Do these Kathleen Kennedy comments worry or bother you ?

[Killerbee911]

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/...r-wars-912393/

Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack. There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels. We don’t have anything other than passionate storytellers who get together and talk about what the next iteration might be

Now honestly I couldn't tell you if the the Star Wars EU stuff is good or bad I haven't really read them, And I am not one of people who are upset with the current direction of the franchise. But I have always been baffled at the decision to throw out everything and go let's start from zero. To me that was just a crazy move when the easy decision would have been to let your high paid screenwriters use the EU stuff with no strict adherence to them, Throw away the bad stuff,Keep the good stuff. And write new stuff where it is needed. I get the reasoning behind going in new direction if you had strong new story that you wanted to tell but from everything I am seeing that is not case. And it is seems like they are struggling to come up with good new stories. Forgive me if this was talk about before I was looking to see thread and I didn't see a topic. Anyways do these comments worry about the direction of Star Wars because to me it seems like they just threw out usable stuff without a better plan. What are you guys thoughts on that quote.

[WebLurker]

Not worried; the movies -- good and bad -- have always been written without source material. Having the right people working on the projects is all you need to maximize the chances of the final product being good.

But I have always been baffled at the decision to throw out everything and go let's start from zero. To me that was just a crazy move when the easy decision would have been to let your high paid screenwriters use the EU stuff with no strict adherence to them, Throw away the bad stuff,Keep the good stuff. And write new stuff where it is needed. I get the reasoning behind going in new direction if you had strong new story that you wanted to tell but from everything I am seeing that is not case. And it is seems like they are struggling to come up with good new stories.

The pre-Disney Expanded Universe (EU)/Legends was decanonized to allow the new movies complete creative freedom. I think they've done well with it, but, IMHO, the Legends stuff at the end (the things that the sequel trilogy replaced) were really bad, so it is admittedly a low bar. However, the Star Wars people can and do borrow Legends stuff for new projects. You mostly see it in the new tie-ins, but the movies do it some, too. Solo is littered with Legends Easter eggs and re-canonized ideas, and that's before you factor in the reference material for it.

[Vegeta]

I thought George Lucas gave Disney all his story ideas for a third trilogy which they flat out rejected. What's better "source material" than the creator of Star Wars himself?

Her comments don't worry me, they just sadly confirm what I long suspected after episode 8.

[ChrisIII]

I thought George Lucas gave Disney all his story ideas for a third trilogy which they flat out rejected. What's better "source material" than the creator of Star Wars himself?

Her comments don't worry me, they just sadly confirm what I long suspected after episode 8.

Lucas in an interview with James Cameron last year said that while the new trilogy would mainly focus on some of the deeper mysteries of the Star Wars universe; however, that would be Midichlorians and the Whills. While the second could be interesting, the first of course has it's problems....He also described something like visiting a microscopic world, which seems a bit Ant-Man.

[Cel]

I think Kennedy was comparing Star Wars to other literary franchises like Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, The Walking Dead, etc., in which there is a main story that can be adapted almost in its entirety. In comparison, Star Wars has a largely open narrative that can splinter off in countless different directions. Lucas had lots of ideas, but he was pretty much making up things as he went along. That gave him the freedom to take both the original and prequel trilogies wherever he wanted, but there really wasn't a set-in-stone story for Star Wars. I believe that's what Kennedy was alluding to, IMO.

[wjowski]

I thought George Lucas gave Disney all his story ideas for a third trilogy which they flat out rejected. What's better "source material" than the creator of Star Wars himself?

Her comments don't worry me, they just sadly confirm what I long suspected after episode 8.

You mean herself? I don't recall Marcia Lucas being consulted by Disney at all.

[WebLurker]

That being said though, the old EU fiction was straight garbage no matter how much you slice it. Pretty much cookie cutter genre fiction with derivative plots, lousy writing, and pretty much no character development, as the main heroes had to remain effectively indistinguishable from how we last saw them in the films. And as time went on the timeline just got so bloated and became impossible to rectify, wiping it entirely was a necessary step.

Wouldn't say all garbage; there was some really good stuff there. Some bad, too, but that's the nature of things. I'm probably weird in the Legends vs. canon thing, given that I think Legends is an important part of the franchise, in history and otherwise, with good stuff, but I think that the new canon is doing it far better then Legends did (barring a few exceptions of really good stuff).

I have thought about the bolded often on and I do think there is at least some truth to that. Have noticed that the original Legends characters avoided that more often then not (although some did plateau) and I think one of the fatal mistakes the franchise runners did was not handing it off to the second generation after the New Jedi Order series.

As far as the timeline becoming bloated goes, I know that there are Legends fans who disagree, but yeah, it was a mess by the end (and it was never fully resolved, given that it was ended before the last round of retcons could paper over the lingering continuity errors of the Clone Wars era and other stuff). Making it up as they went along and engaging in full scale world building kinda made that inevitable and while the retcons did "fix" issues in the sense that they provided a blueprint to know how to reread it, it was still an unholy mess (I laugh when Legends fans insist that Legends had few continuity errors and that Disney had the space to make all the movies they wanted while conforming to every last little chapter book and RPG stat block). New canon is doing a better job keeping things straight and leaving space open for the movies to do their own thing.

[ChrisIII]

Kind of curious what direction they were going to take things had the Disney thing never happened. There was of couse the 1313 game, although elements of it were incorporated into Disney's canon, as well as Battlefront III and IV-IV in particular seemed kind of interesting because it was basically Star Wars "What if?" with stuff such as Sith Obi-Wan or a "good" Vader etc.

It looked like they were also continuing the post-ROTJ stuff, and trying to link it up with the "Legacy" comics as well. "Sword of the Jedi" would've been a Jaina novel series, and stuff like Crucible was mainly intended on 'retiring' the OT crew, at least post-ROTJ wise.

Also it seemed they were working on expanding the "Dawn of the Jedi" stuff as well.

Clone Wars of course is getting a renewal and the unmade episodes are largely still canon.

[PwrdOn]

Wouldn't say all garbage; there was some really good stuff there. Some bad, too, but that's the nature of things. I'm probably weird in the Legends vs. canon thing, given that I think Legends is an important part of the franchise, in history and otherwise, with good stuff, but I think that the new canon is doing it far better then Legends did (barring a few exceptions of really good stuff).

I have thought about the bolded often on and I do think there is at least some truth to that. Have noticed that the original Legends characters avoided that more often then not (although some did plateau) and I think one of the fatal mistakes the franchise runners did was not handing it off to the second generation after the New Jedi Order series.

As far as the timeline becoming bloated goes, I know that there are Legends fans who disagree, but yeah, it was a mess by the end (and it was never fully resolved, given that it was ended before the last round of retcons could paper over the lingering continuity errors of the Clone Wars era and other stuff). Making it up as they went along and engaging in full scale world building kinda made that inevitable and while the retcons did "fix" issues in the sense that they provided a blueprint to know how to reread it, it was still an unholy mess (I laugh when Legends fans insist that Legends had few continuity errors and that Disney had the space to make all the movies they wanted while conforming to every last little chapter book and RPG stat block). New canon is doing a better job keeping things straight and leaving space open for the movies to do their own thing.

Frankly, I thought that the EU canon was basically falling apart already by the time the prequels came out. The EU tried so hard to maintain the "used future" look and feel of the original trilogy, and had already created quite a bit of backstory for the Old Republic era. When the prequels pretty much ignored all of that in favor of the polished and modern setting that was, if we're being honest, probably what Lucas had wanted for Star Wars all along, it became pretty difficult to reconcile the old with the new which probably explains why the prequels were hated for so long. Of course, now that all of the hate is being turned onto the sequel trilogy, despite it sticking much closer to the original trilogy in tone, fans are now all claiming to love what was there before, including the EU and even the prequels.

Of course, the problem now is that shunting off basically everything to Legends means that there are huge gaps in the continuity that won't be filled anytime soon, and in many cases will see many elements lifted from Legends and put back into canon, like with Thrawn. So for now we're sort of stuck with this bastard timeline that doesn't really know what it wants to be, because those Legends stories still exist in our reality and will end up inspiring new authors to write parts of them into canon, whether they are conscious of that or not. But hey, maybe that's okay, Star Wars fans should really just try to stop arguing about continuity and just enjoy the content we have. There's no sense in trying to go back to a mythical age where everything about the franchise made sense and fit nicely with everything else, it's about as futile of an exercise as trying to do that with real history.

[Starter Set]

Well, why use old material when you can write new masterpieces such as a new hope 2.0, the last joke or "no one cares" Solo right?

That being said, let's not put more blame on Kennedy than she deserves. Let's not forget the "fantastic" contribution to that mess of Jar Jar Abrams.

[ChrisIII]

It strikes me as a bit inaccurate. The TV shows in particular have pretty much re-canonized a lot of the old EU, although with modifications to fit into the new continuity. So they did throw away the bad stuff, keep the good stuff in a sense.


-Grand Admiral Thrawn is the big one, although he's no longer a post-ROTJ villain (Well, yet) but causes problems for the Lothal Rebels.

-The TIE defender from the video games is brought back as one of Thrawn's projects.

-The Darktroopers, although reimagined as Thrawn's training droids.



-The Cloud Riders in Solo, although altered to be a proto-Rebellion.

-Some elements of the KOTOR/TOTJ ancient Jedi mythology is still canon, such as Malachor.

-Speaking of which, the Hammerhead cruiser from those games was changed into a Rebellion-era vessel and used quite prominently in "Rogue One".


Also, the old EU was already on somewhat shaky ground, with the prequels contradicting a lot of it, but then in came Clone Wars, with renditions of the nightsisters and Mandalorians which drastically differed from other sources. Also the CW pretty much ignored everything about the Wars established by comics, novels, and the other animated series at that point, which showed that Anakin didn't get his promotion to Knight (and get a new haircut) until late in the wars, definitely did not have an apprentice etc. Keep in mind this was years before Disney too.

Granted, the entire post-ROTJ era is pretty much been paved over (Although in both cases there was a "New Republic", although with different ways of doing things), but the old EU still kind of lives on in the new.

[Bruce Wayne]

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/...r-wars-912393/

You have to realize that the people involved in the purchase and running of Lucasfilm were primarily interested in the movie aspect of the franchise. They ignored the rest because they primarily were movie people. To them stuff like the games/novels/comics were just ephemera that could be discarded and downplayed. Their goal was to crank out as many movies (to pay for the 4 billion dollar purchase of Lucasfilm) and maybe setup SW as a new MCU (which has failed). The powers that be simply did not understand the importance of the lore or the wealth of material of the Expanded Universe or that the SW brand needed to be maintained with the fans.

And despite the success of the MCU, they did NOT understand the shared universe aspect of the Legends Universe. Which is natural since they comes from an environment that venerates the director as an auteur and the movie as the vision of that one person (never mind that it's not true).

[ChrisIII]

Lucas wasn't really a big fan of the EU either, often referring to it as an "alternate universe". Most of the EU references in the prequels (apart from stuff like Coruscant and Quinlan Vos) were largely from DROIDS which he had sort of a small hand in.


It's likely that Lucas's concepts for the sequel trilogy would've tossed out EU material as well.

[Bruce Wayne]

Lucas wasn't really a big fan of the EU either, often referring to it as an "alternate universe". Most of the EU references in the prequels (apart from stuff like Coruscant and Quinlan Vos) were largely from DROIDS which he had sort of a small hand in.

That's not true. He liked the comics. He put Aayla Secure in AOTC/ROTS. He was going to use Darth Talon for the Sequel Trilogy. He liked Dark Empire enough to give it out as Christmas presents to employees. He and Filoni used Ventress from Clone Wars comics/novels for TCW as well as random bits of lore like holocrons and nightsisters. And he was willing to share the sandbox, we can trace the ideas of Sith Lords as being evil Jedi in TOTJ from him.

[ChrisIII]

That's not true. He liked the comics. He put Aayla Secure in AOTC/ROTS. He was going to use Darth Talon for the Sequel Trilogy. He liked Dark Empire enough to give it out as Christmas presents to employees. He and Filoni used Ventress from Clone Wars comics/novels for TCW as well as random bits of lore like holocrons and nightsisters. And he was willing to share the sandbox, we can trace the ideas of Sith Lords as being evil Jedi in TOTJ from him.

From Lucas's interviews in Cinescape and Starlog.

There's my world, which is the movies, and there's this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe—the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. "

"I don't read that stuff. I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world."

"And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn't at all what I would have done with it."

"Once Vader dies, the Emperor doesn't get cloned and Luke doesn't get married..."


Then again, Lucas isn't the most consistent person. After ROTS was released he was pretty adamant that there never would be any more Star Wars movies, just the Clone Wars and the TV show. Then comes 2012....plus his many claims of having the whole saga mapped out perfectly from the beginning during many of the interviews from the prequels.