Discussion Are the Disney Films Part of Lucas Canon?

There's a lot of buzz about Bob Iger's recent comments about George Lucas' reaction to The Force Awakens, that's here if you need to get caught up:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...ucas-felt-betrayed-by-star-wars-plans-1242953
Anyways, the topic of canon has been closely monitored by Lucasfilm for some time now. Although in the midst of it all, George Lucas would comment on how [most] EU events didn't happen in his world. Furthermore, he states that the movies are the primary canon.

As we know, the Disney films proceeded without much of Lucas' input. He was also "disappointed" with The Force Awakens, and it had not followed his initial treatments. These may point to the answer being "no", but I think there's more to the conversation than that. I think it's safe to say that all films deviated sharply from the initial treatments, so not following his original script to a T isn't an indication.

Though some facts in favor of the sequel trilogy; Lucas' vague outline for the series afterwards.

The new films definitely abandoned the Expanded Universe and Luke doesn't get married. Another interesting point is that the series seems to be bringing the focus back to Darth Vader, as was the original intention of the series. He's stayed dead so far, but we'll see how that turns out. The Emperor also hasn't been cloned so far, but we'll have to wait until the film drops to get a final verdict on that.

Has Lucas made any other comments about the new films? Any more snippets in favor or against these films being part of George's story?

 

Yes. They are made by Lucasfilm.

 

Good thread.

 

Well, I have been waiting for something like this to pop up. In vain of the old Dark Lords of the Sith comic series from Dark Horse. Are the true dark side warriors those that are pure sith blood or dark jedi that have fallen seeking sith knowledge? Is Disney Star Wars for real or GL star wars the main squeeze?

Before answering that, GL had one thing that I found difficult to accept. He always changed his mind. You never knew what was or wasn't specially with his prequel movies. He said that Vader was a tragic character and he became less than what the Emperor wanted. It was like Vader was 80% of what the Emperor really wanted and as such was always less than him. Then GL said that the story was over and star wars was 6 movies. There was not going to be anymore star wars movies. Then GL didn't count per say the expanded universe, even though it made him a ton of cash and brought star wars back from the dead in 1991, but enjoyed Dark Empire and made comments that if he made star wars movies after ROTJ, that would be it. He then gave input to TFU video game on the formation of the Rebellion even though it was EU material, and like that there countless others. There was also a meeting with James Luceno and Matthew Stover at the time that ROTS was being done in order to get additional material into the movie novelization that could not be covered completely in the movie, as a result of that Luceno was able to craft the LOE novel and the sequel to ROTS, Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader. This formed the Dark Lord trilogy, a trilogy that despite the new Disney canon, I cannot ignore and say that did not occur. There is a lot of stuff there that really meshed in between the three books making them for me probably the best prequel and sequel novel to a superior movie novelization in any franchise. GL had a lot of contradictions and you really never knew with his 6 movies what version of it was the real one. You had to have the movies in vhs, laser discs, dvd just to have the different original content to include the movie novelizations, comic books, script books, art books, making of books (old ones and new ones), juvenile books, storybooks, notebooks, radio adaptions, old chronicle books etc to have a clearer picture of the entire true story. Specially with the OT more so, but even the prequels had content.

Then he came out with TCW and changed the entire landscape. If we get technical, the 1987 Starlong magazine that covered the 10th anniversary of star wars had a blue print from GL that was suppose to be 12 star wars movies. At the time, it was three prequels, three in the clone wars, the three OT movies, and the final one was the sequel trilogy which was suppose to deal with the force. GL did the prequel and OT ones, but TCW were done as a tv series and if you look at all the content it more than covered the three movies that was suppose to occur in the clone wars. The sequel trilogy while things from GL were discarded, there was stuff from his scripts that did survive with the force portion of it being in there heavily. So GL for me was very controversial with what he would say and towards the end, I got to the point that I just stopped believing him.

He sold star wars to Disney, for whatever reason he didn't want to sell it to Fox. Disney has been accused of many things, but listen to there fans they did. They made sure that the sequel trilogy has more OT nostalgia and very minimal PT stuff. TFA, RO, and Solo were more rugged than TLJ which was a bit more polished.

So, do you count Disney star wars as canon and the answer is ………………………………………………………..yes. Disney may not have used GL's scripts or notes, but there are many elements from his notes and scripts that made it into the movies. While its not pure GL, he has been involved in one way or the other. This includes Solo and the upcoming ROTS. Its not like he has been completely absent, so to not count them is a mistake. What Disney did that I agree is raise Vader back to the status that he had before the prequels. He is the quintessential powerful baddie and the Emperor did not make a mistake in selecting him. While he may have been less than the Emperor, thanks to Disney canon, he more than made up for it. The novels, comic books, animated series, and RO made Vader what we have always known to be, a bad arse sith. And that is the way it should be. While Vader lost some of his athletic ability due to his duel with Obi Wan over time his command of the force gives him others that basically supersede anything physical. Despite some negativity, I wouldn't discount Disney star wars at all. I will also add in there for the newer fans, that you should not overlook legend material, as they had there moments.

GL said in his intro to the Splinter of the Mind's Eye novel that star wars can be told in many ways and that it had countless stories that can be told. He added that he wasn't going to be able to tell all of them, and as such Disney is now the one doing the telling and there stories should not be discarded just because GL passed the baton and is not directing or telling them anymore. Star Wars under GL was amazing to an extent but the best parts of star wars don't lie in what came before, its what is yet to come. Once many of us start accepting this, star wars will be fun again and we never need to see Solo numbers again.

 

Question asked and answered. Locking.