Lit Eleven-ThirtyEight and stuff

Eh, I try not to toot my own horn too much. It's easy for me to over-inflate my own ego by crowing about how awesome this new article I wrote for a Star Wars fan site is. That one was written for a more general audience anyway; I'd post it over on the Episode VII forums but I'm too lazy/sane.

 

Easier solution: Let Iron Lord post the link instead!

 

In other words, we have been lied to by LFL marketing, since at least Heir to the Empire, that the EU was the official continuation of the films, because Lucas can't let it go when it comes to Star Wars or something like that.

 

You're right that the posts I referenced specifically were the follow-up comments and that the hashtag thing was mostly just that, the hashtag, and little actual discussion. I was pretty much operating on the assumption that both sets of posts were by and large the same bunch of people--which I think is a pretty safe bet. The original event was tamer solely because it was mostly just people posting the hashtag, IMO, not because that batch of posters was inherently more respectful.

My position has nothing to do with my own enjoyment of anything--it strikes me as being disrepectful to people like JJM and Luceno and Jason Fry and Michael Kogge and Ryder Windham, who are working just as hard as they ever have and love the existing books just as much as they always have and suddenly find their fans exhorting people not to read their new stuff because of an executive decision that was made about seventy levels above them.

This part I absolutely do commiserate with, mind, and I made an effort to say so in the piece.

Dude, if that link needs to be posted anywhere, it's there.

 

Is this a sacred shaak? I can't even talk to casual fans without them telling me how much Lucas sucks etc.

 

Could well be a case where the SW fan and casual fan perspectives totally invert then!

 

As far as I know, the only main role prequel actor who didn't have a career after the prequels was Jake Lloyd.

And there are numerous such linkages.

Yes, a human being once changed his mind. Not exactly scandal territory...

At least it's ok when other people do it. Sorry, Luca$.

Well, this is really weird. What's the magic cutoff point? And it's defined by mass popularity? Doesn't that mean SW has not belonged to Lucas since 1977?

 

Hey TMG, you asked for a rep of the mindset that Lucas can do no wrong - I give you Arawn!

 

Wait. Are you serious? Yoda throws him into a chair???? You're right, I really need to rewatch because I have no memory of things like that! How did I not see that before?

Speaking of sacred shaaks...

 

Just like everyone posting on TF.N are by and large the same people with the exact same opinions. I mean everyone in the Episode 7 forum has the same views as everyone in the Lit forum right?

Was there a post specifically made that attacked JJM or Luceno? I didn't notice one specifically, but that doesn't mean that one wasn't there in the 300 plus comments & replies. I certainly didn't wade through them all. What I did see was some people encouraging people to stick to Legends novels over the new stuff. Shame on them.

I think it would be hard to protest moves that happen above the authors while running out and spending money on the new books and encouraging others to do the same.

 

So I'm doing this thing in EU Explains where I run down all the offhand references in the OT that have been retold a million times--so far I've done Han and Lando and the Tydirium, and I know I've still got the bounty hunter on Ord Mantell and, of course, the Death Star plans, but I feel like I'm forgetting something. Any thoughts?

 

Finding Hoth.

 

Oh, god, of course. Thanks.

 

How Vader found out about Luke?

 

Are there more than two of those? Off the top of my head it's just "Skywalker" in Vader's Quest and "Luke Skywalker" somewhere in Marvel.

 

Don't forget the "many Bothans died to bring us this information" plot line.

Fey'lya might no longer be canon, but he wants you to remember the Bothans.

--Adm. Nick

 

Again, is there much of a contradiction there? The Tay Vanis storyline in Marvel references "Bothans" being involved, but IIRC nothing that really contradicts XWA/SotE, which is the only version of the story I'm aware of.

 

Was it also in Star Wood? Not to mention I'm sure the new Star Wars comic will cover it eventually.

 

...I can't remember.

 

Wasn't Star Wood the comic where Obi-Wan's ghost told Vader about Luke or something?

 

The other day I got a lift home from a party with a friend of a friend and we got onto Star Wars and I expressed to her that I was kind of sick of casual fans banging on about how Lucas was terrible and how none of them could defend their positions properly. Then I made the mistake of saying watching TPM and ANH back-to-back casts a different light on TPM and she basically chalked it up to my youth/the fact that I didn't grow up watching the OT. People younger than me and much more casual fans than I am have done this sort of hipster it's-cool-to-hate-GL-and-the-prequels thing as well.

 

I'd say it really comes down to one thing above all TMG - Lucas wants to dictates things in a way few of his peers do and it really hacks people off.

For instance, Blade Runner - there's the Director's Cut and theatrical - Ridley Scott has no problem with both being out for people to choose between. Or the LOTR, there's both the Extended and Theatrical cuts of those films. Only Lucas stands apart by wanting one version available at 1 time, with nothing else permitted.

Coming behind that are the additions. If they were all brilliant and enhancing the established quality of the work, no one would likely object but, for a lot of people, while some of the additions do improve the films, others inflict massive, irrevocable damage upon them - e.g. adding a NOOOOO! to Vader's turning on the Emperor in Jedi. Lots of people look at that aghast - the scene was perfect, it needed nothing, Lucas inflicted something. It's as if a master artist took his best work, slung a big stripe across it to 'improve' it, while to his audience, he wrecked it beyond repair.

If there were multiple versions of SW OT available - say dubbed Original, Special 1, Special 2, Blu-Ray, I'd reckon at least 90% of the loathing would go up in smoke. People would choose the one they wanted and LFL would get all the receipts! Hell, you could do a super-set of each film, with each version even.

For the PT, I'd suggest it's an entirely different set of problems, but it starts with the fact that, to many, by the time the PT started coming out, the films had attained a mythical aspect that nothing could likely ever live up to. It may be the ST shares that with the PT, we'll find out in about 18 months.

 

Lucas must be wondering how Peter Jackson was able to butcher half the characters from LotR and get away with it, and how Ridley Scott still has credit after Prometheus, or the Alien recut which completely altered the film´s pacing, or doing several version of Blade Runner changing the very interpretation of the film (Deckard a skinjob means there´s never any contrast between a human and a replicant for instance) [if anybody knows if there´s a version with neither the epilogue nor the unicorn please tell me], but if he so much as changes a coma in the opening crawl people go berserk. Sometimes I think rewriting the Bible would cause less of an uproar than anything SW related.

I just don´t get why some people claim you have to had grown up with the OT to understand the reactions to the PT. I did, but they also had their issues, and nostalgia doesn´t erase them away.

 

The Bible itself is already a rewriting in itself in the sense that its been limited to a very specific set of gospels since the Council of Nicaea.

 

One answer: Jackson hasn't gone and pulped all copies of LOTR and Scott lets you pick the version you like.