EU Media Mistakes

What subjects do you think were handled poorly in the EU not in content but in presentation. I was thinking about Dark Empire today and I think it may have been better presented in novel format rather than comic. While the visuals were impressive it would have been nice to have the extra narration and dialogue found in books that comics just can't offer.

Other interesting thing to think about would be the Kyle Katarn story arc as an ongoing republic like series. The battles against the seven dark Jedi in Dark Forces II could have been great especially if they were drawn out. That way his journey could have been drawn out similar to that of Quinlan's.

Anyone else agree or think other EU projects were presented poorly?

-The Rebel Gungan

 

No posts, hmmmmm....


The hat created Waru....


Discuss

-The Rebel Gungan

 

I agree with DE. A story that important should have been a novel.

 

If presented in a novel format today, would DE include alot of the extras that was supposed to compose the rest of Empires End? Would it also reveal information on the treachery behind Palpatines clones. Would it include nice new information like Lumiya being behind Jax and the sabatoge? There is plenty of information that would be quite interesting to see included now that time has passed and new information is available to add to the story.

I always thought DE would make a good animated mini series. Something of greater calibre than Clone Wars. Perhaps the original voices though would be compiled, that shouldnt be so hard. Oh well.

 

It still irks me that we got a severely shortened Empire's End and no "Lightsaber" (at least, I believe thats what it was to be called, the story of how Luke met Kam) because Veitch wanted the rights to the lightsaber game he created.

Ugh. Did he expect Lucas to say yes?

 

Well heck ... remember the DE audio dramas? It's mostly a different cast (except BDW and Anthony Daniels), but all "They" need to do is animate some pretty pictures to go with it.

And get Temuera Morrison to redo Boba's lines. I always thought it was a terrible (mis)match for the original OT voice--which has since been replaced, thus giving the perfect excuse for redoing the audio drama lines.

 

When you look at the action and everything in DE, and just the overall storie, it would make a half decent film. I mean, we can praise the Thrawn Trilogy all we want, but that would get butchered and honestly would not make a good movie. Meanwhile DE I think has the action, it has the Jedis... I can see why people say Lucas thought DE had the elements of what would have been Episode VII.

Meh, as for mistakes... I kind of wish Union had been made into a short story or at least the ceremony would have been made in novel form. There are a lot of people who consider comic books a "lower-form" of literature and are probably wondering what Luke and Mara marriage was like but they only read the novels...

Nevermind, those who think comics are lower-form of literature can go ahead and screw themselves out of the comicy goodness of Star Wars. I'll just laugh when they only know part of the story...

 

How about the KOTOR Series. It would be nice to maybe have a companion book to the games which lays out the canon, and then you go and play the games and determine your own destiny. Plus it should have the cut bits from KOTOR 2.

It would enable those who are not to intersted in playing the games to gain an understanding of what happened in that era.

Or it could be TotJ style Comics.

 

I personally think that the doppleganger scene in DE might have been much more dramatic and that we could have understood a lot more about how everything fit together. For example it is still pretty ambiguous whether Palps clones are legit or simply stronger C'boaths. Is it actually him or not. It would also be nice to see the whole betrayal thing as Jodus suggests. Most of it I'm sure is the fact that not of this material wasn't written or even close to planned. Maybe we will get a history of the Death Stars novwel regarding Dark Empire where so much confusing material has been published surrrounding who was involved and what happened that we need a novel to clear things up such as the involvement of Lumiya or how Luke met and redeemed Kam. These stories are told and Luke's brief turn to the dark side needs to be documented better.


-The Rebel Gungan

 

This would be incredible:

- Dark Forces Novel
- Jedi Knight Novel
- Jedi Outcast Novel

 

I think Kyle would work quite well as some form of televised media. It has plenty of action, and a few plot twists. Hell if you work in Abels info and revisions, you have some pretty deep stuff going on. Villains that make an impact, a rugged and unstoppable hero, lots of dead stormtroopers. What more could you ask for?


whoa, i really just had a thought of how neat it would be to witness the Imperial civil war right before DE. Stormtroopers shooting each other. How odd would that be to see?

 

Well, the Jedi Knight graphic novel does cover most of the events of the Jedi Knight game.

>>>It still irks me that we got a severely shortened Empire's End and no "Lightsaber" (at least, I believe thats what it was to be called, the story of how Luke met Kam) because Veitch wanted the rights to the lightsaber game he created. <<<

I believe its "Lightsider."

 

You're right. It's "Lightsider."

Thanks!

 

Apparently, yes.

Or at least a royalty for the engine, which is not that wholly unreasonable, even in today's marketplace (moreso today, I would argue, than it was even when Veitch originally wrote it). An excerpt from a Fidonet interview conducted around seven years ago with Mr. Veitch:

OOTM7: CAN YOU TELL US ANYTHING ABOUT THE LIGHTSIDER PROJECT? WHAT IS IT?

Lightsider is a short novel I wrote, that was originally supposed to be a Star Wars novel illustrated by Dave Dorman. In the process of writing this book I invented a game that Jedi play, using the Force, called "Lightsider." The game turned out to be quite good, I think. After I had finished creating it, I realized that it would make an excellent computer game, sort of like Myst, but different in many significant ways. In fact I may have invented a new genre of computer games. So as we were negotiating a contract I asked Lucasfilm if they could put in a clause which would allow me a royalty of some kind if they ever decided to make a computer game out of Lightsider.

Well...it turned out I pushed their button on that one. They told me it would be impossible to agree to such a royalty, and that I was way out of line asking for one! They said they don't do business that way -- they acquire all rights when you do a project for them, and you are paid only for the original project.

So I elected not to sell them Lightsider, because the gaming concept was just too strong. I am in the process of marketing it elsewhere right now. The curious thing, from my point of view, was the vehemence of their reaction to my request. They could have just said "no," and that's that. But it was as if I had poked a scorpion with a stick or something.

So there you have it.

Better still would be something more akin to an expanded pack-in game manual "primer" elaborating on some of the key minutiae of the Tales of the Jedi mythos for the "unwashed" out there...the lion's share of n00bs playing the games for the first time seem to have more questions about the comics' events and characters than virtually anything else, and are occasionally overwhelmed by the story information contained there.

You know, it might help if some of these marketing geniuses had ever heard of a thing called "cross-promotion," or even "promotion," for that matter. How many fans who aren't obsessive/compulsive EU freaks like us are even aware (prior to playing the games) that Dark Horse published seven original Tales of the Jedi mini-series, or that they might be reprinting the harder-to-find, out-of-print ones?

One place they haven't been publicized is in the game boxes themselves. Why isn't Dark Horse pushing Lucasfilm to include some advertising to let people (especially new fans of the games) know that there *are* Tales of the Jedi comics tying directly into the games' events? I think small booklet with an excerpt from one or two of the TPBs and a list of all of them would be a big help.

I mean, come on. Comics sales are flat. Video gaming sales are through the roof. How hard is it to figure that advertising in the video games might increase comics sales? We had to *beg* them to do the new TotJ-period comics, and it wasn't unt

 

The RPG also lost a golden opportunity with KotOR's release. I mean, its the game of the year (and is based on WotC's d20 system!), and they draw a blank on how to profit from it. Can you say "tie in?"

Maybe LFL isn't greedy enough somethimes.

 

Before we blast the EU into oblivion. We have to remember that star wars is really the only franchise to have not only a succesful line of anxcillary porducts, but a very organzied one at that. We have a very big, rich, and informative spectrum that not only covers the movies, but novels, video games, comic books, now animation, and soon live action tv. Much like the X-Men series, Spiderman, Superman, Batman. Those have good comic books, movies, tv series, animation, and video games.


Now, with that said. I will say this. The biggest problem with the eu is the freedoms that some authors, writers, illustrators, and storytellers have had with the usage, display, concept, and power of the force. The clone wars cartoon series was just the tip of the ice berg. The second Medstar book really took the force concept way into warp factor 50. With Bariss and that Bota stuff. Dark Empire with that Force storm was another real winner there. Decimating the entire New Republic fleet? Wow! The entire Tales of the Jedi era and there way over the top abilities to harness the force through amulets, geographical/archeological designs, and stuff like that. In some stories, the force is just a pre-cog thing, in others it borders on and even exceeds magic. The Dark Woman that teleports in front of Ki-Mundi in one of the early star wars on-going comic books. The whole droid can use the force stuff in The Cestus Deception. Even though they never got to 100% effectiviness, they were used on a smaller scale. The Dork clone in Darksaber that with the help of some of the jedi pushed 17 Star Destroyers god knows were. The new Swarm War series of books so far have also expanded the force powers by 200%. Too many contradictions there. GL has told the jedi/sith in his movies a certain way, and the eu really dragonballed z it big time. The same thing with the cloaking device issue. Does it work or not? Why do fanboys need too many explanations and try to justify a fictional universe? Why not just leave it at the fact that some can have the technology to eqipp a shp or a droid and most do not.

The other problem that I see in the future is the re-telling of the same motiffs over and over again in different eras. The redemption, the betrayal, the survivor, the avenger, the exiled. Its getting old, way old.

Those issues have to be ironed out. We need consistency across the boards on the display, usage and real abilities of the force as shown in the movies. At times, I feel that star wars has become the superfriends with the jedi representing the Halls of Justice and the sith The Legion of Doom. There also has to be a direction in which both GL and LucasFilm want to take with the star wars franchise. We already know there is not going to be new movies, and that for now the two series for the television are it. They need to tell good stories there and at least make them worth while so that many will want to watch them, not just bank on the succes of the star wars name.

 

I don't think the Force SHOULD have limits on its powers, but obviously the higher-end powers should be reserved for only the most powerful (Palpatine, Luke, etc.).

 

cont.

Its important that GL and LucasFilm not just use the tv series as a side show, and market it as heavily as it did with the movies. Get the target audience to see that this isn't just another planet of the week filler but a very important part of star wars history being told in televison rather than in the theater. Yes, to the dismay of some of you. Both series have to be as official as the movies, if not. It will be no cigar. Well yeah, there's dvd. But you want the damn thing to be good.

Another problem that concerns me with the eu is that it appears that the novels and comic books are the only one that really are going to be able to go through any era. Why? Why dosen't GL try to capitalize in different eras with the animation at least. Technololgy has grown in leaps in bounds not to really explore multiple series in the animated media. The video games are doing it. Heck we got x-box 360 and playstation 3 coming out very soon.

This leads to the final point we need to make sure we are on cue. Since 2002, it is already known that LucasArts has been improving there console video games. They need to bring out games that continue to sell a lot and recieve good reviews. We can ill afford to have another Epsiode 3 game. Were it was badly reviewed in 80% of the magazines, but sold decent. Without no new movies, this will hurt star wars bad. We don't need an Enter the Matrix

 

Thanos- Your one of the few who believes that. Most complain about it and boy the've ripped a new arse were the clone war cartoon stands. I thought they were good, but too many die-hards did not like the expanded force powers. Funny though, some of them seam to accept the time holding stuff that Jacen did from the second book in the swarm series.