Retcons you approve of and disaprove of.

My understanding is that "Saga" refers to the six episodes of SW films, but not the other SW content from the EU, etc. It is under the "Star Wars Films" section on here, too. But I've never seen someone try to make the point that it is only SW films directed by Lucas (which would exclude TESB and ROTJ), though.

 

That's my understanding as well. It would be a shame not to have a place to discuss exclusively what I consider the "true" Star Wars Saga (six movies)

 

That was definitely the rule of this particular forum back in the day when there was a lot of traffic here; these days I think the mods don't enforce that rule because if they did, there would be almost no traffic at all here.

 

The CW series as well as TFU are both mentioned originally with the topic here, sort of setting the stage and parameters for this discussion. Under the principle mentioned above, this WHOLE thread encompasses the whole SW universe, not just a few posts about TFU.

Then again there wouldn't be nearly as much opportunity for discussion regarding RETCON if we were not allowed to discuss anything other than the six episodes...

 

The only retcon that doesn't fill me with cosmocidal rage is the one making Vader Luke's father.

All the others are steaming piles of poodoo.

 

within just the films it has to be han shooting first...



if you start including the eu i could be here a while lol

 

I wonder about the retcons vs. twists - is the line always clear? If Ben didn't say that Vader killed Luke's father, would this still be a retcon?

 

I disagree that Vader being Luke's father is a retcon. Unless the implication is that Lucas didn't know during the shooting of Episode IV that he'd eventually do that in Empire, it is not a retcon. It's called a plot twist. Big difference, as far as I'm concerned. Even if Lucas didn't know he'd do that in Empire, it is a plot twist and not a retcon, in my mind. A retcon renders something done previously invalid. As Obi-Wan says, from a certain point of view, what he said to Luke in Episode IV was true. It's a plot twist, to me, either way.

But, anyway...

I hate the death-during-childbirth retcon. The script in Return went out of its way to make it exceedingly obvious that Leia was not talking about Breha, but rather, whoever it was that was actually the mother of both Leia and Luke. But, since Lucas has issues, apparently, which watching his own movies, we get this ridiculous retcon in Revenge that destroys what is a rather good scene in Return. Unlike what I said about the "I am your father" part above, there is NO way to explain this change. At all. Ever. In any way.

In terms of retcons that I actually like...

Not sure. I'd have to think about this.

 

I approve that the Mandalorians have been changed back to the original concept, instead of being a bunch of Boba Fetts.

 

I disapprove of Palpatine returning in the EU and Anakin having a padawan. TCW in general, though, I do approve it.

 

It's both. There are good reasons to think that Lucas didn't know that Vader and Annikin were going to become the same character, during the making of ANH. And explaining things from "a certain point of view" is exactly what a retcon is - an explanation that takes previously given info and instead of chucking it, tries to put a spin on it while changing a lot of its content. You might say the Father Vader revelation is the prototypical retcon.

 

I'm not sure I agree with your definition of a retcon. To me, a retcon renders something from an earlier work useless. Like you cannot connect the two, or it is such a stretch of the imagination as to be essentially impossible.

If clarification or viewpoint change were a retcon, our lives as people would be filled with them. Not sure a retcon is possible in real life.

 

Vader = Luke's father is a ret-con, but "Luke's father being 'killed' by Vader was true from a certain point of view" is trying to have it both ways...not to mention that it's a non-sequitur to Luke's question in ANH. Luke asked "How did my father die?" , not "What happened to my father spiritually/metaphorically speaking?". It was best left at Yoda telling Luke that he wasn't ready for the 'burden' (of the truth).

 

Yes, because movies aren't allowed to have things "that don't follow."

I guess it's a difference in view. As I understand it, retroactive continuity is a difficult term to define, as it is.

 

Oh, they're 'allowed', provided that one wants a movie series that, instead of working as a coherent whole, works like a Frankenstein-esque patch-work.

Here's the contrast, again:

"Your father he is" is a ret-con. "So what I have told you is true, from a certain point of view" is a non-sequitur (in relation to the question Luke asked in SW).

 

My understanding of a retcon is something like this:

ROTJ shows just a moon of Endor, never the planet itself. But we know the planet exists and was near the Santuary Moon relatively recently, from the Ewok movies.

How to resolve this contradiction? Oh, it turns out the planet (or the moon) is a wandering celestial body, the orbit is unstable, something like that.

The "certain point of view" is the same kind of thing, an attempted resolution of an apparent contradiction. Whether it works for Viewer X, I don't think really matters; the intent was to smooth continuity problems.

 

From Dictionary.com:

By this definition, Vader-as-father is a retcon, regardless of whether or not you accept that he was not intended to be the father of Luke Skywalker prior to approximately 1977/78, when the sequel to Star Wars began development. Original intent is not mentioned, which I think it should be, otherwise a retcon is exactly the same as a plot twist intended all along. 'Retcon', as I've always taken it, implies a deliberate contradiction with earlier material & an attempt to resolve said contradiction at the expense of the original intent.

Classic example - at the end of the novel 'From Russia With Love', James Bond dies from being kicked by Rosa Klebb's poison-encrusted boots. It doesn't say he died, he starts to faint & sees the poison. He realised he was about to die, & that was Ian Fleming's admitted intention. He wanted to end the James Bond series, so he killed his protagonist.
The next novel, 'Dr No' includes a great deal of exposition of Bond's lengthy recovery from said poison. Bond lived, the series continued.

Supposedly, the very first official retcon was in Batman #1, in which the Joker appeared in two stories - the second of which ended with the Joker left for dead, never intended to return. Bob Kane realised what a great villain he had, so he hastily re-drew the last panel to reveal that the Joker would live after all.

 

While "I'm your father" is an awesome retcon/twist, that particular line annoys me because it smacks of moral relativism out of place in this particular space fantasy. Just admit you lied, it would be understandable given the circumstances. I suspect Lucas wasn't exactly happy with it either, because when "the point of view" is shows up in PT, it comes from the mouth of the Sith.

 

I don't think moral relativism is out of place in Star Wars. Things seemed black-and-white at first, but it turned out they were more complicated. Authority figures were manipulative and people can change. These are important lessons/concepts and without them SW would be less meaningful than it is. As much as I like the 1977-era backstory, I think emphasizing this element was an interesting decision.

 

There're definitely shades of gray in the saga, especially in the prequels, and I appreciate them. But the main divide is still remains: the Sith are evil even if they sometimes tell the truth, the Jedi try to save the Galaxy even though they can make grave mistakes or appear to be narrow-minded.

 

We see a planet way in the background in some scenes. That could be Endor.

 

[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/9/9c/Endor_matte.jpg]

[image=http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/books/weg/endor3sd.jpg]

They don't match (unless that brown object is really really dense and the moon has a widely varying orbit), which still necessitates an explanation. Maybe the shot from the ewok movie was shot with a telephoto lens, making the planet look way bigger, like this:

[image=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0611/paranalMoonset_gillet_f.jpg]

But that's still a retcon.

 

The ultimate SW retcon is in the ROTJ novel when it is said that Obi-Wan and Owen were brothers. That retcon invalidated that novel for me.

 

Brother doesn't always mean blood relation. So that line can still fit.

 

I agree that the word brother doesn't always mean by blood. However, Obi-Wan and Anakin were "brothers". Anakin and Owen were brother (stepbrothers, but brothers still). Obi-Wan and Owen were not brothers by any sense of the word. Aside from blood relative, brother basically means a very close friend or comrade. There was no friendship between Owen and Obi-Wan. How they can possibly be considered "brothers" is beyond me.