Lit NJO and 9/11

It takes a rare level of skill to pull those stories off Robi.

But a related Q would be this: Why would you want a SW version of Schindler's List or Hotel Rwanda when those stories already exist in far stronger, unique form on their own?

It's something I've noticed over the last decade or so and I do think it's linked to SW' identity crisis, SW EU doesn't know what it should be because lots of people are saying it should emulate this and that, that and this and so on and so forth. But in trying to be everything, it ends up being nothing.

 

I'm just giving those as examples. I don't expect to see them as copy and paste novels. I'm reffering more to the quality of those films.

If we eliminate the really bad parts of war from the stories we have no Traitor, no Shatterpoint and one can probably scratch the Mon Cal genocide from Legacy off the list as well.

I stand by what I said. People want good stories. The lightness or darkness of them isn't relevent. Personally I'd be equally happy with a really good but light big three adventure as I would with a darker brooding story featuring the same cast. It's about quality over fitting Star Wars into a pre-defined box.

 

I disagree wholly with that notion, because I think there can be good stories within predefined limits. Space opera is supposed to be something specific. Star Wars was space opera and... isn't any longer, except (at a fundamental level) where it started: at the Lucas-level.

I think there's room for other things in the universe beyond Space Opera (e.g. Red Harvest, as something clearly different) -- but it's my opinion that those things should be outside the "main storyline." There have been plenty of good stories within that limitation in the past and I, personally, view it as a failure of either imagination or talent if a writer-for-hire couldn't hit those marks. Obviously the editorial decision appears to have been made long ago not in my favor, which is why it remains my opinion, but there you go...

 

I'd argue it's more about the balance of the light and dark elements, of the activity or inactivity of characters and the reasons given for it in each case. But every story has to have a clear identity of what it is if only to be able to compete with other, rival stories.

I wonder if we're not confusing terms though, perhaps a better question to ask would be how many genres can SW incorporate without losing its sense of identity?