Lit Ok I think I finally am beginning to understand how some of you EU fans feel about this reboot

Ahh I see where you are trying to go with this anakinfan. Nice try though, As long as the EU is being discussed it is still about Star Wars. Why don't you take your own advice now and not try to start talking about me.

 

Conversation is over anakinfan. I have seen this kind of thing from you before.

 

What else is there on the same scale as Star Wars and the EU? Star Trek is little more than several TV series and films with an extremely limited commitment at trying to have books and comics that expand the onscreen material. Middle-earth and Harry Potter are both prose universes with film adaptions that pale in comparison to the books. Several video game universes, such as Halo, Assassin's Creed, The Elder Scrolls, and Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft universes have expanded into prose, and to a certain extent onscreen material.

 

Walking Dead. Not huge yet but it is growing all the time. I know TWD isn't everyone's cup of tea but they are really building something in that universe.

 

I think you'd be surprised if you went back and looked at the Star Trek books that have come out in the decade or so since Star Trek: Nemesis was released. Since the films have decided to follow an alternate timeline, the novels have taken the opportunity to create their own "Expanded Universe" with overarching continuity and some ties (though you kinda have to squint to make them work, though the same is true of Star Wars Legends) with the video games and comics.


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I doubt we will be over the EU until we start getting material from after ROTJ in the ST universe. Or at least I won't be over it until then.

 

I'd imagine we will start getting post ROTJ novels and possibly a tv show once Ep. VII has had its run in the theatres. Then in about five years after the ST is finished we will get absolutely bombarded with stuff from ROTJ to Ep. IX.

They want to introduce all the new characters to us in the movies and that is why I'd imagine we are getting all Dark Times and OT material now.

 

There may be room for stuff immediately after ROTJ, prior to the release of the ST. It actually may make sense to do that; it would allow them to build up hype for the post Endor era while not spoiling anything from EP7. I don't see them telling most of their stories in this era for a while though. I'm sure the story group wants to finish the OT era and adapting TCW scripts.

When it comes to where they tell stories, the thing that matters the most to me is that they don't extend past the ST for around 10 years after the released of nine or they decide to make/finish another trilogy. There's no reason to go any further when you have thirty years of untold stories. Also, I don't want anyone rapidly expanding the timeline to the point where they limit the potential stories. I prefer having the movies be the limit to where stories can be told (unless they want to do something pre TPM, since that doesn't have the potential to have saga ruining effects and can add context to what happens in the main saga). If novels/comics do eventually extend past the movies, I hope the story groups slowly allows them to touch certain years (for example: five years in universe every ten real years).

 

That's what I was referring to with "an extremely limited commitment," because there was otherwise no real attempts at overarching continuity beyond series like the various relaunch series, Vanguard, and New Frontier before the so-called Destiny timeline, which isn't even consistent with STO due the timing of the development of the game. I am interested in actually reading the Star Trek books at some point, but I kind of don't have any more space to store books, which is why I haven't even finished buying a few choice pieces of the EU yet.

 

The problem with them making any post ROTJ stuff prior to the release of Ep. VII is that while, yes, they could tell stories before any of the new characters are either born or introduced. They still at the same time though would have to have at least one member of the big three involved in the story and that would give hints away as to what they end up being like during the ST era.

 

Not necessarily. People change a lot in thirty years -- or even twenty. There's room for a couple stories that could provide no hints or ones that are so vague they might as well not be counted.

 

Possible. But I think it is a better choice to just stick with the OT era where they can tell stories that have a bigger impact on the overall plot. And then wait a couple years to start writing ST books when they have the ability to let the audience know who these characters really are.

 

Then that creates a problem of the post ROTJ stories being placed primarily on the ST side of the timeline.

Also, they will want a way to build up hype without spoiling anything --the odds are they won't release a lead in novel and on these boards there is speculation that the novelization won't be released until after the film has. This leaves telling stories immediately after ROTJ as the best option to use novels to build hype prior to the release of the film. I'm not saying I think they'll focus on this era yet; I think it's clear that they won't, I just think they may release one or two books that take place within two years of ROTJ.

 

There really doesn't seem room for any equivalent to the Thrawn Trilogy or the X-Wing series - I don't really see the NEU Lit taking off solely on support material, especially since the conventional wisdom is that everyone wants to read about the TV/movie characters (whose stories can't have any character development or significant changes) and that novel-or-comic-only characters won't sell.

Then again, there's the obvious Marvel Universe vs. Star Wars miniseries to look forward to.

 

I don't understand this reasoning. There's THIRTY YEARS between Episodes VI and VII; how does that mean the novels set in that period can't have any character development? The Story Group already has a decent idea of where the characters are headed (filming's been going on for a while now) and the whole point of its formation was to create that kind of narrative interplay between various media.

We've already seen this with A New Dawn, creating a significant change in the lives of those characters that leads to who they are in the upcoming show. And it's written in such a way to leave room for plenty of stories on either side of it. What prevents a writer from doing the same thing post Episode VI?


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By scale, I am mean universes that have their own rich backstory and ideally cover a substantial period of time, so TWD probably wouldn't in a million years be an example of what I am looking for in a fictional universe, not that I am at all familiar with TWD. In other words, TWD is almost certainly small fries compared to what attracts me to Star Wars.

 

What, and step on the toes of the one-off movies? Possible prequels?
Hey, I hope you're right. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Do you really see "character development" happening outside the show once the show is actually going on? That something will happen in a novel in between episodes that will affect what happens on screen?
I'll also be surprised if anything beyond the barest mention of anything in A New Dawn appears in the show, but I suppose anything's possible.

 

Marvel's Cinematic Universe is (roughly) planned out for the next, what is it, ten years? And while I know it's mostly hype, Lucasfilm seems pretty intent to up the ante when it comes to multimedia storytelling. They might both be owned by Disney, but there seems to be some healthy competition between the two studios on that front. Time will tell, though.

I think the trick is in Pablo Hidalgo's "Star Wars doesn't do flashbacks" quote. Yes, there's been all kinds of rumors about there being flashbacks in Episode VII, but that film's over a year away, and rumors are just that, rumors.

I think about all these little bits of dialogue throughout the saga as it stands now. "The bounty hunter on Ord Mantell" bit, for example. I'm not talking about telling that specific story again (though it seems clear they will), but dig a little deeper. Leia seems pretty convinced that Han's truly joined the cause, or at least, far more so than he was at the end of Episode IV. That suggests a character arc that you have three years (in-universe) to explore before the bounty hunter incident.

One of the things that Star Wars has been surprisingly good about (at least in the saga as it stands now) is change. There are ways in which these kinds of stories get stuck in the "illusion of change" mindset, but canon Star Wars shows some real growth between each installment that (as The Clone Wars showed) you can tell all sorts of surprising stories along the way.

Like Ahsoka. I'll admit, she came entirely out of nowhere as far as my preconceived notions about Anakin were concerned. And yet, when coupled with the implication that a Jedi becomes a Master when their Padawan becomes a Knight, her storyline makes a great deal of sense alongside Anakin's. No wonder he's so bitter about not having been made a Master in Episode III; he was well on his way to it when the Council humiliated his Padawan and drove her from the Order.

We have all kinds of stories like that we can tell now, if we just dig a little deeper than the surface. I, for one, choose to remain optimistic.


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Well yes if what you are talking about is a universe that spans thousands of years then TWD wouldn't be that, But it has a rich history of ever developing characters and the comic will likely be going on for a long long long time to come (just at the end of the first compendium myself and have a long way to go before I am caught up).

I personally like TWD better than Star Wars. It's like going through a psychological thriller that never stops and it basically revolves around seeing how people deal with being in the worst possible scenario you could possibly imagine and how they react to it. Star Wars on the other hand is a space fantasy where characters seldom act realistically.

TWD is definitely something to look into if you can handle the gore and psycho behavior.

 

i agree. you know for me, i will buy the new books. i expect to like them, most of my trepidation is for the future st's, and the novels that surround that time period.

 

I want to add that the standalone movies won't be able to touch the big three, unless they take place on the ST side of the timeline -- I doubt the actors will be willing to return for that though. All the evidence shows that these movies will deal with secondary characters anyway. As a result; there will be a lot of room to develop the big three in novels and comics.