One of the few things that annoyed me about Vector Prime and the subsequent books was the frequent mentioning of age. I knew that NJO signified that they were passing on the torch to the younger generation (or at least that's what they were supposed to do) but I feel like they made it so glaringly obvious that everyone was ancient. Corran Horn at the age of 42 was described as having his beard streaked with grey; Luke Skywalker at the age of 44 had a ridiculously aged and lined face on the cover of Vector Prime. Many of the characters go on about how old they are and things of that nature. What makes it worse is that all of this dissapears in the subsequent book series. At the age of 60 Corran Horn is described as being "late middle-aged" when he should be "retired and/or elderly" and the idea of age really isn't brought up with people like Luke Skywalker when it was stressed so heavily in the books when they're in their early/mid fourties. Does this annoy anyone else or make it glaringly obvious that there's such a huge disconnect between NJO and the other book series? Or is this just something I'm reading into a little too much?
Age is a fluid concept in sci-fi in general. It is especially fluid when you want to keep your franchise going forward with familiar characters. Instead of setting those characters with the infirmaties that come with aging, you just move the age line forward. In Star Wars, 60 is the new 30...but only because they have books to sell.
Once it became clear they weren't going to shift the focus onto the next generation, it seems (though IDK, really) that they decided that "60 was the new 40" in a rather literal sense. I'm okay with that in principle... the problem is that it only seems to be the case in the Post-NJO era. When we got given the birth-dates of the various movie characters, a great opportunity was wasted: "Okay, so we want people to get on board with this idea that people live and stay active an awful lot longer in the SW galaxy? Why don't we reveal that Mon Mothma was in her seventies in RotJ, or that Palpatine was in his eighties in TPM? Or that Dooku was one hundred and ten? Etc, etc. That would help sell the notion." But, nope. The only guy who really seems to fit with the idea is Qui-Gon Jinn, who at sixty looks like a healthy guy in his mid-forties... because Liam Neeson was.
Because the writers want to keep cashing in on the the Big 3. They are afraid that if they go to the next generation it might be too much of a gamble. The Unifying Force was the best place to end the Big 3's story as characters on the front lines. When DNT/LOTF/FOTJ were coming out I was fine with the Big 3 being used but by the time FOTJ was in full swing I was getting weary of them. I don't care if they are used in the Rebellion, New Republic or New Jedi Order eras but enough with them in the Legacy era.
The obvious reason is indeed because of a desire to cash in on the big three, and of related characters (Wedge, etc.) as a property. In fairness to the novels the prequels also had numerous fight scenes with characters of relatively advanced age going for the full on acrobatic approach, Dooku at 83, Palpatine at 63, and of course 800+ Yoda. That seems to serve as a partial justification for the shift in Star Wars retirement ages. The problem is exaccerbated by the circumstances of Luke and Leia's ages. Those two, by virture of their birth at the very end of the Clone Wars, are among the youngest members of their age cohort, almost all of their peers are older than they are: Han, Lando, Wedge, etc. As a result they dragged somewhat older characters, especially those who are not Force users, along with them. Of course at the end of the day Star Wars is a futuristic science fiction setting and there's no reason why the advanced medical care available to citizens of the Core should not push the median human life span well over the century mark to something like 115 or something. That would make for longer careers. And really, many people even on Earth retain positions of considerable importance well into very late age - how old is the average senator or supreme court justice? There's every reason that someone who saved the galaxy at 18 would remain of great importance for decades. The real problem is that the post-Endor EU has stacked too many galaxy-spanning crisises on top of each other one after another and keeps dragging the big three out to cross lightsabers and blasters with much younger opponents.
60 isn't 'elderly'. I think it would be a very refreshing thing to see 60+ characters more commonly and actively in SW and media in general. I tire of this youth-centric culture/focus. We need balance where all ages are shown to be contributing. Being in forties or fifties and greying is common. Being lined and worn at younger ages has merit in something like SW given what the main characters endure. Not every tale must be a passing of the torch or force a boy into manhood story.
To be fair, a lifetime almost entirely spent fighting one war after another is going to age your appearance pretty quickly. I would probably find it strange if Luke in particular didn't look older than he was. EDIT: Which is exactly the point Cushing's Admirer just made. There's a lesson for any newbie's out there: read the whole thread before you post.
You've completely missed the point that was being made (almost 2 years ago lol). The OP wasn't complaining about the characters being described as such in NJO, but that 10-20 years later they were then described as younger-looking.
There are certainly inconsistencies in the age description in NJO and LotF/FotJ. I'm currently on a massive NJO re-read, and have recently noticed that authors were putting the focus on main characters aging (especially the Big 3). In particular, in Agents of Chaos, Han reflects on himself aging more than once. Then from LotF onward, it seems that this trend 60-is-the-new-40 really took off. It appears like the time kind of stopped for people in LotF-FotJ era, giving the the movie characters "oldie but goldie" feels (e.g. Wedge in LotF): they aged by the time of NJO (or were aged by events in it), but then just remained kind of in the same shape, on an age plateau. Also, Leia appears older on the cover of The Unseen Queen than on LotF books, though that may just be an artistic thing. I would normally be completely ok with the 60-is-the-new-40, except in post-NJO stuff it seemed more like marketing thing, keeping the franchise going, than actually in-universe thing.
I think I should make my new posting conceit be that instead of making new threads I resurrect ones from when Legacy of the Force was being published. That way when people are effusive with praise for a particular book in the series in these old threads I'm reviving and they still post here it confuses everyone.
DNT did still keep some elements of the NJO aging, but it really disappeared (or was forgotten) by the time of LOTF. Which is really where a lot of things went off the rails.
I thought it was pretty obvious when reading Dark Nest and Legacy of the Force that there's this whole gap of timeline between Return of the Jedi and The Joiner King where stuff happens. The stuff that happens isn't the stuff you read about in the books set during that time; it's similar but not the same. To really figure out what happened you've got to piece it together by reading Dark Nest and LOTF. But then when you read Fate of the Jedi and you realize that stuff happened before FOTJ that wasn't the same stuff that you read about in Dark Nest and LOTF, you give up.
