Comics A/V Sequel Trilogy/ Dark Empire parallels

Maybe after the ST is said and done-the people that did the writing and conceptualizing can be questioned as how much influence conscious or not they took from the old EU.

 

That be cool.

I mean all art builds on each other over time, and you can see anything if you look into it hard enough. So connections to old EU stuff would most likely have been found intentionally or not for everything builds on everything.

 

Johnson posted on twitter in a series of images that he got Force Projection from an EU sourcebook but not directly Dark Empire. But, still, the Luke versus the walkers shot seems pretty directly a nod to DE, which is something that happens really early on in issue #1. Of course, Luke Skywalker facing down an Imperial walker seems to be a pretty dynamic, intuitive image but it's not impossible Johnson got the image in his head from DE. Although in TLJ it's a fleet of walkers and in DE it's only one (and Luke uses the Force to collapse it)

 

I find it remarkable, amusing and flustering that Johnson mined for an EU force power despite the EU being made non Canon.

It means the EU is likely going to be further used a mine for ideas, tropes, and concepts at the leisure of the new writers and directors. I don't know whether to be angry they aren't letting the dead rest, or pleased they are at least taking some inspiration from it.

 

Why is it even remotely a problem that they are 'mining' the old EU for ideas?

 

That's how most reboots work they reboot the story but keep concepts and ideas that could still fit, tweak it sometimes but essentially keep the same. I mean it's one thing not to use a character because that character is so tied in with a story but hey if you have a ship that serves a function why make a new ship that's gonna serve that exact function.

 

Now I'm curious what sourcebook Johnson was reading.

 

There's a old tweet a while back RJ took out of him holding the old Jedi Code book from a while back.

 

Although those tweets don't suggest he got the idea from The Jedi Path, just that he was using it to refute the argument that he'd made up Force projection. He was basically doing the equivalent of looking a word up in the dictionary to prove it was real.

It's not dead. There's nothing to let "rest". Be pleased rather than hyperbolic over a collection of stories.

 

We've known from the start of new canon that creators would be drawing inspiration from the EU:

In the last year or two we've witnessed the EU's influence on the current generation of creators in a number of ways, from explicit callouts in Solo and the Mandalorian to the topic being discussed in this thread. If you're a Legends fan it would be better to be pleased about that than upset, I would think.

 

If anything I'm irked because mining the old EU for stuff just shows that there wasn't anything wrong with it that necessitated a reboot.

 

How does that follow? Just because they are taking concepts and ideas from the EU doesn't mean their primary motivation for rebooting the continuity (to have most significant events take place on screen and to free up creatives) is invalidated.

 

Hence why Jacen and Jaina Solo are back in canon and Chewie's dead on Sernpidal, right?

 

There is a difference between concept and story.

Jacen and Kylo are similar in concepts in that they are both Solo Kids who went bad...Story wise it's very different (I never read the Jacen Solo stuff so someone more knowledgeable than me can fill in the details)

Same with this Dark Empire/ ST parallels...There are similar concepts but the story is clearly different.

 

Sure, but the point being made was there was no reason to "reboot" it; the existence of elements like Jacen, Jaina, and Chewie's death, which would clash with what was being planned for the sequels, were a major reason for the Legends decision. It's not anything to do with concept or story.

 

I will say the central, main conceit of the original Dark Empire, Luke goes to the Dark Side to save the galaxy, doesn't seem to be in the Sequel Trilogy unless we've got a turn for Kylo coming up to save everyone. Which COULD happen still, maybe, but he already slew his master and it just made him more evil. As for anything from DEII and Empire's End providing inspiration or even anything directly, I kind of doubt it because the original DE works on it's own so well.

 

The specifics are different, but both DE and TLJ have Luke encountering the dark side within himself, getting in over his head because of it, and the repercussions he and his family face as a result.

As to Kylo, it might still be a possibility, but we know so little about his motivations (other than simply reflexive to Luke swinging a lightsaber at his head). One of his most-promoted lines from TFA after all was telling Vader's helmet, "I will finish what you started." Just what Vader was supposed to have started, at least from Kylo's viewpoint, isn't clear. Maybe he buys into Vader's claim to Luke from ESB on how "with our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy" - Ben wanting to go to the dark side to achieve that would kind of line up with DE.

I do think the EE sequence of Palpatine going to Korriban and rejecting the Dark Lords is a parallel of sorts to Ben's call to "let the past die" and the (ostensible) fact that Snoke/Knights of Ren are different from the Sith (really hope we get some explanation for just how that is after next year). But I'm sure it's a parallel, and not an influence. Same with Vader having a castle in DE2 and Rogue One - because both are drawing from the unused McQuarrie concept art. Actually, if anything, DE was a pioneer of the modern trend of recycling as many unused concept art pieces as possible.

 

I guess I've just been of the view that they should have left the OT era behind, and set the sequels a few hundred years later. You could still have Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren, the First Order and all that, but without the reboot. But since the reboot did happen, it's kinda annoying to see them bring back little bits and pieces selectively, as a reminder of what once was. Anyway, should probably get back on topic...

 

It's not a Batman-style no killing rule. It's that a Jedi should always use violence as a last resort, and that a Jedi as powerful as Luke has so many other options available to him that number of times he'll really need to kill someone is pretty small.

I point you to the best bit of writing anyone has done for Luke in a long time: Battlefront II. When Del Meeko asks Luke why the Jedi didn't just kill him like he did Del's stormtroopers, Luke says simply "You gave me a choice. They didn't." The same applies to your Death Star example. It would have been better for everyone if there was a peaceful solution to the Death Star. But there wasn't, and so it had to be destroyed to defend a greater good. It still makes the loss of life aboard the Death Star a tragedy, especially as not every single crewer was as cruel and evil as Tarkin.

I think both the sequel filmmakers and the 90s EU authors are going through a very similar process, and coming up with similar results. Both are looking at what the original films told us about the Force and the Jedi, and extrapolating what Luke's order could look like from that - small, wandering, undoctrinal. Both got REALLY WEIRD with the Force. Both wanted to test the next generation of Jedi with a inexplicable revamp of the Empire (the First Order is creepily like the Second Imperium).

The Del Rey-era EU, on the other hand, were writing to the Prequels. As more Prequel material came out, the more Luke's order resembled them, even though the entire point of the Prequels is that those Jedi were wrong. In the end, we ended up with a monolithic order headquartered on Coruscant, exactly like nobody should have wanted.

 

Luke even pre-empted that back at the start of Heir to the Empire, believing that relocating the new government's organs on the same capitol as the old failed government was a bad move.

 

And clearly did Nu-Canon because they invented the rotating capital idea.

 

You just aptly summed up why I am not a fan of the Del Rey EU as a whole, and it actually makes the EU as a whole (including the Bantam age) to me so much less stellar when you realize that the stories couldn't ever do anything but try to copypaste stuff from the films into the books.

And while the ST is doing pretty much the same thing, (evil Empire resurgent, Solo kid go bad man, etc.) I at least think they are doing these elements better for the most part. Kylo Ren is, to me, a much more interesting character than Jacen Solo ended up being. Snoke is a really cool "Palpatine clone" that doesn't break the Prophecy. I like his design and his role in the story. I like how they've challenged our perception of the Legacy heroes, as opposed to the stuck-in-time feeling of a lot of the Legends versions of the same characters.

 

What, you mean that part where the Prequel Jedi said that Jedi shouldn't marry, and then Anakin proceeds to prove them right?

Ok, this might be a bit off topic, but seriously, I constantly hear people say "The Jedi in the Prequels are supposed to be wrong/bad/flawed/whatever", and it really annoys me as I just don't see anything in the films to support this. Or even if you do take this point of view, I don't think that message was intentional. (Just like I don't think the writers intended to have Obi-wan commit a war crime when he pretended to surrender in the Clone Wars movie). It's just fan interpretation. Sure, you can find evidence of the Prequel Jedi being painted as going astray in the EU . . . but for the most part the EU was written by fans. So just like some fans who were Empire fanboys wrote EU works that showed the Empire as more morally gray, and a legitimate alternative to democratic government, some fans wrote EU works that justified their interpreation of the Prequel Jedi being wrong. (I partly blame this on Filoni, you can't have Jedi do heroic things and fight eeeeevil Separatists with names like Whorm Loathsom, and then turn around and have characters wring their hands and say "geez whiz, is war really the right thing after all?")

 

I mean, I think there is plenty of evidence in the films that the Jedi lost their way and failed their order and the Republic.

They preach about not having attachment but for all intents and purposes they have attached themselves emotionally to the Republic, so much so that they make very silly in-the-moment decisions in order to try to protect it. And also keep in mind they were fighting for a system they knew was rotten to the core.

They relied heavily on their prescience to view the goings on in their universe and have apparently been doing this for so long that they are practically useless doing anything without it once Palpatine clouds their vision.

They let the Supreme Chancellor walk all over them and only when it's too late do they decide to do anything about it.

Oh, and

I think their biggest issue was how much they attached themselves to the Senate, acting upon its every word and order. Rarely did they seem to enact their will as an Order.

 

Also they live at the top of an ivory tower, y'know.