Lucasfilm Makes It Official: Star Wars: Expanded Universe Is Dead

[CGAdam]

I always liked Timothy Zahn's books best, but the rest of the EU was garbage. Overpowered characters, lame plots, misuse and misunderstanding of the Force, every single character that got so much as a SECOND of screen time suddenly becoming somehow tangentially pivotal to the movies... bleah.

For those that really care, I'm with what some others have said: just consider the EU an alternate timeline. I'm reasonably sure that'll get endorsement from the higher levels.

For me, the best thing that came out of the EU was Zahn himself. Heir to the Empire was my first introduction to his works, but he's had a long and varied career outside Star Wars that surpasses those books. I think his latest was the Quadrail series; try reading that sometime.

Now, when's that next movie come out again? I need to preorder tickets.

 

[PPB]

Unless I'm missing something, only the post-RotJ is going the way of the dodo. Kyle Katarn first appeared in Dark Forces, which takes place before RotJ. Of course his subsequent development is theoretically going down the drain, but the character should still be part of the canon.

I'm not too annoyed by this myself, I honestly found the post-RotJ EU to be a bit ridiculous and low-quality. The exception being the Thrawn Trilogy. Despite being pretty thick fan service at times, it was well-written and had great characters. I'm happy that the books will at least still be published because it would be a shame if they were to disappear completely.

 

[Karavision]

I feel like I have dodged a bullet in never really caring about this series. I have a greater emotional investment in Kyle Katarn than anyone who has appeared on screen.

It will be awesome watching this new cannon come out will be something special. Like watching an adult bird eat something and then regurgitate it back out for the waiting baby birds.

 

[Racecarlock]

So Rogue Squadron just never happened. Okay. Know what my episode seven is now? Watching rogue squadron 2 missions on youtube. That's what it is now.

Wedge Antilles is my personal favorite anyways. The guy gets by on pure skill with a starfighter and by god he is badass.

Oh but the force unleashed is canon. Great, good move on that one. Writing that wouldn't impress a FIFTH GRADER is now official star wars canon. Very good. The official star wars is trash now, I will be hanging with rogue squadron in the extended universe. The good part of the extended universe.

Although this does officially mean that boba fett really did suck. So that's funny again, at least.

 

[Ratty]

Although this does officially mean that boba fett really did suck. So that's funny again, at least.

Boba Fett sucked and *best Brian Blessed voice* CHEWBACCA'S ALIVE!?!

I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some point down the road they publish a few new "Star Wars Legends" branded novels or comics (because "DOLLA DOLLA BILLS yo") but right now I think they're more worried about the casual fans picking up tie-in material and being confused because it contradicts the latest movies.

They want to make those casual fans transition into tie-in devouring hardcore fans as easy as possible. Disney knows most of the people who love the old EU will grumble but ultimately roll with it. So I wouldn't look to see anything new from the "Legends" line for several years at least.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Did you hear that?
No, not the sounds of thousands of Star Wars fans wailing in impotent rage. That's normal.

The other one, that sounds like a gurgling whimper.
That's Disney, happily choking the life out of Star Wars geek culture: the good and the bad.

Remember: They don't care. They will never care. So neither should you.

 

[Brockyman]

Soooo... the YouTube video (which was published today) are a bunch of Lucasfilm employees gushing for six minutes about how they love and cherish the Expanded Universe which they have discarded.

Got it.

They didn't "discard it" They made to branching paths, kinda like Star Trek did with the new movies. They couldn't just make movies out of the EU otherwise it would have just been retelling things. Even things like Avengers and X-men don't use the EXACT comic references to add some surprise and excitement.

I like the EU too, and it's still going to be there to be enjoyed, I think the self-entitled fan boys who thinks everything Lucas, LucasArts, or Disney does that isn't just Episode IV V and VI and General Thrawn is evil

 

[Brockyman]

Did you hear that?
No, not the sounds of thousands of Star Wars fans wailing in impotent rage. That's normal.

The other one, that sounds like a gurgling whimper.
That's Disney, happily choking the life out of Star Wars geek culture: the good and the bad.

Remember: They don't care. They will never care. So neither should you.

What do you mean "they don't care"? I think a lot of them do care. They couldn't just use the EU in the movies, but they've made it a side cannon, it's not a bad thing if you look at it logically

 

[Ratty]

Oh also I see a lot of people comparing Star Trek's handling of canon with Star Wars and that's an interesting comparison to make but there are a few problems with it. You know which Star Trek novels and comics are canon? Exactly NONE of them.

"Canon" is a little funny and not necessarily crucial when it comes to Star Trek. For a long time the canonicity of one of the actual shows (The Animated Series) was denied. And I believe Gene Roddenberry once said something to the effect of him not considering a lot of episodes in the original Star Trek's 3rd season canonical. Basically, if it's not a TV episode or movie it's just officially published fanfiction.[footnote]And you can usually just ignore any particular episode you don't like in most of the series without any real consequence. Because the overarching narrative is intentionally vague and open-ended. Just like Wagon Train.[/footnote] There are series within this fiction obviously, but not anything so grand and unified as the SW:EU.

Star Trek never really needed a unified "Expanded Universe" like Star Wars did. Because the episodic format of most of the TV shows allowed new adventures to be plugged in without much fuss. "Yeah this novel takes place between episodes so-and-so, whatever." And starting in the early 1980s there was almost always new live action content coming, usually in the form of one weekly TV show or another. So Trekkies weren't as starved for new content as Star Wars fans were by the mid 90s, when the Thrawn trilogy really kicked off the EU as a publishing phenomenon.

As for Star Trek, there have been stabs at "expanding the universe beyond the TV shows", notably the "New Frontier" series. But really there are so many series to choose from that already have a built in audience there's still not much need.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

The entire Disney buyout/Star Wars 7 thing was so utterly unexpected that it's perfectly reasonable for the (more than mere thousands) of fans to get invested in the EU.

Why?

...Because no new Star Wars stories were imagined to be coming out and people wanted to see the story continue. You take what you can get.

[quote/]

Furthermore, the way they're going about it is simply disrespectful to the dozens of very talented writers that put large portions of their lives into making the EU a quality continuity.

Is it any more disrespectful than rewriting the canon every few years as Lucas has done?
[/quote]
In some ways no, but it's still on a larger scale and it's still an action Lucas was nice enough to never take.

[quote/]

I'm not saying I actually expected them to try and follow relatively obscure books, it would just be nice if they weren't so dismissive about it. It stinks of profit over investment in fans.

I think you're inferring more than anything else.[/quote]
I'll just come right out and be honest: I'm incredibly lazy. I read Bob's news article without actually going to the site itself and reading the full post. I completely retract my statement about them being dismissive as the post shows that they clearly are not.

To be honest, I think Bob could have done a better job representing what Lucasfilm had to say.

 

[RicoADF]

I think it's better off this way, theres no way Disney would do the EU justice, if the new movies are junk then the community can ignore them and continue to enjoy the far better stories made by fans, if their good then you've got 2 sets of great star wars stories. This way everyone wins.

 

[Atmos Duality]

What do you mean "they don't care"? I think a lot of them do care. They couldn't just use the EU in the movies, but they've made it a side cannon, it's not a bad thing if you look at it logically

You want to talk "logic"?

Lets not dress this shit up: Disney doesn't care because to them Star Wars is just a brand to be exploited, nothing more.

Now, Lucas milked the motherfuck out of Star Wars, but the difference between him and Disney, is that for a good long while, he still cared...even if it was the care of a rich egotistical madman.

Disney has no such personal attachments.

The reality is that Disney wants to slash the EU entirely because it's too complicated and "geeky" for their new pet monkey JJ Abrams to work with, but at the same time they don't want to lose that EU revenue. So instead, they opted to rebrand it.

It makes perfect sense as business logic.
Ultimately, it's good news for Disney and their bottom line.

But for anyone who was invested in the EU, it's not good news; It's horrible news, because anyone who thinks about it LOGICALLY will realize that Disney is basically throwing out decades of work purely for their own convenience.

Kill the geek culture so that the popular culture can flourish.

Captcha: "Circle of life"
How serendipitous.

 

[RealRT]

Lucas doesn't call the shots anymore and it was already stated that Rebel Alliance did NOT form the way it was shown to in TFU.

He made it so, before Disney bought Star Wars. And since he did say so, it overwrites any explanation offered by the EU.

It was stated by the LucasFilm Story Group head AFTER the buyout. So yeah, TFU is non-canon now.

 

[ricree]

I always liked Timothy Zahn's books best, but the rest of the EU was garbage. Overpowered characters, lame plots, misuse and misunderstanding of the Force, every single character that got so much as a SECOND of screen time suddenly becoming somehow tangentially pivotal to the movies... bleah.

The Stackpole and Allston books were also pretty good. I also have fond memories of the A C Crispin Han Solo trilogy.

But yeah, there were a lot of books that really won't be missed. My super optimistic hope is that they will draw on the best of the EU for inspiration.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

The worst part about this is that they are simply ceasing to make new stories under the old Canon. I'd feel less hurt if they kept the two running continuities: new canon and old canon. But nope! All the stuff you cared about is now in stasis until we cherry pick the good ideas for our new movies.

 

[Do4600]

...You know what, I'm making it official, Lucasfilm is dead, it's done nothing to entertain me since May 24, 1989. Everything they've done since has only annoyed me to the point that I now have a Godzilla style fusion reaction of hatred happening in my chest whenever they mention anything having to do with Star Wars. I doubt that Star Wars VII will be anywhere near the awesomeness of the expanded universe masterpiece, Heir to the Empire. I also see no reason to think that J.J. Abrams will do anything but make a shitty blockbuster out of it. Lucasfilm alienates and infuriates me to a truly irrational degree, and they can just @#$% off, because some of the best things in Star Wars come from the Expanded Universe. Jesus, I am shaking with rage, pathetic.

 

[Skeleon]

Meh, at least the stuff in the movies still happened according to this new canon. Star Trek fans have it worse (unless you go for the "splitting timelines"-explanantion or similar).

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Meh, at least the stuff in the movies still happened according to this new canon. Star Trek fans have it worse (unless you go for the "splitting timelines"-explanantion or similar).

Star Trek got the Relaunch series, which, despite being non canon like all Star Trek books, maintained a continuity with itself and the television series. The Relaunch books are a continuation of Next Generation, Voyager and DS9.

The old Expanded Universe doesn't get to continue. It's in lockdown. There is no alternate continuity anymore. It's frozen in time, with nothing new being added to it. That's what hurts so much; I've followed the EU my entire life, and to see it all brought to an abrupt end with no new material in sight hurts.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

The original trilogy and the KotOR comics & games are the only canon for me.

Hey Disney, can we have a blu ray theatrical release of those three films please?

 

[exobook]

what people are mising the fact that disney is setting up a new eu with a few books set to be realesed in this new eu a new eu where everything is on the same cannon level everything in the old cannon will be rebranded as starwars legends and the authors will take stuff from the legends part of it and feed it into the main eu

yeah I suspect that the old EU is going to be the biggest ideas bucket in years. Within a decade I suspect that a lot of the old EU will be back in the new just in a different form. This of course does assume that the new films don't completely destroy any chance of that happening.