I’m picking up a pervasive mindset here that the best way to go is to outright reject anything you don’t like, and I dig that that works for many of you, but I really don’t feel the need to do that with the current canon. I understand where you’re all coming from, because the NJO books absolutely didn’t jibe with what Star Wars is for me and I never felt comfortable “counting” them, but honestly nothing that’s official right now has been objectionable enough for me to cut it out. I know most of you aren’t keeping up with new books and/or comics (except maybe Haseo) and so you have little incentive to invest in the official version of canon, but one of the things I enjoy about Star Wars is that there’s always more of it, and part of that bargain is allowing the duds to exist on the timeline. I find it much easier to just acknowledge that AOTC happened even though it sucked than it is to perform the mental gymnastics required to make it all hang together when some comic references the events of that film. Doesn’t mean I’m going to start watching it all the time, but I’m fine with it occupying a point in the chronology. Part of what draws me to these sorts of sprawling sci-fi/fantasy epics is the convoluted history of it all; I get a certain amount of joy just from the way things fit together that’s separate from my opinion of the individual things. I guess what I’m trying to say is that rolling with the official canon doesn’t necessarily have to equal jumping through hoops to make yourself love everything Lucasfilm puts its stamp on.
I totally feel this.
As I said
I don’t really have a personal canon of what I think really “happened” but I do have certain pieces of SW that I like and certain pieces that I don’t. There is a distinction between the two concepts.
So there are certain SW things that I like and some that I don’t, but I don’t have any desire to make a “personal canon” out of them. Is there any chance something like Labyrinth of Evil and the original Marvel run really happened in the same continuity? Unlikely, but I don’t really care.
When it comes to canon I have no issue accepting the “official” one. Just because the prequels aren’t great movies doesn’t mean I have to strip them from the franchise entirely and scoff off any new material that references them. When Darth Vader formed an army of battle droids I thought, who cares? that’s pretty cool. Honestly, if people had never seen the offending films the concept of Vader rebooting an old army of droids would have jazzed nearly everyone.
I totally understand how a prequel reference can ‘offend’ someone who doesn’t accept the prequels as canon. But my biggest problem with the prequels is that they didn’t feel like they were a part of the same universe as the OT, I’m happy with almost anything that ties the two trilogies together a little bit more. Rogue One did a pretty good job of tying the two trilogies together, IMO.
I’m with Cobb when it comes to canon. I accept all of the movies as canon. I may like Stover’s interpretation of RotS more than the movie, for example, but I still accept the movie as canon.