I think they could have made a lot better decision regarding the EU. Just...scrapping it causes unneeded rage and they will lose money because of it. Also, it is just a slap in the face to all the authors and creators who have basically just been told, "Ya know those novels you slaved over? Yeah, that's just basically glorified fanfiction now."

 

it's easier to make it non canon than to be yelled at for getting it wrong. I'm more upset that KoTOR is rendered non canon than the EU books.

 

Eh, just consider the stuff you like an AU or something. I was already rendering stuff canon or non-canon in my head anyway, it doesn't matter to me.

As for KotOR, unless they go back 4,000 years at some point and directly contradict it, you might as well consider it canon. The KotOR era's practically it's own little universe.

 

My initial reaction was rage, but on reflection I suppose it would have been too complicated to fit the new films around the EU stuff, which is pretty bloated as it is. It's a shame we'll never get to see some of the cooler stuff on screen, but on the other hand, there's an awful lot of horseshit in the EU, and that was before I gave up on it as a bad job (about halfway through the Legacy of the Force books). Definitely a shame for the authors who've put their time and effort into the books though.

 

~A quote from the article Riley sourced.

This seems to be the catch-all excuse to justify calling anything pre-Prequels non-canon. It's horseshit of course. It isn't all that hard to type in a few keywords into the Continuity Database to search on whatever question an author might have.

It's just another way to say, "I'm too fucking lazy to look, so I'm gonna make shit up that is going to piss off all the people that take canon seriously."

I can already see the utter rage that people (SW-geeks) are going to feel over seeing something they've come to believe is true (canon-wise) tossed to the side.

I don't see the point in this. Post ROTJ is free game, because they're making new movies, so it's going to invalidate a lot of the future, but doing the same to the Old Republic and earlier makes no sense.

 

Invalidating the previous EU content gives a free reign to make new content (ie make lots of money while completely ignoring pesky things like "continuity"), and it can even be spun as giving ~greater creative freedom~, which is already happening.

Honestly, the easiest option would have just been to movie-ize the Thrawn Trilogy. But there's not quite as much money in that now is there. There would still be a lot, just not as much. And that's really all that matters to the people calling the shots.

 

This is where most of my rage is coming from honestly.

There's only three series that are post ROTJ that I'd have wanted kept, and they're something that I feel Disney would keep anyway if they really wanted it. The Courtship of Leia series, the Thrawn Trilogy and the Timothy Zahn series.

 

I think for me...I'm less concerned about the events of the EU being scrapped than I am the character's of the EU never existing. I could do without all the crappy stories, but considering this means that certain characters may not exist....I'm very iffy.

For example this means that we don't know if Boba Fett is alive for a certainty. Mara Jade or Kyle Katarn might never exist...That's more my fear than whether or not they break out the Yuuzhan Vong or Chiss...

 

Pissing off the people that give you money doesn't sound like a smart business decision. We aren't talking about cutting the fat or eliminating a couple of books or games here to make things run smoother. They're gutting virtually all of the universe (minus the movies and the Clone Wars animated, and making everything else invalid.)

Edit: (Quote from Wookieepedia)

Granted, we're not talking about the Mona Lisa here, but I think SW can be argued as part of our (pop) Cultural Heritage.

 

Toss in the X-Wing series and the Hand of Thrawn duology and I'm with you. I wouldn't be too torn up to see the back of say, Darksaber, or the Swarm War arc.

I agree completely, but if I think like a corporate bean counter then... "I'm not marketing to the hardcore fans, I'm marketing to some schlub off the street who saw A New Hope when he was eight and has never so much as picked up a Zahn book" about covers it.

 

But which are you going to make the most money off of: the person that's going to watch a movie and maybe buy the DVD later or the person that's going to keep the franchise alive for decades to come by buying a number of things associated with it? I guess that would be the question.

It just seems like a tremendous waste.

A lot of memorabilia is going to lose a lot of its value. Collectors are probably crapping themselves with this news. Why would they bother investing in more just to have something like this come along down the line again? While the moves made hundreds of millions, it's all the other crap (merchandising-wise) where the even bigger money comes from I would think.

 

I'm conflicted on this.

See, even as a massive fan of the Star Wars EU (I own nearly all of the books, read all the comics, played all of the video games on multiple consoles, my favourite computer game of all time is TIE Fighter, etc.), it sucks to see it completely ditched by Disney... but I get why they did it. Because let's be honest, over two-thirds of it is absolute junk or at best mediocre. Sure, they may have started off incredibly strong with Zahn and Stackpole and Allston and Shadows of the Empire, but to say it stayed strong would be disingenuous at best.

So when it comes to a sequel trilogy, I'm not surprised to see them declare that segment of the EU non-canon and go with their own thing - but think about this, when Abrams was called on to do Star Trek, he and his writers tried their best to meet things halfway and they went back through the original series and material to craft a story that tried to please both groups. Now I don't like the new Star Trek movies at all, but it does show Abrams cares a little about this sort of thing, if only because he doesn't want to totally alienate even the casual fans who might know a little about the larger universe.

As such, I wouldn't be surprised if he went through some of the more critically beloved elements of the EU and picked out pieces or characters that worked. If the sequel stories are going to focus on the children of our original protagonists, I can bet Abrams will go for the easy shot and name Han and Leia's kids Jacen and Jaina - not out of respect for the fandom, but because Hollywood screenwriters in this sort of position will want to do as little work with this franchise as possible because they know they'll make disgusting money. So yeah, if Luke's married in the story, why not make his wife Mara Jade (and hell, maybe they won't kill her like Traviss did...)? Why not fill out the new Jedi Order with recognizable names like Kyp Durron or Kyle Katarn or Tahiri - it would take them no effort, and even if they ignore the original stories where those characters came, it would be a shoutout to fans who stuck with the series. And think about this: since Abrams has such a hard-on for inscrutable mastermind villains, bringing in a character like Thrawn out of context with the arc of the EU wouldn't be a bad way to win an applause line even if the story they choose to tell is radically different.

So here's my guess: of course they're not going to tell the same stories, but that doesn't mean they aren't going to bring in EU characters in some form to the new movies, if only due to sheer laziness in having to come up with new characters. And honestly, since I can't (to preserve my sanity) consider the Star Wars canon sacrosanct, I have no problem with them telling new stories with older characters, possibly even stories that invalidate parts of the post-ROTJ EU.

Although I will say this: declaring the pre-Phantom Menace material non-canon is complete bullshit. Exar Kun and the rest of the Sith Empire material from KOTOR was thousands of years removed the rest of the story, and should have been left alone.

 

All I know is that The Courtship of Leia better remain fairly intact or I will seriously have an apopletic fit.

 

While I get why they did it, would it be a little better to give it an official ending with a book or two and then somehow rename it instead of simply calling it non-canon and ignoring all its fans who helped SW exists in between movies?

And if they don't use any elements from it, Disney is crazy. They have countless concepts in it, good and bad, but more importantly already tested on the potential audience. Not using it and going for all fresh material may work for artistic reasons, but they are a commercial company. I fully expect the new trilogy to redo some of more memorable characters and moments from EU.

 

The thing about the New Star Trek: it's done in a way that makes it an AU of itself, leaving everything that occurred in canon alone. If you like the new stuff, great, but if you prefered the old, then there's nothing to worry about, because the new is literally AU canon anyway.

New Trek books (old canon) are still coming out and haven't been disturbed. Granted, we probably won't be seeing anymore old canon movies anyway, so it all fits together quite nicely.

 

I think the worst part about this decision is that its more or less a big fuck you to the people who made the existence of the upcoming stuff, if not possible then as exciting as it is.

To me the EU is what kept this franchise alive and made that fictional universe alive and now you tell everyone that all that devotion and love doesn't matter? Its just too bad that the love is too strong for the movies to be boycotted or something

 

Why? Disney is not merely concerned with giving Abrams space but with giving everyone else a universe to work with without a 200 book series weighing them-and new fans- down.

I hate this, but the mentality extends beyond Abrams.

 

But at the same time, you need to consider the timeline. KOTOR and the other Old Republic material took place thousands of years before the Star Wars films, and since the films won't be touching on time travel (I fucking hope), odds are the sequel trilogy wouldn't be drawing upon material from before Episodes I-III. It was ancient history even in the time-period of the prequels, and thus irrelevant to the sequel trilogy of movies.

Look, I get the principle of a blank slate outside of a limited canon, but I don't see the rationale in taking an eraser to EU material that will likely never be touched by the films. As such, they're erasing that EU canon from existence for a creative team that at this point doesn't exist and will likely not target that time period when they instead will be working on stories tied to Episodes VII-IX, either spanning the gap between the Battle of Endor and Episode VII or writing within that newly defined universe.

Frankly, I think Lucas would have been better off dropping an arbitrary date on EU canon - I'd argue right before the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, before the galaxy got flipped upside down, the galactic paradigm shifted irrevocably, and (most importantly to the movie-going public) Chewbacca got killed - and setting Episode VII-IX there. Declare the NJO material non-canon or an alternate timeline and go from there. That way, Episodes VII-IX can have an EU backdrop of existing history that respects the fans, but opts to tell their own unique stories. I'll say the same thing I'll say about jumping into comics mid-run: if you work to tell a good story, new fans will be willing to seek out the older material in order to learn more about the characters.

This method that Disney proposed, on the other hand, has no faith in the audience - sure, the average movie-goer is a complete dumbshit and won't know a Quarren from an Ithorian or anything beyond what they've absorbed from Star Wars entering western society's collective unconscious, but if you build an immersive world, you can draw them in. And providing you can tell a complete well-defined story within the movie (something that I'd argue Attack of the Clones failed to do, which makes it the worst SW movie in my opinion), people will seek out additional material and history, and BOOM, there's a whole collection of vintage Star Wars novels that fill in those gaps. To throw that aside is not only wasteful, it disregards good stories and characters that could have enriched the greater world of the films and yet didn't have to cripple or overburden them.

 

It's not just about the films. It's about having a new set of stories that can either closely match the new films, or series or games that don't require reading a timeline to figure out what goes where.

Is it excessive? Yeah, we agree but w/e. From the perspective of an exec looking for the easy path it makes sense to scrap everything and maintain full control. Sucks to be the fans but w/e.

By Lucas you mean LucasFilm or Lucas before he sold?

If the former...why? You're looking for accomodations from people who don't care.

Option One: Cannibalize the EU, take the cool shit and write a story that isn't twisted into fitting the canon. Even without NJO there are decades of baggage that no one wants to try to adapt.

Option Two: Work with the canon, despite it being awkward with the state of the current actors.

Well...TOR may still be canon. So I imagine that this is a political maneuver. They want to rip off the bandage and use a clean slate BUT a lot of stuff will still be defacto canon if TOR stays canon. Hell, the new books might just reuse the same points, thus making it canon. That would be the good way of doing it; you slowly reintroduce the less clunky bits.
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To be frank though I feel a sort of sadistic glee about this. There are a ton of EU fans (or people who don't even consider themselves such as much as fans of one set of games or books)who would be totally fine with all the stuff others like being destroyed while they got to hang on to KOTOR and TOR, they would totally abandon all the other shit to the fire. Well...welcome to the club. It's not just the shit you find boring that gets trampled on. Disney will grab every convenience they can, your whining (not that you did this Silens)about KJA being a special evil not withstanding.

 

Isn´t it fairer to do a complete reset instead of cherry pricking what books/comics etc. to keep? They had to do something considering how bloated and complex the EU is and you can´t really expect movie-goers to catch up to all that has happened. This was simply the most efficient way to do it.

But then I always cherry picked my own Star Wars Universe elements so this changes nothing for me not will it stop me from hopefully enjoying the movies.