Lit Sword of the Jedi by Christie Golden

I think we are fooling ourselves if we believe Episode 7 won't step on the EU. Best we can hope for is a parallel universe. If it's not that, then anything that happened after Episode 6 simply didn't take place. They won't make fans confused saying: "Oh, yeah...well a lot of stuff happened between these movies and we expect you to go read about it in the novels." And this isn't a "Disney" thing. Lucus would have done it too if he were in charge. Anything that happens between Episode 6 and 7 will be a new novel and a direct tie in to the new trilogy.

 

Yeah, but I don't think the people that would be bummed out by this trilogy being cancelled would feel better if a completely different book trilogy was released with this title.

And if people really do just want a trilogy with this title and don't care if it is about Jaina or don't care if it is about a completely different Jaina or a different character altogether... why?

 

Isn't that the general experience of characterization in that franchise that slaps the Star Wars logo on the cover?

And there is precedent, as I said, there are Trek fans who agree that the new movies aren't good but who love them for making the brand name important again. And who knows, maybe the original Darth Plagueis novel had been a much better novel?

 

Yes, but look where it has gotten us.

 

To the point where I'm not bummed out about either state of Schroedinger's Sword of the Jedi trilogy.

 

I'm pretty apathetic myself.

 

Well, I already murdered Star Wars. Now I'm paying the price for my lack of vision.

 

They don't need reference the EU in order for it to survive. What I, and I think many other readers are hoping for, is that the EU is just still workable after all is said and done.

 

Again, I think that's impossible. Eventually, the EU as we know it will be overturned. Maybe not with the first movie, or even the second, but there is no way it can stand. If anything does (and I doubt it) I'd say all we will have left is the Thrawn trilogy.

 

Hey guys...

So, elsewhere on this internet of ours, I just came up with the best argument in favor of EU harmony, and I want to know what you guys think. It's five cringe-worthy words:

Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

People are saying that the EU must be dismissed because nobody would want to reference the books, and I just don't think that's true. From the very beginning, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was released, and I'm sure people read it and thought, "I'm sure in Empire they're going to cover Luke and Leia's encounter with Vader on that foggy planet... It's Vader! How could they not?!" And that sounds hilarious and ridiculous to us now, but I'm sure people thought that, because they hadn't seen Empire yet. If you look at the current place of the EU, literally the only thing that can't be undone is to give the Skywalkers/Solos different kids. No need to mention Thrawn, Mara Jade, the Vong, none of it... Chewie can get a horrible retcon story preceding the films... and sure, it might seem slightly illogical now, but that's because we haven't seen the movie yet. It's like the argument about how Anakin has an apprentice and that seems totally wrong until you realize that there was no opportunity to mention an apprentice in ROTS. Whether you accept that argument or not, it's at least a logical, passable, harmonious argument that keeps the continuity intact, however unlikely it might seem.

Movies are short. This isn't a Terrence Mallick film we're talking about; people don't just sit around and talk about the past for hours, mentioning things that aren't shown on screen. It's entirely plausible, but it's just a matter of whether they have a respectful enough (and GOOD enough) mythological storyteller to do it.

 

You know, I actually thought of Splinter today, too, and how its premise - Luke fighting Vader and winning - kind of flies in the face of what Empire is trying to do. It's the same with a lot of Clone Wars stuff, and I don't mean later stuff like Ahsoka - more like "oh Dooku gets killed by Anakin in that Gameboy game, they're surely going to use that if Christopher Lee isn't available for filming ROTS". As much as the EU expands the movie universe, it always expanded the universe with stuff that was obviously not going to be mentioned ever.

And as for Mara Jade, when I read the Skywalker kid rumour article on 1138, I actually realized that not having Mrs. Skywalker in the movie is the only way of having a Skywalker kid in the movie. Mara is perfect since she's not a character in this timeframe, and especially not a character that's only complicating a contemporary standard Hollywood father/son dynamic; she's stepped aside to allow for father/son interaction to take center stage (compare this to the OT, the original popcorn blockbuster template, where the hero has to find out about and avenge and then find out more about and then redeem the father while spending just one single scene on remembering that he doesn't know anything about his mother, and compare it to Abrams' "I love 70s Spielberg movies so I'll get the Kodak advert right and everyone will agree that this is a perfect Spielberg homage and everyone knows that Spielberg made family movies so it was probably always about daddy issues and that's what Super 8 is all about). Having mentioned Super 8 - that's exactly the Mara situation right there.

I totally agree that the kids are the elephant in the room, the only thing where the EU dared name Coruscant before Lucas had a shot; that and Chewbacca, who could simply fade out of the cast like so many characters did (I'll just compare this to Jar Jar fading out and obviously not really appearing in the OT, and all of that without any IU explanation), but the way I see it, Abrams is trying to have as much connection to the OT as possible, to "the movies that he grew up with", especially if the rewrite rumours are true (plus there's Rebels on the "we have to appeal to OT fans, the average public and the kids will come anyway" train). If the era between OT and ST were a blank, the EU would be all over this - "oh, there was an invasion", "oh, they had to fight a bunch of warlords", plus the stuff the average EU wouldn't dare pull off but TCW and TFU might, like, "oh, 50th anniversary level mega twist! The Solos had more kids we just have never heard about before, let's call one the War Son, and the other which goes against the official numbering of kids but doesn't count towards the numbering of kids since he did something so terrible that nobody talks about him anymore!" What actually happened is like precognitive expansion.

 

Won't happen, they''re going from 4 ABY, and starting fresh, we'll find out things we had no idea about, and events we thought we knew completely written over.
We may see a new wedding for Han, and Leia, Jacen, and Jaina with different personalities, Ben will take the place of Anakin Solo.
Mara Jade will be introduced in Rebels, and appear in the ST.

 

Orly

 

This is exactly why I have hope that the EU will stick around. The movies don't need to mention what happened in the time between the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy. Even if the Solo and Skywalker kids don't appear in the movie, as long as it doesn't specifically say that they don't exist, it should work out.

 

That's very detailled information you have there.

 

Maybe his uncle works at LucasArts.

 

I wouldn't claim to have any information on that.

 

The Solo kids (and possibly Ben) are the only major wrinkle.

For the EU to stay intact requires basically nothing up to the end of NJO to be actually referenced in the movies. No one needs to know about every Imperial Warlord who took over for 15 years after Endor, as they have no impact on things now. Similarly, the Vong invasion need not be detailed, because its over, and people will be focused on building new lives and confronting new challenges.

Han and Leia (and Luke and Mara's) marriage will be obvious if shown on screen. So will the birth of the kids. What was happening when they were born, or the circumstances of the weddings are irrelevant.

A new jedi order under Luke is basically a foregone conclusion, and no matter how many or who they show, that doesn't invalidate anything about how it as formed. Just may require retconning who else was in the inaugural classes.

The only two things that would require a mention would be Chewie's death, which can be done in one to two lines of dialogue if it even has to be addressed, and Anakin's death, which may not even need to be mentioned since he'll have never appeared on screen.

That's it.

Now of course there are a few hundred possible ways that they could overwrite the EU (different/more/fewer kids, the Empire is still in control, Han is dead, etc), but the most likely scenario - new democratic government, new jedi, Han and leia married with kids - and the one most fans expect, flows completely from the EU at least until the end of NJO.

Explaining LOTF and FOTJ would be far more complicated, but it would still be possible to keep that intact by referencing as little of it as possible.

The casual viewer should be able to enjoy an EU concordant sequel trilogy without having to actually read the EU. and that's not all that difficult to do.

 

So what then, PraenomenCognomen, the basis for Ahsoka Tano's existence is the fact Anakin believed he was close to mastership in RotS, despite the fact Ahsoka wasn't in the multimedia project or any other work before TCW?

 

I fail to see why that's a problem....

 

Its a massive problem when one's timeline of the Clone Wars is the multimedia project and related works like the Dark Lord Trilogy.

 

I think you're putting a little too much faith into the rumor mill.

 

The argument wasn't whether it contradicts a gazillion books and comics, but whether it contradicts the movie. And it doesn't. You can stuff Ahsoka between the movies and even create a situation in which it works perfectly, which you point out yourself. The basis for her existence is, of course, that Lucas wanted to have stories with Anakin having a padawan. That situation got along smoothly with his other creation, the movie, in the end.

Which is only an example that the existence of a Vong invasion or Anakin Solo or the name of Luke's dead wife doesn't need to come up in a more or less satisfying action movie script.

I don't think this example was meant to say that the Clone Wars media project was anything but perfect and Lucas had any right whatsoever to change anything about the fictional framework of these books and comics.