Speculation Why the NJO and Legacy Era are toast.

All he did in regards to the death of Anakin and Chewie was didn't put them on the 'do not kill list' and primer for the Del Rey editors. I could easily see him overwrite that. The NJO was really designed by Del Rey, not Lucas... the only really big influence I heard was he vetoed an attempt to kill Luke in Vector Prime.

 

Lucas used more from the "Droids" animated series than the EU in the PT. I think he just likes his own stuff better: who wouldn't?

 

I completly agree with 2 and 3, and find 7 and 8 a little to open ended to respond to, but I'd like to comment on the others. I'll assume 40+bby for sake of arguement

1) If they want to have a movie where Luke isn't married and doesn't have a kid, that would be fine. As long as they don't explicitly state that he was never married, the EU would be fine. The movie wouldn't be very different either way and it would be a boon to the books. If they wanted to give Luke a different wife/kids, then I'd agree that would be an intractable problem.

4) No reference at all to the interim history wouldn't be a problem. If they reference additional events, those could probally be shorehorned into the EU timeline just fine. They certainly can't say something like "there was no thrawn". As long as they don't mention an event involving an already dead character with a specific timeframe, EU would be fine.

5) The EU has had the New republic revert to the rebellion, and change to the galactic federation of free alliances. A name change could easily be explained in a book involving a coup, for example. After the breif incident, the government changes names.

6) I think my point about dathomir would apply here. If they use Kessle and cover it with trees, EU could explain it away by having Kessel being a binary planet and all previous references were to a sister planet, or a moon. If you get a little obtuse, you can get around a lot of things with retcons. Boba fett having a different orgin was explained away by having Jaster Marell be a different guy, with Fett encouraging rumors to thow off his identity. This wasn't a big deal, because it didn't materially change much of the EU.

 

I guess I'm just thinking, "What if I were writing VII?" I know how I would go about it, and it would be very hard to retcon it into EU, because the experiences a person has play into who they are and what they will do in a given situation. A lot of time will have passed since RotJ, I would tailor the backstory to how I was going to write those characters in the "present". Some concrete notions of what has come before would be pivotal to making scenes work. I would also, as a writer, be disinclined to use anyone else's characters where I was free to invent my own; I'd probably not adapt anything directly from sources apart from the movies & TCW, myself. A lot more freedom, no built-in audience expectation,and freedom to have them speak, behave, and think as I want/need them to. "We can retcon it later" wouldn't reassure me or satisfy me, personally.

 

if they made the NJO into direct to bluray movies that would be beyond awsome

 

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

 

I wouldn't mind that. There are a lot of scenes I'd love to see on the big screen

 

Here's the thing though Star Wars was unique in that one didn't have to worry about the universe being reset every ten years. Everything flowed together smoothly. Comics companies don't do that and the fans are used to having some character reset things. Marvel and DC's success with the movies has been 1) making them appeal to everyone and 2) NOT making them part of the official 616 universe. The fans are happy and casual consumers are happy. If Star Wars disregards the fans that kept it afloat till Lucas had enough $ he didn't need or care about us anymore; once Disney strip mines the franchise so critics and casuals are bored of it, guess what? They no longer have a solid rabid fan base to fall back on.

In terms of the New 52, guess what? DC lost fans, they got a spike but now after a year they're falling back to previous levels and on some titles LOWER than before. They did a poll that backfired on their facebook page (They asked "what would you like to see in the New 52?" and fan submitted comments like "Have Booster Gold bring the real DCU back" beat out their official ones).

There's no reason they can't respect the EU and have their movies. Set it after Legacy.

 

If this don't kill yer EU hopes, nothing will, until it is all confirmed.

As speculated earlier, GL & the SW team are answering basic questions about what is possible. He's totally fathering the scripts into existence. This will not be Mara Jade's star turn. Not the EU movie you're looking for...

 

I don't think anyone has ever said this will be an EU based story ever...

 

Read this thread. Some people sure have thought that. Or that it will be somehow sandwiched in to accommodate EU continuity. Not gonna happen.

 

Devil's advocate:George's role here sounds similar, if less involved, than TCW. While EU wasn't exactly sandwiched into TCW stories, it was certainly used, in a limited capacity, for raw ideas. Granted, that analogy only works if the eventual creative team of the ST is as geeky as Dave "Plo Koon's BFF" FIloni.

 

Doesn't have to be sandwiched in... can be thrown in after their current timeline, it's perfectly age appropriate, and they don't even need much if any EU reference to not mess with any EU. Star Wars never gives you much back story anyway, just a rundown of what's the situation, and who is going where to deal with it.

The only back story we had in ANH was that life before the empire was better, and that life somehow involved something about a clone war which we heard nothing else about.

 

I don't think we'll have another creative supervisor working on screen content who is a true fan. The "next generation" will, ironically, all be dudes in the 40's who have a hard on for the OT and don't understand or like the PT, TCW, or any part of EU. The real "next gen" is still in Jr. Highschool.

Count me as a Filoni fan. He knows what makes SW tick and he's a first-rate dramatist. He's working within the very limited confines of the SW style, but he pushes it as far as he can. And TCW shows that GL can lean back and let good direction, performances and often, good writing happen. Some of the episodes are better written than any of the original features.

 

I see where you're coming from OP, but I don't think it's necessarily impossible for things like that to be explained even briefly should they choose that route.

However, only time will tell.

 

Really, they don't need to explain anything at all about what happened between RotJ and EVII... they don't in any other, so why start now?

 

I guess it depends on how far forward VII is set, and whether or not they'll acknowledge the EU.
But there's really too many unknown variables to come to any real conclusion.

 

If they use any EU character, they will still be brought in using the traditional SW manner of doing things... you didn't know much if anything about Han's history other than what the confrontation with Greedo told you... same type of thing for anyone else.

 

No setup just... Bam! No mention in the crawl or any of that. Establishing family can be done very quickly, inside one or two lines really once they show up on the screen. Han messing up his son's hair or teasing his daughter. A kiss or a name drop can tell us so much. I mean look at Lando's establishment in ESB.

 

Exactly, and characterization in SW is just as subtle. Like when Han (originally speaking) shot first! You knew this was a guy who skirted the line from that moment on! Luke and his longing to leave from the moment you were introduced... yet at the same time when speaking to Ben, talking about his obligations and why he couldn't. You knew right then, this kid wanted to venture out, he had ambition to see the world, yet he is a very loyal individual - loyal to friends and family.

You don't need a "this is what happened in the past 30 years and this is how everyone is related" explanation at all.

 

The Thrawn Trilogy and the X-Wing series (all of it!) first, though. That would be beyond awesome!

 

The X-wing series should go into the live action TV show and the Thrawn trilogy should be a TV mini-series!

 

It all flowed together, I dunno how smoothly. But comic companies absolutly do that. The Marvel Universe is 1 continuing, ongoing universe were all the characters live at the same time and everything happens. If anything its more "together" then the Star Wars one because its one medium. But they understand from experience that everye once in a while you have to reset things because they get too big, the past gets in the way of telling good stories moving forward and the history becomes a barrier to entery for new readers/fans.

And this argument that restarting/resetting things will alienate the currents fans and hurts sales is BS, history tells us that restarts and resets INCREASE sales. If they say "Starting Jan. 2014 the current time will be scrapped and it be started with the 6 movies (and any future movie), The Clone Wars, maybe 1 or 2 other things remaining", sales of new material would go up. The existing fans would be pissed when the announcment is made, but then go buy the first book to see what its all about (Espically if someone like Zahn writes it). THe fans who have stopped reading EU novels over time will come back to see what hte new stuff is like/about. And it having a new, fresh universe to jump into is much more welcoming to new readers. A new reader being able to pick up the new book and not having to worry about 22 book series that came before it, then 9 book series that came before etc.... helps sell books.

I'm guessing you read EU novels. If they said htey are scrapping the existing EU time line and creating a new one. And the first novel that release in the new time line is written by Zahn and all you hear is how great it is, are you saying you wouldn't read it? Cause I don't believe many (if any) fans would avoid it.

The DC new 52's issue is a lack of quality. The new books would have to be good, but thats always the case.

They could set the new movies after Legacy, but they may not want too. They may want to have Luke and Han and Chewie and Leia in it. As I've said before, the EU exists to support and suppliment the movies, not the other way around. The filmmakers shouldn't (and won't) be limited by what someone wrote in a novel (that a small percent of fans read) 10-20-30 years ago.

 

I've said before, I would LOVE to see a Rogue Squardon cartoon (in the same style as the Clone Wars) set between A new Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Have Luke, Wedge, Janson, Hobbie, Dax etc... be the main characters with Han, Leia, Chewie, 3PO and R2 in supporting roles (kinda like Padme and Yoda in TCW)

As for the Thrawn trilogy, they could do it as something but they would only do it/it would only work if they make changes to the story to fit within the contunity of the films (PT and ST). Like how Kashyyyk is protrayed, how clone are produced etc...