Lit Telling NU stories of significance outside the films (Was: "Meh.")

Let me be clear. I love the old EU. I love the idea of the new canon. I am a huge supporter of it. Okay, now...lets talk. Leading up to the Force Awakens, I would consume everything Star Wars coming out because I wanted new content, and hopefully hints about the Force Awakens. Well, now that it's out I can't help but have a "meh" feeling about the current story arcs in the comics, the books, and even Rebels. Again, I knew what we were getting with the new canon but I don't think the implications hit me until now. They can't tell the kind of stories I want because the kind of stories I want matter. And those will be told in movies. I'm definitely not complaining about that aspect, but I wish they could find some way of telling a story with significance without stepping on toes. Anyone else feeling this way?


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Thinking back, I seem to recall saying something similar at the time of the Disneyfication.

 

Rebels has it's own story arcs to tell with Jedi and darksiders and Darth Vader, and also with Rogue One a-commin they could tie their story into that as well. Whole lot of room to play with that. Seems pretty big.

As for the comics & novels, the battle of Jakku is pretty darn huge considering it's when the Empire surrenders so a whole lot of things in there.

while I fully believe the fall of Luke's Jedi and Ben will get a broad strokes treatment in Episode VIII, I think fleshing that period out fully will be the providence of the comics and novel series. Heck, even the marriage of Han & Leia & birth / early childhood of Ben has a whole lot of storytelling potential in there.

Some of those are big stories but also a whole lot of nifty character pieces too.

 

Don't get me wrong, I hope for all of those things but I'm less confident than I once was that we will get those. We are still fairly early in this new era, so it could go either way at this point.


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I can't say I'm especially bothered by it. Why wouldn't I want the SW stories of most significance to be on screen, given the option?

Most of us gravitated to the EU because we wanted more SW after we ran out of SW films. Importantly, it existed to fill a vacuum that no longer really exists. At least not on a permanent basis. What we have now is not so much an expanded universe, but a supplementary one. It'll fill in the gaps and little else. Though, as BigAl notes, there's some beefy stuff to go over in that respect.

If we do start getting stories that really "matter" outside the films, it'll be because the PTB have determined they're best told in that medium, or entirely beyond the scope of a flick. Which is a fair way to go about things.

(I'm going to amend your thread title to be a little more descriptive, by the by. The current one is "Meh." )

 

I never thought of it that way. The old EU was filling a vacuum, this is filling in small gaps.


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There was something about the last year and a half that was like waiting for a giant wave when you're in the ocean. And you're preparing yourself mentally and physically for Force knows what. And then when it's only a meter or so off... it dies away. It's a calm little ripple. You expected something immensely awful or hugely terrific, but not the calm little ripple. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't anything what you expected.

That's what I felt like with the new stories. The movie... well that's another story. Another wave. But everything outside of the movie has been cool or ok, just not knock-your-socks-off extreme (good or bad).

 

I would love to see a Luke's Jedi TV series (Throw a bucket of cash at Mark Hamill and off you go!) but it would fall into a "prequel story destined to end on a downer" note but I doubt that'll happen so I think mos def the most we'll get out of Luke and Ben's big brouhaha story will be in comics & novels. Possibly that's the best format because you can literally get inside the character's heads.

 

Most definitely so, BigAl; that is why I hold that the only real medium for storytelling is prose - whether printed on paper, an e-book or an audiobook (provided they are complete and unabridged). Nothing else compares.

Look at all the Classics - prose, every one of them.

Film simply cannot give as much 'content for the buck'. Take the first Harry Potter as an example. My first exposure to this was a Boxing Day Broadcast (on BBC Radio), which may have been simply a broadcast of the audiobook. I recall it lasted for around six hours; and that one is a slim volume. Audience endurance limits film running times to what? Two and a half to three hours maximum?

 

Wouldn't go that far however for something as in-depth as Ben's fall and the destruction of Luke's Jedi seems best in a comic or a novel for a whole lot of introspection. Whatever medium best fits the message. I don't think the final act of Force Awakens would have as much impact if it only existed as a novel. It works perfectly as a film.

 

Personally, I had no problem following the Battle of Ebaq 9 (a rather larger and more complicated affair) as written. I didn't need extra Blaze Bugs either!

 

Let me tell you all a guilty secret...

I haven't read a single Star Wars story since the reboot.

There, the cat's out of the bag...

Now, it's not because I've read anything that makes me dislike them, in fact several genuinely sound interesting. But. I'd put off reading other non-Star Wars stuff for a long time, and got into those, and... yeah, I've just continued reading those, and up to this point nothing from the NEU material has jumped out at me as enough of a "Must Read" to pull me away from what have now become my other reading habits.

Which is a shame, as I do miss reading EU, but I'm just not seeing anything that's filling that void, to stick with the term Ulicus used.

I've seen (and loved) TFA. I loved Rebels. But, like Barriss, I've not felt swept away by anything that's made me charge to the bookstore to read. And I miss that. I want to read STAR WARS: KYLO REN or something. Okay, they want to keep the big stuff secret for Ep8 and 9, that's fine. But why can't we get a story like Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter?

 

I too feel this way. I'm not saying the new material is bad, everything not directly associated with TFA has ranged from good to absolutely fantastic but none of this stories can have much of an impact. All the important main stuff is being reserved for the episodes and the really important side stories are being kept for the anthologies. Thrawn, Caedus, the Vong all felt important because they were the main story but you can't have books of those scales or impact anymore, it's all about the movies.

Now, the movies might improve but as a guy who would've lived and died at peace with just the six movies we already had before Disney, I can't say I really like this new way and the way it limits the NEU. The place where the actual good storytelling is being done whereas the films are, judging by TFA anyhow, try hard middle of the road affairs hell bent on OT nostalgia.

 

I honestly think a "Kylo Ren kicks a whole lot of ass" comic or novel is probably going to be a thing before Episode VIII comes out. They're starting to open the TFA materiel now, it wasn't out before because it was Mystery Box'd (probably from the creators too) but Bloodline, Poe Dameron and the oft delayed Threepio one-shots are a-commin in the next few months.

 

It's had its good points and bad points, but overall the Nucanon still feels like New Coke to me. That includes the TFA movie.

But I, too, think that the days of the "EU" "mattering" as much as it did in the nineties or 2000s are over. A lot of the stuff that, in the old 'verse, would've been left to the books are going to be picked up by TV shows and tie-in movies.

 

This.


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I haven't gotten much into the New EU outside of Lost Stars( don't have much time for reading due to school and other extracurricular stuff) however, if you overlook the fact it is young adult and can appreciate a good love story I would recommend it. The book actually can for the most part fit within the old EU with the exception of the ending which is great since I can put the story in both universes. Regardless I will admit nothing in the New EU has ever struck me as a must read or gave the same scope or the excitement that I got from the Pre EPI EU material however, I think its because its so early on in the process that we aren't going to get any really revealing or informative books outside stories focusing on old characters around the OT or PT timeline which is why I am excited for the Poe Dameron comics that are coming.

Regardless I do understand, when I got into the EU around 2007 and opened up Wookiepedia for the first time I was just shocked by all these new stories, time periods and characters I had never heard about. There are alot of EU stories that I have never gotten into but just enjoyed reading off wookipedia because the EU made SW feel like a big history book which the NEU lacks because it is new and undeveloped and since the new movies will reveal the new big plot lines.

Still there are some quality stories out there but really I think the success of the NEU will be determined in time. I am not going to give my opinion on its direction really until EP IX has come out because at that point I can fully judge the ST era and the the material surrounding it. I mean there are still huge gaps that can have reveals and major twists and instead of another adventure story that has little major impact on the universe (like the gap between EPVI and EPVII). So there is potential for really good trilogies of books whether they capitalize on it remains to be seen.

 

There's also the question of will Canon material address other eras, not just fill in gaps the ones they have and will they focus on already existing characters or focus on new ones as well.

 

I think that can be reasonably answered already as we've had lots of new characters!

Now TFA is out will that reluctance to use the big 3 three fade? Hard to say, though there is Bloodline now with a focus on Leia.

 

Yeah pretty much what most people have been saying for 3-4 years now

it sucks IMO and doesn't look like anything other than predominantly tie-in material will be published. But it's still early days and who knows what will happen.

Yes but do you see the common thread with all those 'stories' is that we already know what happens?

Not quite the same as the old EU where anything could happen post ROTJ

 

Sadly that's just how a "new" expanded universe is. Before, we had stuff like KotOR (the game and the comic) and Legacy and Dark Times and the New Jedi Order novel series, but it took decades to reach that point, branching out from the OT and the prequels. And even then we still had plenty of stories about the Big Three set between Yavin and Hoth, because that is the most iconic period (not post-ESB, since Han is frozen in carbonite and unavailable).

Right now, a lot of stuff is sidestory or just basic post-Yavin stuff. We didn't get much pre-TFA due to them avoiding spoilers, and I doubt we'll get much post-TFA stuff until closer to Episode VIII. We're still getting good stories in some things (Rebels, Lost Stars, the Lando comic series), with Rebels being the closest to a "big thing", but even that's decades before TFA so who knows how much of an effect it'll have on canon.

For better or worse, the big thing right now are the sequel movies, and much of the new content will relate to that. That's not to say we can't get good stories out of it, but I miss the old sense of wonder with the old EU that led to stuff like KotOR, or had so much history to be summed up in books like the Essential Atlas and Warfare Guide.

I'm hoping VIII will have more important lead-ins. Like TFA's novelization was nothing memorable (aside from how generic it was), and even Marvel didn't even do a TFA comic adaptation, or a comic lead-in. The closest was probably Shattered Empire, and that doesn't have much to do with TFA either (a bit, but not really). Its why I don't care about the main Star Wars comic series, they're just covering stuff like Vader finding out Luke's name, and been there, done that.

I can understand saving the big revelations for the movies, of course, but a lot of the build-up to TFA also meant holding back on just what the post-RotJ time period looked like. Now that TFA is out, I hope we can get more important post-RotJ stories (hopefully Bloodline will turn out something like that). At the same time, while I don't mind semi-important EU stuff, that doesn't mean the movie can just jump here to there and not bother to explain anything, that's just poor storytelling.

Maybe in another 10-15 years, Star Wars can start experimenting or getting really creative again, but who knows.

 

What worries me is the idea that we will get nothing but tie-ins until episode 9 is out. That's a very long time from now.


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That's the worst case scenario, and I'm afraid very likely. The best case scenario I can think of would be if they did something like the Clone Wars multimedia project. In the years between Episode II and III there was a ton of tie-in material, and much of it was entertaining or at least felt semi-important and had lots of lore. We had comics, novels, video games, animated series (the good Tartakovsky one, which might still be out of print, unfortunately). But that was after the middle part of the trilogy.

Right now the TFA era is still mostly a blank slate. Doesn't help that the movie was so vague or skipped over details much of the time. The Visual Dictionary can't make up for everything. What is the state of the Republic, the First Order, the Resistance? I'm expecting those questions won't be answered until Episode VIII, os until then most media will be just spinning their wheels while waiting for VIII to set up more stuff and lay out more rules of the era.

We're getting stuff like the Poe Dameron comic (yay!) and a Leia book by Gray (yay!), but those are just prequels, leading into TFA. They'll hopefully turn out good (expectations are high for both authors), but the ending is set already, so that takes away a bit.

Even in the post-Yavin time period there's still room for somewhat original stories... just too bad the main Star Wars comic is going with the simple, lazy route. In this issue, Luke encounters Vader... again, for the third time since Yavin. Will he escape? Will he survive? Will anyone actually worry? The Vader comic at least is a bit more original (better writer helps too). But it is still new EU so they're just going for the most high-profile characters (Dark Horse relied on that strategy too often).

But they have to hold back on using villains too much or thei reputation decays. Before RotS, Dooku and Grievous were the top bad guys, and who only occasionally encountered a senior Jedi. It makes Anakin's line in RotS about "my powers have doubled since last we met" sound sort of impressive, as he's probably referencing Geonosis. Then TCW have Anakin and Obi-wan bumping into them at least half a dozen times, but of course none of them actually die or take a serious wound. I'm afraid they're going to fall back into that style, which is why I'm not too invested in new comics. At least Rebels hasn't gotten so lazy as to just use that generic story, one of its better points.

 

I still think it's fairly ridiculous that, between the 2014 canon reboot and Episode VIII in 2017, it seems like the only post-ROTJ Luke story we'll get is a single comic issue where he kills dozens of stormtroopers in order to rescue a tree.

 

Agreed. I don't get what the big issue is with them needing to keep everything so secretive.

I mean, for one, it's pretty widely acknowledged that the number of pay attention to the books is a tiny slither of the number that watch the films, so they could practically give the plot away (hello Stover's ROTS released a month earlier) and it wouldn't spoil it for most people. But even beyond that, even if they did give stuff away that circulated, does it really matter? Marvel have made mountains of money releasing films where 90% of the story is predictable based on whichever comic they're loosely adapting (I'm talking the Days of Future Past stories and stuff), and nobody at Disney stepped in and told them to keep away from anything that might let the audience predict what was going to happen.

Which is why I don't get the obsession with keeping so much stuff locked away in some mystery box.