That would've been awesome, but they probably would've been required to pay Zahn some of kind of royalties if they used his books for the new movies. Not to mention the risk that the fans would consider any adaptation a pale shadow of the books themselves.

 

I find it really funny that you think this is a thought process that would have gone though anyone's mind.

 

Point. The need to Zahn a cut of the profits was probably a far more compelling reason.

 

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...-turmoil-brought-down-a-legendary-studio.aspx

 

You do realize it was the set up to what would exterminate most of the Jedi?

 

Of course I do, but it was shoddy set-up to say the least. When you need the EU to make even half of the Sifo Dyas/Dooku/Jango Fett nonsense make sense, your narrative has failed. Plus, between the Anakin/Padme romance, the cringe-worthy dialogue, and the startling pacing problems and anticlimax of that film easily renders it the worst of the prequels, at least in my books.

 

What part of it requires the EU? Someone posed as the Jedi Master-or was the Jedi Master- and ordered some clones well in advance using Sidious' well-known prescience-or near prescience. Jedi pick up clones, clones kill Jedi, Sidious is free to cackle and torture babies unmolested, and every government ship in the galaxy is accompanied by ominous music. The end.

 

It may not -require- the EU, but I know when I was sitting in the theatre for Attack of the Clones I was wondering, "Who the fuck is Syfo-dyas and why is he important? What's his backstory? I've never heard of him and yet he is responsible for all this?"

So I would not say that it required EU knowledge, but it was certainly a very jarring way of telling the story. Why would the Jedi trust this army that Syfo-dyas has commissioned?

 

Who is Nicolas Flamel and why does he have a Philosopher's Stone for the headmaster...

I think those kinds of situations are unavoidable in stories. You can't explain everything sometimes.

OK, Jedi Master ordered a clone army but this is left shady enough to later learn that it was a sith plot to kill all the Jedi.

I think I read a wiki that said Plagueis, with his public identity of Hugo Damask, convinced Syfo-Dyas to let him pay for the army, but that's where the EU comes in and makes the decision something that happened over 20 years and two or three meetings. TBH, I don't think that that's necessary to flesh out the story. It falls kinda flat in my book. But to each his/her own.