Books "Sword of the Jedi" trilogy would be over by now...

Gah! Thanks.

All Miller books were pretty bad.

Golden...I didn't have a problem with her FOTJ books. And I liked what she did with Vestara.

I liked the series. I agree it was disjointed at times, but...how was that very different from how the EU ever operated? Or any fiction franchise with multiple authors.

So DD was the big Golden stinker. But, essentially, not her story. An adaptation of a script.

 

I would argue that people who enjoyed the post-NJO completely missed the point of Traitor, just like Denning himself, or simply never read it. There was no basis whatsoever for Darth Vader II in the NJO, which makes everything that followed that much more ridiculous.

 

I would argue people who don't read a given book but criticize the book anyway based on others' thoughts of the book and THEN take it a step further and make judgements about the people who did read the book are hypocrites of the highest order.

 

I don't need to have read the post-NJO to know that there is no basis whatsoever in the NJO for what happens in the post-NJO.

 

But you do, apparently, need to keep telling us your same opinion of a book series you've never read over and over and over.

Just copy your last post. And going forward, any time you need to once again say the same thing, just paste your copied post in.

Think of all the time you'll save!

You're welcome.

 

Wait, so Traitor was the novel that Barris Coffee was referring to? Okay, now that makes sense.

Never read it myself and am not planning to. (Jacen was never one of my favorite characters, I don't like Vergere and her philosophy at all, I've found Matthew Stover's writing to not be quite up my alley; I read Shatterpoint, the Revenge of the Sith novelization, and Shadows of Mindor. I liked the first, the second was okay, and I couldn't finish the latter.)

 

You keep asking why everyone didn't like the post-NJO, I was trying to provide reasons why, including in a post on the last page that was completely overlooked, but I guess I am not qualified to do so.

 

I never asked that once.

But you are correct--you are not "qualified."

Remember: copy and paste.

 

Perplexed by people who consistently hate the last 10 to 15 years, I think I am one of those people.

 

Nailed it!

 

Stymi

The moderation team will address Zeta when we feel he's crossed the line. Please leave him alone.

Thanks.

 

Looking back at Legends and watching TFA, I've realized that in Legends, the OT was just an origin story for the big three, but in TFA, the entire plot is about the OT's legacy. The Vong, the Killiks, Abeloth, and the Lost Tribe had no connection to Vader and Sheev beyond the fact that Sheev probably was aware of them and had plans to deal with them. Caedus was Vader's grandson but he doesn't seem to care for Vader otherwise. In contrast, Kylo Ren is obsessed with finishing grandpa Vader's work and it's likely that Snoke is similarly obsessed with Sheev's work and Hux with Tarkin's. This is why I'm looking forward to VIII and IX way more than I ever was to SOTJ.

 

I simply do not understand the kind of mindset that, just a year or two after the prequel trilogy had ended and given what a vicious shredding it had been given by critics, decided "hey! Let's write the prequel trilogy all over again!"

And I actually liked the prequels, one of the few who did - my own objection had more to do with the lack of imagination. But seriously, if you're just going to completely remake a previous story, why that one?

 

They could have gone anywhere with the story. Anywhere.
But apparently people complain if we get new story ideas and concepts.

So lose/lose?

 

Well, the hero falls story is a compelling drama when done correctly. And for what it's worth, it did make sense for Jacen's story, since NJO had been putting him on a path of moral ambiguity. There's also the irony of the kid following his grandfather's footsteps, despite believing that he was doing the opposite (also never fully repenting like Vader did). I personally think that Jacen going bad was actually a decent story hook; many readers had first met him as a good guy and read about him as such for years, that it gave the fall more meaning than if it was a new character specifically created for the series as the evil villain. My complaints are that the story wasn't that well done (and I think that his initial fall should've been woven into the series rather then having say: "I'll be a Sith" in book one).

 

But he was still a good guy in the first book, at least from his point of view. The problem is that they abandoned the whole "I'm doing these things to save the galaxy" and ended up with Jacen fighting with his own clothing, while the more interesting Confederation-GFFA War was pushed off-screen (and ultimately, never really resolved).

 

Ripping off the prequels was already a bad idea (they just had to call the other side Confederation), not to mention it was also very poorly done (with that whole galactic war thing concluding off-screen). NJO managed to keep plot progression going by having a huge enemy to fight, so the heroes could gradually fight their way up to the final boss by TUF. LotF just had Caedus, and Luke already had him helpless in book six out of nine, but couldn't do anything to him, due to plot armor, er, dark side dangers.

I don't really care for fallen heroes, especially when they never really learn a lesson and not much to show for it (no matter how much the narrative pretends things have supposedly improved with Daala as CoS). Worse than that, is that while I was never a Jacen fan after NJO, TUF kind of positioned Jaina and Jacen as the next lead Jedi, heroes of that war. Or at least as a sage character, something like that. As Solos and as Skywalkers, the Solo kids are supposed to be high-profile characters, but they killed off two of them, and the third was still relegated to subplots.

This SotJ trilogy might have remedied that, might have given Jaina the screen time she deserves, but... well, I doubt Del Rey could have actually put together that good a story. Their better stories were usually standalone sidestory novels by better authors.

 

Saying that "NJO put [Jacen] on a path of moral ambiguity" is... pretty much exactly what Zeta was saying about not actually reading the series. I wouldn't even really use the word "misunderstanding", because that's like saying coming away from A New Hope thinking Darth Vader is a circus clown is a "misunderstanding". You don't have to like it, but I can't imagine actually reading TUF and coming away thinking of Jacen as a morally ambiguous figure.

 

Vergere's philosophy wasn't any different that what Yoda taught Luke on Dagobah, other than Vergere being a bit more blunt than Yoda, with Traitor functioning as Luke's training on Dagobah for Jacen.

 

#2003

 

"Joined the Dark Side, Dooku has. Lies, deceit, creating mistrust are his ways now." (Yoda, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones) [my emphaisis]

"Listen well. Everything I tell you is a lie. Every question I ask is a trick. You will find no truth in me. Though you believe nothing else, you may rest your faith on this." (Vergere, Star Wars: The New Jedi Order - Traitor) [my emphasis]

Now, since I haven't read Traitor, I'm not qualified to judge entirely how much like or unlike Yoda Vergere was (although I did read some of her other NJO appearances). But I think it 's understandable why one would tend to believe that she's in service to the dark side.

 

I actually consciously mentioned Jacen instead of Vergere, because even some of the other NJO authors apparently didn't speak too clearly with Stover about her (and I'm actually referring more to Luceno and WJW than Denning, here). But they still portrayed Jacen quite unambiguously as a hero.

 

What does the ultimate hero do after the saves the universe?

It's a common mythological trope for the world saving hero to become the tyrant.

It's not a thing SW invented. It's a part of the Hero With a Thousand Faces often overlooked. The whole second half of the book, actually. Just not as popular as the Monmomyth (the heroes journey).

One of the most popular stories that explored this was Dune.

It's a logical step for Jacen, whether you agree or not. And I'm not necessarily defending LOTF and how Jacen evolved.

But to reduce it to Vader 2.0 is way off. The story was totally different. A story with often used tropes is not a rip off.

If that is the case, the OT, Luke's story in particular, is perhaps the biggest ripoff, most unoriginal story ever told.

It's also way off to have an interpretation of a story and say anyone who disagrees with that interpretation doesn't get it as much as I do.

What then is even the point of literary criticism? Of discussion?

I get you are attached to your interpretation. Everyone thinks their **** doesn't stink.

But, newsflash, yours stinks as much as anyone elses. I'd say more, but that's my take.

 

Or they just ended up coming across that way because the entire movie was written to remind people of the OT as much as possible.

 

I sort of agree here; I didn't mind them using "PT redux" at the jumping-off point for a post-NJO story because it is a fairly logical next step for the narrative. But the best reason to do that would be to demonstrate any number of societal and character differences from the PT--Jacen was not Anakin, the GFFA was not the OR, Luke was not Yoda, etc. The galaxy had been through so much in the previous 50 years that should have informed what happened to Jacen and how everybody responded, and the ending should have demonstrated that lessons had been learned from all that, and that people--Luke, certainly--had grown. Bad **** had to happen for them to put a big ol' novel series there, but it was like the entire galaxy had been shaken clean like an Etch-a-Sketch after TUF. Everything was forgotten, not just the Vong.

I know I'll lose a couple people here, but this is where I think the ST had drastically improved things. Yeah, it's still sort of a depressing status quo by the time TFA comes around, but they had a whole generation of relative peace, and when things do go wrong, they're for different reasons than in the PT, and the good guys' response is different. Padme believed in the Republic in spite of all the evidence and she went down with the ship; Leia wanted to believe in the NR but knew when to move on. That's not just different for the sake of a new premise, it's a conscious evolution coming from what the character had been through--and one the EU never really figured out.