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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit What did fans think of the SW contiuinity back in the day?

Discussion in 'Literature' started by StartCenterEnd, Dec 8, 2018.

  1. Jedi Princess

    Jedi Princess Jedi Master star 4

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    Mar 25, 2014
    It's... It's all still there.
     
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  2. Esh-kha

    Esh-kha Jedi Youngling star 1

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    Aug 16, 2018
    Didn't Lucas want to kill the lower canon levels of SW when they started working on Filoni's Clone Wars but Filoni said keep it?

    If A VIDEO GAME HAS 25% of the budget of a Sat Wars movie or 150% do you still think it's just commercial fan fiction?
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2018
  3. Jedi Princess

    Jedi Princess Jedi Master star 4

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    Mar 25, 2014
    Friend, some of us are still finding our feelings about the post-Lucas MOVIES, let alone a video game. Price tag has nothing to do with that. The term "commercial fan fiction" is more about a person's relationship to the piece, not a condemnation of its quality.
     
  4. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Sep 7, 2012
    The Old Republic's budget was actually higher than any of the prequels (not adjusted for inflation, though still might beat them out even so) and roughly equivalent to Rogue One and TFA.
     
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  5. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

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    Jan 3, 2013
    Anyone who thinks "commercial fan fiction" is an insult has never read or created fan fiction.
     
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  6. Duguay

    Duguay Jedi Grand Master star 2

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    Nov 30, 2002
    I grew up through the 80's and 90's, and was a very big fan when very young, but I don't know if I can answer the OP exactly. My family had one of the kid's picture books, Mystery of the Rebellious Robot. A friend of mine and I visited the library and our eyes bugged out at the sight of Splinter of the Mind's Eye, a SW novel we never knew existed! It wasn't even until the 90's that I found out that there were Han Solo and Lando Calrissian books, too. It was hard to consider comics because the story went on and on, and it was hard to get the issues that came before. I considered the comics as their own continuity.

    In the 90's I embraced the Thrawn trilogy as the continuation. I became angry about later novels wanting to include the newer comic, Dark Empire, although I was interested in reading Dark Empire as a separate entity. Eventually I got Dark Empire when comics started to become more easy to access in the form of TPBs, and despite novels wanting to include DE, I still kind of felt that the Thrawn trilogy and DE were alternative sequel storylines to RotJ. I still feel that way. I kind of started to get in the groove of continuity inclusivity between comics as things went on approaching the prequel era, but I always felt able to hold back. I eventually read the old Marvel series, and had a blast with it...and I didn't buy in to any retcons, I allowed it to be it's own continuity.

    I know it's not quite what the OP is asking about, but something of the expectation of 80's perspective applied to me in the early 90's.
     
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  7. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

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    Oct 29, 2005
    It's ironic that the Star Wars comic was being published by Marvel around the time that Mark Grunewald's groundbreaking organization of Marvel's canon was going on. Even more ironic, the Marvel panel at Celebration years ago revealed that LFL led to the cancellation of the comic by being overly controlling over what stories could be told post-ROTJ, despite having no canon.
    It really seemed indistinguishable from any other franchise tie-in material. There was no real effort to make it all work, apart from individual authors self-referencing.
    WEG, like any role-playing company, had to make sure that their RPG was consistent across its authors, which is probably why it was used as the foundation for the EU. Certainly they never created their own RPG canon with the idea that any concepts would ever appear outside their RPG.
     
  8. The Positive Fan

    The Positive Fan Force Ghost star 4

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    Jan 19, 2015
    No doubt - from the RPG's beginnings in 1987 to HTTE in 1991, there really wasn't anything "outside the RPG" for their concepts to become foundational material for. The franchise went for a solid five years or so with virtually no story content whatsoever (except for the Blackthorne 3-D comics, which were pretty obscure even then). Who could blame the authors at WEG for not anticipating the resurgence the franchise would experience and the central role their work would play in it?
     
  9. Jid123Sheeve

    Jid123Sheeve Guest

    @vncredleader

    I've never heard of Mark Grunewald's Marvel Canon organization.
     
  10. vncredleader

    vncredleader Force Ghost star 5

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    Mar 28, 2016
    Yes he was famously brilliant for how much he knew about obscure Marvel history. You see that in a lot of his work, reworking old characters in seamlessly
     
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  11. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    WEG published Galaxy Guide 2: Yavin and Bespin in 1989, and it references The Night Beast comic strip.
     
  12. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

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    Oct 29, 2005
    Mark Grunewald was the creator of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which is the grandaddy of all the official guides.

    Marvel Comics was already breaking new ground back in the early 60s by making sure that their heroes and villains all interacted across different comics to a greater extent then ever before. Grunewald, a fan-turned-comic writer, was already known for noticing obscure details in the comics. He spearheaded centralizing all the knowledge from all the comics, with the understanding that this wasn't to 'limit' future writers, but give them a consistent background that they could draw from.
     
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  13. StartCenterEnd

    StartCenterEnd Jedi Grand Master star 3

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    May 2, 2006
    Do you think it makes Lucas look bad that he didn't care about the licensed material fitting into his work? Did he just not care about his fictional universe and its continuity? Does this just make him seem like he's all about business and dosen't care about the integrity of his created universe? Just giving writers free reign to do whatever they want and not even checking it or anything, just make money for him.
     
  14. FiveFireRings

    FiveFireRings Jedi Master star 4

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    Nov 26, 2017
    Well, if we're talking the early stuff, Lucas was also busy on the filmmaking side with the Indiana Jones series and more, plus building up ILM and all of that. He was busy and had other interests.

    And in the wake of TTT, as mentioned above, nobody really expected it to be so successful, but when it was, there was going to be more. I always thought that with that initial trilogy, Lucas was probably all "Sure, do a book, I don't really care, it's not the real story"; when it spawned its whole own universe, there really wasn't any reason for him to start caring.

    It should be remembered that licensed properties before the '90s were always sort of toss-offs. Marvel's original Star War book was actually top tier in terms of attempted continuity in its time compared to, say, Gold Key's comics for stuff like Trek or The Black Hole where you got the feeling that the creators may not even have seen the properties they were adapting, and just plugged the characters into generic SF stories. In other words, although Lucas wasn't involved much in the EU per se, his handling of SW licensing was a big part of the transition to tighter continuity in spinoff material.
     
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  15. Esh-kha

    Esh-kha Jedi Youngling star 1

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    Aug 16, 2018
    Did they have a super computer that was the size of a room?

    Must have been a nightmare to keep track of continuity.

    All about business...
    I think he was an odd goofball rich guy after a point and not that much of a businessman.
     
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  16. vncredleader

    vncredleader Force Ghost star 5

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    Mar 28, 2016
    That's why he was so great, no need for a computer -his brain was just as good. :D
     
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  17. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Sep 7, 2012
    Lucas did care to a degree. He was involved in the early post-ANH Marvel strip planning, he was heavily involved in Splinter of the Mind's Eye (where it really was a collaborative effort with him and Alan Dean Foster coming up with the story), he gave broad directives to Daley and Smith to make sure their works didn't contradict future movies, and he even wrote outlines and backstories of the main characters from ANH for spinoff authors to use.

    Though of the latter, the only backstory of his that actually got consistently used was Threepio's, which Lucas then himself contradicted in TPM. Which I always thought was funny - back in 1999, there were the movie purists using Threepio's origins as a way to point out that the EU didn't matter and Lucas didn't care about it, when really it was just evidence that Lucas himself changed his mind on the backstory of the setting he himself came up with.
     
  18. Jid123Sheeve

    Jid123Sheeve Guest

    I've asked this question before on another thread but since you brought it up I'll ask it here, do you think NuCanon has taken a more movie purist, as you call it, approach to creating the Star Wars Universe than the Eu of old did... And I'm asking more on a objective they have or haven't level not doing so is good or bad level.
     
  19. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Sep 7, 2012
    I don't think it's really applicable in that way, since part of the whole 90s/00s movie purist mindset was that anything not on the big screen = licensed fan fiction. A lot has changed in both Lucasfilm and wider nerd culture attitudes to continuity since then (and I think the MCU and Wiki/Wookieepedia played big roles in that) but I don't think the core "movie purist argument" really can be applied to how the nu-EU works.

    Also in regards to what I wrote above, I should have added - Lucas doing all that stuff early on was a lot more than, say, Gene Roddenberry did for Star Trek spinoffs. Even after the dawn of the Star Wars EU, the only film/TV creators I can really think of who delved into their own tie-in fiction to the degree of Lucas was J. Michael Straczynski for Babylon 5 and Joss Whedon for Buffy and Firefly. And especially for Whedon I don't think he would have done so without the Star Wars EU paving the way (especially for his comic stuff at Dark Horse).
     
  20. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    It pretty much depends on which Lucas you look at and when, there's more or less a Lucas quote for every side of the argument.

    For myself, Lucas or LFL, or both, wanted to have their cake and eat it. All the convoluted canon tiers, while making statements that yes it all counts, (except when it doesn't), was about keeping the train running and they succeeded, just about, until 2014.

    They could have done a Trek from the start: Declare it a continuation, not the continuation but would people have cared as much? Would there have been that consumer buy-in? Once they started that ball rolling though, they were stuck with it and you can see some stuff as covert attempts to get out of it, like Lucas' casual bulldozing of Clone Wars 2002-05.

    For myself, I'd say the big lesson I have taken from Trek books is that canon, or lack of, doesn't matter. What Trek did with the Ds9 relaunch in 2000 is demonstrate that continuity and consistency is more important. If the story is good enough, then the canon stuff doesn't matter and, in this respect, Lucas and LFL lacked the courage to take that route - I think they should have.

    Equally, to licence out your creations, under a basis that the stories feature them are continuing the story and then reserve the right to obliterate it completely, while making money out of it, does strike me to be very dodgy. One response when the great reboot happened is why some fans didn't expect or see it coming. The answer is those fans had placed their trust and confidence in LFL not to do it, they were not cynical. One consequence of the reboot is that some fans will have become far more cynical about the whole undertaking and apply that new cynicism to the new material.
     
  21. Nom von Anor

    Nom von Anor Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Oct 7, 2012
    Back when I first started to lurk in here in early 2001 or so, I was surprised to discover how hostile some "movie purists" were towards the EU. There were also Lucas-only people, which seemed to be a subset of movie purists. There was a veritable war going on between them and EU fans, and unpleasant comments were exchanged frequently. Movie purists sometimes came to the EU forums to troll, and vice versa. I stopped coming here for long periods(sometimes for more than a year) at times, but gradually all this bickering appeared to die down. At least it seemed to me that way.

    Now we have a new canon, and much content that are "non-movie". And, of course, Lucas himself is no longer in the picture. I wonder if this movies-count-only business is still going on, I very rarely venture outside Lit and EU Community.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2018
  22. Jid123Sheeve

    Jid123Sheeve Guest

    It’s always a bit strange and fascinating that of the big franchise I like, the others being Doctor Who and Star Trek it was Star Wars went with THE continuation route but not A continuation rout

    Doctor Who has lots of books that aren’t even in canon with each other, only thing close to cohesive is Big Finish

    Harry Potter is to controlled by JK Rowling right now

    Lord of the Rings has films separate from the books and games separate from everything.

    It’s defiantly quite interesting
     
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  23. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

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    Jul 19, 1999
    Though Doc Who has the ultimate get-out escape clause: Time travel. ;) I think Who fans just want more stories and they're not fussy as to how they get them!
     
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  24. Jid123Sheeve

    Jid123Sheeve Guest

    That's the one thing I will always appreciate about Doctor Who.

    That and I realize just how much like comics Doctor Who is, for whenever a showrunner leaves only certain things from his era stick if anything. So if you don't like a showrunners direction you don't have to worry about it affecting the franchise long term for very rarely does something stick.
     
  25. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

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    Jul 19, 1999
    Sadly Jid, I've heard legendary tales of Who fandom that isn't always quite so positive, like utter horror over a female doctor and diversity.
     
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