SW - Episode 7: Mary Sue wakes up but there's no coffee. RAGE.

[Margalis]

Pssh.  Jedi gone bad are Dark Jedi.  Sith is like a whole separate religion.  And besides, the only people who would define the Jedi as universally good are the Jedi themselves.  Regular people see little difference between them and Sith.

Honestly as soon as I posted that I thought to myself "I don't know what I'm talking about and someone is probably going to point out that Jedi actually can be evil or some shit."

[Merusk]

Pssh.  Jedi gone bad are Dark Jedi.  Sith is like a whole separate religion.  And besides, the only people who would define the Jedi as universally good are the Jedi themselves.  Regular people see little difference between them and Sith.

SO THERE.

That's an EU/ Mega SW Geek thing. What the differentiation is now that Disney holds the rights remains to be seen.  They've stated that there will now only be one canon, maintained by two guys:  As it stands now, anything not in the movies (and, I believe the Clone Wars series) is more than likely going to be axed.  That would include Dark Jedi
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/13/star-wars
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-spinoffs-will-matter-668958

Chee is no great fan of the EU as a bifurcated storyline. So things will have happened or they will have not, driven solely by the products Disney produces.  It also makes a hell of a lot of sense for Disney to wipe out all of the books, video games, novella, short stories, comics, fan-wank novellas etc and move forward from the movies only because that's what the general public is familiar with.

[Pennilenko]

So basically, Disney is saying, "Fuck Yo Neck Beards!" Is that right?

[Merusk]

Yes.

ed: Which is a good thing. Lots of the little bits people hated about the prequels were trying to address Neckbeard questions from the previous 20 years.

[eldaec]

Anything not in the movies doesn't have to axed as it was never canon to begin with.

What Disney said is that they plan to stop producing terrible non-canon bullshit, but before they start pretending the EU never existed, they are going to check if there is anything that is not utterly worthless, and in the unlikely event that they find anything, promote it to be canon.

[Cyrrex]

Pssh.  Jedi gone bad are Dark Jedi.  Sith is like a whole separate religion.  And besides, the only people who would define the Jedi as universally good are the Jedi themselves.  Regular people see little difference between them and Sith.

SO THERE.

That's an EU/ Mega SW Geek thing. What the differentiation is now that Disney holds the rights remains to be seen.  They've stated that there will now only be one canon, maintained by two guys:  As it stands now, anything not in the movies (and, I believe the Clone Wars series) is more than likely going to be axed.  That would include Dark Jedi
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/13/star-wars
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-spinoffs-will-matter-668958

Chee is no great fan of the EU as a bifurcated storyline. So things will have happened or they will have not, driven solely by the products Disney produces.  It also makes a hell of a lot of sense for Disney to wipe out all of the books, video games, novella, short stories, comics, fan-wank novellas etc and move forward from the movies only because that's what the general public is familiar with.

Technically speaking you are correct, of course, and unless specifically stated my comments are from the Mega Geek point of view.  That said, the idea of Jedi, Dark Jedi and Sith is not a far stretch from the canon, and in my opinion works okay.  There are "fallen" Jedi as part of the canon (Dooku before he became Sith) that are disillusioned with the dogma for one reason or another, though that falls a bit short of calling them Dark.  Then there are the Ventress types who are part of the canon, who are neither Jedi nor Sith...and Dark Jedi is as good as term for any for them. 

Does it matter?  I don't know.  Probably not.  You can argue that there is a fundamental difference between a Dark Jedi and a Sith, but the average viewer (and the average citizen in the SW universe) probably doesn't care.

[eldaec]

There is certainly enough room in betwwen what has been said in the canon for a future writer to have any kind of force user they feel like without them being aligned to either Sith or Jedi. And starting from there you can have dark Jedi mean whatever you damn well choose since the term has not been defined.

And Ventress isn't canon.

The canon test is as follows...

Is it episode 1,2,3,4,5 or 6?
Yes: Canon
No: Not canon

[Cyrrex]

I was operating under the assumption that Clone Wars was going to be kept as canon.  If not, fine.

[eldaec]

I imagine clone wars will be promoted to canon.

But it isn't yet and this discussion is meaningless without over zealous specificity.

[Merusk]

Yeah, Clone Wars is the sole grey area right now and only because they have the animated movie that was in the theater and the CN series was really popular.  Disney can still axe it if they choose to take the brand that direction, though. 

People sometimes thought LucasFilm was "overprotective" with the cannon tiering and sending C&D letters at times. They haven't seen anything yet, because Disney is an utter cock about it and won't let several of the ridiculous things that happened in the EU happen again because they'd hurt the brand beyond the neckbeards.

[Evildrider]

I have a feeling that Clone Wars is definitely canon.  If only from the producers hints at something big happening with Ahsoka Tano.

[MahrinSkel]

Clone Wars has a good shot at becoming canon if for no other reason than that this is Disney, and without Clone Wars the hooks for kids in Star Wars are Ewoks and Jar-Jar.

--Dave

[Malakili]

Clone Wars should have been in the prequel trilogy  Nuke the first movie from orbit, re-jigger Attack of the Clones a bit to make it work as an opening movie. Then we could actually see Anakin develop, the relationship between him an Obi-Wan develop, and the Emperor would have had essentially the same arc as well.

The storied "Jedi training" is utterly ignored in the prequels, Anakin doing legit training at the academy in the new attack of the clone as first movie would have been great.  Then due to the crisis he could have been like, called into action a bit too early with Obi-Wan agreeing to finish his training in the field (thinking he could teach him as well as Master Yoda, line from the original trilogy).  

Then the two of them go off and fight in the clone wars (movie 2), they become close.  And then in the end get rid of the garbage death by pregnancy plot, and just have him tempted by the dark side's ability to help him end the war (which would have been established in the movies as something he had seen first hand and therefore come to hate, even have Padme die as a casualty of war after giving birth or something to make Anakin hate the war even more and desperate to end it), resulting in movie 3 pretty much as it was anyway.

The entire first movie could have been replaced with a line of dialog like "Palpatine is chancellor, also there is this promising young padawan named Anakin" Seriously, the rest of the movie was pointless.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I've heard from a lot of people who work in the industry that Disney is absolutely notorious for policing what does and does not "count" in its properties and ruthlessly curbstomping unapproved variations. But in this case it may really do some good for them to just take out all the accumulated SW trash and work back up from there.

[Nevermore]

Clone Wars has a good shot at becoming canon if for no other reason than that this is Disney, and without Clone Wars the hooks for kids in Star Wars are Ewoks and Jar-Jar.

--Dave

If hooks for kids was the only criteria, then Disney has the new Star Wars Rebels coming out in the fall on the Disney channel anyway.  However, I think since Rebels is being animated in exactly the same style as Clone Wars it would make sense to keep Clone Wars canon.

[eldaec]

Clone Wars should have been in the prequel trilogy  Nuke the first movie from orbit, ......

Yeah, something like that - but honestly, anyone could write half a dozen outlines better than the actual prequel story in an afternoon.

But most of us still own the DVDs.... for shame.

[Malakili]

Clone Wars should have been in the prequel trilogy  Nuke the first movie from orbit, ......

Yeah, something like that - but honestly, anyone could write half a dozen outlines better than the actual prequel story in an afternoon.

But most of us still own the DVDs.... for shame.

Yeah, that describes me pretty accurately.

[Merusk]

Yeah, something like that - but honestly, anyone could write half a dozen outlines better than the actual prequel story in an afternoon.

Yup. Then again that's also only an outline. The prequel outline SOUNDED good until we got the mess that it is.  EP1: The corruption and fall of the Old Republic and Rise of Palpatine, Anakin Skywalker is discovered and begins Jedi training.  EP2: Fallout from Palpy's grabs for power and the Clone Wars alongside Anakin Skywalker the hero.  EP3: The seduction and fall of Anakin Skywalker and Rise of the Empire.

And yeah, I own the DVDs and even watch them from time to time. No shame. I accept it for what it is, not pine for what it could have been. Living in the past, blah, blah, blah.

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, I've heard from a lot of people who work in the industry that Disney is absolutely notorious for policing what does and does not "count" in its properties and ruthlessly curbstomping unapproved variations. But in this case it may really do some good for them to just take out all the accumulated SW trash and work back up from there.

I agree and I bet they will do this.

[Rendakor]

Clone Wars should have been in the prequel trilogy  Nuke the first movie from orbit, ......

Yeah, something like that - but honestly, anyone could write half a dozen outlines better than the actual prequel story in an afternoon.

But most of us still own the DVDs.... for shame.

I saw them all in theaters on release day (Episode 1 multiple times orz) but didn't buy or even download them.

[Teleku]

Hah, yeah, thats exactly my situation.  Have not seen any of the prequel movies since their original midnight showing debut in the theater.

[Margalis]

How can Disney even evaluate what is canon? I mean there's so much random SW shit and so much of it is bad - would they hire 100 interns to sift through all that? Any Disney exec has probably seen the movies and I assume none of them have read the books or played the games.

Not only does throwing it out make sense from a theoretical perspective it also makes sense from an operational one.

[Merusk]

Leland Chee was an employee of LucasFilm before Disney bought them and is the guy doing the current evaluation. He was in charge of trying to keep it from being an unholy nightmare before.  I understand his power was only to the point of saying things like "no, Luke was over on Dathomir trying to bang this chick at that time. He couldn't be on Sullust getting a shave with Chewbacca's 7th cousin.  Move your storyline by two weeks."  The actual approval of storylines and products was someone else, whose purpose was to generate $$ so all harebrained ideas got approved.

Now he is apparently the guy in charge of keeping it straight and approving what gets added.  Evidently.

Either way he's probably one of the sole people in the company who could do it.

[eldaec]

How can Disney even evaluate what is canon?

I suspect "evaluate" is a euphemism.

And Disney execs are the same manchildren you meet on boards like this all the time. They just happen to have a job that requires them to compartmentalise. That doesn't mean they are unaware that Kevin J Anderson books are mind breakingly awful.

[Triforcer]

Did he write the Courtship of Princess Leia? Every time in my life where I suddenly cry for no reason, I figure its that.

[Kail]

Did he write the Courtship of Princess Leia? Every time in my life where I suddenly cry for no reason, I figure its that.

Hey, that's a weird coincidence.  My sister just told me she's got her hands on a pair of Star Wars novels, and would I like to read them, and one of them is the Courtship of Princess Leia.  So, it's a really emotionally touching story, you're saying?

[Ironwood]

It's fucking shite.

[calapine]

Did he write the Courtship of Princess Leia? Every time in my life where I suddenly cry for no reason, I figure its that.

According to Wikipedia Wookiepedia it's "a 1994 bestselling Star Wars novel by Dave Wolverton".

Edit: But there are many other reason to hate Kevin J. Anderson. Such as writing crappy Dune books. Unless Star Wars that's something I care about.

[Ironwood]

KJA wrote a lot of shite for Star Wars.  I see no need to go outside a particular field :  Let's just agree that KJA is a fucking awful writer, no matter what the fuck he's writing about.

[Venkman]

Courtship wasn't bad. It had three interesting elements: Luke coming into a better understanding of the Force, an android modelled more like Data than C3PO, and the key villain which I wish had more play. He was sort of the Jimmy Hoffa of the era, Vader's equal from the non-Force using commerce side of things.

It wasn't Zahn level of story telling. But let's face it: I wouldn't say Zahn's books were empirically great either. They were just the best of the SW novels.

It all comes down to one's own ability to stomach the EU material. I could get past the writing just to keep up with the characters.

We'll all do this when the next movie comes to. I still smile when some people say JJ "ruined" Trek. Because shit, the things he did with both movies are the exact things that excite me most about the next. No, not the lens flare or story. Just that he took the parts of the rules that truly matter, ignored the tumors that were allowed to be bolted on, and made for a fun popcorn fest.

That's all I want. That's all I got in the 70s, and that's what I want again.

[Abagadro]

Let's just agree that KJA is a fucking awful writer, no matter what the fuck he's writing about.

Can't think of another writer that has completely shit on so many decent franchises.

[jgsugden]

Sites are now reporting the EU is being discarded for the most part, with certain elements being recycled.  Not a surprise to most, but I am waiting to see how much anger this creates.

[Ironwood]

Sites like this one ?  In General Discussion ?  First post up ?

[jgsugden]

Sites like this one ?  In General Discussion ?  First post up ?

Didn't see it.  We don't all visiti every forum all the time... and for some strange reason I thought *this* was the place to post discussion of Movie VII stuff... silly me.

[Ironwood]

YOU FAIL !  NOW DROP AND GIVE ME 20 !!!

(I don't know why either.  Just one of those odd things I guess.  Either that or they like giving me two places to show how much I admire KJA.)