Lit Fading Relevance

A couple months ago I found out that a friend had read a few of the new-canon novels. We compared notes, and when I told her how much I had enjoyed Catalyst, I hesitated to recommend it to her. I read it upon its release, before Rogue One hit theaters, but a year and a half later I said to her "I guess I could only recommend it if you still care about Rogue One?" It turned out she saw R1 once and didn't like it at all, so yeah, Catalyst was off the table for her.

That got me thinking about the staying power of direct lead-in/tie-in novels in the Disney era. With SW films being an annual thing now, they're a lot less special than they were in the past when we were sure we were only ever gonna get six of 'em. A novel like Labyrinth of Evil was all about the Episode III hype, sure, but it still packed a lot of replay value for fans who would later read their way through the prequel era and treat Episode III with reverence.

But Catalyst? It's been over a year since Rogue One came out, and in a lot of ways the film's relevance seems to have already come and gone. A lot of fans will tell you that they liked the nostalgia porn it threw at them in the theater but upon further reflection thought it was pretty bad. The Force Awakens was also SW comfort food, sure, but it has sequels and will remain a part of the cultural zeitgeist for a while yet. If R1 already hasn't aged well to a lot of fans, then what chance does Catalyst have? It's a great read, yes, but can it stand on its own without leaning on the film?

A part of me wonders if Lucasfilm only realized after R1's release that the anthology films aren't going to feel all that special to fans, and if that played a part in the severe shortage of Solo tie-ins. Even if Solo isn't a flop like many are predicting, it will still probably be a "yeah, that happened" kind of movie in a couple of years' time. A lead-in novel, no matter how skillfully crafted, would only have so much hype attached to it and likely wouldn't be cared about by anyone even one month after the film's release.

Am I wrong? Does Catalyst have the same re-read value as any other new-canon novel? Will future readers want to read their way through the OT era and include it in their journey? Will you recommend it to new readers years from now without the "you have to still care about Rogue One" caveat? Would you in 2018 still read a companion novel to 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger, or is that an unfair analogy? Sound off below.

 

It's just a different style of storytelling now that people are going to have to get used to. The films and tv shows are always going to be leading the way while the novels and comics will be filling in the blanks.

And in regards to R1 not aging well that is all just a matter of opinion. Lots of people consider it to be one of the better Star Wars movies released (ranking it right up there amongst the OT movies). People are just moving on a lot quicker than they used to before the Disney purchase because we have a lot steadier flow of movies coming out now than we did before. Once one movie comes out we talk about it for a bit but within a couple/few months we start getting info about the next installation to be released.

 

I think that may be part of my problem with the new canon over the old EU, there is so many TV and film projects coming out its really going to limit what any of the new novels and comics can do. Thus very little or safe stories will be told that may or may not tie in to a upcoming project. It's only going to get harder for some of these new canon pieces to stay relevant if they stay the same course, just tell good stories! Labyrinth of Evil is still a good read after all this time, if we can get more stories with quality like that then the new canon should be fine in it's relevant factor.

 

I imagine most of the stuff in the thirty year period from ROTJ to TFA will be left to the novels and comics. I don't really see the movies touching that time period and though we may see a tv show take place then there will still be a lot of room left for the novels to tell new stories.

 

That the new EU has been relegated to filling in the gaps between the films rather than blazing ahead with new stories is a grievance that many have expressed, but I don't think that being relegated to that position automatically limits a novel's re-read value. The old EU had a lot of fan-favourites that weren't part of the blazing-the-post-ROTJ-future saga, including novels that leaned heavily on their surrounding films, like Labyrinth, Shadows of the Empire, Cloak of Deception, and more.

What was unique about Catalyst is that it was the first (and thus far only) tie-in novel for a non-episodic film. Like Jammin Jedi said:

SW films just aren't as special as they used to be. When there were only six (seven if you count The Clone Wars) films for novels to lean on, those novels could maintain re-read value for years, as each film was, well... special.

So while in general I agree that there probably isn't as much re-read value in the new EU as there was in the old, I still feel like Catalyst suffers the most. Years from now, new readers will still be interested in reading OT- , Clone Wars-, and New Republic-era stories that fill in the gaps between the main episodes, but a novel that exists to tie directly into a non-episodic anthology film won't be high on their shopping list. I'm not saying Catalyst shouldn't have existed --- it was a good book, and R1 had a lot of hype as the first anthology film so of course it made financial sense to do the book --- I just feel bad that it will probably be forgotten more quickly than a lot of its new-EU-brethren.

 

While I do enjoy the tie-in books and such for the most part, I just had a conversation earlier today on YouTube about something kind of similar, it seems like for the most part, it doesn't really matter how good the tie-in material is, people are just flat-out not interested in reading tie-in material, and except for the movie to tell them everything regardless of what the books or comics do. While I will always enjoy the new canon books, I will confess that I have only read each book once, and now have them sitting on my shelf above this very computer. I always tell myself that I will go back and reread everything again, but then I just never do, and it bothers me that I don't because I really want too, but I think my main issue is that there are a lot of books and at least to me, only a handful really stand out as required, and I feel like I've retained a lot of the info in the books.

 

Rebel Rising and Guardians of the Whills would like a word with you.

 

That's anecdotal. I could say I've seen lots of people still regularly placing it in their top three Star Wars films.

As for Solo, tie-in announcements are expected this week. I think we've already heard about a prequel novel from leaks. The time frame for announcements, trailers, etc, is a necessary consequence of its release coming so soon after TLJ.

 

New EU is pretty much forced to tell 'insignificant' stories because significant ones are being kept for the films. But at the same time for obvious marketing reasons they're hesitant to write the thing which would free them the most: Stories that happen in some other part of the galaxy with characters that have pretty much nothing to do with the movie characters. The closest thing to an exception being the Aphra comics and a handful of short stories (not a coincidence, I think, that the Aphra stories have been so well-received).

So yeah, they're limiting themselves and the reread (or even first-read) value of their stories by painting themselves into a corner where both universe and character development are heavily limited.

Also I care about the anthology films. Significantly more interesting to me than the ST to be honest, and I'm quite worried about what the announcement of Rian and the GoT guys' trilogies mean for their future.

 

I think it's all down to personal taste and interest in characters and time periods. Catalyst focuses heavily on Krennic and Galen Erso, two characters I'm not all that interested in, so I've not read it. Had it been centred on Mon Mothma, Cassian, Draven, for example, I'd have been more likely to give it a read. Rogue One is one of my favourite Star Wars films and it's very rewatchable (we watch it about once a month), but there's certain characters I enjoy more than others. I thought Krennic was a great villain as someone to hate, but I'll be honest, I was rooting for Tarkin throughout.

 

That was a huge strength of Catalyst --- Luceno made Tarkin feel like an underdog and made you wanna root for him. Much more so than in the actual Tarkin novel.

Yeah, that's another reason I'm worried Catalyst will be a hard sell to future readers. When five or six new SW movies are in the bag, will Krennic be an interesting enough villain among the bunch that new readers will want to pick up a book about him and Mads Mikkelson, who's in R1 for all of five minutes? Is the opening scene of Krennic kidnapping Galen really crying for a backstory? Or will a visually interesting villain like Phasma, who also has the benefit of being in the main episodic films, be an easier sell?

I mean... after Captain America: Civil War, fans were excited that Spidey and Black Panther would both be getting their own movies. Would a movie about the bad guy from Civil War solicit the same level of excitement? Do you even remember who the bad guy was? Is Krennic that unmemorable too?

 

Civil War's villain was arguably one of the best and most interesting ones in the entire MCU, at the very least in the top 3. The bar for that is of course not spectacularly high, filled as it is with color-swapped evil versions of the heroes and random psychos who totally have stronger superpowers than the last random psycho. With that said, his story was told in its entirety in that movie and anything more would be pointless and redundant.

As far as R1 goes I pretty much agree. Neither Krennic nor Galen as presented in the movie will leap out to most people as characters who need a novel. Something focusing on them can certainly be good, but it's hardly the sort of thing the average person thinks "I gotta read that" about, and as the movie gets older that's only going to be more true. Of course, I'm not convinced a joke character like Phasma is the easiest sell either, at least not after two utterly pointless film appearances that leave the character very hard to take seriously.

 

Even I don't care about Phasma enough to pick up her tie-in book, why would others? She's barely in VII or VIII long enough.

 

I think it's extremely reductive to think of Catalyst simply as a Rogue One tie-in book.

 

Of course it doesn't help that they've hideously dated books with this "Journey to..." nonsense, that means in five years if I pick up a book, I have text on it saying "This will tie into the upcoming The Last Jedi!"

 

It's a good book that has a lot of strengths beyond simply getting fans pumped for the movie --- Luceno's take on the planning and construction of the Death Star and just how massively galaxy-spanning a project it was is a huge breath of fresh air after the old EU had a room full of people basically just design it over a weekend. Tarkin is characterized well and made to feel like an underdog you can root for. Lyra Erso is a well-developed character, and the book's an all-around enjoyable read. It's my favourite of the (admittedly few) new-EU books I've read.

But it is a Rogue One tie-in book. Its full name is Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel, and the paperback edition says "A Prequel to Rogue One" at the top of the cover. It's a backstory for the characters and main weapon of R1 and it was released as a prologue to R1. That's how it was marketed, and that's how most fans, especially casual fans, do and will continue to see it. Acknowledging that isn't reductive, just as it wouldn't be reductive to acknowledge that Labyrinth of Evil is an ROTS tie-in when the cover of the book says "The must-read prequel to Revenge of the Sith."

Its status as a tie-in doesn't detract from the quality of the story, but I do worry that it detracts from its future marketability factor. I could recommend it to friends by saying "Hey, are you interested in the backstory of the Death Star?" but if they've already forgotten about/don't care about Rogue One, the very name of the novel that's on the front cover of the book might turn them off. Calling it "A Rogue One Novel" dates it in the same way that, As Xander notes, "Journey To" does.

I feel like they could have made the paperback cover less, rather than more, about Rogue One, perhaps by excluding the "A Rogue One novel" instead of adding in even more text to hit you over the head even more that it's an R1 prequel. Does the novel stand on its own? One could definitely make that argument. Does its marketing suggest that it does? Not at all.

 

In retrospect to me it's seems the Phasma book and comic were cynically building false hype and cashing in on a character they knew full well that they were doing nothing with, in order to maximize her merchandise value before the fans were able to see the movie and realize how pointless she was. It was pretty disappointing.

 

She's essentially the Boba Fett of the sequel trilogy. Filler onscreen but somewhat interesting off-screen.

 

Catalyst will hold a lot of relevance for anyone that is interested in the building of the Death Star.

 

Visually interesting characters who appear in the main episodic films are marketable. Promote your novel as being about Boba Fett or Darth Maul, and it'll sell, and not just upon its release. Ditto the Death Star --- that's why putting the Death Star on the cover of Catalyst was the right thing to do. But four years from now, will it be remembered as a good book with interesting character arcs and a cool origin story for the Death Star? Or will it be remembered as being "A Rogue One novel" that stars characters from a spinoff film that nobody cares about anymore?

I'm probably overthinking it. But, I mean... it's my favourite new-EU novel, and I still couldn't in good conscience recommend it to a friend. That's crazy.

 

Rather people view it as a Rogue One tie in or not it will still be about the Death Star. I honestly don't think your tie in argument holds much weight as everything that isn't a movie in Star Wars is basically tie in material.

 

I think you're over thinking it.

 

This is just a consequence of Star Wars resuming regular secondary media tie-ins like any other franchise. The Expanded Universe was developed under a unique set of circumstances that aren't going to be repeated.

 

Indeed-the old eu could have stories like the NJO, LOTF, KOTOR, etc... thanks to large periods in between movies which were admittedly always the core of what Star Wars was-at least to a casual audience.

This phenomenon was predicted back when Disney bought the franchise-I seem to believe I made the observation myself.

The Old EU was really was unique-in that emerged under very unique circumstances, had people invested in its integrity as a coherent story, and so it could grow an identity apart from being mere "tie ins".

This state of affairs was only sustainable so long as new movies did not come out.