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Lucasfilm Announces Break With Star Wars Expanded Universe
RogueyWon writes: "A recent blog post from Lucasarts had confirmed that the new Star Wars movies planned for release by Disney will formally break continuity with the Expanded Universe novels, comics and video games. They say, 'In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe.' The news is unlikely to be a surprise, given George Lucas's previous pronouncements on the issue."
We found out that by keeping the time- and storyline, we could not cram enough cuddly merchandising crap into the show. Expect a lot more fluffy aliens, cutsie droids, and if you thought that Episode 1 was an overblown trailer and ad for the podracer computer game, we have a big surprise for you in Episode 7!
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I cannot claim to be much of a Star Wars fanatic and haven't read a Star Wars book in years, but I remember reading Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire along with the rest of the Thrawn Trilogy as a child and wishing that someday that would be adapted for the big screen as future episodes of the film series. Judging from its critical acclaim, I imagine many had the same wish. Strange that Disney would leave that all behind when its storywriting work was already done for it.
Perhaps not enough opportunities for tie-in marketing in existing plot material?
I'm sensing a disturbance in the force.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
So stop reading if you haven't read the Thrawn Books. I liked them books, but I just wish they could have come up with a better solution then just killing him at the end. It seems every time they do something interesting they cop out later on when it's time to resolve it. It's like the writers can't figure out what could possibly be a threat to a Jedi, which is silly. Blasters in sufficient quantity are threat. Bounty Hunters are a threat. Hell, Aurra Sing freakin' _hunts_ Jedi. I always thought the Star Wars MMOs missed out on a cool end game where gangs of Bounty Hunters would hunt the Jedi in PvP mode.
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...as if a million Star Wars EU geeks had suddenly cried out in terror, and then immediately took to the Internet to vent their rage.
Dan Aris
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...What about "Children of Star Wars"? What about "Star Wars Messiah"? Does Leia kill herself? Is Luke Atredies REALLY the Kwisatz Haderach?
I realize this is George Lucas' universe, that he "made up myself", but come on, aren't there another nine books of story to tell?
I grew up with the expanded universe, and it was good back then, but at this point it's super depressing. They've killed off a bunch of main characters (both from the films and the EU), and they've sketched out a future that makes it clear that there is no hopeful future in the EU, just an endless cycle of collapse and ruin.
It has been a long time since I was extremely familiar with the "extended universe", but at one time I had read somewhere around 50 of the books from this universe...and while many of them were great individually as a universe the universe as a whole was set by 20 different writers with different prerogatives...so for one I don't think the expanded universe is even a great universe but then on top of that it just totall ruins any ability for creative writing. There is hardly in an unaccounted for day in that universe.
Lucas screwed up a lot in the prequels but I think some of that was due to trying to fit his story into the expanded universe. Primary example: midochlorians are right from the expanded universe. But he obviously referenced it throughout the films, the whole clone wars business -> mandolorion armor -> boba fett business was defined in the expanded university and then Lucas made his story to match that mold and it was the worst thing ever. I'm not totally blaming the expanded universe, Lucas is awful, but there is no reason to follow it.
So anyway I will be glad to see some surprises. Hell I wish they'd forget the prequels happened and we just started from scratch after rtoj. the only real expanded universe bits I'd keep would be shadow of the empire and the bounty hunters...they don't pidgeon hole the story. Or start inventing new ships and tech and forcing the writers to reuse all these predefined assets.
So the outrage is that the people who own the rights to make the movies aren't going to use some fan-fiction about the original movies? Why should I care?
I don't respond to AC's.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who understands how the world works. Spin-off works have never been binding on any franchise flagship. Sure, the Star Trek films and TV series have been free to pick up bits of continuity from the novels or comics, but they've freely ignored them when it suited the purposes of the story they were telling. Marvel Comics can take what they want from the films (e.g. Phil Coulson), but they're still going to ignore them and tell their own stories. Episodes I-III already contradicted the Expanded Universe; why in a galaxy far, far away would anyone expect Episodes VII and later not to do so? Expecting the writers of these films to read and accommodate the metric tonne of professional fanfic (however good it is, however authorized it is) that comprises the EU is totally unrealistic.
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A fork in the universe, I see.
Take it, they will.
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...they did the whole 'we're going back in time to change everything' thing.
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As someone who saw the original movie when it first came out... only way that this works... Is to go waaaaay back in time. ( a long long long time ago in a galaxy far away) or to go forward far into the future (many generations after Luke and Anakin restore balance to the Force). There they could create new and interesting story lines that parallel the existing one(s).
I know they probably made it official now, however, I could have swore i've read this a while back when they announced they were making a new Star Wars movie. As I said, they are probably just making it official now, but I think everyone was already prepared for this to happen. So its kind of a non-story?
Which asshole are you referring to?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Has anyone ever dug deeply into the EU "canon"...I haven't but just scratching the surface you see dozens of pieces of work that contradict another dozen pieces of work. If they were to even attempt to keep it they would have to dig through 30 years worth of works to figure out which half needs to go anyway.
Someone from the future travels to the past, changes something fundamental and the universe slips into an alternate reality from which it can never return and in which no event can be expected to unfold as it did in the original.
Not only will this by definition never be inconsistent with the EU, it will give the writers ways of amusingly rehashing old stories by subtly altering some key elements things, like who gets to die of radiation while saving the crew. Maybe, in Episode VII, Luke will hack off Vader's hand?
What?
they rebooted the universe... they blew up Vulcan... they have old spock as some kind of time traveler from a future that doesn't exist.
Etc.
So imagine if they do the same thing to star wars... You could see Tatooine blown up in the first movie. You could see a time traveling vador giving force advice to yoda or something. Who the hell knows.
Generally not a fan of this sort of thing but it is what is happening.
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Okay, breaking continuity does make it harder to suspend disbelief. Most movie viewers can get over that within a few minutes, and I'm not really watching Star Wars for the dialog, social commentary, or even the technical predictions. I'm there to see the money shot, and hopefully a fun story to keep me from disbelieving while I wait for Luke's X-wing to fly down the trench. You know what impressed me even when I was a teenager? The fact that fast moving objects actually looked blurry, and that the Millennium Falcon was dirty. That was the first interstellar vessel I ever saw represented on film as having grease on the walls. Hell, there were even chrome (fuzzy) dice hanging from the rearview mirror, and it was the first time that I saw such incredible detail - detail which correctly got blurred when the viewpoint moved quickly. I just want the underlying story to not ruin my ability to suspend disbelief, so that I can enjoy the money shot.
When the prequels, came out, Lucas tossed everything the EU under the bus, including everything stated and implied in the films. ("I just remember my mother was always very sad," No! That was your adopted mom!) About the only thing he kept was Obi-Wan and Anakin fought over lava. So none of this is surprising.
When milking an existing franchise there's this need to be different-yet-similar, and a need to ramp everything up a notch or two. Eventually, everything gets a bit stupider as a result.
Years, ago I ingested everything out of the WEG RPG source books. I loved it. Now when I look out at the EU, it seems like such overwrought load of rehashed crap. A perpetual war of Sith and Jedi with even the uniforms and technology always looking the same. It's like the Star Wars Galaxy didn't even have changes in design, or different empires to grow and fall. (The Rakata being the notable exception.) Its quite a boring universe really.
Frankly, I had forgotten about the new movies before seeing that /. headline.
Let me guess, there will be space planes, robots, creatures and sword fights. I think I summed up the movie already.
I'm glad they made that clear before I spent money on them.
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Very good review of Star Wars. Too many people take the content of Star Wars way to serious. It's like listening to people argue about Woody Woodpecker canon.
Why the fuck even call it "Star Wars" then? Because you bought the rights to it and a combination of plot elements, etc? Is it illegal for other fictional works to reference another? No. So, why even call it "Star Wars"? Name Recognition, ugh.
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What makes Star Wars work is:
(1) No time travel
(2) No time travel
(3) No time travel
For some reason, time travel has become the be-all and end-all trope of speculative fiction in comics, movies, and books.
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At risk of violating the prime directive, I'd also say that Star Wars works because:
(0) No quantum coherency remodulation.
That someone first makes a jump further back into the past, but is a real quickie about it and rejumps to a later date. Vader: "Luke... I am your son..." Luke: "NOOoo, WTF? JUST NO!"
I wonder if the reasoning for this is along similar lines as the Star Trek venue in the theaters.
While at first my reaction was negative -- after thinking about it, I would imagine that the folks at Disney are well-aware of how devout Star Wars fans feel about the the spirit of the story and the characters and worlds behind it; further, if they mess this up not only will they lose the income potential, they will have a lot of very angry fans on their doorstep. It could be that Star Wars doesn't live in a box anymore, that it's time for some fresh energy into the story - I can live with that, provided it's done appropriately. We don't want to see Mickey Mouse behind a tie fighter :-) I am willing to give Disney a fair chance.
I agree with a previous poster here, elsewhere, about the "prequels" being very cookie-cutter -- cities, venues that we are already familiar with. Boring. We need more unknown worlds like Dagobah, et al, to stimulate our imagination, to keep a rich storyline going (along with interest).
But I think they will have only one chance at this...