Lit The Missing Era.....

I was wondering if anyone else noticed this. I am open to speculation and/or leaks. Obviously everyone remembers the days of the 90's Expanded Universe, which provided an entire life story for Han Luke and Leia after Return of the Jedi. Then Disney declared it all Legends and wiped all of it, out. But notice since then, except for a few books (which have nothing to do with Han, Luke and Leia) this era which used to have many stories has been left virtually empty. And get this, Lucasfilm is currently not letting authors write about the big three in this time period. What are they planning? In a recent interview of Timothy Zahn on the Star Wars Show, he said he had another story about Grand Admiral Thrawn he would like to tell, "if that era would open up." What are they planning?

So, do you think Lucasfilm has something up their sleeves? Or do they just not care about what adventures Han, Luke and Leia had in this time period?

 

I mean, it's pretty clearly locked down until the ST is done, after which it's fair game. The main question then is, does this era get relegated to books and comics, or get filled in with higher profile stuff like animation (noting that one of the OT3 is a respected voice actor who's been involved in SW animation before).

 

Once IX and its supporting material are out there, and the dust has settled, we'll start to get more content between the Aftermath series and The Force Awakens. Perhaps summer 2020? We're already getting some very soon in the form of The Mandalorian.

 

Here's the ol' customary reminder that Lucasfilm made the Legends decision, not Disney, and it was in the works from the moment Lucas revealed he was planning sequels and his company would be a movie studio again.

And "a few books (which have nothing to do with Han, Luke and Leia)" isn't accurate. Life Debt and Empire's End both feature Han and Leia extensively, Last Shot is entirely Han- and Lando-centric, The Legends of Luke Skywalker is obvious, and Leia's the central character of Bloodline. I get that they're not exactly what you want, but to say none of the books have anything to do with those characters isn't true.

But yes, Lucasfilm is very clearly waiting until after TROS to open that era up. We're already seeing headway into it with The Mandalorian, and I'd say it's a very good bet Filoni's next animated series is not only in the works but will be set in the New Republic era.

 

It's a bad decision to wait, period. By this time in the Prequels we had several running comic series, several video games and video game series that in some ways involved the Prequel trilogy. All of this helped marketing and helped drive interests in Star Wars. Toy sells were through the roof, as was Star Wars merchandise as a whole. It's like Disney took Red Letter Media's ideas on script writing and also complaints on merchandise to heart, which is a bad idea because RLM knows as much of marketing as they do of filmmaking and reviewing - zero.

 

We've had plenty of sequel-era content, which would be the equivalent. OP is talking about the preceding era (which we've also had content from regardless).

 

I'm reminded of the old restaurant joke that you can have your food good, fast, or cheap - pick any two. Star Wars fans can have content that's rushed out to capitalize on the popularity of the current film trilogy, of high quality, or fully consistent with the rest of the ongoing canon - pick any two.

 

The Prequel content was very high in quality though, the video games dwarf anything EA have put out, such as the two Battlefronts and the mobile games.

 

Leaving the post-RotJ era undefined is a logical consequence of making the ST movies. Once those have been finished and the era defined, the post-RotJ era can be filled in more. Think of it not in the context of the Legends EU producing sequels to the OT years after it had been released, but releasing prequel material during the making of the OT. By incorporating the real-world 30+ years between RotJ and TFA, the new movies basically skipped the "prequels-to-the-sequels" era.

 

Except, here's the thing (probably, for most of us) the "prequels-to-the-sequels" era looks more interesting than the sequels themselves.

With the close of Return of the Jedi in 1983, fans were wanting to know about Luke Skywalker's rebuilding of the Jedi Order, the establishment of the New Republic and the new struggles Han, Luke and Leia would face in those years. The original post Ep VI Expanded Universe answered those interests. In addition to bulldozing all those stories the powers at LF have largely decided to ignore this era. Talk about not knowing your fan base! I like what George Lucas told Timothy Zahn, "If I do a sequel trilogy, your book trilogy is the story in between the trilogies."

 

The sad thing here is that now, where some fans would have been very interested in these stories and some still will be, for some the ST has scorched the earth and sown salt on it. Why read about Luke's doomed attempt to revive the Jedi? Why bother with seeing how the New Republic fares when it gets quickly blown up in TFA and isn't even missed? We know what happens to Han and Leia, so what's the hook?

It's this awareness of setting end events and the effect they have on earlier stories that I think has been lacking at LFL. There's still time for ROS to improve this picture, but that single film already has an awful lot to do.

I am sceptical they could not have worked out where stories could and could not be told, while still leaving themselves plenty of leeway for their tale to evolve in the spaces they claimed. That would have been a healthier balance than the outright timidity - I think DR and LFL Press have played their hands as best they can and, despite the restrictions, have come up with a lot of excellent stories. I can't but wonder though what they might have done without them. Maybe we'll get to see this with the Project Luminous project due next year.

 

Quality of the ST aside (that's been discussed to death and I doubt anything new would come of it), knowing the way a story ends does not inherently devalue it. If that were true, there wouldn't be any interest in the prequels either, or in any story being revisited in popular culture for that matter. If a story is good, knowing how it ends shouldn't matter. In some cases, it might even enhance the experience.

 

Counterpoint - The Clone Wars. We all know the outcome. But we still all want to see it depicted.

 

Clone Wars works in part because you know there's the OT, that the Empire falls - so far, the ST doesn't have that. I already allowed that ROS could supply that, but we won't know until December.

Although, for some I don't think even ROS will win them over no matter how it turns out.

The other element that helps the Clone Wars is the sheer huge mystery of them, barely mentioned in the OT, they were this big thing for the PT to reveal - what they were and what the effect of. (In contrast, we have the story set by the ST: Luke tried to revive the Jedi failed, went off to Ach-To to die and did so. That's it, there's no mystery left here, the mystery box got torched.)

I think it depends on how conclusions work or don't for each individual. For some, the conclusion doesn't affect the journey, for others it does.

For me the example of a strong conclusion reverberating backwards and improving that which preceded it is The Unifying Force.

Back on topic, massively expanding on the hinted at story in the TLJ novelisation might be able to overcome these hurdles. Although another difficulty is how they retain the 24 years of peace they have put in place while also telling stories set in it.

 

The Clone Wars weren't that big of a mystery, speculation notwithstanding; we knew the Jedi fought them, clones were involved, and Palpatine purged the Jedi and started the Empire. We were given the endpoint for that the same as you're suggesting we've got for Luke's story; it's the details that interest people in both cases. What was Luke's training temple like? Who were his students? What did Ben's training entail? How did he meet Snoke? etc. Saying there's no mystery left because it ends with Luke going into exile is like saying there's no mystery to the Clone Wars because Obi-Wan ends up an ex-Jedi in the desert.

 

I agree with #Coherent Axe.

Unfortunately, we seem to have no information that Lucasfilm is interested at all in fleshing out those details. There are a few possibilities that might be their plan. A) A video game series, I consider this unlikely. B) Far more likely, they have plans for an animated series starting 4 or 5 years after Episode VI. It will feature Han, Luke and Leia as main characters much as the Clone Wars series did for Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme. They will encounter Ahsoka and Sabine during the latter's search for Ezra Bridger. At least this is my hope, but since there is no official press release, who knows? It could be they could care less about the three main characters and the now, Legends EU novels is all we have about them in that time.

 

Bolded emphasis mine --- this is a good comparison. It'd be like if Han Solo at Star's End had featured the Emperor as a primary villain. And then everything it had established about the Emperor had been contradicted by Jedi.

A single throwaway line in Ep. IX could establish loads about the days of Luke's Academy. If any of the Knights of Ren are former students of Luke... even if not, Kylo could say something important about his Academy days. Why write a book about Luke's Academy before the sequels are finished, and risk having your entire story contradicted?

 

Having them as minor characters or separated from each other, doing their own thing, really doesn't compare to the intimate familial relationships they are given in the old EU novels. It just isn't a fair trade off.

Btw, I prefer the "other" Empire's End.

 

I wish they could have done what they did with the NJO series. Fill in the gap between ROTJ with plenty of new stories, characters, groups, species, planets, ships, etc. and then prepare an epic Saga years later with all of those concepts we've already spent time with and gotten to know.
Instead of just jumping forward in time, starting a story and filling in the blanks afterwards.

 

Can’t wait to get another era about a Republic and a group of Jedi who don’t have long to live.

 

I actually really like this somewhat backwards approach. Sure, I'm impatient for the material, but when it arrives it'll be in the form of books, comics, animated series etc. that will feel definitive, which I like... as opposed to something that'll be overwritten by the films, or has to awkwardly sidestep stuff that hasn't been decided yet. And the story of Luke's academy (and his travels before establishing it) has great potential as far as I'm concerned.

 

Well, that's why I mentioned the TLJ novelisation in the last paragraph of my prior post, which seems to get ignored.

The back story hinted at in it could work very well, especially if RoS launches it.

If it also happens to fit the ST to the structure of PT decline, OT restoration in a way that is more than tearing everything down, it could also help win over more sceptical fans.

 

Where is that from?

 

I have no idea why you'd assume that. We don't have an announcement about anything yet (because why would we, TROS isn't out yet and Resistance is still going?), so that means Lucasfilm doesn't care? Of course not. I find the idea that "we don't currently have a story about X, so therefore we'll NEVER have a story about X" pretty strange, and it overlooks the whole history of the franchise.

 

It was something Timothy Zahn heard George Lucas tell him. But it was long before Disney bought Lucasfilm. So, it probably doesn't matter as much anymore. In addition Lucas changes his mind a lot, which the author also mentioned. Of course if someone wanted to reconcile the Thrawn Trilogy with the existing canon, it isn't that hard to do.

https://ew.com/article/2012/11/02/star-wars-sequels-timothy-zahn/

Quote at bottom.

But years ago, he was briefed on Lucas’ plans for sequels, and how the Thrawn books would fit in. “The original idea as I understood it— and Lucas changes his mind off and on, so it may not be what he’s thinking right now – but it was going to be three generations. You’d have the original trilogy, then go back to Luke’s father and find out what happened to him [in the prequels], and if there was another 7th, 8th, or 9th film, it would be Luke’s children. The Thrawn Trilogy really would have fit into the gap,” the author said.