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Reboot the EU — Page 2

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19 novel epics... you're talking about the bleedin You-Zahn Pong invasion/NJO, aren't you? Stupid idea, that thing. Clever money-wise, though, making a lot of money off fans, something which Lucasfilm does so much with all the merchandise. I'm very restrictive about what I let myself buy. I don't want to get the latest unnecessary Star Wars coffee table book to put money in Georgie's pocket. Still, I have given Georgie a fair share oof money anyway. (:

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Vaderisnothayden said:

oof

I'm guessing you're referring to Star Wars - The Original Original Film ;-)

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::scratches head:: Can't find where I said oof. Maybe it was Original Original Fuckingtrilogy.

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Vaderisnothayden said:

19 novel epics... you're talking about the bleedin You-Zahn Pong invasion/NJO, aren't you? Stupid idea, that thing. Clever money-wise, though, making a lot of money off fans, something which Lucasfilm does so much with all the merchandise. I'm very restrictive about what I let myself buy. I don't want to get the latest unnecessary Star Wars coffee table book to put money in Georgie's pocket. Still, I have given Georgie a fair share oof money anyway. (:

lol

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 (Edited)

The best answer is to decanonize the special editions and the prequels, and go back and use the original films as inspiration for new EU material.

The modern stuff comes from the bad prequel mentality.

Hell i even prefer Jaxxon the Bunny over Jar Jar Binks.

 

Jar Jar was bad enough but Hayden Vader/Anakin and dumb Padme were enough to make me want to throw rocks at the theater screen.

Any star wars projects Lucas has had a direct say in or connection to have sucked since post return of the jedi.  I mean it might sound wrong but the dude needs to be fired from his own creation since he is the problem.

To me the Zahn Trilogy was a great era for the EU.  I made me want to see more star wars films.  Instead my childhood memories were trodden upon with garbage looney tune style characters, bad cgi and even worse 1 dimensional characters and nonsense plots, and a almost deliberate break from continuity of the oot. If there was anything i could undue in star wars it would be the special editions and the prequels.  Made star wars into a fucking joke and for what to make money?

If not for the Legacy comics and Kotor series and sometimes a good eu novel here or there i would have parted ways with star wars forever because Lucas is still destroying star wars.  With the Clone Wars cgi toon, the upcoming live actions series and that awful force unleashed and its sequel.  Everything now is a branching off of the bad prequels even the EU. 

Star Wars is forever ruined and tarnished.  Its deserved legacy is compromised, if that is not bad enough the real original films are buried never to see the light of day again, ever.

Other fans probably have developed an imaginary time machine in their minds where they can go back before 1997 and unruin star wars.

Me i will never forget.  Lucas destroyed his own legacy.  Now his legacy is cgi.  lets see if that lasts 30  years or more,lol.

 

This thread should be called erase the Prequel Trilogy from Existence, that would solve the EU problem halfway already.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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I agree that Star Wars needs Lucas to quit having control over it or contributing to it, but I don't see that as likely. He's really fucked it up.

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skyjedi2005 said:

The best answer is to decanonize the special editions and the prequels, and go back and use the original films as inspiration for new EU material.

The modern stuff comes from the bad prequel mentality.

Hell i even prefer Jaxxon the Bunny over Jar Jar Binks.

 

Jar Jar was bad enough but Hayden Vader/Anakin and dumb Padme were enough to make me want to throw rocks at the theater screen.

Any star wars projects Lucas has had a direct say in or connection to have sucked since post return of the jedi.  I mean it might sound wrong but the dude needs to be fired from his own creation since he is the problem.

To me the Zahn Trilogy was a great era for the EU.  I made me want to see more star wars films.  Instead my childhood memories were trodden upon with garbage looney tune style characters, bad cgi and even worse 1 dimensional characters and nonsense plots, and a almost deliberate break from continuity of the oot. If there was anything i could undue in star wars it would be the special editions and the prequels.  Made star wars into a fucking joke and for what to make money?

If not for the Legacy comics and Kotor series and sometimes a good eu novel here or there i would have parted ways with star wars forever because Lucas is still destroying star wars.  With the Clone Wars cgi toon, the upcoming live actions series and that awful force unleashed and its sequel.  Everything now is a branching off of the bad prequels even the EU. 

Star Wars is forever ruined and tarnished.  Its deserved legacy is compromised, if that is not bad enough the real original films are buried never to see the light of day again, ever.

Other fans probably have developed an imaginary time machine in their minds where they can go back before 1997 and unruin star wars.

Me i will never forget.  Lucas destroyed his own legacy.  Now his legacy is cgi.  lets see if that lasts 30  years or more,lol.

 

This thread should be called erase the Prequel Trilogy from Existence, that would solve the EU problem halfway already.

Have you even watched the Clone Wars cartoon, or are you basing your information of it on second hand information? I have not seen the pilot movie (I am still scared of it because it does not look like it has much redeeming value), but the show itself actually surprised me with how good it is, especially once I got to the third disc of season 1. Even though I can certainly imagine that in the movie theater the animation would have looked like poo, it actually looks darned good for an animated TV show. The last CG cartoon I saw that actually made me go "wow" was Starship Troopers, and Clone Wars was the first one since then that managed to do it. And the stories, while some of them are juvenile, a lot of them actually deal with subject matter a lot deeper than even the original trilogy delved into, which for a "kids' cartoon" is very refreshing.

This thread more and more seems to be backing up a long running theory I have: if Lucas puts his name on something, a certain portion of fans are going to automatically decide that it's irredeemably bad and denounce it as destroying their beloved franchise. Am I honestly the only one who's noticed that it's only the fanboys who ever complain about there being such a large perceived quality gap between the original trilogy and the prequels? What about that girl on TheForce.net's podcast who was a "Star Wars virgin" who after viewing the saga in chronological order actually for the most part liked the prequels better (except for-- oddly-enough-- Return of the Jedi)?

I am not saying that the prequels are without fault-- lord knows I've made up plenty of lists of all the stuff I would cut from them, and I would rather watch the Phantom Edits over the theatrical cuts any day of the week. However, I think that 90% of the fan-rage over the sequels is blown out of proportion and mostly comes from fanboys being unable to remove the nostalgia goggles when viewing the originals, and thefore percieve them as being vastly superior to the prequels to the point where the prequels are unwatchable.

The solace I can rest in is that when the next generation of Star Wars fanboys grows up, and George Lucas's son or whoever decides to make episodes 7 8 and 9 or whatever large-scale multi-media project comes next, a bunch of the kids who grew up with the prequels are going to rant and roar about how inferior the "new" Star Wars is to the six moves they grew up watching. At that point, I'll be able to roll my head back and laugh while saying "I've seen all this happen before."

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Timstuff said:

skyjedi2005 said:

The best answer is to decanonize the special editions and the prequels, and go back and use the original films as inspiration for new EU material.

The modern stuff comes from the bad prequel mentality.

Hell i even prefer Jaxxon the Bunny over Jar Jar Binks.

 

Jar Jar was bad enough but Hayden Vader/Anakin and dumb Padme were enough to make me want to throw rocks at the theater screen.

Any star wars projects Lucas has had a direct say in or connection to have sucked since post return of the jedi.  I mean it might sound wrong but the dude needs to be fired from his own creation since he is the problem.

To me the Zahn Trilogy was a great era for the EU.  I made me want to see more star wars films.  Instead my childhood memories were trodden upon with garbage looney tune style characters, bad cgi and even worse 1 dimensional characters and nonsense plots, and a almost deliberate break from continuity of the oot. If there was anything i could undue in star wars it would be the special editions and the prequels.  Made star wars into a fucking joke and for what to make money?

If not for the Legacy comics and Kotor series and sometimes a good eu novel here or there i would have parted ways with star wars forever because Lucas is still destroying star wars.  With the Clone Wars cgi toon, the upcoming live actions series and that awful force unleashed and its sequel.  Everything now is a branching off of the bad prequels even the EU. 

Star Wars is forever ruined and tarnished.  Its deserved legacy is compromised, if that is not bad enough the real original films are buried never to see the light of day again, ever.

Other fans probably have developed an imaginary time machine in their minds where they can go back before 1997 and unruin star wars.

Me i will never forget.  Lucas destroyed his own legacy.  Now his legacy is cgi.  lets see if that lasts 30  years or more,lol.

 

This thread should be called erase the Prequel Trilogy from Existence, that would solve the EU problem halfway already.

Have you even watched the Clone Wars cartoon, or are you basing your information of it on second hand information? I have not seen the pilot movie (I am still scared of it because it does not look like it has much redeeming value), but the show itself actually surprised me with how good it is, especially once I got to the third disc of season 1. Even though I can certainly imagine that in the movie theater the animation would have looked like poo, it actually looks darned good for an animated TV show. The last CG cartoon I saw that actually made me go "wow" was Starship Troopers, and Clone Wars was the first one since then that managed to do it. And the stories, while some of them are juvenile, a lot of them actually deal with subject matter a lot deeper than even the original trilogy delved into, which for a "kids' cartoon" is very refreshing.

This thread more and more seems to be backing up a long running theory I have: if Lucas puts his name on something, a certain portion of fans are going to automatically decide that it's irredeemably bad and denounce it as destroying their beloved franchise. Am I honestly the only one who's noticed that it's only the fanboys who ever complain about there being such a large perceived quality gap between the original trilogy and the prequels? What about that girl on TheForce.net's podcast who was a "Star Wars virgin" who after viewing the saga in chronological order actually for the most part liked the prequels better (except for-- oddly-enough-- Return of the Jedi)?

I am not saying that the prequels are without fault-- lord knows I've made up plenty of lists of all the stuff I would cut from them, and I would rather watch the Phantom Edits over the theatrical cuts any day of the week. However, I think that 90% of the fan-rage over the sequels is blown out of proportion and mostly comes from fanboys being unable to remove the nostalgia goggles when viewing the originals, and thefore percieve them as being vastly superior to the prequels to the point where the prequels are unwatchable.

The solace I can rest in is that when the next generation of Star Wars fanboys grows up, and George Lucas's son or whoever decides to make episodes 7 8 and 9 or whatever large-scale multi-media project comes next, a bunch of the kids who grew up with the prequels are going to rant and roar about how inferior the "new" Star Wars is to the six moves they grew up watching. At that point, I'll be able to roll my head back and laugh while saying "I've seen all this happen before."

There you go again, using calling stuff fanboyism as a way of putting things down. No, it's not only the fan boys who see such a big gap in quality between the OT and PT. It's the generally accepted view outside of Lucas worshippers that the prequels are far lower in quality than the original trilogy. The prequels ARE that bad. I have studied them in depth and dissected their faults and I have carefully studied the originals in the cold hard light of the modern day and compared them. The originals do work far better than the prequels. That's not just some "fanboy" delusion.

Personally I've seen the Clone Wars cartoon and found it works far better than the prequels. It's still not proper Star wars (it doesn't have a chance to be, considering the way it's founded on the bogus prequels), but it works a lot better than the prequels. Many people who see a great gap in quality between the prequels and originals also find the animated show more tolerable. We don't automatically hate anything Lucas does. We can actually think intelligently and we're not all deluded or blinded by nostalgia.

You don't see the great gap in quality between the prequels and originals, so you conclude that it's not there and that those who see it must be deluding themselves. I think you owe it to yourself to question that conclusion.

The original films are exceptional. That's why so many people love them. If their exceptionality was only a nostalgia-caused delusion they wouldn't have become the legend they did. The prequels are exceptional only in how faulted they are (most notably AOTC and ROTS, TPM being a bit better). As for the kids of the present day when they're grown up, 20 or 30 years from now there won't be that many people caring about the prequels the way people still care about the originals, because the prequels don't have the conviction of imagination or the emotional depth of the originals.

Lucas didn't simply make new films that were of far lower quality than the originals. If it were just that, people wouldn't be so bothered. Rather, he revised his vision, changing the nature of Anakin and the emotional style of Star Wars, while also rejecting the original Star Wars by replacing the originals with the special edition. He made a dramatic break with the original Star Wars. We are not being deluded in recognizing that break.

 

 

 

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There is a gap, and if there wasn't I wouldn't be a regular at a website that specializes in fan edits. However, the gap is ridiculously overblown by fanboys in comparison to what it actually is. My parents view all 6 movies as being similarly cheesy and the only real thing they complain about in the prequels over the OT is that they can't stand Jar Jar's baby talk. With fanboys though, the movies also had to pass through the additional scrutiny of not having 20+ years of nostalgia to back them up. It's not that I believe that the prequels are better than they actually are, I just accept that the original trilogy is not as grand as my nostalgic feelings for it would incline me to think.

If the prequels were as bad as people make them out to be then they wouldn't be nearly as popular. They segmented the fanbase into those who accept them and those who do not, but to most people outside of our fandom, their attitude towards all six movies is "it's Star Wars."

Also, before you jump in and say "people will buy anything with Star Wars on it," I'll point to the theatrically run Clone Wars pilot which only grossed 68 million dollars. Yeah, that's still no chump change (especially considering it barely cost them anything to release), but compared to the other Star Wars films it's pretty unimpressive that it couldn't break 100 million. People will watch what tickles their fancy, and in the case of the prequel trilogy a great many people liked them enough to push them to the top of the box office and DVD charts. Clearly, general opinion of the movies is not nearly as negative as one might think if just looking at some of the comments of the fans (and even in the fanbase the margins aren't nearly as negetive, because complainers are always the loudest).

Something I've noticed in talking with my non-geeky friends is that they find Star Wars fans to be quite amusing. Some even go so far as equating the malevolance of fans towards George Lucas as being like if Christians were constantly angry at Jesus, which to us might sound absurd, but that's because we're not on the outside looking in. To the non-fan, Star Wars fanboys are an argumentive lot who are impossible to fully please, and when we're not bickering with each other we're biting the hand that feeds us.

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Ask me 5 years ago and I'd say Phantom Menace was garbage. Ask me today, after it's been out over 10 years, and I'll say it's pretty good.

They're the type of movies that kind of bring you back to your youth, when you just went to see good conquer evil...with lasers. The stories in these movies have never been really solid, but they have a lot of nostalgia tied to them, and that's what brings people back.

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Reboot it. If you're going to try to the "consistent story arc" thing, that's the way to do it. And it's not like they'd lose money...

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Just do what Star Trek does. They don't worry about consistency between the books.

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TheBoost said:

Let the new material have 12 hours of movies to be consistent with, and ignore everything else.

Those 12 hours are not even consistent with themselves!

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TheBoost said:

What happened to rescuing the princess and blowing up bad guys?

 

That ship sailed in 1980

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Oh, I'd definately like to see the EU rebooted, especially the PT/NJO/Legacy era EU, or at least have some alternate continuities created to run alongside the main EU.

Of course, I doubt it's going to happen (at least not for anytime soon). Not only are the EU writers just a bunch of ass-kissing sycophants, but the fans are as well. There was even a discussion on this very topic on theforce.net, and most of the posters there said they were dead set against having anything Star Wars that existed outside the main continuity (they actually think allowing someone to write an alternate PT, NJO, etc. would result in the main EU being rebooted. Don't ask me why they think that, though. Their reasoning sucks.)

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You can always do what I do, which is to use the power of Nihilism to negate the validity of the parts that suck.

Unfortunately, that means that you have to throw out about 98% of what's there, but that's the price that must be paid.

For me, the actual unmolested films are obviously of greatest importance, followed by the works of Brian Daley and Timothy Zahn.  Pretty much everything else I'm convinced had to have gestated in a dog's rectum, though how prone to digestive disturbance the dog was in each particular case does vary.

I also have some theories about where the Zahn-haters originated, but I'll refrain from mentioning those.

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That's about all you can do to preserve a sense of SW spirit.

Shatterpoint did excite me over the notion of having an R-rated prequel though. That would have been worth watching: Star Wars meets Apocalypse Now.

VADER!? WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOCHA LATTE? -Palpy on a very bad day.
“George didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys.”-Harrison Ford
YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DamnFoolIdealisticCrusader

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I wouldnt mind reading a few more EU novels sometimes, but what makes me give up on one halfway thru is mostly all the references to stuff that happened in other books.

You can never go home again, but i guess you can shop there.

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Half the problem with the EU these days is trying to fit in "everything before it" including retconning the previous retcons to satisfy a presumably ever shrinking minority of fans who actually care about that stuff.

Another problem is Lucas' meddling. It seems like he shows up at the last minute to screw around with the story and everyone just bows to him because he owns Star Wars. I guess this is asking the man to show a little restraint and allow others to be creative around him, and maybe that's too tall an order, but I think it could be done. He's not planning to make any new movies (right?) so it could work. Trouble is he's making that TV show.

A reboot would only work well if they just jettisoned the previous EU in the process. Once you start this new series, you'd have to stick to some kind of consistent storyline if you're going to go that route. A starting point would either be looking at the six film saga alone, or the original trilogy alone (before Lucas screwed his own continuity way worse than anyone could have imagined in the early 80's).

How do you maintain a consistent story line, you ask? Get together and create a "Writer's Bible." Make everyone contributing to this new EU stick to it. Plan stuff out in advance, too, that helps. In short, do things the opposite of how Lucas does them.

That, or as someone suggested, DON'T BOTHER WITH CONSISTENCY and just make each book/comic/game/etc (or "series" by an author) a self-contained story set in the basic Star Wars universe, and don't even pretend you're not doing it.

And finally, I know it's the human thing to do, to have every two bit hack writer make it their "dream" to write Star Wars stuff to try to make a name for themselves or revitalize a flagging career... but really, don't bring in people as favors or whatnot, stick to people who really want to contribute quality stories to the universe, not self aggrandize. It has got to be possible to do these stories that are actually written well and planned well. "Fanservice" only belongs in the games, period.

How this could be done realistically is that the regular EU would continue its life-support downward spiral as normal, but you'd have a seperate "continuity" of EU, say the New Expanded Universe or something, with either the stand alone stories set in the same universe (a bit like "infinities" but without the self-sabotaging suckage like it's a "magical reset button/mirror universe" crapfest) or else the pre-planned, stick-to-the-writers-bible universe.

 

I believe Marvel comics had a secondary continuity with their "Ultimate" series, and before that DC had their "alternate Earths." These universes don't have to intersect (and probably shouldn't) nor should they try to "resolve" them into one continuity with some absurd plot device, just put them aside and take away all pretension that you're going to try to keep all those now conflicting stories straight from the old series. You have to start somewhere, so only the six "Episode" movies (or just the OT) would count.

Let the concept of "canon" rot, or just redefine it. Series 1 (old stuff), Series 2 (new continuity).

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You know i just about have given up on the EU.  The last decent EU i can think of was the Legacy comics series and that has been canceled it ends at issue 50.  Also Kotor comics which had little to do with the games, also done.

New Comics will be probably tie ins to The Old Republic game, and a graphic novel adaptation of Force Unleashed II. 

The new novels in fate of the jedi are such low quality and come out so slowly that it is hard to care.  They and the other recent books are the reason tie in fiction has a bad name for a reason,lol.

I am sick of the clones already been done to death.  So has the spirit transfer idea, and whatever else bad idea was cooked up by Dark Empire or Kevin Anderson.

Funny thing is i would take some of the bad mid 90's EU any day over this prequel derived Lucashed Crap.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Yeah, I have to agree, as mediocre as some of the 90's era stuff was, it was still only based on the original trilogy, and the writers didn't have to deal with feeling like they had to tie it all into the prequel garbage, or retcon the hell out of the existing stories when the continuity started to go to hell.  Not to mention the filth of the New Jedi Order and later things had yet to happen, so the name of Star Wars EU hadn't yet been sullied to anywhere near the degree that it has now.

Even Timothy Zahn, whose work I adore, hasn't been immune to this problem.  It's very bizarre to hear Luke and Mara suddenly talking about separatists and droidekas when previously they had known virtually nothing about the clone wars era aside from the fact that the clones had been the enemy of the Old Republic.  Frankly, I like that idea a lot more than anything the prequels presented, and in my mind Zahn's original ideas are how it 'really' happened back then.  Also, Vision of the Future was such an awesome grand finale that it should have been the conclusion of the entire Star Wars story (and can still be regarded as such).

It just blows so much that the official publications have to be made to fit with each other, when that is becoming ever more of a joke and impossibility.  I don't even think rebooting the EU would be any good, because then it would just have to start from scratch based only on the officially recognised material, which is the SE's and prequels, and wouldn't be true to the original conception of what Star Wars was all about in any way.  Selective nihilism is the only way to go if you want to retain any enjoyment of the things that actually are good.

If some folks wanted to, say, write their own unofficial stories that only made use of the good stuff and discarded the rest, that would be brilliant; but then of course you run into the problem that 'fan fiction' has a bad name with a lot of people, due to most of it being written by illiterate thirteen year olds.  Although it's an amusingly disturbing truth that the better fan-created works often surpass published material in quality . . .

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hairy_hen said:

...and in my mind Zahn's original ideas are how it 'really' happened back then.  

I still wish we had a clear look into Zahn's "bible" on what he assumed about the prequels.  He obviously spent a lot of time trying to guess at what it would be.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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He did create a whole scenario for the clone wars, but wasn't allowed to describe it in any great detail.  Keeping it mysterious works for the purposes of the story, though, and is justified by references to many historical records having been lost, either to the rampant destruction or in an attempt by the Empire to rewrite history to reflect their own perspective.

But yeah, I really would like to know exactly what it was that he came up with.  Interestingly, his first outlines had the character that would become Joruus C'baoth originally being an insane clone of Obi-wan!  That could have been a really weird and twisted story thread, but he wasn't allowed to do that either, and of course it works very well in its final form.

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hairy_hen said:

Yeah, I have to agree, as mediocre as some of the 90's era stuff was, it was still only based on the original trilogy, and the writers didn't have to deal with feeling like they had to tie it all into the prequel garbage, or retcon the hell out of the existing stories when the continuity started to go to hell.  Not to mention the filth of the New Jedi Order and later things had yet to happen, so the name of Star Wars EU hadn't yet been sullied to anywhere near the degree that it has now.

 And this is exactly the reason why I can't stand the current EU. Prequelisms - everywhere. It doesn't matter if the story takes place in the distant past or into the far future, if it's warranted or not, there has to be a reference to something spawned from the PT.

Does every Sith have to dress like a Goth and carry a red lightsaber? Does every Jedi have to dress like a desert hermit? Do children have to be called "younglings"? No, absolutely not. But 100.99% of all the EU writers are sycophants who can't - won't - let us forget about that godforsaken PT.

If only the fantards would wisen up and stop lapping up this BS. Then - and perhaps only then - this madness would come to an end ... or at least be played down.