Do these Kathleen Kennedy comments worry or bother you ?

[Hulkverine]

What’s worrisome? Those books aren’t canon. It’s not a difficult concept.

[WillieMorgan]

Ah, the irony of seeing one of your favourite pop culture franchises bought out by a real world evil empire....

I'm not at all worried by Kennedy's comments. Disney has saved me a LOT of money by buying the Star Wars brand.

The old EU was never 100% cannon. Lucas himself barely touched it and, if memory serves me correctly, it existed on a lower 'level' of official canon than the movies themselves. I think Lucas' personal G-canon trumped everything else and always overruled all the EU and other sources. I'll admit that I haven't really looked that up in years though. The old EU was hardly perfect either. Towards the end it was getting particularly creaky. To hear people dismiss it as though it's been replaced by something far better makes me chuckle though.

[WebLurker]

What’s worrisome? Those books aren’t canon. It’s not a difficult concept.

Well, the current stuff is officially canon. Legends was claimed to be such, but I do think that the label wasn't worth that much in the grand scheme of things.

The old EU was hardly perfect either. Towards the end it was getting particularly creaky. To hear people dismiss it as though it's been replaced by something far better makes me chuckle though.

That is a matter of taste. Having read both extensively, I do sincerely think the replacement is far better overall then Legends was. However, both have their gems and bombs, so I don't see the need to dismiss one over the other.

[Hulkverine]

Right on. I thought you were just talking about all the old stuff. Mara Jade etc

[ChrisIII]

It also sometimes had a tendency to contradict itself at times. By the end there were about a billion explanations for the theft of the Death Star plans in the first place, for example.

For example, the Legends page on the Star Wars wiki has a pretty good run down: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dea..._plans/Legends


The gap between the first two films was also somewhat crowded (Not a lot of people touched the other gap after "Shadows"). For example, you had all the old Marvel comics, the various newspaper strips, the Empire and Rebellion comics, and Dark Horse's new monthly all trying to fit stuff in there comics-wise, plus a good chunk of novels such as Zahn's OT era Mara Jade novels (Allegiance, Choices of One etc.)

[WillieMorgan]

That is a matter of taste. Having read both extensively, I do sincerely think the replacement is far better overall then Legends was. However, both have their gems and bombs, so I don't see the need to dismiss one over the other.

I never said it wasn't a matter of personal taste. It still makes me chuckle though.

I also wasn't comparing the old Legends continuity to anything other than the Disney movies that have superseded it, although I can understand why you'd think otherwise. I'm never gonna buy the current comics, novels and whatever else fleshes out the shiny new Disney approved SW 'expanded universe' so can't really comment on them. I just meant the new movies which feel like dull facsimiles of Star Wars to me. Again, I'm being subjective. If you think otherwise that's up to you.

Like has been mentioned above, elements of the old EU can't have been too bad as they have been incorporated into this new reality. So Kennedy's comments don't actually ring true.

[ChrisIII]

Disney's EU mainly seems focused on the OT era with not as much focus on the sequels due to the fact they're still being released and of course they don't want to get too far ahead or reveal too much. There's been a few such as the Poe Dameron comics, Aftermath and a few novels but not that much.

Most of the Marvel comics, for example, take place in the ANH-ESB gap, although now they're moving beyond that to the ESB/ROTJ gap.

They've also done a good chunk of stuff in the PT-OT gap; The most recent Vader monthly, Lords of the Sith, and of course Rebels and the new game Fallen Order.


Prequel stuff was a bit sparse at first apart from Dark Disciple and some comics but has picked up recently with Age of Republic, Master & Apprentice and Queen's Shadow.

[WebLurker]

I never said it wasn't a matter of personal taste. It still makes me chuckle though.

Sure.

I also wasn't comparing the old Legends continuity to anything other than the Disney movies that have superseded it, although I can understand why you'd think otherwise.

As Yoda would say, most embarrassing.

I'm never gonna buy the current comics, novels and whatever else fleshes out the shiny new Disney approved SW 'expanded universe' so can't really comment on them. I just meant the new movies which feel like dull facsimiles of Star Wars to me. Again, I'm being subjective. If you think otherwise that's up to you.

So, movies to EU/Legends? Okay, I can understand that. That's more or less my view of classic Star Trek vs. Abrams Trek. I've seen Legends fans explain that the overall Legends continuity, not just the movies, are what made them fans and made the franchise worthwhile to them. I can get it, but I do not share that opinion. While I think it's hard to compare a few movies to a library of books, I really like the characters and stories for the new movies and very much prefer their versions of the events and eras they're "replacing" (did prefer Han's Legends backstory from the AC Crispin books over the movie, but only slightly, and I'm really weird given that I think TLJ Luke > Legends Luke).

I guess at this point, I don't like the idea of a Star Wars universe without Rey, Finn, BB8, Jyn Erso, and the others. Still some really good Legends stories I like to revisit now and again, but something seems missing from that continuity now.

Like has been mentioned above, elements of the old EU can't have been too bad as they have been incorporated into this new reality. So Kennedy's comments don't actually ring true.

I think the difference is that now, the movies are the main driving narrative of the franchise. Tie-ins fill in the gaps and do borrow stuff, but it's mostly characters, props, and world-building. There are very few instances where it's been implied that an actual Legends story may have happened in canon, too.

[PwrdOn]

It's hard to imagine a time when Star Wars wasn't the ubiquitous pop culture presence it is now, but the early 90s were definitely a low ebb for the franchise as fans had mostly moved on, the prequels were still years away, and the merchandising well had more or less run dry. Those EU novels, comics, and games really helped to keep the flame burning, so to speak, and were actually the entry point into Star Wars for a lot of fans who would've been too young to catch the initial theatrical releases of the movies.

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.

[MASTER-OF-SUPRISE]

Not entirely. Depending on what you mean. It's unlikely the old EU was ever going to get an adaption for the big screen. The actors are well past the point. While I'm not a fan of the sequel trilogy especially is deconstructions. I understand why they didn't use it. Though I will maintain Luke was more human and relatable in the old EU.

I do hope they stay consistent with the new EU since they said they would. Though that is very unlikely. Legends was a mixed bag. When it was great it was great and when it was bad it was really bad. It had it's ups and downs but that's what 40 years of continuity will do. Give it enough time and the new EU will be just as convoluted.

[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.

[WillieMorgan]

So, movies to EU/Legends? Okay, I can understand that. That's more or less my view of classic Star Trek vs. Abrams Trek. I've seen Legends fans explain that the overall Legends continuity, not just the movies, are what made them fans and made the franchise worthwhile to them. I can get it, but I do not share that opinion. While I think it's hard to compare a few movies to a library of books, I really like the characters and stories for the new movies and very much prefer their versions of the events and eras they're "replacing" (did prefer Han's Legends backstory from the AC Crispin books over the movie, but only slightly, and I'm really weird given that I think TLJ Luke > Legends Luke).

I guess at this point, I don't like the idea of a Star Wars universe without Rey, Finn, BB8, Jyn Erso, and the others. Still some really good Legends stories I like to revisit now and again, but something seems missing from that continuity now.

I'm old enough to be an original generation Star Wars fan. It was the classic trilogy that won me over as a child. Although unbalanced, the EU was great for SW fans during those long, dark periods of inactivity movie-wise. I can understand it being many fans first point of contact and therefore being held in fond regard due to that. I guess I just don't appreciate being told that the novels that I spent 20 years buying and reading, that were often sold as an 'official' continuation of the saga (or as close as to 'official' as was possible at the time), were suddenly being thrown into the metaphorical dustbin. Disney wants to sell me a brand new EU? Nope. Goodbye.

I'll stick to a continuity that, warts and all, didn't turn Han Solo into a deadbeat dad and then just killed him off to give Harrison Ford the onscreen death that he's wanted ever since ROTJ. Even Mark Hamill fundamentally disagreed with the direction that Luke Skywalker's character and story arc unfolded during the sequel trilogy. I'm not really interested in turning this into some sort of argument though and absolutely agree that the old EU had backed itself into a corner by the end of it's life. I remember thinking 'Where the hell do they go from here?' after reading those Legacy Of The Force' books.

[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.