Lit Leland Chee reveals the main reason for the reboot!

Or one of them anyway. Apparently it was motivated in a large part by the fact that if they'd kept the old EU canon, the new movies would not be able to use Chewie! The Story Group felt that both denying the fans Chewie and directing them to some random book to explain why he wasn't there would be too much to ask of the casual fandom, so sadly the EU had to go.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/chewbacca-and-a-falling-moon-might-have-ended-the-/1100-6456165/

Thoughts?

 

The EU was bound to go eventually anyway.

 

This and probably ten other reasons. The initial reason likely came when they realized JJ wasn't going to use Jaina and Jacen as characters.

 

Actually that would have started all the way back with George

 

I would have put "the quality since 1999 or thereabouts" at #1 as a reason...

 

The quality has always been all over the place.

 

Right... because in a universe where Darth Maul came back after being cut in half and then falling down a bottomless pit, it would've been impossible for Chewie to come back. If they were that stumped, they could've just asked Marvel for some pointers. Not to mention - when have they ever been guided by the secondary canon? It never happened post-Disney (except in the most trivial cases) and it won't happen now - no movie or TV show is going to change a storyline because some 'canon' novel or comic said something.

The real question would be - why not keep the EU as a viable alternate universe? (It is by default, really; but I mean officially). The EU would've been free to continue on its own merry way without having to constantly course correct for the movies and TV shows.

 

Han kidnapping Leia, Luke boinking a robot ghost, the magnificent Waru, and "I bid you dark greetings!" were all pre-'99 bro.

 

Darth Maul coming back makes Zero sense. I was not saying the New Canon is any less weird.

 

They could have had Chewie in the film, with no mention of his "death" at all. A tie-in book that no one reads can reveal that the Vong captured Chewie and exiled him to a remote planet for 20 years until he was found.

 

The reason was b/c it was a massive established continuity. I'd love to go read LOTF right now but there's about 50 books I have to read before I get there. If Disney wanted to make Episode VII in the EU they're weren't going to realistically expect fans to read through everything they need to know. They'd have to ignore and probably contradict so much. The casuals aren't gonna know what the Vong are. The casuals won't know who Pellaeon is. The casuals won't know who the Solo children are. Now you can introduce them to stuff in the film, but how much time are you willing to spend on exposition? So if you make a film in the EU you'll have to...
Jump through hoops to make it fit into the established lore.
Jump through hoops to summarise 40 years of storytelling to the average moviegoer.
Have little room for new novels.
Have no room for an original story. Meaning...
You'll have to adapt a story, skipping important details and misrepresenting things (Which will tick off fans) or...
Start your film a hundred years later which won't be as N O S T A L G I C.

 

Gotta get that nostalgia money.

 

It wasn't a binary proposition - either have the films slavishly follow novels and comics, or completely get rid of them. Again, LFL never had the films and TV shows acknowledge the novels in any meaningful way, why would that suddenly change? It was always the novels and comics playing catch-up to films and TV.

 

Hence the existence of Star Wars sequels.

 

Chewie's moon death is sort of an easily identifiable "Why they couldn't make Episode VII a sequel to the Expanded Universe" sound bite. All indications are that Lucas' idea wasn't going to be based on that either and Abrams built off of Lucas' original ideas anyway (it wasn't an entire Abrams clean sweep, there was a foundation from Lucas / Arndt). so basically it seems the Episode VII sequel to Crucible notion was never even considered. But to pare it way back, I just explain it to people as "There were Star Wars books in the 90s and then Chewie got killed by a moon, couldn't make a movie based on that"

 

There's a million ways to explain it away. Or you could just decanonize it. It's not like they cared that much about preserving the oh-so precious EU. They could take out that scene. Or the whole book. Or the whole series for that matter. Not the whole universe. "Unidentified Stormtrooper #42" didn't need to be decanonized because Chewie's death dates didn't match up.

 

I'm skeptical of this-it seems like a thin almost silly justification for throwing out 20 plus years of stories.

It's more likely they had no intention of ever keeping the EU even in part and we're happy to use any excuse-such as this to provide at least some justification when inevitably questioned about it.

 

Granted, Leland DOES say this is just his opinion. The other Story Group members may have had completely different reasons.

 

What has Chewie done in the NEU that means the reboot has to have happened? TFA was one of his best roles ever imo but other than that? People on Facebook commenting on the article are hellbent on keeping him alive, and now Han and Luke are dead, and Leia is most likely on the way out as well, so I'm here scratching my head about it.

I'd rather be reading about Wraith Squadron missions in Hutt space during the Slave rebellions, SOTJ, the hunt for the Dagger of Mortis, stories about the info from Cult Encounters, Abeloth's previous escapes, more Legacy comic era stories, than the NEU. So, this.

 

I don't see why the EU couldn't have been continued as an alternate timeline. They could have easily scaled back production on the old eu and focused on the new stuff while keeping a steady if slowing pace for the old.

 

I cannot believe they rebooted canon, just so they could bring back a secondary character, and to ultimately rehash the OT.

 

A book and comic series a year, release all of the old Hyperspace articles, get unabridged audio books for all abridged audio books, and, books that don't have an ebook option, get ebook options.

 

Yeah stuff like that.

 

If rumors are true that Lucas' treatments always included just Luke on his own in the wild along with Kira (who became Rey in the ST), then the EU might always have conflicted with the ST, even the Lucas versions. A lone Luke would require explaining away EU Luke's massive New Jedi Order entourage and his son Ben Skywalker.

Also, couldn't Disney just license out their EU to another company or something, like Pocket Books? Despite the new Star Trek Kelvin timeline films and the new tv show Discovery, Trek continued their own EU for some time (and I think it's still ongoing).

 

The “movie fans don’t read the books so we have to wipe them all out” logic is total BS. A New Hope has so much references to past events that no one was able to read (because they hadn’t been written yet) and it worked out just fine.


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