Books Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne

Bottom line is, "canon" as a concept ain't worth $%!# no more. All that matters is storytelling opportunities if we're being polite, and what can make the company 3 %&#$tillion freightloads of money if we're being honest.

At the heart of the issue is the shift from doing things small to doing things BIG. Now Star Wars is beholden to Disney shareholders, and that will lead to its steady decline. I am expecting great things of the first few Disney-Star Wars movies, but if there's really going to be a movie every year, there will come a year when that movie won't be worth wiping your ass with.

 

This is a dark but very plausible prediction, alas. They said they wanted to revive an old man, but they're only going to give him taurine, which will make him very excited for a while... until he 'll have a heart attack.

 

I know they want to do a movie every year, but I doubt that will last long. Give it a few years after the ST is finished and I think their whole movie a year thing will go away. Then I'm guessing we'll be left with how things use to be. I don't think what they want is going to be sustainable -- unless they are really creative, which I don't expect.

 

Why even attempt to revive an old man? Old men (and women, and hermaphrodites for that matter) should be allowed to go out on their own terms.

Lucas wanted to get rid of Star Wars because he didn't want to have any more of it. That's when it should have died as a film series. TV series could still make money for Lucasfilm for a couple of years more, but that's all that should have been happening right now.

 

I don't have a problem with the franchise having ongoing media. Why else would I bother with the EU if I didn't want more from this universe? More isn't bad if it's written in a way that's logical and fits within the established rules.

More films and TV aren't a bad thing in a galaxy with a (now only potentially) timeline spanning several millennia. The problem is the need to appeal to the largest audience possible with a film/TV budget, and more accurately... the big business philosophy that this is only possible if you keep the story and lore relatively simple.

A premise which is entirely false for fiscal success, and that's why this 'total' reboot is unnecessary.

 

This scheme is guaranteed to maximize profits now. The plan is to make an absurd amount of money within the first five years of the acquisition (and, as step #1, basically monopolize summer 2015 in ticket sales). Obviously, a $4 billion investment demands some version of this strategy in some form, but Disney went with the most obscene interpretation. It's quite obvious that Bog Iger is the one who pushes for the super-short term profits approach (he needs to make money off Lucasfilm while he still is CEO).

I'm sure Star Wars will be left completely eviscerated by the point Mr Iger has justified the Lucasfilm purchase, but who'll even care by then. Part of me hopes that rushing Ep. VII will prove a fatal mistake.

 

it was supposed to be a movie every 2 years

 

Likely very little.

The problem is a Live Action series is likely out. Quite simply the cost involved in making anything realistically sci-fi on television is painfully expensive. Look at Firefly or Terra Nova. The first was an absolutely incredibly done series, the second had potential that wasn't developed. But both were VERY extensive worlds that you could easily buy into because of high-quality production.

Both were killed by low viewership and high costs. While Star Wars as a name may increase the viewership, there is not one successful live-action Sci-Fi series that has ever been on television past a couple years other than Star Trek of old. And you can tell that even for its age, it wasn't the highest budget.

So we're limited to animated series. That's not a bad thing, but it does limit the audience. Yes, there are a handful of successful adult oriented cartoons (Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park), but those are fare more adult than any Star Wars, let alone Disney-owned, cartoon will ever be. So I think its unlikely to see the support levels of those.

(I don't have the numbers for TCW but I suspect those would bear me out)

ANd if there's more than one animated Star Wars show on at the same time, that may draw more viewers in total, but it won't double the numbers. People will pick which one they like better and watch that.

So likely, we're limited to at most two cartoons of short-duration. In order to have a multi-season arc that is successful like TCW is, they can only really one one at a time. So realistically, we MIGHT see one short season or two show along with Rebels, but with therefore very limited potential. And most likely, we'll get Rebels - gap year - Sequel Trilogy related - and then who knows.

Oh definitely. Shoe-horning Han into Death Troopers and Shadow Games were terrible decisions. Those should have been standalones.

But here's the thing, while I do want things like Coruscant Nights, Death Star, or Scourge, I also want to be able to spend time in the books with something about the Big 3 (or whoever now) that GOES somewhere.

Those were all enjoyable books, and they added breadth to the universe, but no depth. An EU should be able to do both, not be limited to a one-dimensional side-line.

Yes and no. Would it be cool to see on screen? Absolutely. DOes that mean you should only be able to do things on screen? ABsolutely NOT.

In the hospital, we'd love to have every patient on a monitored bed around the clock with 1-1 nursing. We can only do that for about 2% of the patients admitted if we're lucky.

And that's what the movies should be - the most important 5 or 10% of the universe around which everything else evolves. But that should mean that the EU deals with 90% of stuff. Sure, only about 20% of that should involve the BIG events that change the galaxy, but there still should be that.

Saying that the movies drive can be the only thing to progress big events is like saying that we can only admit 50 people to the hospital at any given time, and all the other 700 will have to wait until we can get around to them with those 50 beds. Sure you CAN do it that way, but its a really bad idea.

This here hits on the primary problem. PROFIT MOTIVE. And that's whats driving the creative decisions right now.

If they really wanted the story group to be in charge, the first announcement would have been along the lines of "we will finish releasing scheduled product till this date XXX, and then there will be a hiatus while the Story Group decides the future of the franchise. We plan to release Episode VII once that has been decided."

We would probably all still be in limbo now, and possibly well into next year before the Story Group came back to tell us what was going on. But at that point they could clearly lay out "here's what we're going to keep that fits with the new direction planned with Lucas's proposed outlines, and our goals for the franchise, here's what doesn't."

Only then would they have hired directors, writers and actors outside the Big 3 who are reprising their roles.

Would some things have been tossed? Probably. We likely would have ditched everything post NJO or post Hand of Thrawn. Maybe some stuff before that. But it wouldn't have been the whole-sale reboot we got.

I'm sure Lucas had some good ideas in the outlines that he had. But they probably could have been fit to match the EU without changing the intent. Han and Leia have three kids? Luke isn't supposed to be married? Ok, we have to ditch the NJO, and change one of the kid's name's George wanted to use.

Oh. Han and Leia haven't seen each other for years? Guess we'll have to set this after NJO and have Han off chasing a rumor that Chewie was still alive. Oh, and we can probably revive him too while we're at it.

That SHOULD have been the purpose of the story group. To plan things BEFORE Disney got to work on them. But everything was done out of order.

Rather than 1) Plan, 2) Script 3) Hire, it was in the exact reverse order, which is the exactly wrong thing to have done with a franchise this size. And its very sad, because its obviously aimed at justifying that massive outlay of cash to the shareholders.

 

Oh? Maybe, but I can't imagine them ruling out filling this era in with spin-off movies setting up the characters and setting of the sequels - once they come out. Or maybe an ongoing animated show giving background to the Jedi Hunters (yes, I know that is probably not going to really be in the movies - I use as an example). Even if they don't, just the idea that they might could force the Story Group to put a moratorium on the era (at least any significant developments in the era). Time will tell.

Yeah, either that or we will get a backstory on Tarkin, a backstory on some Rebels characters, an inter-movie Luke story, and a Vader/Palpatine side story. Guess we have to wait and see.

 

Just a quick check-in and I'll come back to the other points later, but ... huh? Babylon 5, Farscape, and seventeen seasons of Stargate say "hi".

 

The only problem is that I don't think viewers are as forgiving as they used to be of the budget limits of TV or to put it another way: It's the Agents of SHIELD effect. People expect Marvel-style TV movies and there's no way the budget covers it. (Though that's far from the only problem with AoS S1!)

B5 has often been slagged for looking cheap, Trek has 'planet of the week / anomaly plots', Stargate has a lot of alien planets that strangely look like Canadian forest, Farscape? Relies on muppets. But to the fans these were seen as necessary evils - and even seen in an affectionate light for some, there's only so much that can be done after all. Now? I'm not so sure that's the case which makes it much harder for any SF series.

 

I think a TV show is very unlikely because of Rebels. I do think there will be movies in that period but they won't be able to touch the main characters -- at least in live action. Thus I think that role will go to the novels. Maybe I'm wrong, but I prefer to try to maintain some optimism.

 

The reason I'm upset is because I think this is not only a bad decision creatively, but ultimately a bad business decision. The idea that the audience will be deterred by a large lore is flat out wrong. They're deterred by stories which RELY upon previous material, not new material set in an existing universe.

They probably could've written the movies to be set in 50ABY and still done 95% of what Lucas's draft ultimately set out to do, given the advanced age of the big 3.

I'm not complaining that they cut out some of the lore. Like many, I'm almost glad to see the Legacy era (novels, not the comics) gone. I'm upset about the idea that they've weakened the franchise by cutting out everything, and somehow think they're making it better, and dare I say, somehow think that makes it more profitable. I firmly believe that that is a genuinely misguided philosophy even from a business perspective.

 

Indeed, though its fifteen seasons of Stargate, not seventeen.

 

Farscape ran technically 4 seasons, but isn't (in north america anyway I can't comment on Australia), a very well-known, let alone successful or profitable series.

Babylon 5 and Stargate definitely have been longer running. But neither is exactly a house-hold name, let alone look the same quality as would be expected of a Star Wars series OR pull in the profit/viewership that would be required to be kept by Disney.

Successful probably wasn't the right word. But popular/household name/giving huge profit.

 

One of my fears is they're going to pull a "Once Upon a Time" with these sci-fi franchises -- that is, combine parts of their Marvel universe with Star Wars. Something like that would be guaranteed to make money, even if it didn't have the "starring" actors. OUAT has already cameoed the sarlacc (name included!) -- that seems almost like eerie foreshadowing....

 

Can't see that happening. Too corny

 

I wouldn't mind OUAT having a Star Wars character. Like, at all. I'd love it, actually. I wouldn't even mind recasting for that case, and only that case, because it would be a "what-if" tale anyways, not the canonical characters. But then, I'm probably the world's biggest OUAT fanboy, and the idea of Frozen and SW characters existing in the same universe, not to mention the characters already in OUAT...well, I would enjoy it a lot. But that's just me; I'm sure lots of people would groan and complain.

 

I couldn't get into Once Upon a Time.

 

Well, hey, that's okay. Different strokes for different folks.

 

I have not watched OUAT, but if they'd insert Palpatine in it I would.

But think of something like OUAT two centuries later with all the new fairy tales mixed in: Aragorn faces Jaime Lannister in a duel while Voldemort tries to kill Luke Skywalker.

 

Can they afford Ian McDuiarmuid?

 

Nope, seventeen. Ten of SG-1, five of Atlantis, two of Universe. Technically, if you include the non-canon and blatantly terrible Infinity cartoon, it's eighteen.

 

15, Universe never happened just as little as Infinity.