Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

I think that's a slight exaggeration tbh. When Chewbacca was killed off in VP there was huge outrage, with the author Salvatore actually getting death threats!

Abadacus to a certain extent it's always been about the money. Why do you think there are Special Editions etc always being re-released, Lucas is essentialy making money of the same thing. Why do you think Disney were willing to pay 4 billion because it is a money maker.
It was just at the time there was nothing else but EU books, so it didn't matter, but it does not mean they weren't willing to ride roughshod over it if it suited them.

Look at it this way,it could be worse look at Asimovs work. IRobot is a truly brilliant sci-fi novel with so many themes about life and what it means. I (and others) were so looking forward to the film. Instead the fans were treated to that Will Smith debacle complete with Shia Lebouf

 

Stackpole had some interesting things to say on the subject:

http://theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/stackpole2.asp

TF.N: How has your overall experience with Star Wars fans been? Positive? Negative?
M.A.S.: It's been overwhelmingly positive, which is why the reaction to and attacks on Bob Salvatore have stunned me. Had I known the sort of ill-mannered responses his work would get, I'd have told him to run away. Instead, basing things on my experience, I told him to come on in. I guess I kind of feel betrayed here, and I have to wonder what sort of nonsense will go on with my NJO books.
TF.N: What would you say to fans that reacted (and may react) negatively?
M.A.S.: Well, first, Star Wars belongs to Lucasfilm. They're hosting the party, if you will, they pay the band, so we dance to the music they choose. Second, if you want safe stories, pablum puked out that doesn't make you think, go read Star Trek or some other series. Star Wars has the depth and strength to allow for really dynamic stories. If those are not to your taste, stop reading those stories. All the writers are doing their best to turn out great stories, and I think this series will be full of them. It's funny, on one hand writers will be criticized for having a cadre of "safe" characters who can't die. Readers say that makes the stories boring. Then we turn around and make everyone fair game, and they don't like that. The key is writing the best story we can, and doing what we have to do to make it the best. I'm not going to compromise my standards of storytelling because I'll make someone nervous. If I'm NOT making them nervous, I'm not doing my job.

 

What I meant is that I don't know many franchises where the authors and the guys in charge were so easily reachable. Come one, wev'e been getting TONS of "Word of God" information throughout the years.

 

Do you see a load of asterisked terms in that statement threatening various acts unto a body part? No, of course not. That sort of thing is simply not done in England, that's left to you perfidious rebels!

(No, more like 50/50 Scorned Consumer / Reciprocity Principle)

More seriously though I keep looking at the pre-order price for New Dawn. It's a new era, it's by John Jackson Miller - those two factors alone should render it an instant buy. I can't buy it. Buying that, in a way, validates the reboot move, which I cannot go along with.

Might there be a story that overcomes this aversion? It's possible - couldn't say no to All-Star Western, it was More Than Meets the Eye that re-sparked interest in Transformers, while Marz-Sejic on Artifacts... In the main the rule remains: Do a reboot and my buying interest plummets. It's taken Marvel about 2 years to recover from the toxic impact of AvX, but even there my buying isn't what it used to be.

 

People might complain about character shields on characters they dislike, and about the death of a character they like.

 

Thinking about Chewie's death, the reboot now makes me frustrated that Lucas didn't let them stick with the original plan and axed Luke instead.

There were so many stories we could have read about-- and would have done-- had they indeed been treating the EU as non-canon all along like they're now retroactively claiming. There would have been no more of the Big 3 always barging back in, the Solo kids would have truly had the chance to be the new generation of leaders, the passing of the torch could actually have happened! But no, they kept being told not to touch Luke, Han and Leia...

And now that character shield has turned out to have been entirely meaningless anyway, and just prevented Jacen, Jaina and Anakin having the stories they should have been allowed to have, free from always being in Grand Master Skywalker's shadow.

 

On the other hand, if they ever DO decide to revisit it -- and I imagine they will, once the NU is well established, because MONEY -- well, all bets will be off.

Can't get back the missed opportunities... but there's life in the old dog, yet!

 

The opportunity I miss most is how had Luke been killed, Jan and John could have made Legacy a story of the grown up Solo kids, instead of needing to skip a century to get away from movie character shields.

But instead we had the revenge of Luke's old girlfriends.

 

I thought (and still do) that all the "rage" and sending death threats as truly awful. It's a fictional character for gods sake .

That said what made me laugh was that all the talk of being edgy, they killed off the easiest character to kill. Unless it's first person all Chewie could do was go rrrraarrr
I mean other authors put him out the way by having him babysitting he was that superfluous

 

I've said it many times before, but I really think the biggest mistake the NJO made (in retrospect) was focusing on passing the torch to the generation after Luke, Han and Leia.

A Legend of Korra situation, in which we'd leapt ahead to a point where generation two (Jacen/Jaina/Anakin/Skycrawler) were already heroes in their own right, passing the baton on to generation three would have worked much better in the long run.

It's the cleverest thing the Avatar franchise did, I think. The original cast are either already dead or very, very old, and -- as a result -- the fanbase just immediately embraced their middle aged kids.

Aang could have very easily become a "Luke" figure.

"Why isn't Aang solving all the problems? He's the Avatar!? Why is his age a big deal? Avatar Kyoshi lived into her 200s! Aang should live at least as long! Save Our Avatar!"

 

Yeah. That's essentially what I feel Legacy probably would have been had there not been the imperative to keep Luke, Han and Leia in the spotlight.

If they'd been allowed to jump forward without needing it to be a huge leap like to Cade? They could have instead started a story with Grand Master Solo, but that's been the era that's never been touched-- but so easily could have been had they not had to dance around the question of Luke being alive. Hell, they never even wanted to confirm if he was dead in Cade's lifetime! Remember when Cade saw his "Force ghost", but if I recall right, even John himself was never really allowed to give any specifics, and we never knew if it was really a ghost, a Force vision, another death stick induced hallucination, who knows.

That was always ridiculous before-- but if Lucas had no vested interest in the EU and Post-ROTJ timeline anyway, it's now doubly ridiculous that they didn't just let the books have some more room to breathe.

 

Whatever anyone thought about VP, the news of death threats being sent to RAS was one of the very few things the entire forum deemed idiotic and way out of line!

As to character shields and deaths:

If you need to be worrying about whether the characters die in the next chapter, the story's clearly weak because it hasn't grabbed you by throat and started squeezing! Case in point is Mindor by one M. Stover!

If you're going to kill a character off you better make you do it right - see Ton Phanen, most widely accepted death of the EU-that-was. If the death isn't accepted, something's likely wrong somewhere, likely suspect being the Dead Hand of a Planning Committee.

If you're going to opt for the slaughterhouse setting DR went for, you need replacement characters that the audience have a level of liking for and attachment to so when they get promoted, no one screams foul. This is very hard to do despite Avengers and X-Men writers making it look easy for years. Frankly, the amount of crappy deaths DR have racked up over the last decade would render anyone anti-death.

Changing tack, I'm in agreement with Uli on the principle of time jumps - that is one of the main ways of keeping a story running. But sadly the enduring crapstorm over Legacy pretty much proves it can't work for SW. In this respect Trek fans are considerably more realistic - they don't require that James Kirk sort out the entire galaxy to such a degree that there's no trouble whatsoever for decades after his death! Ditto Picard and Sisko, though.... If anyone was to, it'd be Sisko!

 

i was fine with Chewie's death. It was a hell of a way to bring a new, much needed reality to Star Wars. It killed fandom, and raised some fandom back from the dead. I admire that series tremendously

 

Hey, I was just excited about getting a map of the Star Wars galaxy for the first time!

 

Chewie's death hurt like hell, even considered giving up SW but didn't.
I know people can get passionate about things but really? Death threats? Things get crazy like that all the time now.
I'd honestly love to see a post NJO era where Luke died from his wounds after his fight against Shimrra.
Agents of Chaos made Chewie's death worth it.

 

I want to know what the death threat guy thought when he heard Peter Mayhew was in Episode VII.

 

I think the problem with character deaths and characters shields ultimately boils down to trying to please two mutually exclusive groups at the same time. There's a demographic of fans that want stories that are episodic with little carry over and consequences and there's fans that want the stories to be on the level with the films with character development and gravity to the stories. Evidently the latter group grew tired of the Bantam releases toward the end of the nineties as sales declined, and in response Del Rey decided to cater to them with the NJO series, at the risk of alienation of the former group.

I think there's a balance that can be struck. If someone is utterly opposed to character deaths, there's simply nothing you can do there, but you can at least make the death serve the story and be true to the character. Chewbacca's death fulfilled that in my opinion. I think the NJO was pretty good across the board in that sense with Anakin and Ganner as well.

 

This.

Instead of "60 is the new 40", for "episodic content" they could have done more stories like Mindor or have finally written a Pellaeon vs Ackbar novel, and have left the stories at the end of the timeline for the grown up kids.

 

I think Anakin and Ashoka develop through the course of the series, and it killed off a lot of Jedi council members that people wish it hadn't (albeit for different reasons).

OTOH, you're handicapped on a line between II and III and can't diverge from that. General Grievous can't die, or even fight Anakin, for instance.

 

TCW tried to have it both ways, is the thing. It started off episodic, sweeping across a wide spectrum of places and battles, then moved to a more serialized, focused form as it went on, stretching single-episodes worth of stories out over four parts. It's one of the reasons that the character development of most of the cast was so shoddily done (one of a few). Also: they forgot that a lot of the characters seen early on in the show existed and dialed in on Ahsoka, Anakin and Obi-Wan. Even poor Rex got the shaft. The only one who managed to get a fulfilling arc with actual closure outside of the main three was Asajj Ventress, and only because Katie Lucas seemed to like her.

 

I think you need to have the ability to kill off characters, or at least change the status quo or things get stale, but it has to be done correctly, which probably means it is done in a way that fits with the character and story (pretty much what has already been said).

However to me there is a huge difference between making a story decision that is controversial and... well... erasing everything. I guess it’s kind of like the difference (In Dr Who at least) between the Darleks that just kill you, and the Cracks in time that erase your existence. Much rather just get shot!

What I wonder, given I don't spend much time on the internet boards, is do fans (I am generalizing a lot) complain about issues like Chewbacca’s death, LOTF, The Clone Wars, and the continuity reboot equally, or are there some issues worse than others? Does the community (again a big generalization) ration their complaints or turn it up to 11 for every issue? Has the complaints market become too saturated with complaints that the value of each complaint or issue been devalued? If that's the case it may explain in part why they ignore us, and why our complaints have so little sway.

Mind you they would probably have still ignored us regardless.