C3PX said:Vaderisnothayden said:That's the OT. The OT has a right to be revisionist.
Why is that exactly? In fact, I find both those things I mentioned as very irritating retcons. If George could retcon the snot out of his movies back then, why isn't he allowed to do it now?
I already went into the answer to that in detail (see my last post).
But to elaborate on that further... look at the context of his retcons and revisionism:
In the OT you have retconning as part of the ongoing process of creating the OT, which is the great work of Star Wars. The retcons leave some bits that don't look great (some of Ben's lines look a bit funny, for example) but it's done as part of films that work. All three original Star Wars films keep up some form of the same spirit and mentality and they work and work as a unit and they do not betray what went before.
Whereas with the prequels the revisionism is part of a project that totally betrayed the spirit and mentality of the great stuff that went before. Films that failed. And Lucas had already stabbed the OT in the back by mutilating it in the SE, which took from the validity of everything he did after that point. The prequel revisionism comes after Lucas had already tried to make Han shoot second, which goes beyond retcon into full on giving Star Wars the finger. And the prequel revisionism is very much part of that reenvisioning of Star Wars that led to soulless crap films that betrayed and screwed up Star Wars.
Whereas the OT retcons enhanced the films in certain ways -neatly wrapping up the love triangle, giving Leia more significance, creating a deeper bond between Luke and Leia and giving Darth Vader a whole new dimension.
The lack of quality of the prequels and the way they betrayed Star Wars is very relevant when judging the validity of their revisionism.
And there's no getting away from Lucas's big break from Star Wars. Lucas took some breaks in between making the OT films, but he didn't leave Star Wars behind for years in between those films and come back with a different attitude. With the SE and the PT, he left Star Wars behind and came back without the magic that had made Star Wars work. And without that magic that was what was needed to make it work, he didn't have the license to fuck with the OT's stuff. If he'd done mediocre prequel films that were at least loyal to his OT-era vision then I would have found them significantly less annoying. But he did one mediocre revisionist film and two awful revisionist films.
And now every last Sith is called Darth something or other. Darth Toilet Seat.
At the end of the day, it is still just EU. Not sure why you felt obligated to do so. All the other EU books are being pushed as THE story after the trilogy, before the sags, and all the spaces inbetween. Do you read each one of those? The Force Unleashed is THE story between the trilogies, doesn't mean you HAVE to read the tripe.
Shadows was pushed as more than all those other EU stories.
Being a fan of something is suppose to be because you enjoy it. I cannot imagine turning what is suppose to be pleasure into a chore, and somehow feeling obligated to throw my money at something I don't want, and to waste my precious time reading something I don't like.
If you care about something, you can care about where it is taken and what's done with it. Then you may investigate areas of its development you don't particularly enjoy because the core thing matters to you.
Sometimes you come off sounding like you are a victim of Lucas and his evil greedy plots, I don't mean to sound like a Lucas apologist by any means, but you must realize, you are only a victim of yourself.
I would disagree. I didn't mutilate the OT or destroy the saga with the PT. Nor did I push Shadows as important and I didn't make it a load of fan fictiony crap.