Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

Waru will just be

 

I was just asking if anybody had speculative thoughts on the matter. How they'll handle that era is something that interests me.

 

Well, hey. Get Peter Jackson to direct it. Then you have a very TOTJ feel to it.

 

Can't wait to see Odan-Urr running around with mynock crap all over his face.

 

None of this bothers me in the slightest.

 

Erm, I think they were playing coy about it on Forcecast but I think it's a few Rebels guys, Wiseman, and/or Simon Kinberg. Kennedy got the ball rolling on the whole thing. It actually sounds more generally like a writers room where they pitch ideas, at least to me.

 

Waru won't be effects.

Hire someone to rewrite TOTJ while you're at it. Except Redemption. You can keep that.

 

Agreed. Redemption is the only bit of TOTJ that has my 100% backing. The rest can be kept as general events but a massive part of it rewritten to be better. Exar Kun, the Krath, Ulic's fall, all of that can be kept–but the actual storytelling left me bored. The idea was great, the execution not so much. If Peter Jackson did it, he'd take the same basic liberties he did with the LOTR saga, and thus make it (hopefully) better, and drop the bad stuff.

 

I think Tales of the Jedi is pretty good before KJA got involved, i.e. Ulic Qel-Droma and the Beast Riders of Onderon, The Saga of Nomi Sunrider, and The Freedon Nadd Uprising. Personally, I don't mind Dark Lords of the Sith and The Sith War. I can get around the KJA-isms.

I honestly haven't read Golden Age or Fall of the Sith Empire in a while so I'll withhold judgement on those.

FWIW, KJA was the sole storyteller on The Sith War, Golden Age, Fall, and Redemption, with Dark Lords of the Sith being the only overlap period with Veitch.

Veitch didn't intend for Ulic to be redeemed at all. His Dark Empire end notes bear this out. From what I've gathered from interviews, Veitch was very much skeptical of the idea of redemption for bad dudes that do bad stuff. He didn't like the prequels because he didn't think Anakin should be sympathized with by the viewer. I don't really agree with that.

 

So, I bought action figures over the last few months for Mara Jade, Jacen Solo, Jaina Solo, A'Sharad Hett, Darth Krayt, Darth Talon, Darth Nihl, K'kruhk, Ganner Krieg, Antares Draco, Sigel Dare, Cade Skywalker, Deliah Blue, Jedi Leia, Clone Palpatine, and a few others. Anyone else going on a shopping spree lately?

 

I love all of TOTJ except for Fall of the Sith Empire. I loved Naga Sadow's rivalry with Ludo Kressh and Exar Kun's "discovery" of the Sith (which was also the first appearance of Korriban ) among many other things.

 

Exar Kun was just a failure of a character in so many ways, a concept that could have been awesome but didn't even come close. And don't even get me started on Nomi, a character that should have been inspiring but was instead deserving of a savage beating. Ulic was handled very badly as well, but Redemption is good enough to make me forget. KJA must have been having an absurdly good day when he wrote Redemption, as it feels like the work of another author.

The story of TOTJ's life is that it's brimming with great ideas and concepts, but absurdly poor execution. In other words, perfect for a loose adaptation.

 

Are these events in Dark Lords or Sith War, or are you talking about their earlier respective origin stories or The Freedon Nadd Uprising as well?

 

Its been a while since I read TOTJ, but I actually liked the series. Never knew there was such an undercurrent of dislike for it...

 

Personally, I liked the audio dramas a lot too. But I like pretty much any SW audio drama. If they made one of LOTF that would be a real test.

 

There's nothing that wrong with the early stories; those were just on the boring side. It's when the Big Stuff started happening that Nomi and Ulic's characters were flushed down the drain. Ulic, at least, had the benefit of a compelling arc, but once again it was something that was so much better in concept than in execution. Nomi, on the other hand, gave the impression the writers had no idea what to do with her.

What makes Nomi Sunrider worse is that Veitch apparently intended, at some point (though the idea may have been dropped) for her to be the first female Jedi Knight. Considering how emotionally unstable and hypocritical Nomi is shown to be, not a good first showing for the fairer sex.

 

Eh, I didn't think they were that boring. They're interesting to listen to at least!

I'm probably biased toward TOTJ because

A) I like audio dramas a lot, and it has them -- BUT IT CUTS OFF AT THE END OF DARK LORDS

B) I like the depiction of the Jedi in it.

C) Nostalgia

D)

 

If they did a loose adaptation, I would fear it being "KOTORized" (meaning Kun getting a red saber and the technological development being at KOTOR levels).

 

No, just no.

 

That's exactly what I was trying to say. Well put, Gamiel.

 

That is one thing I like about TOTJ; the sense that the galaxy is an older, different place. KOTOR did a fairly good job of that as well, but it still felt closer to the time of the movies. TOR... well, TOR felt like a 50 year prequel to the films, not a 5000.

 

I think there's just always another reason to stall. TCW's over . . . but now there are going to be sequels, we can't settle anything yet. Who knows if the EU will even exist? And then we're going to solve something for Episode VII, but hey guys, Episode VIII will be out in two years, why don't we just wait to see what kind of impact that has on the scene? The can will always be kicked as long as there's more road.

 

Heck, it could only be one year depending on what the spinoffs cover. They'll have to account for those as well.

 

As I've thought more and more about it, I think the recent "news" about the Story Group maintaining everything at the same level of canon going forward is total bull. Disney received a collection of movies, television, books, comics and games that are already a 90-95% consistent continuity. If their goal is to have a continuity and canon with everything to be at the same level, then Episode VII's script should have been adjusted to fit the existing canon. The way things are being described, in my opinion the movies still have a higher level since they are likely going to wipe away a great deal of existing material. Leland and Pablo's comments seem hypocritical. All of the EU stuff has been overseen by LFL and kept consistent for the most part over the last 20 years. All that's changed now is the owner of LFL and the fact a new movie is coming out. Neither of those things had to affect an already existing continuity if they did not want.

Why should they bother maintaining a new continuity? They have one already, and perhaps its has some not so great stuff in there, but it's mostly consistent.

The only joy I get out of any of this is that even if a "new canon" is defined and everything is equal at all levels, at least we in Lit get to say "I told you so" to all the movie purists...at least from a certain point of view I miss the old days of this board sometimes

 

One of the things i do like about the ToTJ time period, is that the Sith (Kun and co) are not wielding red blades. I do think the reason for this is because at the time ToTJ was made, there was not much red bladed darksiders, so the whole red color for sith/darksiders was not as common back in the earlier days (of course the in-universe reason is probably because Kun and co did not know about said sith tradition, which I think came about before his reign as a Sith).

But I sure would dislike it, that if a newer version of Kun is depicted again in the future, he would be wielding a red blade. Though that would probably be the case because red is such a common color when Sith are shown these days. However I would not rule out the possibility of Kun maintaining his blue blade if he ever appeared on screen, since it happened with Anakin in RoTS when he became a sith. Though if Kun did use his blue blade in some future adaption of ToTJ, I would not be surprised if some of his fellow Sith wielded red, after all, I think it would be hard for writers now days to through in a bunch of sith into a story without showing a single red bladed lightsaber.