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Should the prequels and TFA be considered canon?

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I don’t believe Lucasfilm or Disney should dictate what is or is not canon. I think the fans should decide this. Just because Lucas decided that he wanted to put a young Anakin at the end of ROTJ and have Han shoot first doesn’t mean we have to accept it as canon.

Likewise the prequels should not be considered canon, because they’re bad films and because of the numerous discrepancies between the prequels and the OT. Basically, we shouldn’t recognize anything prior to ANH, and that includes the Clone Wars cartoon.

The prequels will only get worse with age, and I strongly feel that maybe in ten years, Disney will succumb to pressure from the fans and retcon them.

I think the same will eventually happen with TFA, and Disney will realize they should have brought the Zahn trilogy to the big screen instead of Jar Jar Abram’s boondoggle.

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Betteridge’s law of headlines is strong with this one.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Admiral Motti said:

the prequels should not be considered canon, because they’re bad films

I don’t think that’s how that works.

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As far as the idea that the Zahn books would have made a better movie than TFA is concerned, I reread Heir earlier this year, and while I still like the book an awful lot, it’s so much more flawed and bizarre than people seem to want to admit. A lot of what worked on the page in 1991 would not translate to the screen in 2016. And anyway, piss and moan all you want about the lack of originality, but the character dynamics in TFA are a whole lot more interesting than the Super Best Friends Club of the cherished early EU. I’ll take shell-shocked Luke and backsliding Han over their well-adjusted Legends counterparts any day.

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I think we’ve been over this a couple times before, but canon is whatever you want it to be. Something being “official” means just as much as something being unofficial. Free yourself from the notion that it matters.

I actually heard Pablo Hidalgo give an interesting opinion on canon the other day during his extended interview on The Star Wars Show.

Keep Circulating the Tapes.

END OF LINE

(It hasn’t happened yet)

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Canon is a lie, given that it’s all entirely fictional anyway. Unlearn what you have learned.

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suspiciouscoffee said:

Canon is a lie, given that it’s all entirely fictional anyway. Unlearn what you have learned.

This.

What George Lucas/Kathleen Kennedy/JJ Abrams/Dave Filoni/Pablo Hidalgo consider canon has absolutely no bearing on what is “true” unless you allow it to.

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Just came across this video;

https://youtu.be/MPH44H9K-T8?t=4m39s

It’s not explicitly about Star Wars, it’s about The Elder Scrolls, but there’s a 4 or so minute section about Star Wars canon. It should skip to that section automatically.

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Should the prequels and TFA be considered canon?

Yes.
And CW… and TCW… and Rebels… and Rogue One… and Episodes VIII-IX-X-XI-XII-…-XXX (starring Vin Diesel I hope)… but you’re not obliged to watch everything, especially what you don’t like.

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Admiral Motti said:

I don’t believe Lucasfilm or Disney should dictate what is or is not canon.

They don’t.

I think the fans should decide this.

They do.

Now then, if you’re talking official canon, who cares? You shouldn’t. But if you insist that you must, how in the world would the fans decide? A vote?

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Well, this is why people have their own head-canon, just pick what you like and ignore the rest.

(I ignore the PT and treat the Disney films as interesting fan-films. That might be an odd solution, but it works for me.)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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MalàStrana said:

Should the prequels and TFA be considered canon?

Yes.
And CW… and TCW… and Rebels… and Rogue One… and Episodes VIII-IX-X-XI-XII-…-XXX (starring Vin Diesel I hope)… but you’re not obliged to watch everything, especially what you don’t like.

Pretty much this

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I like to think of things in different levels. If you adhere to the original movie being it, that really doesn’t fit in with the idea of canon so here is how I look at it.

OT - Platinum Canon
OT & PT - Gold Canon
OT, PT, & ST - Silver Canon
OT, PT, ST, Rogue One, Clone Wars & Rebels - Bronze Canon

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yotsuya said:

I like to think of things in different levels. If you adhere to the original movie being it, that really doesn’t fit in with the idea of canon so here is how I look at it.

OT - Platinum Canon
OT & PT - Gold Canon
OT, PT, & ST - Silver Canon
OT, PT, ST, Rogue One, Clone Wars & Rebels - Bronze Canon

OT, PT, ST, Rogue One, Clone Wars, Rebels, Novels & Comics - Participation Award Canon

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yotsuya said:

I like to think of things in different levels. If you adhere to the original movie being it, that really doesn’t fit in with the idea of canon so here is how I look at it.

OT - Platinum Canon
OT & PT - Gold Canon
OT, PT, & ST - Silver Canon

This makes sense in theory but not as much in practice. The PT is well…the PT and the ST isn’t even close to being over. Pretty premature ranking in my opinion.

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Either you accept the official canon or you do not.
If you do it’s all in.
If you don’t it’s up to you.

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At least the Star Wars sequels and prequels were made with the same actors, staff, and company. It’s not like they’re Christmas Story 2 or something where noone from the last one was involved.

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By the way now that Disney is going to go as far as Episode XII, how to call the second sequel trilogy ? SST (love it, but not to be confused with StarShip Troopers), or could the new 6 films as a whole be called the sequel hexalogy, aka SH ? But it would make the first 6 films the Original Hexalogy, or OH (originalhexalogy.com ?).

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There were only ever two possible outcomes for a sequel trilogy.

Either Lucasfilm was going to figure out a way to set it within the continuity of the EU (in which case Chewie would be long dead and the ending would neccessarily allow for the Legacy comics to still happen a hundred years later), or they were going to completely start over per George’s wishes.

I never understood why people thought something like a Thrawn Trilogy adaptation was a possibility for the ST. The mere fact that the story would be spoiled already was reason enough for it to stay off the table as an option.

Setting a sequel trilogy within the existing continuity is always what I assumed they’d do. After all, most of the major characters were still alive in the novels with the exception of Chewie.

Most people angry about the EU reboot probably think it was all Disney’s doing when it was entirely up to George. He apparently never considered the books canon to begin with, even though Lucasfilm touted them as “the official continuation of the story” and gladly took people’s money for it.

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Fang Zei said:

There were only ever two possible outcomes for a sequel trilogy.

Either Lucasfilm was going to figure out a way to set it within the continuity of the EU (in which case Chewie would be long dead and the ending would neccessarily allow for the Legacy comics to still happen a hundred years later), or they were going to completely start over per George’s wishes.

I never understood why people thought something like a Thrawn Trilogy adaptation was a possibility for the ST. The mere fact that the story would be spoiled already was reason enough for it to stay off the table as an option.

I think straight to DVD cartoon adaptations of EU material a la DC Comics animated movies would be a good idea (especially if they could get Hamill to at least voice Luke), but the idea of them ever doing a live action EU-based movie was always silly to me. Even when I was a little kid I knew that there was no chance of an eventual live action sequel movie being based on the book canon. I hardly ever read SW books but I knew from a friend who’d read quite a few that the canonicity was ridiculous.

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If one is to have a healthy head, he/she should not consider PT and TFA as head-canon.

真実