Tyrphanax

I'm down for the "PT was just a fever nightmare" thing. Nice.

SilverWook said:

Wookiees! Perhaps we will see a familiar looking young Imperial officer get stuck with a life debt, and the best pal a smuggler could have? ;)

Was just thinking that. Very cool possibility!

Plus, with confirmation that the big three are coming back, and the fact that since the format has been proven with The Clone Wars and ostensibly has a much higher budget now, maybe we could see some small cameo voices...?

I'm so excited right now. I'm just gonna jump right on the hype train immediately. I don't know any of the new actors (aside from Serkis and von Sydow, of course), but that's okay with me. At least I don't have any negative connotations with them.

I feel like the absence of Billy Dee, Lawson, Bulloch and other people doesn't exactly mean they won't show up at some point down the line. In fact, I'd say that the first film needs as few extraneous cameos as possible in order to build up the new characters as legit to a jaded and cynical audience.

I'm really, really jazzed.

TheBoost said:

Tobar said:

The decision in regards to the EU was purely an internal one and Disney had no part in it.

 Stop defending Di$ney. 

 Thank God we can still put dollar signs in these words!

darklordoftech said:

They wanted to kill Luke, but Lucas wouldn't let them.

Exactly, which means they should have dropped the whole idea of killing an OT character off altogether.

SilverWook said:

Killing Lando likely would have caused a bigger uproar than Chewie.

Yeah, that's my point. Chewie was the safest bet, which I always thought made his death pointless and silly because they killed him ostensibly to show that "nobody was safe" when, if they really wanted to show that, they'd have picked one of the big three and eaten the backlash it caused.

I think we all still knew that everyone else was safe, even after Chewie died, which just made the whole thing an exercise in futility.

From my point of view.

Vozlov said:

You simply cannot kill any of the lead characters without changing the fundamental group dynamic, and thus the established narrative trend.

The only reason Chewie was allowed to go is because he comparatively had the least involvement in said dynamic.

This is it exactly, and that is why when they say they killed Chewie to show that "no one is safe" is a pile of crap, because Chewie was the absolute safest kill they could have made (and very likely the only one). They didn't even kill Lando, who was around for fewer films, because even he had more dynamic.

Not that I agree with that, because I thought Chewie was a great character who had great dynamic with the characters, but he does speak an untranslated language after all.

Fang Zei said:

Indeed it could just be a blanket statement, and if that's the case it doesn't really change anything. All they'd really be saying is that, going forward, everything will be on the same level as everything else. The "legends" thing might simply be a two-level distinction (G-Canon vs non-G-canon) for the layman that doesn't get into the more elaborate multi-tiered heirarchy of canon.

I'm hoping it doesn't mean a nullification of the EU, because as others have said, they'd be overwriting a whole lot of great stories in addition to the less well-recieved stuff.

 Even if it's not, it's not a bad way to treat it.

Fang Zei said:

I must echo what Hal and Tobar and Mr. Cobb have said. We need to wait and see how this all shakes out. For the moment, I'm still taking this news merely as confirmation that the new trilogy won't be an adaptation of any existing EU story. I'm sure I'll be proved wrong, but there ya go.

I agree.

Either way, we're not "losing" the now-Legacy stories. They'll still be as readable and as good as they were before, and some of them will still hold a place in each of our individual canons, and I can almost guarantee that we'll be seeing the best parts of those stories cropping up again in new stories.

Like the writers themselves said, it's not changing how they write their stories in any meaningful way, so I wouldn't even count it as a loss.

Maybe we'll even see some rewrites to fit whatever new canon there is, and, again, it's just too early to say anything concrete.

Have I mentioned Karen Traviss in this thread yet? Because if not, everything she's ever written is utter fanwank circlejerk garbage.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Tyrphanax said:

While I'm sad that certain aspects I liked about the Post-ROTJ EU are gone, I'm really happy that it's wiped out a lot of stuff I didn't enjoy (I'm looking at you, Karen Traviss).

Isn't most of her work pre-ROTJ? =P 

Yeah, which is bad enough, but at least I don't have to think about Boba Fett's heart growing three sizes that day and then breaking down and crying.

Of course, on the flip side of that is that Boba's now primarily what Lucas made up, but maybe we'll see the end of that eventually, too, right?

Right? =(

Also, on Dominic's link: lol @ the massive circlejerk going on over there about how they should be consulted on the EU. ALLOL.

Dominic and Tobar make good points in this thread.

I'm certainly not surprised. There was never any part of me that thought they would just take the existing EU books, comics, and games and just make a movie out of them, or even try to fit the story into the existing EU continuity. A new story will be far more interesting than a story I already know anyway.

Like most people here, I'm pleased by the decision. I feel like the current continuity was getting bogged down with all the retcons and bad stories and whatnot. I think a clean slate was in order to give the movie (and whatever comes next in the EU) some breathing room. While I'm sad that certain aspects I liked about the Post-ROTJ EU are gone, I'm really happy that it's wiped out a lot of stuff I didn't enjoy (I'm looking at you, Karen Traviss), and I'm really excited to see what kind of new stories come out of this.

I think with us especially, it's easy, because most of us have a personal canon already, and like it was said, that's what matters anyway, but it is funny to see prequel apologists, who don't have any concept of a personal canon flailing around like their world is coming apart.

Tobar said:

Even with Lucas' anyone can learn the Force thing he still sticks to the idea that some people are inherently stronger in their connection to it than others:

The Skywalker line is very strong with the Force, so Ben says, “I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe.”

So while you could train others, they still wouldn't be a match for those that are naturally more attuned to it like the Emperor and Vader.

Which then makes the idea of anyone being able to learn it stupid because that's like saying "anyone can learn karate, but they have to stop at the brown belt, no matter how dedicated they are or how much they practise, because they don't have a strong enough connection to their chi" or whatever.

I just think it's a really dumb idea that either devalues the Force and characters connected to it, or it devalues itself as an idea.

Bingowings said:

The Jedi were meant to be like warrior monks from the East.

Orientalism ascribes the East with a magic cauldron of exotic human abilities (Yoga, martial arts, sorcery, immortality etc). The idea being that while the Tibetans, the Chinese, the Japanese etc were human beings like us. their culture contained disciplines we never developed or forgot.

It was a trope of 19th and early 20th Century fiction that a Westerner would visit some far flung school in the East and come home with exotic abilities.

So no it doesn't weaken the Jedi if anyone could learn their disciplines.

It strengthens Palpatine's desire to wipe their teachings and teachers out...all of them.

While I understand your angle, I really must disagree that making it so that any Tom, Dick, or Harry could have stepped up and been the next Luke Skywalker is a good thing.

If having the ability to be taught to use the Force is innate in all denizens of the galaxy, why wait for Luke to come of age? Why not train someone with obvious talents (like Han)? If the death of Vader and the Emperor was the ultimate goal, then someone who was emotionally disconnected from Vader would have been a better choice. In fact, why leave it up to one man? Why not train several well-chosen people to fight the Empire?

I also feel like comparing the Force to yoga or a martial art is pretty silly, honestly. The Force is a supernatural thing, which is not exactly the same as stretching a certain way, or even learning how to fight; and while the Force and these real-world practises do both have a few things in common, learning how to break a board is not quite the same as learning to use their mind to help block a blaster bolt with a blade made of energy, and I feel like making it so that just anyone off the street could be trained to telekinetically pull a starship out of a swamp like we can learn how to do a downward dog really devalues that amazing ability and the power of the scene that showcases it.

Beautiful!

Tobar said:

Here's a great little visit with the composer for Rebels, Kevin Kiner. I love that they're now going back to the classic John Williams themes. It was really missed in the Clone Wars.

 I gotta say, I love that theme.

Tobar said:

I'd prefer they kept Boba out of this. While the focus has shifted away from the Prequels, the consequences of them can still be felt. Any depiction of Boba Fett would inevitably be portrayed or at least voiced by Temeura Morrison.

Instead, let's get a new mysterious character to be intrigued by.

This is what worries me.

I want to see Boba come back so badly in the new films. So badly. In fact, with the popularity of the character, I feel like it's almost guaranteed that he'll be in it somehow.

But I just know that thanks to the AOTC, he'll almost inevitably be voiced by Morrison or Logan, and that will kill me.

That said I could always just redub the lines myself when I can get the Blu-Ray...

Duracell makes a good alternative point, though. Maybe the sarlacc damaged his vocal chords or something? Of course, that also makes me wonder if they go that route that they'll do some stupid half-cyborg version of Boba which would be stupid. I dunno. It's a complex issue for me.

darklordoftech said:

The Lucas-Kasdan conversation says that not only do you not need midichlorians to use The Force, you don't even need a master to teach you how to use it! This truly means that anyone can use The Force.

I remember back in the PT heyday when SuperShadow's site and Midi-chlorians were big deals. I remember one of the articles on his website gave the supposed Midi-chlorian counts of all of the main characters, and while I knew all of his "info" was bunk and that Midi-chlorians were a stupid device, it made me consider for the first time that the Force might be a power that could be used by anyone.

I didn't really like that idea then, and I don't really like it now... I feel like it devalues the Jedi if just anyone can be trained to use the Force. Han is clearly an uncanny pilot (I'd put him on the same level as Luke, maybe even higher) and an obvious non-believer in the original Star Wars, but then he meets up with Luke and Obi-Wan and begins to realize that the Force is real, why wouldn't he start to think that maybe his talents are Force-granted and seek training from Luke?

I think that, for the Force to make its impact, it needs people who can use  it and people who can't. It loses its uniqueness if any nerd like Greedo could be trained to use it; plus it devalues characters like Han or Boba Fett, who are just as talented as Jedi, and can ostensibly hold their own against them.

One of the very worst things to happen to Star Wars EU was the entire "What's the Story" campaign. Because every single background character in the movies needed to be deeply connected to all the other characters in the movies somehow. I see these entries every once in awhile when I'm browsing Wookieepedia.

It was basically, "How can we make fan fiction canon?".

darklordoftech said:

The irony of this list is that TFN is far more close-minded than we are. They HATE anything that's not a rehash of the PT.

OT.com is by far from a cliquish community, but it's nice to see that we have a pretty broad variety of fans of different films, EU, people with personal canons, people who like the OT, people who like the PT, people who like the SEs, et cetera... and we're generally pretty accepting of each other because we're generally all here for the same reason.

thedaner said:

We are now in exciting times, but I will say that it's nothing like it was in '77 because back then, we didn't know what to expect. Upon its release we had one film, a novel tie-in, Topps cards and very little merchandise (and some of it was bootlegged crap--e.g.,"Darth VADAR Lives").  Pales in comparison to today…well, the film WAS unaltered back then...

That's a good point. This time we certainly have an idea of what to expect, and bad experiences with the PT to be wary of seeing again.

But, to be honest, as much as I don't want to pack my bags and dive on the hype train, I'm just plain excited for this whole new "era" of Star Wars fandom. It's like a rebirth, almost, and not in the way that the beginning of the PT Era was, because, unlike after 1983, our expectations really couldn't be lower, and now we're seeing all that painful PT Era imagery being swept away and the continuity is being scrubbed clean. It's almost like we're going back to a blank slate where things aren't as restricted anymore and anything could happen again.

It's exciting!

Padme looks like she's having some trouble doing the deed.

Baronlando said:

http://starwars.com/news/announcing-an-exciting-new-array-of-star-wars-childrens-books.html

They're selling this kids book series about the original trilogy like it's meant to educate the demo that knows mostly the prequel/cartoon era.

 Is this a bad thing?

I think the best part of the image is that it's an actual AT-AT foot (or at least prop of some sort) in an actual location, instead of a green disc on a green background.

Tobar said:

That these guys aren't Bothans:

 ROTS Palpatine? Is that you?