Speculation Why the NJO and Legacy Era are toast.

I don't even know why this is even up for debate. Both the Prequel Trilogy and the Clone Wars TV series have always done their own thing. They may borrow ideas from the EU and throw in a reference or two, but neither ever let their storytelling be dictated by EU canon. I don't expect the Sequel Trilogy to be any different.

Some stories are going to survive. Others are going to get trashed. It will be no different to before. And a dead Chewbacca is one of the first things I expect to get trashed.

 

Its technically not just HIS universe anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. He even tacitly acknowledges that in the PT, since he references the EU all three prequels. In Eps. I and II more than once. In Ep. I Obi-wan says that he senses something elusive. He's feeling Darth Maul, but doesn't know it. That's reference to Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, which lead immediately into TPM. Senator Palpatine tells Queen Amidala that Chancellor Valorum is mired in a manufactured scandal. That scandal was created by Palpatine in Cloak of Decption to undermine Valorum and make it possible for Palpatine to assume the Chancellorship. Aurra Sing can be seen briefly during the Pod Race. In Ep. II, when Palpatine and the Jedi are discussing beefing up Padme's security arrangements, Mace Windu mentions that Anakin and Obi-wan are just returning from a border dispute on Ansion, that would a reference to The Approaching Storm, which also formally introduces Count Dooku. On Kamino, Jango says that he offered the job of being the template for the clones by a man named Tyrannus on the one of the moons of Bogden which is the last stage of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. In Ep, III, after rescuing the Chancellor, Anakin says that this is the tenth time that Obi-wan has saved his life. Obi-wan corrects him and says that that incident on Catp Nemiodia doesn't count. That would be a reference to Labyrinth of Evil.

 

As someone who loves the EU, it's a little saddening to realize that they are going to have to dump, change, or ignore a lot of it in order to make Ep. VII. There is just way too much that has happened and way too many characters and events that really wouldn't fit into film in order to keep a lot of it.

Which means...we're going to have a whole new series of books based off of the new canon of the ST, with a lot of the same characters and happening around the same time as other events that have already been written about. Doesn't it?

 

But how many of those references are to stories that were written after the prequels? Thats not referencing the EU. Its the EU giving a backstory to a line of dialogue in the films.

And in the case of Aurra Sing - I thought she was originally intended to have a bigger role in AOTC before being replaced by the more expendable Zam Wesell.

 

All of those examples are of tie-in books based on Lucas's screenplays. They weren't pre-existing novels.

 

No, they are not going to summarily dump the Expanded Universe. That was point of posting that video statement from Bob Iger. They didn't just by the films. They bought the ENTIRE Star Wars Universe, and they bought they bought the Expanded Universe PRECISELY because of its huge scope. When he says that there are 17,000 named characters and several thousand named star systems that says that they see ALL of it as a cohesive whole.

 

Yes it almost certainly does. We'll get authors and hopefully good editors working with the current holocron team to sort out this mess. I'd bet Zahn will get a book or two at least since there are large parts of Vision of the Future and Specter of the Past written to retcon and even tweak the EU written up to that point. We'll just have to wait and see how this will work.

At the same time we can't forget this is a business as well so if a character is popular in the EU (Mara Jade, Solo Twins, Ben Skywalker for example) I'd expect a reappearance. Jade already has multiple appearances in games, radio drama, and so forth so her coming back for Episode VII wouldn't be very far fetched at all.

 

Dude, they're gonna mine it for content, not treat it like an actual history. You need to accept this, you'll sleep a whole lot better. The way Dr. Who has adapted several old radio plays - they don't care about that separate continuity, they just own the content and use it however they want to. If you have Peter Jackson using Tolkien as a grab-bag for his free-for-all movies, you're certainly not going to have an A-List director asking if he can or cannot do something because it "violates canon". It's a big toy box to them, not an inviolable narrative they plan to follow like Talmudic scholars.

 

I love the NJO and would be unhappy to see it gone but if they have an Anakin Solo in the Sequels that's like the one in the EU that would make me happy. Oh wait, he was killed in SBS since people might get him confused with Anakin Skywalker. So no Anakin Solo most likely even though it would be interesting to see him on screen. Seeing how Leia ultimately forgave her father and how Anakin Solo dealt with the possibility of becoming just like his grandfather would make me happy.

 

Yeah, they'll mine it for content. I am not disputing that. You can only make so many movies about Luke Skywalker before Mark Hamill becomes too old to play the part, or decides that he just doesn't want to do it anymore, but my point is that alot of people are specifically arguing that the ENTIRE Expanded Universe is going to be COMPLETELY SCRAPPED and that Lucasfilm and Disney are simply going to start over again. My position is that they won't because there are parts of the post-Jedi EU that people would like to see adapted, like The Thrawn Trilogy, X-Wing and the New Jedi Order. I'm not saying that we'll get them right away, but I wouldn't rule out seeing them in some form at some point down the road. Also, its important the remember that the Star Wars universe is HUGE. We know that the recorded history of the galaxy spans more than 20,000 years, but we've only seen about century of contiguous events, give or take. There is a lot that hasn't been shown to us yet, so if they try something and it bombs, then they can just go forward, or way back into the past. I think that the immediate pre-TPM to FOTJ timeline will be more or less left alone. They may reference it in the ST, or they may not. That has yet to be determined, but I don't think it will be altered in any really significant way. Continuity is Star Wars is not the same as in Star Trek or in Doctor Who, where there are time warps, alternate dimensions and parallel universes. The Star Wars galaxy exists in a chronological. linear universe, not a multiverse.

 

It's a multiverse in all but name. There's a ton of content that doesn't really fit together, events that happen simultaneously etc. and we just accept it. But it is doubtful they'll want to confuse consumers with content that's being used for major motion pictures costing hundreds of millions of dollars. They will want synergy. Ergo, all new books set in that era will be based on the movie not the old EU.

As for Luke, they'll probably kill him in VII and use him sparingly as a Force Ghost after that.

There's no reason why certain EU stories can't be adapted as animation or something, but it's just not popular enough to garner major film adaptations. Again, A-list filmmakers aren't going to want to do EU books, they'll want to put their own stamp on SW.

Beginning with the presence of Chewie - and they'd be insane not to include him - the EU is going to start experiencing profound disruptions when the actual, official continuation of the Skywalker Saga appears.

 

Just because multiple events happen in the same time frame do not make Star Wars a multiverse.

I agree. It fits with Saga's pattern.

If they do that, they'll be nuking large chunks of continuity and they run the risk of alienating fan. I don't think they'll do that right out of the gate.

 

Well, Corruscant, which was created by Zahn, made it into the movies, so I'm sure something else will for the new ones.

 

I don't think Pablo Hidalgo had been set to task of researching for the film just to completely scrap huge portions of the EU...SORRY.

Small bits will be lost, sure, but only very small bits.

 

Wasn't Coruscant depicted in the Thrawn Trilogy books as having mountains, with snowy peaks?
Sure, the name and perhaps the idea of Coruscant (capital city/planet) remained, but the design itself was changed.
That's what's most likely going to happen in the ST - concepts and ideas from the EU will be there, but changed to by more in sync with the story and the universe the writer and director want to create.
For instance, if the director/writer feels that Korriban has to have heavy rain weather and a dark-blue color theme rather than red-orange, because that would make the planet more cinematic and dramatic, then be sure they will make it like that.
Same goes for characters and events.

 

If they plan on using Ford, Hamill, and Fisher (which it appears they do) then the movie will be taking place around 45 ABY in order to account for their actual ages. This would place it after the established EU (except the Legacy comics).

It would be very easy to have Ben & Jaina as the main protagonists without needing to get into the backstory of the EU, except maybe a throwaway line about Ben's mom being dead for the last 10+ years. Don't even ned to mention Anakin & Jacen.

Contradicting the EU when it's not necessary would just alienate a large portion of the SW fanbase, and potentially put in jeopardy a large source of revenue (which Disney is probably more concerned with). So why bother when it's just as easy to incorporate a couple of things when necessary (see: Coruscant)?

 

Some people are in serious denial. We're trying to be gentle with them but...the potential audience for a new Disney produced SW feature, the beginning of a whole new era of SW, is many times larger than the audience that now exists. Lucasfilm, although a relatively big operation, was small beans compared to Disney. While LFL still exists, the minds behind SW are thinking bigger now. That little company owned by one man who cared about sorting continuity issues and who could literally answer questions about obscure background characters...it's gone. The idea of alienating such a small portion of the fan community is not an issue. To bring back Star Trek they blew up Vulcan, killed Spock's mother, and set the whole thing in an alternate universe: and 99% of the fans accepted that. SW won't go that far, but they're also not going to get tripped up by something that happened in a book 15 years ago.

 

Also, didn't we have this exact same conversation 15 years ago?

 

And what was the conclusion 15 years ago?
Did the PT contradict much of the existing EU at the time?

 

Yep. Some fans live in Heartbreak Hotel.

The EU they're talking about was a "virtual sequel". That sequel is no longer going to be virtual!

I'm not dismissing the work of so many respectful authors, but face it:

1] In 2015 that story will probably become apocryphal.

2] Even hardcore EU fans were not happy with where it was going, they've been bitterly criticizing Del Rey all year!! Maybe it's had its day and it is time to move on to bigger and better things. Who knows those characters better than the man who created them?

I'm not suggesting a "salt the earth, junk the EU" solution but realistically, the new films & content will take precedence over anything that has been published. Star Trek has managed to keep a wildly discontinuous "continuity" in existence for years, which show producers and movie makers dip into whenever they want to. SW can do the same.

But don't get your hopes up about seeing Mara Jade or the Skywalker/Solo children as created by the old EU. I'm sure they will use & reference the EU, but it would be complete insanity to base a new movie on a series of spin-off novels that are seriously losing steam.

 

Yep. Gone was Boba Fett's elaborate backstory, the Clone Wars were completely different than we had thought, the nature of the Force, the nature of the Sith, the rise of the Empire, all were different than on the EU. It pretty much broomed a huge swath of EU.

 

I don't know what the rest of you define as "a lot," but I didn't feel like the prequels really dismantled much of the Expanded Universe continuity. It seems to me that any perceived conflicts between the prequels and the EU were able to be explained. Maybe the "Clone Wars" TV series took apart some books that had been set during the time between Episodes 2 and 3 . . . I don't know much about that because very few of the books I own take place during that time. I don't think, however, that Episodes VII, VIII, and IX are going to conflict with the Expanded Universe as much as some of you may think. I just can't see them screwing over a lot of hardcore fans by creating events that totally take apart every book that occurs post-Return of the Jedi. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it.

 

It's going to happen. And I seriously doubt that many EU fans, sitting in a theater at a midnite screening packed with fans cheering and getting swept up in a new SW saga, are actually going to feel disappointed. There might be a bittersweet feeling of letting go of the long story they've become attached to, but when it comes right down to it, I don't think even the most dedicated book fan is going to choose the books over the movies. And trust me, they will not drop the ball on this. It will be a movie that generates excitement, laughter, and tears. As someone pointed out, this is a series that has something to prove again, it has a bad rep. The biggest mistake they could make as producers would be to saddle this movie with a lot of irrelevant baggage. Episode VII will go for the jugular. It has to, it cost $4 billion plus however millions it takes to film, promote and distribute the film. I doubt even the most ardent EU fan is going to walk out wishing they'd used the Vong.

Prepare to jettison the "faux sequels" - the real sequels are coming up fast!!

 

I think people are jumping the gun with the EU becoming non-canon. The last book from FotJ shoehorned elements from TCW's Mortis arc into the story. Because it seems so unexpected I suspect the ST is going to involve Mortis somehow and the books are already trying to establish the status quo in which the galaxy is in during the new movies.