Lit What's more important? continuity or story

To be fair, the James Bond movies never really attempted to be coherent with one another. They've always been general stand alone films. Star Wars isn't like that. There's an overarching story across the various movies. In order for this over arching story to be coherent, the individual stories must be compatible with each other. ergo: continuity.

As for the X-Men movies... don't get me started. They started off with coherence, then just started doing whatever. I honestly don't think anybody over at Fox cares enough to make the X-men movie timeline to make sense.

 

Also, George Miller isn't trying to make a flowing narrative or saga around Mad Max so mentioning it is pointless.

 

Isn't the point of Mad Max that Max is a kind of folkloric hero who shows up in a lot of other people's stories? Or is that just fanon extrapolation from what we're given?

 

As I've gotten older I've realized something: You will love things and dislike things but you can still enjoy the thing regardless. I had issues with that under my old account here. Boy Howdy I surely did.

 

But does that really matter in the case of the X Men? DOFP was arguably the best of the films. Imagine they had to obligatorily tie it with The Last Stand

 

I think both continuity and story matter. For me, continuity often strengthens story particularly if that is a creator's intent.

 

Continuity has to be the priority for Lucasfilm - they can't bend or break their own rules (at least for now, when canon is making its baby steps).

Pulling from old EU might be confusing and do unintentional disservice to certain characters, whose history is too rich to adapt in the entirety. So if you decide to make something canon, what aspects do you choose? At what point does a character become something different than fans loved? I'm not saying it's impossible to do it right, though. On the contrary - it's always nice to get nods like this. I'm just saying it's difficult to do it extensively and I understand why we're not getting it. Let's see what happens with Thrawn. That's the first major test of the whole idea.

KotOR is a bit different because of how distant it is from films. I could see it all technically becoming canon but I understand that they want to rework it in some way. I guess Revan is a matter of time. I'm really curious (and a bit nervous about) how are they going to handle this, because of KotOR's non-linearity. A novel heavily based on KotOR's plot, which would set Revan's canon profile, would be perfect. Mind you - that comes from someone, who hasn't read any Old Republic novels. I know there were attempts to create a 'canon version' of Revan but I can't comment on that. It would be weird to have another novel retconning everything in such a blatant way... But they're basically doing it with Thrawn now, so whatever.

Anyway, who knows - maybe at some point we'll get new Legends stuff. Like non-canon micro-reboots (similar to parallel comic series with different versions of the same superhero). It's not something I'm looking forward to, though. I'm cool with the actual canon growing huge first.

 

I like how you put that. Very poetic, a lot like how Obi-Wan described the For...ooohhh...

Continuity is great to anchor a story to other stories within a series. I can go both ways, sometimes, liking a series for light continuity (old Star Trek) or a series that builds and builds on what it establishes (like new Battlestar Galatica). I've liked quite a bit of the old Star Wars EU. I've been dabbling a little bit with the new EU, optimistically.

Robert E. Howard wrote out a broad history for the setting of his Conan series, something I don't think he did with a lot of his other action/adventures stories. Some of his series didn't need it, because the settings were based in the real world. The imaginary history he outlined for Conan's time and place gave him an anchor for stories; but at the same time I don't think he adhered to it strictly, but as a guideline. I don't know if that's a legitimate argument for the enduring success of his Conan stories, whose main character has become larger than life outside of 18 stories written long ago in the 1920's and 30's.

I prefer a good story to be the main thing, with continuity ready to anchor, guide, and inspire; or be flexible...

 

Now that I've thought on it more: Both are equally important. If the story doesnt have some sort of internal consistency or doesn't mesh well with major story arcs in other places...might make it feel like its an alternate universe.

I understand why they rebooted everything...to clear up the playing field and whatnot but that doesnt mean I don't hope that more EU aspects sneak in.

 

There is a coherence storyline in Connery's and Craigs Bond's. For Connery Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Thunderball, you only live twice, and diamonds are forever feature the same villanous organisation and in From Russia with Love Spectre's entire plot revolves aroind getting Revenge on Bond for Dr. No. The only stand alone plot is goldfinger.

Craigs bond similarly has the overarching storyline of how Quantum/Spectre has effected his life and missions, like Connery he has one film that stand on its own for story purposes, skyfall.

 

Story.

I read TUF not only without having read any of the NJO, but also none of the EU except the first of the Jedi Academy trilogy, 10 years earlier, remembering only enough to know I didn't want to read the other two. Guess what? Despite lacking any context, I enjoyed TUF. It was a good story, presented very well. There are structural reasons for continuity to be important, but a novel that meticulously cross-references the remainder of canon while lacking an enjoyable story is just reference material.

 

Thrawn is getting a novel and will appear in Rebels season 3. Armand Isard got a mention in a novel. The stage is being set for some of the popular characters from the EU to come into the new canon.

 

I have been reading all your comment and to be honest I kinda agree more with jakobitis89

And you know what I'm starting to believe it be better if star wars wasn't 100% percent consistent,especially in the way characters act in certain novels and other media, because If there's one character who's portrayal especially in the novel the dark disciple I so far I have consistently hated, Its Mace Windu.

This isn't so much a critique on the book itself as much as on its character of mace windu. The book consistently tries to make me hate mace windu guts though out the entire novel and he basically becomes sort of a commander contrarian trope.

He's always throwing his weight around back talking yoda, browbeating obi wan, and all round being very aggressive.In the old canon, I thought of mace windu as kind of the stoic no non sense type of jedi who deeply cared about all life as much as any jedi should even if he dosen't show it. We'd get sprinkles of that in clone wars such as windu trying to protect the zilo beast, but really it seems hes always just used to portray the flaws jedi council so that characters like obi wan and yoda can stay on the moral high ground.

I mention this because the book is an adaptation of a clone wars episode and it makes me worry that the clone wars version of mace and the jedi will be the de facto characters. Which means that we will never get the shatterpoint mace, or the Dark Rendezvous yoda or count dooku.It will also mean that for the jedi council members such as ki audi mundi,shaak ti, or agen kolar will haft to stay arrogant narrow minded idiots in other potential stories, or that characters like greivous and dooku will haft to stay mustache twirling villians.

That why I'm a little conflicted about character consistency, because if authors stuck 100% to characters first portrayal, that will mean however bad the characters are, authors will haft to stay consistent with that characters portray. This probably unfounded paranoia since the new canon is still kinda in its infancy,but after re watching the clone wars episode with the ashoka jedi trail, its got me a little uppity about the new prequel canon.

 

I was watching an SF Debris video review on some Star Trek episode. (Wait, is it heresy to talk about Star Trek on these forums? Too late!). He mentioned that he doesn't mind if there's some small error like the writers forgetting which deck the captain's quarters are on, but he does mind if shows them beaming through the shields, since several episodes have had plots that hinge around the rule that its impossible for ships to beam through energy shields.

I have similar opinions regarding Star Wars. If there's some small inconsistency I'll usually overlook it (though I may try to find some way to justify the mistake anyways), but larger inconsistencies, whether character wise or world building lore wise, can damage the story and take you out of it.

 

If it's a real good EU story, I think taking the broad strokes and adapting it to the new canon would make for a better product than "The EU did it so we can't." Han's Imp Cadet backstory who saves Chewie and gets drummed out is pretty great and would make a good spine for the Han Solo movie (and I'd wager way more likely than not it will be). That seems like a great Han Solo origin story, he's a guy who isn't as cold as he pretends to be, saves Chewie, they become smugglers (Which has been his accepted backstory since... what, the late 70s?). They shouldn't have to write in hoops to avoid that just cuz the EU did it. they have a great story to adapt right there.

 

Continuity is context for a good story.

In any story where continuity is an issue, like, say Star Wars or Sherlock Holmes or Superman, continuity only matters to give you a sense of "okay, what the hell is going on and what is happening with these characters or concepts I already know." Continuity absolutely does not matter in telling the story of Elementary with Sherlock Holmes in 2015 New York, Batman: The Dark Knight with Christian Bale, or the Avengers movies. People can and will accept a new version of a concept (begrudgingly) if you let them know this is something new.

However, continuity is important for something within the story. Batman vs. Superman is confusing to a lot of people because Batman and Superman act wildly out of character throughout the movie as they're traditionally known. We don't have the continuity of "this is the people we know" so the story is ruined. Likewise, in a new continuity, you should have continuity WITHIN the continuity or its ruined.

 

I think story is obviously more important probably, but there is a familiarity to the old continuity that feels like the story we've been with for so long. So really, i don't know what's right, but I'm not complaining either way.

 

To me a great continuity MAKES a great story. Even in some of the more relaxed time periods I wouldn't have a problem as long as they stuck to continuity.

A poor continuity tends to make me cringe, and ruins the story. It was definitely one of my biggest problems with the old EU.