Saga Trying too hard for the Canon

Don't know if this belongs here, but I was wondering if Disney is going too far when ensuring everything they publish is fitting perfectly into the new canon. In my opinion that's not a good thing because it prevents things that are obviously not canon and therefore unlikely to be confused as such from being published. For example mini games like angry birds Star Wars will not have a sequel even though many people enjoyed those games. The worst part for me is that Star Wars detours might not be released now, which I have been really looking forward for. they say they don't want to confuse people so that someone might mistake it for canon. I think the only people who won't recognize that Star Wars Detours is not canon, won't care care enough about the canon anyway so cancelling detours was just unnecessary. What are your thoughts?

 

What Lucasfilm is doing is that they're ensuring that every new book, comic and video game is on the same page from the outset. The old EU did not do this very well, as there was contradictions within the narrative before Lucas turned around and changed things with each new film that he made, much less the revisions to the existing ones. Case in point was that the Jedi had families in the old EU prior to the PT and then had to turn around and create retcons to match things up. What is happening in the new books is that certain ideas will match up to the ST. If Luke has no child in the ST, then the books prior to then will not have him in the story.

"Detours" is on hold, but it has not been completely shelved. Meaning that it'll get released eventually.

 

Before AOTC, to be precise. Even after TPM, PT Jedi were being given families (Ki Adi-Mundi springs to mind).

 

For me canon doesn't matter anyway. Enjoyment does.

 

I agree with that on a base concept, but I can really only enjoy something if it's consistent. It would be weird if, say, we see TPM and suddenly the Republic is inexplicably an Empire. Some contradictions can be reasonably explained, like the Vader is Luke's father thing, but if it becomes a point of reallllly having to stretch the mind to wonder how one thing got to another so quickly, then it loses the charm

That being said, I'm certain that current EU is shaping itself around the ST rather than forcing it to adapt to whatever EU material may come out

When it comes to the EU and canon consistency - I couldn't care less. Just keep the saga straight and I'm pleased

 

I love the idea of everything being connected to a specific canon. It's something I've loved so far with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (what with the films, Agents of Sheild and Agent Carter), and I'm really looking forward to the DC film universe doing the same thing. I always wished that more of SW was interconnected, storywise. Then again, I only really watch the movies, shows and read the books-so things like video games, Angry Birds and the like I couldn't care less about personally.

I suppose I hadn't read enough of the Post ROTJ novels to take issue with the more or less "disposal" of the EU, but I'm glad that they're now doing more than just the films. I've always loved learning about what all happened between the films, and this can help fill in some gaps in an interesting way-and perhaps not just with books.

 

+1 - I doubt I'll ever see/read/etc everything that is/will be canon, so I just take stuff from Legends and Canon to make my own personal canon

 

Precisely, all these labels are simply marketing anyways.

 

Agree completely, as at this point, I don't really care whats canon and whats not. As long its a fun story, I'll be fine.

 

Canon is nice hypothetically, but realistically I'm not going to read every single comic, novel, play every game, etc. Seeing the movies as they come out is a simple thing, so chances are I'm going to always be caught up on that canon. But I'm sure I'll have a discussion here and it will eventually come up that such and such happened in some comic that I never read and that doesn't have any bearing on the films. I mean, I just read the Tarkin novel that's part of the new canon, and I really must say I did not enjoy it. There's neat little things in there that are interesting, like Palpatine living in the Jedi Temple. But the whole backstory that Tarkin was given was just not something I could ever picture holding true for that character. And he'd have conversations and I just couldn't picture Peter Cushing's portrayal of the character saying the same things. And not just Tarkin, but Vader and the Emperor too. Palpatine seemed interested in getting Tarkin and Vader to work together, and it just seemed like he was some guy setting up two friends on a blind date. It was weird and seemed completely out of character.

So much of what ends up being canon I won't end up reading and I'll probably be just as oblivious to as the EU when it was considered canon.

 

That's my gravest concern about bothering to finish Tarkin. Will I see it as credible Sir would do :X, Z, and A? Probably, no. I already had a few such cases of that in the sample chaps. I really tire of the canon arguments, anyways. It makes zero difference to me.

 

Like BELO, I love the thought of getting a consistent Star Wars universe where everything officially "did happen".
I also like the idea of Legends. All those stories are still legitimate, but as legends of the GFFA. Some of them are distorted/embellished versions of historical events and can easily be viewed as semi-canon, while others have yet to be contradicted at all, which to me makes them "canon for now".
Most of the post-ROTJ Legends will likely be completely contradicted, though, so that'll be more like a "what if" type of thing, or a parallell reality. That's kind of neat too, in a way.

 

EU was fairly consistent as it was and Disney Wars already has contradictions. That's why I'm content to ignore labels.

 

I agree Disney is trying too hard to make everything canon...so much so that I think they will shoot themselves in the foot in regards to the quality of work the new eu will produce...Heir to The Jedi is the worst piece of crap I have ever encountered in my life...and I think it's because the author was restrained in regards to where he wanted to go in the story...i feel that the old eu had more creative freedom

also there's already inconsisitencies within the new eu which is bound to happen when you have multiple authors attempting to tell a saga

for example the Revenge of the Sith novel references events in Labyrinth of Evil and Yoda Dark Rendevous...and The Tarkin novel references events in Dark Lord...i thought those werent't canon! it already doesnt make sense!

because of all this canon talk with Disney I officially hate the word "canon" as much as I hate the word "reboot"

 

Any events or names that are mentioned in canon material are canon too, of course - though not necessarily the entirety of the material where those events occur.
Again, though, a story that has yet to be contradicted can't really be proven non-canon.

 

Luceno seemed to pull alot from the EU, but mostly planets, ships, and stuff like that. I never read much of the EU, so as far as events in the EU, I don't know how much of that got referenced in Tarkin. But just from reading the Wookieepedia regarding Tarkin in Legends material, it seemed like quite a few of the details from the EU got carried over into canon, though some were wildly different, like the whole Carrion Plateau stuff (which I thought was boring as all hell and could not picture a family forcing their son to go through that). And then there was the occasional nod to Plagueis, which I thought was distracting as it had nothing to do with Tarkin or the rest of the story.

 

I think that "Tarkin" might have been originally written for the old EU, before the decision to change it was made. That's probably why certain things from the old EU, like "Plagueis" carried over while other details were different from earlier material.

 

The name "Plagueis" appears in ROTS. However, his being Palpatine's Master, was more an EU thing (beginning with the ROTS novelization and continuing from there)- and Plagueis's personal droid from the Darth Plagueis novel, was included in Tarkin.

Lucian probably talked the Story Group into letting him keep a lot of old EU references.

 

Tarkin is the only novel I've read of the new canon, and I think I only read three novels of the EU, none of which were within the last decade. But with things like keeping Eriadu Tarkin's homeworld; keeping Eriadu in the Outer Rim; mentioning victory-class star destroyers, Immobilizer 418s, and a couple other EU ships; mentioning Naboo's king, the Trade Federation, and Naboo's plasma; etc. I can't imagine that the Story Group cares too much about these really minute details. I mean, there are probably stories that will be written that don't contradict a single thing from the EU, and I suspect that events in the EU will continue getting nods here and there.

I'm guessing the reboot is more to keep their options open for the sequel trilogy, and perhaps pre-TPM stuff, though TOR has been allowed to continue running and now has the Story Group credited. I don't know if they are keeping the ancient history relatively in tact, or if they are going to let the game run its course and then turn around and contradict it. There were several questions on Twitter regarding the canon status of TOR, aimed at some woman from Lucas Licensing I believe, and I think her initial answer was basically "I don't know." I don't think an explicit yes or no has ever been given.

And then I recall seeing some YouTube video that someone tapped from some convention where they were promoting A New Dawn, and people were asking about the possibility of going hundreds of years in the future and thousands of years in the past, or of re-imagining EU characters, and every single answer seemed to boil down to it being a possibility, but that there are no current plans to do so, and that there was a heavy focus right now on unifying efforts across all media with the OT era to support Rebels and The Force Awakens.

So really, the mention of Plagueis actually came as the most surprising since they've already locked down that he's Palpatine's master. Which seemed useless because while he gets a couple nods in Tarkin, they don't amount to much and aren't really relevant to the story.

But I don't think the Story Group has any real reason to take things like EU ships, planet's locations, even the political climate surrounding the Naboo Crisis, off of the table.

 

I believe it's implied in RotS that Plagueis was Sidious' master. I wouldn't say it's an EU idea.

 

The movie leaves it vague, with Sidious calling The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise "a Sith legend" and at no point claiming he was the apprentice that was taught "everything he knew".

 

I thought I recalled McCallum talking about how there were earlier drafts of the script where Palpatine strongly implied that he or his master had created Anakin, but that they decided to leave it more open(?)

I actually would have preferred Plagueis remain a Sith legend. It makes Palpatine look less like a blatant liar. As it stands, you have Palpatine tell Anakin that Plagueis taught his apprentice (Palpatine) everything he knew, which would include the power to cheat death, but then he turns around and tells Anakin that only Plagueis knew how to do it and that they must work together to discover the secret.

If Plagueis were indeed some Sith legend of a master far in the past that Palpatine regarded to be true, then it looks like he's trying to discover lost knowledge and makes him not a liar.

 

I don't think he did lie regarding that. He said they'd have to discover it together.

 

The real problem is with how LFL worded their statements about canon going forward. Their very first statement last year made it sound as though only post-RotJ material would be deemed non-canon. However, it was then stated that everything besides the films, TCW, and novels 'where they aligned with the films', was non-canon.

All attempts 'definitive' statements about canon have been horribly botched by LFL. However, now that they have actually released a bunch of canon material it is fairly easy to see how this is going to work. Going forward we are generally going to be told if somethings canon or not. So we were told that Son of Dathomir would be canon even though it was released by Dark Horse. The Imperial Handbook won't be canon even though it was released well after the period in which everything was supposed to be canon. For the most part it will be obvious what is and is not canon, but somebody from LFL will clarify something when we are unsure.

Personally, I like having a canon policy. Something I've always loved about SW is creating the illusion that the GFFA is real, and imagining what goes on between the pieces of media we get. I don't expect everything to be perfect, but a high degree of consistency helps a lot.

 

Obviously, since at that point Anakin would turn him over immediately. Yes, the dialogue is vague. Still, I said 'implied' which we can see through Ian's acting as if he was recollecting the moment when he killed his own master. Not to mention the whole point of the scene:

"Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew."

Which he later uses to help turn Anakin:

"I have the power to save the one you love."

He also said that he has the power. So he lied, one way or the other.