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Given the new canon, what must we unlearn?


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I've seen a few references to Mon Mothma being the leader of the Rebellion. Is this still the case? Or is she just someone who gave a briefing now? Was her role given in anything that is canon?

 

Are there any other, similar things that you can think of? Expectations we've had for years based on things like novelizations or radio dramas?

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Hopefully it means...

No SOLO brats

No planetoids falling on Chewie's head

No Cloned Emperors

No C'Baoth

No yuuzhan vong

 

 

Probably means:

 

No Thrawn, No Mara Jade and No New Jedi order.

Hopefully it doesn't mean..

No Kyle Katarn & Jan Ors

 

Agreed. Balance of the force may be no Jedi, no Seth. End of the gods.

No Seth? What do you have against Driver?

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For all we know Luke never taught anybody else the ways of the Force.

This would get me out of the theatre so fast, I swear to god. "PASS ON WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED." "Meh, think I'll go play with some power converters instead."

 

 

I think nitpicking all the little things and saying "WELL THAT'S NOT CANON ANYMORE" is kind of dumb. The main reason I'm annoyed about the whole "non-canon" announcement is not that certain books are no longer canon, but that EVERYTHING is no longer canon, including tons of interesting backstory that makes the Star Wars universe more than just another franchise. Take away everything that's not presented directly in the films and TCW, and, well...it's such a flat universe.

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I'm offended.

 

And given what little has leaked out, it really seems like JJ wants more than anything to make a Star Wars movie that fits with the OT. All the hints of imperial sets, rumors of no New Republic... I feel like he is less interested in building a world of the SW galaxy post Empire as he is just having an adventure. What I mean is, I am assuming there will be very little exposition on what has happened in the last 30 years. The PT pretty much proved spending any time on galactic politics is boring. My guess is, we'll get a paragraph in the opening crawl dedicated to it, and that will be it.

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I haven't been really following this with a close eye, so can someone give me the gist? Basically I gather the whole extended (or expanded, or whatever) universe is not canon?

 

If so, good. I never considered any of that junk Star Wars anyway. Not the Thrawn novels, none of it. It's all just basically fan fiction by authors too lazy to come up with their own universe.

 

Good riddance.

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Yeah, that's the jist. The new powers that be realized there was no way to make a sequel with all the EU material. There was a double problem of so much plot having happened that it would be impossible for people to pick up with the characters 30 years later if all the material from the books was used. The number of people who read the EU is a small percentage of who will go see a Star Wars movie. So they did away with all of it, putting it under a banner of "what if."

 

The official cannon now is what has been on-screen, big and small. Which means, The PRequels, The Clone Wars cartoon series, the upcoming Rebels animated series, the original trilogy and the new films.

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Yeah, really I'm more interested in what we've "known" for years from even prior to Thrawn that maybe is no longer true, not continued discussion about the EU.

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I have no real basis for assuming this other than speculation but I think everything post-ROTJ is now deuterocanonical (google it) and everything prior to ROTJ is more or less "safe". I mean, unless Max von Sydow ends up being Darth Plagueis the Wise or whatever then why shouldn't we assume all the stuff that happened long before the new movies and doesn't appear to contradict them is quote unquote real whereas all the stuff that does contradict the new movies and happens around their time is now quote unquote legendary.

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Yeah, really I'm more interested in what we've "known" for years from even prior to Thrawn that maybe is no longer true, not continued discussion about the EU.

 

 

lol @ everyone completely whiffing on the point of Brando's question.

 

But hey, any opportunity to bitch about the EU, right?

I'm not sure it's possible to separate the two given how the EU played off of every hint of where the story would go post ROTJ, of which there was very little:

 

- the Empire was defeated

- the Sith were defeated

- Luke was told to pass on what he'd learned, starting with his sister

- Han and Leia were together

 

I'm not sure what else there is!

 

Now if none of those turn out to be true.. I don't know...

 

The Empire still exists in some quarters despite losing their Emperor, there's more Sith, Leia never became a Jedi and Luke never had any students, and Han and Leia broke up... part of me thinks that is the most original concept ever for a post ROTJ story, and for that reason I like it. But at the same time, undoing what ROTJ was handing us seems wrong.

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To me it's much more interesting to speculate about OT-era stuff that we all assumed was canon backstory now being thrown out. We all know the post-RotJ is going away. But stuff like Han and Chewie's first meeting, Luke's home life on Tatooine, Leia's time in the Senate--that's all non-canon now, too. To me, that stuff changing has way more implications on the Star Wars universe we currently know than just dumping everything that happened post-RotJ.

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Despite being non-canon now officially, I still think the old radio plays are still truth. They were really just the movie scripts greatly expanded upon with stuff from the original novelization, which, whole Lucas didn't write either, both were based on his work and made at a time when he probably actually over saw them.

 

Besides, unless the NU/EU decides to cover that stuff, it;s not like we'll ever see it. Unless it happens in Rebels.

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Despite being non-canon now officially, I still think the old radio plays are still truth. They were really just the movie scripts greatly expanded upon with stuff from the original novelization, which, whole Lucas didn't write either, both were based on his work and made at a time when he probably actually over saw them.

 

Besides, unless the NU/EU decides to cover that stuff, it;s not like we'll ever see it. Unless it happens in Rebels.

I believe the Story Group has said novelizations and radio dramas are canon except where they contradict the films. So that's clear as mud.

 

Unless it happens in Rebels, or a standalone, or another TV series, animated or live action...

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Guest El Chalupacabra

 

Yeah, really I'm more interested in what we've "known" for years from even prior to Thrawn that maybe is no longer true, not continued discussion about the EU.

 

 

lol @ everyone completely whiffing on the point of Brando's question.

 

But hey, any opportunity to bitch about the EU, right?

I'm not sure it's possible to separate the two given how the EU played off of every hint of where the story would go post ROTJ, of which there was very little:

 

- the Empire was defeated

- the Sith were defeated

- Luke was told to pass on what he'd learned, starting with his sister

- Han and Leia were together

 

I'm not sure what else there is!

 

Now if none of those turn out to be true.. I don't know...

 

The Empire still exists in some quarters despite losing their Emperor, there's more Sith, Leia never became a Jedi and Luke never had any students, and Han and Leia broke up... part of me thinks that is the most original concept ever for a post ROTJ story, and for that reason I like it. But at the same time, undoing what ROTJ was handing us seems wrong.

 

Agreed. Kinda hard to question what we assumed to be true now isn't true, based ONLY on the films or TCW. You kind of HAVE to talk about EU, if you want to delve into what was assumed to be true that now isn't, right?

 

 

To me it's much more interesting to speculate about OT-era stuff that we all assumed was canon backstory now being thrown out. We all know the post-RotJ is going away. But stuff like Han and Chewie's first meeting, Luke's home life on Tatooine, Leia's time in the Senate--that's all non-canon now, too. To me, that stuff changing has way more implications on the Star Wars universe we currently know than just dumping everything that happened post-RotJ.

 

I think if written well, the new movies will not contradict anything EU that took place before ROTJ. It doesn't have to acknowledge that those events happened or not, just not mention them, and leave it open-ended for interpretation as to whether those EU events took place or not. It's the EU stuff that takes place post ROTJ that will be the issue for fans of the EU books, because some events are just going to have to be wiped out of continuity for the movies to take place.

 

I think it would be cool of Disney for the sake of some uber-fans of the post-ROTJ EU novels if some popular elements or Easter eggs from post-ROTJ in the movies, here and there, as long as it is done sparingly (IE maybe have a minor character who is the same race as Thrawn make an appearance, for example).

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To me it's much more interesting to speculate about OT-era stuff that we all assumed was canon backstory now being thrown out. We all know the post-RotJ is going away. But stuff like Han and Chewie's first meeting, Luke's home life on Tatooine, Leia's time in the Senate--that's all non-canon now, too. To me, that stuff changing has way more implications on the Star Wars universe we currently know than just dumping everything that happened post-RotJ.

That's more along the lines of what I was going for with my initial post. There's the stuff that we KNOW isn't canon, but that really only impacts those who read the EU.

 

But I agree, the current announcement is incredibly confusing. If they're going for clarity, they should probably just say "The movies and the newer TV shows are canon, everything else isn't." Instead of "some of it's canon until it's not."

 

The way I see it, anything that can be easily overwritten, not retconned but completely overwritten, just shouldn't be canon. Make a consistent canon and go from there.

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For what it's worth, the kid's cassette tape story of "Return of the Jedi" (featuring actual dialogue from the movie!) referred to "Alliance leader Mon Mothma". Not that I think it will matter. By the time Episode VII takes place, she is surely dead as the character is during the same time period in the EU.

 

I do agree that unlearning much of the EU and the characters it involved will have to happen: No Solo kids, no Mara Jade Skywalker or Ben, no New Jedi Order the way it's been portrayed in the books or in the comics, a lot of the recurring characters like the Rogues, the Imperials, the disparate species and cultures that have been introduced. The backgrounds of places like Ithor, Mandalore and Tatooine, or what we thought we knew about them, are out the window, too.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

For what it's worth, the kid's cassette tape story of "Return of the Jedi" (featuring actual dialogue from the movie!) referred to "Alliance leader Mon Mothma". Not that I think it will matter. By the time Episode VII takes place, she is surely dead as the character is during the same time period in the EU.

 

I do agree that unlearning much of the EU and the characters it involved will have to happen: No Solo kids, no Mara Jade Skywalker or Ben, no New Jedi Order the way it's been portrayed in the books or in the comics, a lot of the recurring characters like the Rogues, the Imperials, the disparate species and cultures that have been introduced. The backgrounds of places like Ithor, Mandalore and Tatooine, or what we thought we knew about them, are out the window, too.

Well if Episode 7 isn't following the same story as EU, why does Mon Mothma have to be "surely dead?"

 

The actress who played Mothma, Caroline Blakiston, is still alive. Why can't Mothma still be alive? Hell, so many people have played the character in the movies (ROTS, obviously had a different actress), TCW, video games, etc, that you don't need the original actress.

 

If there was a reason for Mothma to be in Episode 7, they could even re-cast Judi Dench to play Mothma. In fact, now that I think of it, I believe there was a rumor going around about that a while back.

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Well for one thing, my Dash figure is now either worthless or worth enough to go back to college for a few semesters. I'll need a new name and avatar obviously; my Star Wars shelf will need to be gutted; my true love Mara Jade is no more so i'll need a new Mistress; and we're back to Square 1 on whether the Mandalorians are more like 60s Klingons, 90s Klingons, or Ferengi.

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