Lit The concept of canon: good or bad?

I'm wondering if the new canon has started already, with the new Empire trilogy of books,
the Brian wood comic series
Kenobi, Scoundrels.

abandonment of Zahn's HoJ trilogy, leaving it a Duology.

the changed ending to Crucible

The change in the Killiks, in TOR

The new REbels cartoon,which will have input from the movie people,
and the new story team, all those decisions needed the approval of Chee, and Hidalgo

they knew about the sale, and the ST before it became public.
They would make sure everything gradually became ST friendly.

they wouldn't know the finished script, but George Lucas would have shown them the treatments, so they could prepare.

they'll probably just stop publishing EU 1, while new books, comics, and Rebels overwrite its foundations, and build
the foundations for EU 2

 

And this, to me, is the really depressing part. If I could believe in a clean break where they rebooted the EU and everything from 2015 onward is completely cohesive--movies, TV, comics, backs of cereal boxes--I would be a happier campier than I am now. EU 2.0, fine, I can get into it after an appropriate mourning period and probably even learn to love it after the Stockholm Syndrome kicks in.

But I can't help but see this as the end of any sort of cohesive canon in the long run, where despite the best honest intentions of people at LFL, Disney pays the new EU about as much attention as, say, the Pirates of the Caribbean EU, and after a few more films we are right back where we started, trying to retcon some Episode VIII-IX bridge novel to fit with throwaway lines in Episode XIV or whatever.

tl;dr: I don't predict a choice between "our" EU and an equivalent-but-different new EU, but rather a choice between "our" EU and something that will prove in the end to be an even worse Wild West of continuity anarchy.

 

Whichever way you slice it Sable, saying: "Yeah, you can do a continuation and call it official and then saying hey that stuff doesn't apply to me" is never going to look all that great.

LFL retains sign-off on all the books too, so the only conclusion that can be drawn from that, cynicism aside, is that they don't consider it to dismiss the films, that that charge is one fabricated by over-protective fans.

As for what Lucas has said over the years, there's a case of someone not able to be coherent with regard to his own work, never mind that of others, which he then applies to his statements on SW. From his attitude in recent years he seems to have drifted towards exhibiting a Guinness-like irritation that it'll be what he's remembered for.

 

That's why I'll always remember him for Radioland Murders.

 

Before he returned to Star Wars, he did try to give Indiana Jones an EU, If Willow had succeded. he was planning fon turning that into a franchise, you could tell, by the Willow merchandise, and toys at the time, he even had plans for Willow sequels. He went back to Star Wars, because that was the only thing he created tht could give LFL, an infusion of cash.

The Indy books hadn't sold, ILm was going strong though, and Pixar would be beginning in a few years.

The Prequels, and TCW would bring in, not just licensing, and merchandising opportunities due to their high visibility.
remember when TPM came out, people were saying that it would be the first new Star Wars in years, the media, and movie goers were oblivious to the fact that the EU had been going on since 91

 

To hear Pablo and Leland talk of the "story team", the Kennedy administration (heh) is very much more committed to consistency than the Lucas administration was. The difference between Lucas and Kennedy is, IMO, Lucas had a story and anything else was secondary. Kennedy has a franchise, and anything else is secondary--if she tells someone not to write about Han and Chewie meeting or how Obi-Wan learned to ghost, it's not due to some authorial desire to keep secrets, it's to preserve actual plans that are already in motion.

The bad news, in theory, is that I'm betting in Catherine's short story example, the short story would never have been published in the first place, rather than risk stepping on someone's toes later, so we could be seeing much more conservative prose output in the ST era.

The good news is, if Disney has all the huge stuff blocked out for potential movie development but still wants to keep raking in novel profits, they might be more inclined to let the novels and comics play around in the unexplored cracks--Pius Dea, anyone?

 

Which were eventually written:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Willow

The film was eventually followed by a trilogy of fantasy novels written by Chris Claremont (again from a story by George Lucas), with the grown-up destiny girl as the central character. These stories were originally to be made into films themselves, but following the unsatisfactory box office performance of the film, the stories were instead turned into novels. The entries to the trilogy are:

• Shadow Moon (1995)
• Shadow Dawn (1998)
• Shadow Star (2000)

 

but not filmed, he's a fim maker, his dream would have been to have them filmed.

 

I'm still not quite prepared to throw out all of Bantam and the NJO in exchange for say, a twelve-novel series on the Great Droid Revolution and a trilogy on the Battle of Zarracina III, but it's definitely a potential silver lining.

 

That's about the same position I've taken lately. Though I used to be a staunch canon-defender (even though I've viewed the EU more or less like a "what if" ever since the Marvel comics and I've been reading a lot less EU since it jumped the Sarlacc with LOTF. Well, the NJO came pretty close to doing that as well), I'm really not a fan of the very inclusivist policy regarding canon Licensing has taken. It becomes a bit silly when every bit of trivia from all kinds of sources is made canon.

I also think that canon might, however unintentionally, restrict the authors.

 

Perfect consistency across all mediums is almost certainly impossible. Still, with new, successive movies serving as 'canon anchors' as the storyline progresses, with the business-minded Kennedy instead of the story-minded Lucas in charge, and after reading the article about the "Story Group," I'm more confident that the New EU will be more consistent, possibly much more consistent, than the EU we've known.

That's a risk that, in light of what I mentioned just above, I'm willing to take.

 

Of your last point, I'm sceptical. If you don't want to be restricted, don't do work-for-hire in a shared universe franchise.

But, more importantly, while going with personal canon works so far, it will still need modification. Case in point is Clone Wars - try fusing Clone Wars 2002-5 material with post-2005 material and you'll find it requires you to overlook certain aspects or details. With the likely anticipated new EU, fusing it with the old will be the same difficulty but considerably ramped up.

 

That is a fair point, but that might also mean losing good authors.

 

I've read that the confirmation of the Endor Holocaust as "not-canon" in Star Wars Insider, was what caused Curtis Saxton to stop writing for Star Wars- but I'm not sure if he qualifies.

 

In that respect, they're pretty much already lost anyway preferring to build their own worlds and characters rather than work with someone else's.

I mean I'd love to see a Gaiman SW story, but I doubt it'll happen! Ditto the likes of Erikson, Lynch, Butcher.

 

Source? I have never heard that and I haven't got a clue, but I can imagine other reasons as well.

 

Curtis Saxton infamously sent out a post about the Complete Locations over concern that his Endor Holocaust theory was implied to not have happened in the book:

"I would have quit the project and demanded anonymity for my role if the irrationalists had succeeded in inserting anything that gave the impression that Endor is "saved". I consider this a "red line" issue of intellectual integrity. Non-negotiable."

Needless to say, other official sources - such as Pablo in Insider - stated emphatically it didn't happen. You can draw your own conclusions about Saxton never contributing officially again.

 

There's plenty of good SW authors who have published books set in worlds of their own creation: Matthew Stover, Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, Aaron Allston, Sean Stewart, etc.

 

That's a condition of their being asked to write for SW D_X, but for every author you name there's a whole raft that people wish would write for SW.

Like it or loathe it, franchise fiction, like superhero work-for-hire, generally tends to be perceived as inferior to original visions.

 

Frankly, I was disappointed that they asked him in the first place. "Intellectual integrity" is nice and everything, but applying it to the extinction of teddy bears is utterly tone deaf as far as SW is concerned.

 

I was very glad that they asked him and I think he did a tremendous job with the Cross-Sections and Inside the Worlds (for which he seems to mostly have acted as a consultant) books and he is more in line with the movies (and I think he would've been the perfect choice for co-writing/consulting on the Atlas). But bashing/criticizing authors isn't what I imagine this thread to be about...

 

Not quite. As far as I know, Troy Denning has never published a single original work. And when Paul Kemp's Crosscurrent came out in 2010, he'd never published original work up to that point, instead having only published novels in the Forgotten Realms shared world (by now he's published two original sword and sorcery novels).

That's true, and an unfortunate state of affairs. I've found Stover and most of Zahn's SW novels, at least, to be superior in just about every aspect of writing to plenty of original works.

 

I believe the topic was whether canon issues might cause authors to be lost.

 

It might have been more accurate to say that published work is a condition of being asked to write for SW--I don't think anyone has ever said it has to be original, it's just that that's the far more common case.

 

Yeah, that's likely more accurate - it's about proof of selling stories.