Fixing Legacy of the Force

Legacy of the Force was the story that soured me on the EU and made me stop reading Star Wars books. The general consensus seems to agree with me that it was a bad story and a needless retread of the prequels which no one wanted.

But like the prequels, I think there were good ideas and the potential for a good story in there. Having a story where neither side is truly in the wrong and everything is morally grey could have been something truly new for Star Wars and tested the Jedi and the main characters in new ways.

The biggest change I would make would be to the awful Jacen plot which took over the story and undid all of the good ideas early on. When Luke has visions of a Sith Lord who doesn't exist, I would have that turn out to be exactly the truth. Instead of going nuts and turning truly evil, Jacen's plan would be basically the same as Lelouch's from Code Geass. After learning from Lumiya the truth about Luke's vision and seeing through the force how bad the war would get, he'd take over and unite the galaxy against him, intending to let himself be assassinated at the end to restore peace.

This approach I think would be more in character for Jacen and the more utilitarian outlook he had after the Yuuzhan Vong War than just making him another crazy Sith and would fit better with the story's early themes of a war with only innocents and no guilty.

I don't think there's a way to fix it, some times a bad story just needs to go away.

IMHO, I think the sequel trilogy has been the fix, if that makes any sense.

[QUOTE=WebLurker;4680856]IMHO, I think the sequel trilogy has been the fix, if that makes any sense.[/QUOTE]

True, forgetting the awful stuff of the past and just starting fresh was definitely the best way to go. I may not have liked the sequel trilogy very much up until now but it's better than most of what Kevin J Anderson wrote by a country mile.

[QUOTE=thwhtGuardian;4682505]True, forgetting the awful stuff of the past and just starting fresh was definitely the best way to go. I may not have liked the sequel trilogy very much up until now but it's better than most of what Kevin J Anderson wrote by a country mile.[/QUOTE]

I think that's a little unfair. Whilst I agree totally that Kevin J. Anderson's books are fan-fiction level trash at best, much of the old EU was far superior in quality than those examples. Timothy Zahn and James Lucerno are just two authors that wrote far better material. Supporters of Disney SW tend to hold up Anderson's work as though it exemplifies the old EU when it really doesn't. Later novels were of far higher quality.

Regarding Legacy Of The Force, my impression of it was that the EU continuity creators at the time were beginning to run out of fresh ideas for the series. They'd covered so much ground across so many novels that they'd been forced into repeating themselves. I remember thinking at the time 'Where do they go from here?'. How to fix it? No point really. Now we all bask in the genius of Disney SW. Cough.

[QUOTE=WillieMorgan;4682551]I think that's a little unfair. Whilst I agree totally that Kevin J. Anderson's books are fan-fiction level trash at best, much of the old EU was far superior in quality than those examples. Timothy Zahn and James Lucerno are just two authors that wrote far better material. Supporters of Disney SW tend to hold up Anderson's work as though it exemplifies the old EU when it really doesn't. Later novels were of far higher quality.

Regarding Legacy Of The Force, my impression of it was that the EU continuity creators at the time were beginning to run out of fresh ideas for the series. They'd covered so much ground across so many novels that they'd been forced into repeating themselves. I remember thinking at the time 'Where do they go from here?'. How to fix it? No point really. Now we all bask in the genius of Disney SW. Cough.[/QUOTE]

I love the Thrawn series and I think their quality is why they've been reworked into the new material but I always hated the whole vong war stuff so I'm not sad to see it gone. There was a lot to love in the old EU, but a lot of garbage too.

I think part of the problem was Troy Denning who wrote most of the books, he sort of had a weird obsession with putting as many shoe-horned prequel references into his material as he could. Part of the Swarm war series was pretty much Luke & Leia watching a hologram version of Revenge of the Sith that R2 had locked away, Tatooine Ghost was pretty much Leia reading Shmi's journal, discovering the ruins of Anakin's Tusken massacre etc.