Lit is Chewbacca gonna be revived in the EU over the next two years?

There's no way in hell Chewbacca will NOT be appearing in the sequel trilogy, as I and many others have said before.

However I feel like all of the events that took place over the past few years (death of Jacen and Mara Jade, etc) have been the authors way of cleaning slate for the imminent release of the sequel trilogy. If they are gonna make a last minute retcon/change in an attempt to keep the whole post ROTJ EU alive, its gonna have to be Chewie's death.

which is why I fully expect them to have him show up alive somewhere with some sort of haphazard explanation.

Perhaps in Crucible, since its the "final" novel in the timeline to include the Big Three as main characters?

 

Not only that, but some other really strange things may happen. Samuel L. Jackson has been reported to be interested in returning for the new films. He probably won't be in them, but you'd still wonder why he thinks Mace Windu should be there...

Luke Skywalker: But, you're the famous Jedi Mace Windu! How come you're here? You were thrown out of a window before hitting the surface miles below many decades ago!
Mace Windu: I did. But I got better. And I'm not the only one. Innit right, Chewie?
Chewbacca: Wrawruff uff ruaaaah! <Well, being hit by a moon kinda hurts, I have to say.>

 

I'm sorry, in which press release did they say Chewbacca was going to be in the film? Has Peter Mayhew said he was approached yet? Seems to me a lot of people are jumping to a lot of uninformed conclusions about these films.

 

I think we need to learn more about the plot/setting of the ST & the fate of the EU in general before we can really speculate about the fate of our beloved wookie.

 

Chewie's been dead since 1999 and 20 years IU. Leave him dead in the EU.

 

Chewie will come back in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure crossover comic by Brian Michael Bendis from Marvel!

 

If they bring back friggin' Boba Fett, who died THIRTY years ago, then they'd better sure as hell bring back Chewie.

 

Boba Fett came back in 1992 (a year after the EU began again) after falling into a pit where he was supposed to be slowly digested over a 1000 years. How does that not scream loophole? He is the best Bounty Hunter in the galaxy and nowhere near old enough to die of old age. Chewie otoh? How was he supposed to survive in space for 20 some odd years? It would be bad if they brought him back. Just as bad as Maul coming back in TCW. Worse probably since Maul had the Force to keep himself together but really bad on Lucas' part to bring him back.

 

Riven_JTAC Falling into the Sarlacc and having a moon fall on you are quite different from each other. Chewbacca was killed in such a way to ensure readers that he wasn't coming back. Besides Dark Empire was released in 1992, less than ten years after Return of the Jedi was released.

 

We know the Big Three are coming back. It would seem a bit odd for them not to even approach Peter Mayhew. At this point, I'd say the only ways he won't be in the movie are A) if Peter Mayhew doesn't want to come back for God knows what reason (and even then they could just get another tall guy to wear the suit) or B) if they want to satisfy the relatively small contingent of hardcore continuity-minded EU fans rather than give the much larger number of movies-only fans what they want.

 

Who says the EU will be respected in that regard?

 

Who says it won't?

 

It's a valid question, but I think Disney will ultimately realize it's a bad idea to dismiss the material that has kept Star Wars a viable franchise during its "dormant periods" for lack of a better term. The NJO books were a very popular EU title and Vector Prime is a very highly regarded novel. To disregard it would be to lose a significant source of merchandise, and while some decisions over Star Wars properties have been extremely ill advised in the past (just look at the history of Star Wars Galaxies for an example of blundering in this regard) I find the likelihood of repeats such as that to be small.

Still, it could happen, but market research would probably indicate that Chewie merchandise won't be worth disenfranchising book fans.

 

let the dead stay dead. although i wish we could have Jacen and Mara back. I don't want to see the njo series retconned.

 

Chewie can come back for Episode 7 but let him stay dead in the EU.

 

To be fair, none of this "actor interest" stuff really means anything. It all comes out of reporters desperate for some kind of sound byte to craft a story around because there's public interest in any kind of Star Wars "scoop." The result is interviews that go like this:

Reporter: "Hey, Sam, you were in the last Star Wars!"
Samuel L. Jackson: "****in' right."
Reporter: "Do you want to be in the new Star Wars?"
Samuel L. Jackson: "Sure, whatever. That would be ****in' awesome if it turned out I was in it or something, mother****er. That'd be cool."
Reporter: "HEADLINE: SAMUEL L. JACKSON HIGHLY INTERESTED IN RETURNING TO STAR WARS."
Samuel L. Jackson: "I ****in' suppose . . ."

Or like this:

Reporter: "Hey, Leonardo DiCaprio, you're a famous actor!"
Leonardo DiCaprio: "I certainly am."
Reporter: "Do you like Star Wars?"
Leonardo DiCaprio: "I'm a human being who grew up in the seventies and eighties. Of course I like Star Wars."
Reporter: "Do you want to be in a new Star Wars movie?"
Leonardo DiCaprio: "Sure, whatever. If they sent me a script and the script was right, that would be cool."
Reporter: "HEADLINE: LEONARDO DICAPRIO DESPERATE TO BE CAST IN STAR WARS."
Leonardo DiCaprio: ". . . what?"

 

You can say that actor interest stuff doesn't mean anything, but I don't think you can say that Sam Jackson wanting to return is some reporter teasing him into a phrase that can be manipulated. He's extemporaneously gone off several times now about how he could return, how it would thematically work, how he could still appear as a ghost or hologram, etc. The guy clearly would be interested in returning.

Funnily enough I think Jason Statham of all people is the only actor I've seen who answered negatively when asked in interviews whether he'd want to be in Star Wars or not.

 

The only, and I do mean only way I could truly be sold on a "Chewbacca Returns" storyline, is if it was the result of the Yuuzhan Vong. In their efforts to repent for their actions and redeem themselves in the eyes of the galaxy they now call home, the Vong attempt to sort of "return what was taken" by way of a biotechnological clone or something of that nature. It would connect well with themes of the Vong seeking to make amends in Legacy, likely making small steps to prove good faith before being championed by Kol Skywalker for the series' Ossus Project, and the nature of the maturing clone would explain the absence of Chewie all these years without resorting to him miraculously surviving the impact of the moon and yet being trapped somewhere or suffering amnesia for the past twenty years.

 

But someone tampered with the cloning process and has created an army of angry Woookiees, with Chewbaacca leading them! Han, with the help of his daughter are the only people capable of ending the Woookiee nightmare!

 

Chewbacca's death made me stop reading the EU for five years.

At the time, I was 3 books away from having read every Star Wars novel ever written (not counting the kids books), so they lost a serious reader at that point. I only eventually picked up the next one because it had Corran Horn in it, and I only just finished reading NJO in the last month. I say, put Chewie in the new movies, and let's just pretend that whole moon-dropping thing never happened.

 

Yeah, but it doesn't mean, as implied, that Jackson's willingness to return means anything about the potential direction of the series. He doesn't know anything. He just thinks it would be cool to be in more Star Wars. The only answer to "you'd still wonder why he thinks Mace Windu should be there" is "He's some guy completely on the outside of the process who wants to be in Star Wars, and will tell you so if asked." He cares more about it than your average, "Sure, I'd be in Star Wars!" actor, but it's still all the product of a reporter-driven process that's seeking soundbites from people who have nothing to do with the process, not any reflection of anything going on within the process.

 

Jeez, you think they could bring back the billion other some-odd people they killed, as well? It would be a nice gesture, is all.

 

lol Sure would be nice of them, wouldn't it?

I was only half serious at best with that idea, though in the hands of a sufficiently talented author, I wouldn't be altogether opposed to it. All I'm really saying though, is if it becomes an inevitability that Chewbacca must return somehow because he'll be showing up in Episode VII, his death in Vector Prime be damned, I'd prefer it be done in a way that has strong story potential rather than a hand-waved gesture of ass-covering before the movie drops. Use the framework of the universe as it stands to make it happen, be more creative than "he was just hiding," and make any return as emotionally impacting as his departure.

 

Eh, 1) I don't think that Jackson's statement that he'd love to be in the new Star Wars films (and come on guys, this is the dude who called Lucas up to beg him to let him be in the prequels in any capacity at all, even just a stormtrooper that no one knew was him) implies either that he was actively in discussions to be in them, or if he does end up in them somehow, that he'll be Mace Windu and not voicing an alien or something.

2) In the unlikely event it does happen and he is Mace Windu it'd be a helluva lot easier to explain than Chewie. Luke survived having his hand cut off and being thrown off a high thing too. It's not like a moon fell on him. The real question to reconcile would be why he stayed in hiding for decades. And how much old age make-up they'll slap on him to make him look 50 years older than Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.