Grouchy Imp said:
Dead Metal said:
Grouchy Imp said:
If they hadn't retconned the EU they'd probably have enough source material to manage it too.
No, the EU was made non-cannon precisely for this reason. The way it used to be meant that they couldn't have made new material without running into problems because of the EU. Now that the EU doesn't exist anymore, they can do their own thing, develop the characters and universe they want, and still take EU material and adapt it to make it cannon again or to put their own spin on it.
That's quite a generous way of looking at things. I'd put it another way, that their writers are too lazy to learn the lore and adapt their ideas to tie in with established (ex)canon. Having to read and factor in to your own story what other people have written is, like, hard, whereas wiping the slate clean so they can write whatever they want is ssooo much easier.
Sorry, I've been a follower of the EU for over 25 years and have spent hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of pounds on it over the years and the EU's casual dismissal by Lucas and Disney is still a sore point for me. If Disney manage to streamline the EU and do it justice then I'll happily eat my words, but I'm just a little too jaded to believe that they'll do anything other than shoe-horn EU characters into bland made-to-order films written not to tell an enthralling story but to hit a sales target.
Let's face it. A lot of the lore of the EU was utter crap. I say this as a major Star Wars fan who grew up with the original trilogy. I have read almost every single book of it and re-read the good ones numerous times (i.e. Anything written by Zahn) but there is absolutely no way that I would want to see a movie that tried to incorporate all of that. I mean, just look at this [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Legends_media]!
The original actors are about 30 years older than in ROTJ, so that would be somewhere around just after the Yuuzhan Vong war or getting into the Dark Nest trilogy if they kept that same time frame. Do you really want to hear Han tell someone that Chewbacca died when a moon fell on him to explain the lack of his presence to those who didn't read the books? It would feel cheap and pointless.
While I regret the loss of some of the EU (Thrawn trilogy and X-Wing series), the EU as a whole was just a jumbled mess that is better put out to pasture. If there's a few cameos of characters thrown into the new movies as a nod to the EU fans, great, but trying to fit all the crap in just for the sake of continuity really isn't worth it.
Dead Metal said:
I'm sorry, but back when the Prequels came out all I ever heard from Star Wars fans was how much the movies sucked, not because they were bad, but for contradicting EU books and comics. I witnessed an hour long rant about how George Lucas betrayed everyone by including Guido, and how that ruined the comics and novels he's been reading that chronicled his live's saga.
No, people weren't pissed that the prequels contradicted the EU, they were pissed because Lucas contradicted his own movies! Obi-Wan said he was trained by Yoda, not Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan having no memory of R2-D2 and a lesser extent C-3PO, despite being exposed to them for years, Leia supposedly had memories of her real mother, who now died during childbirth. I know there are other things too, but these are the things that come to mind. These are what people were really upset about.
