Lit Do you like the new canon?

I think the real issue with TFA is it's too similar to the OT for a lot of people, that it is too similar to the Expanded Universe but not IDENTICAL, and we don't have quite enough information to know what the hell is going on.

In other words, fans being fans.

Mind you, I do find it bizarre so many people are angry it's so much like the OT. Isn't the OT the gold standard? It's like hating Captain Kirk and Spock.

 

I'll have to make this brief since I have to leave for work in a few minutes, but here it goes:

Although I didn't hate TFA like some posters here did, I did have some serious problems with it. I think "it's too much like the OT" isn't the main issue. Superficially similar elements like "there's a droid carrying secret information" or "a youth on a desert world dreams of a better life" didn't bother. What bothered me was the Status Quo.

Leia's leading a rag tag, outnumbered resistance movement (and is NOT a Jedi). Again. Han is a smuggler. Again. They destroy a planetoid sized superweapon. Again. The Jedi are all but extinct, and the Republic is no more. Again. The plot and character arcs seem to be moving backwards instead of forwards.

And I know I said I didn't mind the superficial similarities, but some of the vehicle designs were lazy. If you took the new TIEs and painted them grey instead of black, only die hard Fleet Junkies and fans of a similar bent would be able to tell the difference.

It's not so much "hating Kirk and Spock" but "haven't we seen this stuff before"?

 

And speaking of Kirk and Spock, this sort of "soft reboot" is something we've seen before with Star Trek. The last Pirates of the Caribbean did it as well, and there are plenty of other examples still coming out. The trend is getting wearying, and it's a shame Star Wars had to be part of it, especially as a knee-jerk reaction to prequel hate.

I feel like whatever Lucas's concept of the film might have been, it could have been more interesting than what we got—certainly visually. It'd have been interesting for him to have come up with the complete story (beyond his ideas for "Jedi girl" and "Jedi killer") before handing it off to Kasdan and Abrams.

 

It's because it's a reboot and it follows the OT's story to a 'T', so we all know the desert kid will keep the droid. We all know the old mentor will die. We all know the Death Star will blow up. It's boring.

 

No. I may actually give a comic series or two a look. Overall, like anything else Star Wars, if it doesn't interest me, I do not bother. Not fond of the movies & other media too, so currently, I think zero of new canon.

 

Problem is is that a lot of the people complaining about TFA for those reasons were completely fine with the EU when they told extremely similar stories to the OT.

 

That's just my more objective argument. I HATE The Force Awakens for more subjective reasons.

 

You made this exact claim before, which I am quoting below, yet I don't see evidence for this? I'm posting from another thread in which I responded showing how different the EU was from the OT:

 

How exactly is Snoke Palpatine 2.0? What a superficial, ignorant argument to make.

 

We can have healthy debates that stick to facts and evidence without resorting to namecalling (i.e. calling posts/people superficial, ignorant).

Snoke appears mostly by hologram the way Palpatine did in ESB. He rules an Empire called the First Order, like in the OT. He has 1 apprentice who looks like Vader. He has a superweapon that can destroy planets. He has, through his apprentice, wiped out a Jedi Order into the single digits. He has single handedly turned a Skywalker to the dark side.

I'm not sure any of the EU Sith Lords fit all of these checkboxes that I listed. Even Emperor Vitiate and Darth Krayt miss some checkboxes (they don't have the planet killer for instance). This I feel is the evidence why some feel Snoke is a little too similar to Palpatine.

 

But even more ignorant is to miss the blatant similarities that were deliberately done. But if you happen to love Episode VII: The Empire Reloaded, then continue to enjoy.

 

Of course it was deliberate. They'd be idiots if they made TFA without knowing the similarities. It was a cynical product designed to appease the OT fans who wanted their Star Wars back. But it's still a bad movie even if the creators knew exactly how derivative it was while making it.

 

I mean, the closest I can come to recalling anything like that is that a lot of initial criticisms of the Legacy comics were that it returned the galaxy to the ANH status quo. The Empire was in charge of the galaxy. The Sith were running things. The Jedi Order had fallen. The republic had fallen. A lone Skywalker orphan is far from the centre of the action when we meet him. But with a bunch of Darth Mauls running around because that's just so kewl.

Sent from my SM-G386W using Tapatalk

 

Of course you can selectively pick a series of generic checkboxes but these are all superficial similarities. What about personality? What about the actual character versus their occupation or what they have available to them? It's equivalent of saying that Qui Gon Jinn, Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda are all the same because they're Jedi, took on a young Skywalker apprentice, and died before fully training that Skywalker.

Further, it is ignorance in this case, because with Snoke, you know very little about him. Come back in 3 months and make an argument when you have more information, but in the meantime, you have to admit that you're being premature.

edit - I can't believe people are honestly bringing up Legacy as an example of original Star Wars storytelling...

 

Like any analysis, we'll adapt conclusions as we go along. We can only make theories on the evidence we have now. I don't think it's wrong to make conclusions based on first impressions, as long as those conclusions are open to being changed later.

This is my conclusion for now (that Snoke is very similar to Palpatine), and I don't think it should be called ignorant any more than theorizing the Big Bang created the universe short of more info later. All conclusions can be adapted as new info arrives.

 

It sounded less a working theory and more a proclamation but fair enough. Personally, when I see and hear Snoke, I don't think Palpatine at all. "She... resisted you?!" isn't something that I can see Palpatine ever saying in that manner. And from what I see of Snoke in the TLJ marketing, wearing a flamboyant gold robe, it seems a pretty far cry from Palpatine's look and reveals a more French absolutist monarch vibe.

 

I'm pretty sure any Ep. 8 spoilers about Snoke are strictly off-limits to anything except the Ep. 8 thread. Nothing not in TFA about him should be discussed here at all.

 

LOTF was basically a retelling of the OT as well.

sidv88 all we were talking about then was the Emperors within Old Republic era. There was quite a bit in the post Jedi EU that was derivative of the OT also. Namely Legacy of the Force.

 

Legacy is not interesting because it is underdog vs giant Empire; it's so much more than that. It's interesting because of the Fel-GA-Jedi dynamic. Plus the Allies actually had numbers and territory. It's much better than the Rebellion of old.

With TFA it could've been unique! What we got was literally just Rebels vs Empire. It could have had the New Republic playing a very interesting role in the story, but it was completely sidelined. TLJ can fix this but Awakens missed a good opportunity. But they clearly weren't interested in politics.

 

Since you prefer the EU I am sure you would say it is more interesting than TFA. A lot of people were getting tired of the EU by that point and many of them will tell you TFA was done better.

 

I'm not just saying "This is better than that"; I'm providing an argument on why I believe it is better.

EDIT:...your point?

 

I thought we didn't want this to degenerate into another TFA hate-fest...

 

TFA is the vanguard of the NuCanon. Criticism of it is certainly relevant I feel.

 

There is no need to open up entirely new threads for it just so people can rant about it though. Go to the TFA thread to post about how much you dislike TFA. It's why most threads about the EU end up getting closed down is because most of them aren't created to actually talk about the EU. They are created so certain people can rant about TFA.

 

jamminjedi23
I didn't start this TFA discussion. I just went along with it. It's not like I'll refrain from posting just because the discussion is a tad bit off topic but whatever. I didn't start this fire. Now what would you prefer we talk about?

EDIT: And what makes you think this thread was created to please "certain people". This thread had NOTHING to do with the EU. It was only about NuCanon. Read the first post, please.