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

[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.

 

[Jesse Ron]

In the words of Darth Vader, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!".

 

[Jingle Fett]

C'mon people, learn to read

they will now do so in the context of an official unified canon maintained by an official Lucasfilm Story Group, which will also decide which characters and concepts from the former EU can be repurposed by future filmmakers and authors

This means that not necessarily all of the EU will be dropped. A lot of it may be, but they can cherry pick what they like and leave out what they don't like. This means if they feel like it, they can keep characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn, Mara Jade, Admiral Daala, etc....And drop the stuff they don't like (like the Yuuzhan Vong or some of the weirder/crappier stuff).

 

[spartandude]

Pro- The Old Republic MMO is therefore non canon.... so give Obsidian the rights Knights Of The Old Republic franchise!

Con- The Heir To The Empire trilogy is now non canon.

 

[Gabanuka]

I really don't see why this is a big deal.

So what, the extra stuff no longer match to one official fictional history. It's no like the stories fade from existance, they still exist and are still great.

Hell most of the best DC comics are Elseworlds. All Star Superman, Red Son, Kingdom Come, etc

Except that now they're no better than fanfiction, they've been disavowed.

It doesn't devalue them as stories. The problem with Fanfiction is that the majority of it is shit not that it's not canon.

Besides the EU is still being released by official sources, just go the 'Alternative Universe' route if canon is so important. There are now two Star Wars universes.

 

[putowtin]

Ahh sod it all, gave up caring about this after Jar Jar Binks...

Disney do as you will this one no longer cares!


(Who am I kidding... the X Wing books, Wedge... Face... NOOOOOOOO!)

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Fans own SW, not the company. They will keep the EU alive because they believe in it.

The EU isn't going away but as for the official canon, referencing the EU with names/planets is probably the best we're going to get.

Whatevs. The books aren't going to be burned.

 

[Alterego-X]

It doesn't devalue them as stories. The problem with Fanfiction is that the majority of it is shit not that it's not canon.

The problem with fanfiction is not that the "majority is shit", the majority of EVERYTHING is shit, the problem is that with published media, people have an interest in the best top few stories, and ignore everything else that is shit, while with works that are legally declared to be "fanfiction", there is a desire to mock them by focusing on the shitty average and the infamous nonsense ones, instead of the quality ones.

 

[MiskWisk]

It doesn't devalue them as stories. The problem with Fanfiction is that the majority of it is shit not that it's not canon.

The problem with fanfiction is not that the "majority is shit", the majority of EVERYTHING is shit, the problem is that with published media, people have an interest in the best top few stories, and ignore everything else that is shit, while with works that are legally declared to be "fanfiction", there is a desire to mock them by focusing on the shitty average and the infamous nonsense ones, instead of the quality ones.

This. So much this. Have a cookie good sir.

OT: Saw this coming. Hopefully just a case of poor communication and they're just going to cherry pick the good stuff while ignoring the Vong bad stuff.

On a side note, while reading this thread, I somehow got it into my head that they are planning on merging the Kingdom Hearts storyline with this. I have no clue where that came from but, damn it all, that would leave me on the floor laughing my lungs out.

 

[Shiftygiant]

It's hard to get upset over something that is little more than fanfiction being declared non-canon.

All fiction not made by the original authors are in essence fan-fic. People are pissed because what the have dedicated a fair amount of time too has just been rendered meaningless. All the story's and characters they loved and the future of the series is no longer meaningful and was pointless. It'd like if Marvel or DC suddenly declared huge chunks of there back catalog to be non-canoh wait.

 

[Nowhere Man]

Well at least now we don't have to deal with a canon that has the emperor being cloned and coming back to life. I got the impression from that article that Disney was still going to be cherry picking things from the EU. So can we get Mara Jade too?

 

[UniversalRonin]

Wait, so no Kyle Katarn? He is the best thing about the post-Return of The Jedi stuff.

If we're very good, Darth Micky might bring him to life in some form or other... *Starts praying* I hope that B*stard mouse does. Because let's face it, once they nerfed Boba, who else could fill the gap of coolest character.