Saga George Lucas Canon

With the 6 original movies, what is canon for the Lucasverse? TCW? Tartakovsky CW?
Can the original Star Wars Expanded Universe fit into George Lucas canon? how the Star Wars timeline look like with only the elements that Lucas considers canon?

 

It really depends on your definition of "canon," there. AFAIK, Lucas barely had any input into Tartakovsky's CW--but he didn't have *zero* input. Likewise, with TCW, he mostly stepped back during the first season--mostly--and was mostly involved with production issues, and then got more involved as the series progressed. So I'm afraid that there might not be a straightforward answer to your question.

 

So what about the Holiday Special, Shadows of The Empire and The Force Unleashed Lucas was involved in those projects too, what about Star Wars Underworld scripts and the cancelled Lucas ST?

 

As far as published material goes, that would be the six movies and TCW (excluding Season 7). Then you have unpublished material (TCW and Underworld stories, his sequel trilogy) and direct comments from Lucas about aspects of his "canon".

And the EU didn't fit into Lucas' canon. The other way around was how it used to work.

On Tartakovsky's CW:

"The Genndy show was an experiment that we did with Cartoon Network that was 5 minutes each. They went sort of where commercials normally go, and it was an experiment, not only in doing five-minute shows, but it was an experiment in trying to translate Star Wars into an animated medium, and we felt very good about that. We thought it turned out really well, and we then took it to the next level, which was to do a full-out animated series of The Clone Wars. There’s not much overlap. Genndy did most of the animation and most of the stories for the first experimental series, and this one I’m pretty much following the mythology and the rules of the features, so it’s a little bit different, but it’s very much like the features except it’s in animation." - George Lucas

On the EU:

"The books are in a different universe." - George Lucas

"There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books." - George Lucas

 

Well, about the Holiday Special, Lucas was barely involved. The idea to have a Wookiee family was his--just the idea though, not anything about the plot--and he apparently wrote (part of) the animated Boba Fett segment.

Don't know about his involvement in SOTE or TFU.

 

His "involvement" in TFU was answering yes/no questions from the LucasArts team about what they could and couldn't do. It wasn't his story and he wasn't involved with it.

There's no record of any involvement from Lucas with SOTE.

 

The inclusion of the freighter Outrider in the Special Edition Mos Eisley scenes, is suggestive though.

 

For me "Lucas canon" includes the six movies and TCW. That's it. It would have also included Underworld and his version of the ST if they had ever been made.

 

Not really. The ship was designed by Doug Chiang for the Special Edition, and like many other things, were adopted by SOTE at the time.

There's no Outrider in the Special Edition. The Outrider was made out of that ship design.

 

Shadows of the Empire was released before the Special Edition was.

The Special Edition was released in January 1997.

Work on Shadows of the Empire began in 1994, and the video game was completed by 1996 and released then. Other parts of the multimedia project were also released in 1996.

The fact that Shadows of the Empire was able to use the Outrider before the Special Edition came out, shows that Lucas was making the material available to the Shadows of the Empire designers, early on.

 

The designs were made available to the rest of the company, yes. That's how it has always been, it's not something unique to SOTE. Lucas didn't go out of his way to specifically deliver SE designs to the Licensing department. The Licensing department simply had access to the production department and its contents as they were developed and approved.

The fact remains that there's no evidence of any involvement whatsoever from George Lucas on SOTE. Not even tangential "involvement", like in TFU or Tartakovsky's micro-series.

P.S: Work on the Special Editions also began in 1994. The fact that SOTE happened to be released first is meaningless. The time, money and scale of the development of these projects are completely different. The Special Editions were the source and that's all that matters. And even if this was a case where the design was originally from a Licensing project, it says nothing about Lucas involvement. Lucas has used in the past designs in his works that he happened to like that were made for Licensing projects.

 

This is the most accurate statement about the matter, in my opinion.

Yes. There is a clear difference between "being involved in" or "approving" something and actually working on it as a personal project you care about.

That's why I don't really believe in "canon". And I don't think Lucas cares about it that much either.

 

I'd say that the only things that are firmly "George Lucas' world only" are the first six films, the rest is mostly just partially part of his vision, like TFU, Shadows of the Empire, TCW, or the CW mini-series, which they all have big imput by Lucas, but aren't exactly stories made by him for his saga.

You could say that in terms of "fitting", most EU and new canon set in the movies' era fits the saga, but that's different than looking at it from an authorial vision point of view, chronology is something different, the EU was made to fit with the saga even if it wasn't completely Lucas' "world" from a creative (or "headcanon") standpoint, but i wouldn't consider any of those stories part of this "Lucas canon" because of that, since it's George who decides what is or isn't in "his world".

 

TCW are stories made by him for his world. The rest has little to no input from him and he never considered them to be part of his world.

 

It's why when the reboot happened the only thing that stayed was the First Six Movies and TCW.

You don't see CW mini-series being made canon again.

 

The others have way more than "little to no" imput, TFU was George's project, it was his idea, he managed the whole thing, was consulted about plenty of details, and there was a lot that came from him, just like in TCW, of course in TCW he did have more creative imput than stuff like Shadows of the Empire, but it's not just a story made by him, he wasn't the only big creative voice in TCW, it was also largely Filoni's project, it's not the same as with the first 6 films, also he didin't even write a single episode lol, how is it "a story made by him" exclusively?

 

Apart from the fact giving vague directions and ideas doesn’t make something his project to the degree we could consider it his intended story, TFU was clearly another instance of GL having an idea which he wanted others to build upon. This still doesn’t it’s within his ‘universe.’

The involvement between TCW and these EU projects are completely different.

 

Canon is the domain of fascists and pedants. Best not to worry about it.

 

No, it wasn't his project. It was Haden Blackman's project. His input amounts to rejecting some alternate ideas and answering some yes/no questions. He didn't come up with the game or its story. LucasArts was making a game and he filtered some proposals.

There's no record of any input in Shadows of the Empire.

And no, TCW wasn't like TFU, nor was it Filoni's project. It was Lucas's project that Filoni was in charge of executing. Lucas came up with virtually all the stories (and few that didn't he had to approve and adapt accordingly). He approved the episodes at various stages of production. TCW was made to be consistent with the movies, at many levels, and that's because George was directly and heavily involved from beginning to end.

There's no comparison with the licensed projects, even the handful of those that received George's suggestions.

 

whatever lucas did=canon. everything else=fan fiction

 

My primary Lucas canon is just the movies 1-6. Secondary includes The Clone Wars seasons 1-6. Then I have other levels starting with Filoni canon and ending with the sequel trilogy as the lowest level.

 

It's all canon to me.




Unfortunately

 

I do agree that if there's a level of canon that comes close to George, it's from Filoni. He's not George so it lacks that authenticity and its not perfect, but overall the man gets it better than anyone else and I really look forward to the content he is involved with.

 

I always found it pretty funny that die-hard EU fans liked to brag about Lucas's involvement in the stories of the expanded universe. Then they trashed all over TCW because it put a bulldozer to a lot of EU stuff and it was easily the thing that Lucas was most involved with.

 

I never bought into that mentality, and Lucas himself was always adamant that the expanded universe was separate from his films. I enjoy some of the old EU, but especially most of the post-Return of the Jedi stuff never held much interest for me because I knew it wasn’t the story Lucas would tell.