basically seemed designed to allow the EU to exist in a more implicit way. Sure, there were some prequel novels that were snuffed out when the prequel trilogy came out, but the amount of post-Battle of Endor content far outstripped the rest.

 

I should say that I'm not upset with the decision to make EU non-canon, I'm upset with the reality. Because honestly, I don't really think that movie adaptations of the EU would be very good to begin with, as they'd need to be heavily adapted to be compelling stories on the screen rather than the page. Thrawn is not a movie villain, ysalamiri aren't a visually compelling threat to the Jedi, and I think they'd need to perform some movie magic to make us care about the Ackbar/Fey'lya story. In some ways I might have been happier had the new Star Wars movies never been announced or intended, but here they come and I'm trying to force myself to be excited about potential rather than what I really like being dashed in potential's favor.

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Except Lucas has consistently referred to them as non-canon all these years, right?

 

If I remember right, they have had more than one canon for SW, there were levels of canon, and each level could not contradict any levels above it.  It went something like Lucas>movies>tv series>EU>non-EU written works>toys and merchandise.

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How can a fucking book be wrong? It exists! It's right there, immutably in your hand! Who cares what some corporate chieftain decides? Canon is a bullshit thing. «Oh no, the stories I love are suddenly no longer valid or interesting because it now officially doesn't fit into the timeline, which is decided exclusively from higher-up.» No one ought to care about this decision, because it invalidates nothing, unless you drink the anally copyright-obsessed powermongering merchandise machine Cool-Aid of the Disney/Lucasarts conglomerate.

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There was one trilogy that wasn't half bad, Timoth Zanh i think?

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It invalidates it in the eyes of writers who will almost certainly no longer continue to develop content for the Legends part of the franchise (hell, I don't even know if Lucasarts is licensing the Legends brand to new books) and instead for the new canon. I don't think that the new stuff will make the old stuff go away, it just means that the old stuff will no longer continue to be developed in any meaningful way.

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So, we're sad for things that aren't even made yet, and instead of which other things will be made that may or may not be of equal, worse or better value, but it's all just hypothetical?

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I just recently read the Thrawn trilogy (Timothy Zahn) for the first time. It was pretty awful. I mean, I guess for licensed fiction it was some of the least worst, but man, there are ways to describe anxiety other than saying that someone's stomach or throat is tight, and someone can smile without feeling his or her lip twist. The writing style is atrocious.

 

I enjoyed them, though. I was feeling pretty down because of a bunch of heavy real life shit that was beyond my control; I couldn't concentrate on anything more substantial. Some stupid Star Wars books were just the thing.

 

Now I'm playing TIE Fighter and reading the super weird Legacy comics about the great-grandson of Luke Skywalker who is a jerk and a drug addict. TIE Fighter still rules.

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Heh, it's so weird how these changes are made over so many years. I just can't imagine that happening with many other big film series.

 

Kris Straub has got your back:

201109071.png

 

So, we're sad for things that aren't even made yet, and instead of which other things will be made that may or may not be of equal, worse or better value, but it's all just hypothetical?

 

To be fair, this sentence could be used to invalidate anyone's anxiety about any future thing or event.

 

The Expanded Universe is a known quantity. It might be of uneven quality, like Wikipedia Brown says, but I think anyone who's invested any substantive amount of time and care in it is going to feel just a little anxious about having it deliberately set aside in favor of some unknown quantity, especially in a franchise that historically hasn't treated its fans kindly and with a director known for his divisive reboot of another franchise.

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Pretty much any discussion of canon and non-canon makes my skin crawl around a little. It just seems a bit dumb. The rightsholders can work off any sheet they want to make a thing. It's basically splitting hairs over whether stuff is "real fiction" or "not real fiction" and I think it's the worst, most tedious thing fandom has to offer.

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