This is probably something that only I care a goddamn jot about, but whatever. Why do the readers always get fucked? “We’re going to ignore 40 years of story so we don’t have to actually try to follow an existing storyline.” Fuck. You. Go ahead and make up some half-assed plot for the next three movies. I’m mad enough right now to follow my long-held Brian-Herbert-Dune plan with anything SW that Disney comes out with. The new movies are going to have to get AMAZING reviews from non-fanboys for me to even consider watching them, at least how I’m feeling right now.
You laugh, but all the hardcore Star Wars nerds are totally going to boycott the new movies. By which I mean they’re only going to each see it three times. Maybe five. Six times, max.
No, it’s not a huge deal, but it does suck. I’ve been reading the EU for years, and this fucking SUCKS. Not quite as bad as Greedo shooting first sucks, but it still sucks.
When did they (including Lucas) ever assert that the EU was in any way canon? Why would they want to chain themselves to a book some random author, no matter how good or famous, wrote thirty years ago? Why would they want to go to the trouble of deciding which works were canon and which weren’t, since I’m pretty sure there have to be some contradictions somewhere? Why would they care about the novel or comics readers in terms of whether the stories they enjoyed were canon? Wouldn’t that work against them (no need to see the movies if you already read them)?
It makes sense. There are a lot of books that take place after the movies, up to like 100 or years after, I think, where Han and Leia have kids, and the kids grow up, and the Empire falls apart and gets back together and falls apart and gets back together, and aliens invade, and Luke trains a lot of people to be Jedi, and Sith show up again and they all fight and so on.
So if they’re making a bunch of sequels, they’re going to want to make original stories. They don’t want to say, “Well, ok, this movie is set 30 years after Return of the Jedi and is about Luke and his kids discovering the Emperor’s lost porn collection. Oh, wait, we can’t do that. According to the books, 30 years after that, the Sith Lord Darth Badius took over the galaxy, and Luke challenged him to a dance-off with the future of the New Republic at stake.”
They want to make their own movies that tell the stories they want to tell.
I just heard Timothy Zahn speak last week at Awesome Con in DC and this issue came up. He didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by it. His idea was that the stories are all legends and as such, sometimes things are remembered incorrectly in part, or even are entirely myths with no basis at all in history.
Are they going around to everyone’s house, taking their comics and noveizations, and burning them? No? Then who cares? The stories you liked still exist, and who cares what Anaheim has to say about it?
Not a bad thing IMO. The Zahn trilogy was pretty good, and there is an occasional other good book in there, but there is a fair bit of pretty poor novels in the EU.
I always knew it wasn’t canon, and I’m kind of a purist. Plus I’m lazy and never got around to it.