Lit So if the EU was still going right now where do you think they would be?

Mind you, there’s a world where Lucas sells and it isn’t Disney who gets Star Wars. You’d be looking at potentially different publishing landscape if the franchise ended up elsewhere.

 

Fox would be the other key player.

Since Dark Horse had a lot of fox properties (aliens, etc), they would likely leave in there.

 

Yeah, and that’s a very different looking publishing initiative than what Marvel’s done.

 

You've got this completely backwards. Ignoring/alienating core fanbase is what kills franchises. Even modern Star Wars demonstrates this.

 

Yep modern Star Wars sure did demonstrate this didn't it. They went straight from a trilogy that averaged over a billion dollars to a group of tv shows that became one of the biggest things on television and are one of the main reasons Disney plus has over a 100 million subscribers only two years into its run.

People on the internet try to make things sound far worse than they really are.

 

Let’s not pretend that modern Star Wars hasn’t appealed to the fandom, or that it’s even possible to have a successful media franchise these days that deliberately tries to alienate its fan base.

It’s about balance, that’s all. For every The Last Jedi being weird and subversive you have the Mandalorian wearing it’s EU/animated heart on its sleeve. Maybe some people want it one way more than the other, but you need both.

 

You've both hit the nail on the head exactly with what I'm referring to. The Mandalorian was unashamedly fan-servicey and while it may sound dramatic many will say it's saved the franchise. Of course it helps that it's simply a good product but being largely aimed at satisfying SW fans definitely helped. It's provided the vital recovery from the "mixed" response to TLJ.

Make fans happy = good. Not a complicated formula.

 

The main thing is that fanservice heavy doesn´t work forever. We saw that with Book of Boba Fett. Yeah you can keep a francise going for a while with soulles fanservice, but in the long run people will become more and more disintrested.
Plus Din and Grogu were still new characters, and at least the first season was largley independent from larger stories.

Both extremes ultimatley won´t work, there needs to be a healthy balance between fanservice and fresh air. And legends was ultimatley smoothered more or less because of a crippling fear for real new stuff after NJO proved divisive.

It was basically rebels/Jedi vs. imperials/Sith in an endless loop, with just slightly changed astetics. Even the characters falling more and more into archetypes.
Like the "new generation" Post Endor would have been little more than clones of what came before. Ben the new Luke with a bit more snark, Allana the new Leia, Vestara(Or Tahiri) the new Mara with a bit more edge, Lando Junior suprise! the new Lando, Jaina basically as the female Han of the group with a bit more Neo Nazi fetish...

Doubt any stories with them would have ever been considered better than medicore by the fanbase...

Plus what villians would there have been there in this time? Probably just random Lost Tribe Sith and generically evil Imperials, aka Moff Dirkl "I´m evil!" Leccersen...

 

It can definitely work forever, but only if it's accompanied by good . . . everything else. If all you have to offer is fanservice then it will fall flat pretty quickly which I think most would agree if that's what you meant. Mandalorian worked because it was a great story, great characters, great visuals etc, but it was still "fanservice heavy" by anyone's definition.

Agree with pretty much everything you said, Book of Boba Fett a good example of relying too much on Member Berries without having enough to back it up

 

When people say that Mandalorian saved the franchise they should say it saved the franchise for them.

That's far more accurate than them trying to say it saved the franchise overall.

 

For villains? Its easy to imagine Hogrum Chalk as another evil authority figure. But that's just me going off of how the HandofThrawn series made Chalk into the post-Legacy villain. Its pretty clear he was being set up in that way, anyway, in Legacy itself. He seems to disappear from Vol. 2 entirely, but a lot of characters did, which could've resurfaced later on.

I disagree that any part of the EU would be retconned if Lucas kept doing things, movies or otherwise. The reason I see this is because we've seen similar situations when Lucas took a proactive approach with the Prequels. Very little of the EU was harmed, there were ever some retcons like the CIS having off-screen clone armies of their own to keep with the Thrawn Trilogy. If we had a Sequel Trilogy, or more TCW-esque projects, the EU would've just coped and flown things along. Essential Guides worked in the TCW issues pretty well with the EU, so I fail to see why anything would change.

 

For me my issue is the EU getting away so far and wrapped into itself it almost becomes unpematrable by the end

I mean we just don't know...yeah they could Picard this but post endor was given free reign BECAUSE lucas had no plans for it until late in the game

 

Honestly, the big AU scenario is not "what if the EU were still technically canon?" but "what if GL stayed in control of Star Wars?"

A Star Wars that's still being kept under close control by its original creator-figure is very different from what we have right now and what we've had since the Disney sale. Whether or not he ever made a ST (and honestly, I don't think he would have--GL is old, and it would be an incredible amount of work and expose him to lots of criticism to which he's shown himself fairly sensitive), a GL-controlled Star Wars would be under a much tighter leash, and would reflect the current entertainment Zeitgeist much less. Even if there were a ST it would have taken a lot longer to get to screen, if it happened at all. If it didn't, maybe we would have seen a film or two from Lucas proteges in the last decade (Solo plus) to exploit the rising profile of nostalgia entertainment, but I think the focus would have been on television projects: Star Wars Underworld or some other single big-budget live-action TV show with the GL imprimatur, plus perhaps a show or two from Filoni (Rebels plus). GL likes Filoni & Favreau, so Star Wars Mandalorian could honestly have happened.

And yeah, I definitely think that if GL were in charge the EU would not have been decanonized. Not because GL loves the EU, but really for the opposite reason, because he kind of doesn't care about it. The decanonization was done by professionals who cared about consistency and the integrity of the EU and the new storylines: GL is not such a professional, for better or worse. Everything he did would require further retcons, but that's really nothing new, and I don't quite get the argument that that would somehow be more untenable than previous retcons.

What's more accurate is, as people have said, that the shift towards televisual stuff and the end of the "golden age" where the EU was basically getting to play in the Star Wars sandbox alone would have happened no matter. That shift really started before the decanonization, though, with TCW, and has arguably been hampered by Disney's poor job managing the Star Wars films in an attempt to rush out a Marvel rival. A GL-managed Star Wars would almost certainly be a slower burn with gradually-increasing Filoni/GL TV projects. We would probably have gotten a show like the Mandalorian sooner with GL, but would have fewer projects in development than right now.

The real issue for the EU has always been the post-ROTJ, which is the main "sandbox" that they got to play in without interference. It's possible GL would have eventually done something in this space, but that would have just brought that area of the EU in keeping with the rest of things.

If he did something in the Post-ROTJ space, it seems like it would have been, TCW-style, based on a weird and semi-random combination of taking stuff from the EU and overriding it. It sounds like he was fairly fixated on the Solo twins, ditto Darth Maul, ditto Darth Talon, ditto single Luke. That might (or might not) have necessitated lopping off some amount of the more recent (and unpopular) post-ROTJ stuff, but the Denningverse had already introduced the concept of time travel into the setting seemingly in part to provide for a pain-free way to undo their own storylines if they wanted to.

All these retcons, plus GL's increasingly insane fixation on various things and increasingly insane philosophical ramblings, would almost certainly make for a much weirder and zanier world of Star Wars than we have now. But imo, I vastly prefer the madness of GL plus random EU authors at his/their worst retconning endlessly on top of each other to what we've gotten post-EU. Mileage will very much vary however.

 

Well that's the thing about Star Wars history if you know anything is that GL "Control" or really more his ..."Interest" in control of Star Wars waxed and wain.

After 83, George was kinda over it....He was getting his divorce, he wanted to take care of his kids (Good on him BTW) and because of that he sorta like Star Wars do it's own thing more or less.

Then once he was getting back into with the Prequels and the Phantom Menace he kinda was getting back into control obviously especially with Phantom Menace and the Prequel Era in general.

Then Prequel were done and the backlash happened and again George was done...Let things be.

But then Clone Wars happened and I do think as Clone Wars went on George got more and more involved as that was becoming the flagship for his Star Wars and allowing him to get all his wacky ideas out, so we were maybe seeing a resurgence of George wanting to "Reclaim ownership" of Star Wars

However of course, age, and a bunch of other things came to pass and apparently the 2008 financial crisis plus that movie SpinTales (That WW2 movie he did) factored into George selling.

 

Haha I think you mean Red Tails but that's a fitting typo for a George Lucas movie about pilots, as we all know spinning is a good trick

Well that's exactly what we're talking about isn't it. A lot of people would say that it did "save" the franchise overall, and there's a small kernel of truth to that even if it's not that blatant. SW badly needed something well-received and Mando coming along and being close to universally liked and praised has given the franchise a massive boost.

 

That’s right Red Tails

I heard the flop of that film was the straw that broke the camels back in terms of deciding to sell

 

Well you had Red Tails, and a little movie called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

 

That's a problem any expanded universe is going to have. Star Trek, Halo, 40K, all have or had this to greater or lesser degrees.

Eventually you have to choose, do you alienate a loyal readership to appeal to more casual/film-oriented fans, or do you decide "alright lower sales expectations in return for a small but loyal audience that we can engage with more intimately and respectfully".

Obviously Del Rey leaned in the former direction, at least they seemed to do so at some level-hence the Big Three always being in the covers, and a lot of risk avoidance. Though they were willing to EU specific stuff like DOTJ late in the EU's existence.

I do get your point I think-eventually it does become nearly impossible for new fans to get into, and it does become so self-referential that its connection to the wider IP becomes increasingly tenuous. Which makes it even more alienating for casual fans.

Unpopular opinion, but I actually liked that movie. Never understood why it generated such dislike.

 

Well yeah that's why I'm ok with reboots or taking a step back and going back to the roots.

Godzilla did it in 80's and we got the Hesei era and the Godzilla franchise was better for it....Sure they went back to aliens pretty quick but they balanced it out a bit better.

Heck you don't even need continuity resets per say...Star Trek TNG i think was a good model of just going off into the future but sticking to the roots.

So kinda like what Legacy did but a even more going back to the roots..So more KOTOR

Honesty I don't think Star Wars does this enough (Although i will say legends kinda did it) where you can reboot but not really reset by just jumping in the timeline. The key is to keep it with the roots...and then get wrapped up into lore and what not.

I actually like the movie too honestly...It pretty classic Indiana Jones at the end of the day. Indy's son kinda lower the mood but honestly it's pretty okay.

 

I don’t hate it, but it has problems that water it down some.

Plus, I think it was a wake up call of sorts for people that Steven Spielberg wasn’t the same kind of director that everyone remembered from the 70s,80s and 90s.

 

This is why when they got Jame Mangold to do Indy 5 I got WAAAAAY more excited for it.

 

I’m not too keen on Nazis again, which I feel is like the Sequels going back to the Empire/Rebels (and really late stage EU, funny how they both got stagnant that way)…but Mangold’s talented enough that I expect Indy 5 to be good.

 

I am because that's what I wanna see...Indy Punching Nazi's which in this day and age we need more of

Maybe Indy goes to Argentina

 

I’m kind of sick of people going back to the Nazi well, especially because of where we are in this day and age.

If anything, they should have stuck with the Soviets being the ones getting decked in the face.

 

Other than the Horus Heresy most of 40K literature is pretty standalone tbh, as long as you have the most basic idea of the setting. It's also been of a significantly higher standard on average than SW literature for a while now but that's not really relevant . . .