Speculation Why the NJO and Legacy Era are toast.

Who's talking about actors improving lines? That's a whole other can of worms.

Your argument was about directors rewriting scripts, not about actors improvising lines.

Try to stay with the tour K?

 

So this is what reality looks like inside the bubble? Interesting.

 

Good one.

 

The implosion of a thousand dreams will be horrifying to watch.

...and also entertaining.

I still remember the shock over Jango Fett. All's quiet on that front now...

 

Check the name of the thread. I didn't start it. The thread is for speculation on the status of the post RotJ EU. Which is what I'm doing. It is extremely unlikely that any of that stuff will anything more than a glancing influence on what George, Kathleen, the scriptwriters and director will created.

 

You say because you obviously work for LFL or Disney.

Riiiiiight.

Good. Glad we got that settled.

Carry on then Trollio.

 

The-Eternal-Hero yours wasn't the thinking I was accusing of being "in the bubble."

 

I agree, the EU influence on the films will be glancing... Though I also believe the vice versa happens in terms of the films to existing EU will also just be glancing.

It's not that hard to be original without trashing huge chunks of what's there. Plenty of open space to work with, and that is what Pablo Hidalgo specializes in...providing information to help continuity. He's been gathering research for the treatments to help with the film. That is an indication to me, that like in the past, they want to TRY to keep continuity as much as possible where they can.

 

Oh he/she's still in a bubble. Just a different one.

 

A sample non-specific crawl

 

Offscreen and in the games. He now has a seat on the Jedi High Council, though; and is the Order's Battlemaster!

 

Exactly, this doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. I doubt very much the writers or the director will be losing sleep over whether the film they want to make is going to jive with the complexities of the EU, but that is exactly what they pay Pablo Hidalgo, Leland Chee and all the others to do. They will want to get their money's worth out of these people, if they thought that continuity was worthless, they would have saved themselves some money and fired them a long time ago. That being said, things are going to conflict with, and override, some EU, it's inevitable.

 

The EU authors went for big stuff -- Luke & Leia's children, killing off Chewie, the future history of the Republic and the Jedi, Force powers etc.

If they had remained on the margins there wouldn't be a problem. Now, they did what they did because those are the things we all wanted to know about. Ditto EVII. But the majority of the new audience still hasn't had those questions answered. The new team will want to create their own story of "what happened next". That's why it will effect the EU. They're probably going to cover the same territory.

The worst thing they could try to do is be clever like they did Star Trek 2009. Just continue the story and ignore the post "Jedi" continuity. Use elements if you can but don't get bogged down. Which is almost certainly what they will do. Unless they skip ahead 60 years or something. But I don't think they will. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

I looked up an online list of the top 50 EU characters and took their top 10 as an example, and I agree that Kyle could certainly be present as a Jedi Master, but in terms of total EU influence he's not nearly as big as those listed.

EDIT: Before anyone else calls it. Chuck Norris as Kyle Katarn, thank you.

 

I agree with the first part, but I'm not sure they will ignore it all as a solution. It would work, and they might do it, but I would think they would set the movie in the currently empty area after Fate of the Jedi, or maybe between some of the earlier series's. After all, between each trilogy and series of books there is usually a few years minimum that just gets brushed over as 'rebuilding time', so there would be more than enough time to have something important enough for a trilogy of movies to revolve around happen in. If they go that route though, I would be more inclined to agree that it would start to mess with continuity since they would probably end with things being different than they should be where the next book would pick up. But they have been doing that for a while now with the books, they just add in new ones between existing ones. Sure it seems strange that in a book that takes place a year later, they never mention something that almost destroyed the galaxy in the last book since it was written after the next one was, but that is the kind of retconning that they've always had to deal with anyway. If they put it after Fate, then they could just write the future as they like it for a while, and in that case I'd say that Legacy might be in trouble as they might diverge from where it should go. But you do have a point in that case about all the intervening events getting to be a lot of stuff to get the audience to grasp. Who knows, fun to speculate though.

 

Well and truly seconded!!

 

I don't expect them to toss it all, but it'll probably be treated like superhero movies treat the comics... source material not word of god. I mean here's a great example/allegory.

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and the Joker. The story is completely utterly original, but also grabs a lot of the most famous elements of the comics in its rendition of The Joker. People that worked on it went and read The Killing Joke to get a good grounding of the character and to build their version.

Episode VII has it's own exceptional foundation in the EU with the Thrawn Novels... and I don't mean plot or that. I mean character design and elements. Solo Twins, Mara Jade, and Luke Skywalker trying to build a new order. If they decide 'Okay twenty years after Endor' and start grabbing elements and characters as foundational material expect to see or hear actors talking about reading the Thrawn Trilogy and so forth. I could imagine say... the actress playing Mara Jade going, "This doesn't seem in character" and reference Zahn or something.

However, not all things in the EU are created equal or easy to utilize, hence why I singled out the two biggest bodies of works liable to be classed as AU or lesser canon with Episode VII's emergence.

 

It's really simple. You don't throw away great ideas and existing characters, ESPECIALLY when you purchased them wholesale like Disney did. It's like buying a big box of markers and throwing away all but one and drawing with only that marker. It's stupid business tactics and Disney is smarter than that.

 

They won't do that because the can't. The internal logic of Star Wars doesn't work that way.

 

Disney bought the classic characters that are worth something in the global culture: Luke, Han, Chewie, Vader, Yoda etc. They will use them in every way possible esp. at theme parks and in merchandising. The execs at Disney did not sit down and say, "Dammit, we need Abeloth and Naga Sadow in our stable!!!" When they explored the Lucasfilm portfolio they no doubt became aware of the big trove of extra stuff ripe for possible exploitation. But they probably have little idea what is in the EU beyond vague notions of big video games like KOTOR Online and the fact that there are books and comics. Their big announcement wasn't, "Wait for it - what you've all so desperately wanted - we're doing a big EU event like Shadows of Empire! Now, now, try to contain your enthusiasm!" They nailed their colors to the mast: Episode VII - a sequel trilogy. The rest is clearly secondary as stated in the press release - fodder for further development of secondary projects. Outside of hardcore fandom, no one has any idea who these EU characters are. A lot of great work has gone into the EU, but some of it's gonna have to give in the wake of the official continuation of the SW saga. Whatever they do with it all, it's probably not going to end up in the most eagerly anticipated film of our time.

 

That one marker has exponentially more value to Disney. It makes no sense to tell millions of filmgoers, looking forward to these movies "sorry to crush your decades of dreams about seeing Han and Chewie in the Falcon again, but we couldn't use Chewbacca, because he died a while back in a tie-in novel. We'll just have to resist making the Chewbacca t-shirts, pens, party favors, pez dispensers, action figures, beach towels, plushies, statues, flash drives, Mountain Dew cans, etc."

There's nothing about those "box of markers" that loses substantial financial value because of the illusory idea of "canon." It's just intellectual property waiting to be farmed.

 

Do you know what the word wholesale means? Mayhaps you should look that up. Go for it, I'll wait.

 

We all agree some will be lost...it's inevitable...where we disagree is to the amount that will be lost.

Disney does not have creative control. Lucas Film does. Disney just approves or denies what Lucas Film presents as the story they want to film.

You don't fix what isn't broken. You don't suddenly redefine how one of the most successful movie franchises of all time is produced.

 

...and strangely enough discarding those markers is stupid from a business standpoint. Disney is smarter than that. They didn't get to be the size they are by throwing away the stuff they buy.

 

"You don't [fix] what isn't broken. You don't suddenly redefine how one of the most successful movie franchises of all time is produced."

Exactly. Up to this point the screen SW has used the EU only as an idea box and nothing more. Why expect something different? Especially from outsiders?

Some of the EU is really brilliant genre stuff, some of it has earned its place in the Saga. But it is marginal compared to the impact of what Lucas created. Apart from hardcore SW fans, SW = the famous characters we all know about. Even Jar Jar is more "SW" to them than some obscure EU character they have never heard of.

I'm sure they'll find a use for a lot of the stuff. But they might as well bet the whole budget of the movie on a horse race as go in with their hands tied. It would be complete insanity to factor that stuff into the story of EVII. But I'm just repeating myself now. Believe what you want to believe. Maybe Iger is at this very moment pounding his fist on his desk and shouting into a Skype camera, "No no no!! We MUST use as much of the EU as possible! We didn't pay that kind of money for rights to a dozen of the most recognizable characters in entertainment history, we paid for 1,000 obscure characters no one has ever heard of!!" Anything's possible...