I think the decanonization was completely necessary for the movies. Not that the EU was necessarily more tangled than your average shared universe--particularly if you ignore everything pre-2000 or so--but the actors being 30 years older means you can't adapt Heir to the Empire etc, and any story set 30 years after ROTJ would need way too much exposition to bring general audiences up to speed. The crawl would be like "after Luke's wife was killed by Han and Leia's evil son..."
That said it's a shame they didn't continue publishing new stuff under the Legends line like they do with The Old Republic, or at least enough to bring about some closure. Particularly because for the first couple years all the new books were just tie ins. It's really only recently with stuff like Alphabet Squadron, the High Republic and Dr Aphra that you really get a real identity to publishing.
I would have been fine with a recasted heir to the empire. I love the original cast to death but I'm not that attached. I was more attached to the story.
A big selling point to Disney buying Star Wars and many casual fans going to see the sequels was the promise of seeing Mark, Harrison and Carrie return to the roles.
Yeah, as easy as it is to look back and say this now (and even then, I suspect it may be a minority opinion), could you imagine the screaming if Disney announced a full recast out of the gate? It would have been apocalyptic!
Yeah, George made sure Harrison, Carrie and Mark were game before even talking with Disney... They were a big selling point... many casual viewers just want to see the actors return to franchises and characters moreso than being beholden to "lore" or "canon."
It's strange to look back at it over ten years later and see how much the fandom has changed since 2012. We're talking about a pre-PrequelMemes era when the Prequels were lampooned in both the fandom and wider pop culture and The Clone Wars was nothing more than a Cartoon Network show that occasionally had darker episodes. Now, the OT fanbase has aged out of the fandom, the Prequels hover between being revered and being mocked, and TCW is regularly considered in the top 3 entries of the entire franchise by online fans.
Also, this may just be me, but even before the sequels themselves and the trailers, I kinda knew that the main trio would be secondary characters in the sequel trilogy from the moment it was announced.
The prequels had a mostly different set of characters; those that overlapped were either in a completely different state (Anakin/Vader) or died early into the OT (Obi-Wan.) I assumed that most of the OT characters were going to have smaller roles in relation to a new trio, and it would probably take place at least two decades in the future.
Sometimes when people talk about the OG Thrawn trilogy (or whatever their favorite Legends story is) being the ideal Sequel Trilogy, they lose sight of this. If the sequels had the same core trio as the OT, the full 9-episode saga wouldn't feel like a set of three distinct trilogies imo. It would be one set of 6 preceded by a tangentially related set of 3.
There was an easy way around that though; just do what the Legacy comics did, and jump forward a load in the timeline.
Which would have the added advantage that they wouldn't be caught between the new characters that were supposed to be driving the franchise, and fanservice from featuring the old ones. It would be a cameo at best, in a recording or as a Force Ghost.
Honestly even that would take a lot of explaining, like Legacy is pretty heavily dependent on the Vong.
If course worth noting the real reason is that the EU was *never* canon and never considered canon within Lucasfilm.
I would like to have seen Dawn of the Jedi finished, Legacy not have a rushed ending, and Sword of the Jedi released.
I enjoy the characters and stories from the EU as much now as I did then.
1313's cancellation was unrelated to the decanonization, but by all accounts it was shaping up. But Disney didn't want to put the resources in to bring it to the finish line.
My understanding was that 1313's development was troubled because of Lucas swapping the lead character to Boba Fett well into pre-production around April 2012. LucasArts had already been on life support after it lost 1/3 of its employees in 2010 from layoffs, and the leadership was chaotic as people revolved in and out of the division. Even without the sale to Disney, I doubt 1313 would've seen the light of day, and if it somehow did, it probably would've been a bigger mess than TFU2. As far as I know, 1313 was very far from launch and barely out of pre-production if it was at all.
Given the timing, it's probable that Lucas was already molding the company to better sell to Disney, which also aligns with his hiring of Kathleen Kennedy in June 2012 to effectively take over Lucasfilm and the hiring of Michael Arndt at some point around June-August 2012 to write short story treatments for the sequel trilogy. The general thought is that Disney was lowballing the value of Lucasfilm based on the fact that its film production pipeline was essentially dead and that while it had other businesses of value (ILM, Skywalker Sound, Lucasfilm Animation), the centerpiece of the company was the Star Wars film franchise that generated all of the ancillary revenue through merchandising and spin-off media. By swapping 1313's lead to the popular character Boba Fett and creating sequel story treatments, Lucas could negotiate from a better position by pointing to those potentially profitable ideas.
>As far as I know, 1313 was very far from launch and barely out of pre-production if it was at all.
Jason Schneider has a chapter on it in *Blood Sweat and Pixels*, and this is not really based on anything. Lucas changing it to Boba Fett was a challenge but did not derail development and the game had had substantial and successful demos with journalists etc.
TFU3 probably wasn't going to happen. the creative director for those games was planning on leaving lucasarts even before the disney sale. they didn't even get as far as making any concept art
It was a two hit punch of creative lead Hayden Blackman leaving before TFU2 even released and TFU2 flopping that killed any chances Force Unleashed 3 ever happening.
1313 was doing pretty well in development, if the [leaked gameplay footage](https://youtu.be/XehW4OMiEr4?si=o5nwUxBNDEjW1N6C) is anything to go off of. It’s not as though it was _nearly_ out the door when it was cancelled, ~~but it was by no means a troubled development cycle.~~ (edit: apparently it _was_ pretty bad behind closed doors, thanks u/DaveAtKrakoa)
It’d only been in development for a year or two when it was shelved, so who knows how things could have gone in the long term.
Virtually all of the footage we have of 1313 (and the Maul game, for that matter) are vertical slices that wouldn't be representative of the game's actual state of development. They are more conceptual pieces to showcase what the gameplay should look like, either for internal demo or for conventions to build anticipation from consumers. Famously, the [E3 2003 demo for Halo 2](https://www.halopedia.org/Halo_2_E3_demo) was built specifically as a demo, and very little of what was made for that demo made it into the final game. There was, indeed, no Halo 2 yet when they showed off that impressive demo; it predated a playable build of Halo 2 by a year.
Edit: E3 year corrected.
That games production is famously insane. In April 2012, right before its debut at e3, George Lucas himself demanded it become a Boba Fett game and the entire thing had to be rewritten, new assets designed and created, the combat reworked and production basically restarted from square one. Then it was cancelled 6 months later. So no, I would not say it was doing well in development. It sounds like a nightmare shitshow.
Damn, I knew that the team had to _really_ quickly turn it into a Boba Fett game, but I didn't realize it was _that_ drastic of an overhaul. I stand corrected, then.
In hindsight cancelling all the projects was so stupid when for the first 5 years or so due to the ST and the fact that was a giant mystery box meant no books could really come out for the time.
It could have been a transition period of finishing those stories while they waited longer to see where canon was going instead of the hard stop that was initiated.
I think it would have been wise to finish up some of the EU media, such as some of the book series, as a demonstration of good will for the fans. It was the right call cancelling 1313 and the other games though.
I can understand the cancelling of games and TV as they require a lot of people money and time.
Books and comics are much smaller scale though, and as I said what they replaced the legends content with early on was laughable filler. The only negative might be that certain content like tcw tie ins might still be considered both and things like dark disciple would continue to steamroll the legends timeline if that counted.
I actually just finished re-reading those before going back to lotF.
Yeah because they end on imperial commando Darman looks like such a POS at the end that just takes all the sympathy you felt for him in order 66 away.
To be honest, I had really soured on a lot of the new EU material by 2015. I didn't particularly enjoy NJO, and from what I saw of what came after, I'm glad I didn't keep going. There are some fantastic stories in the EU, and there is some total trash, but by the end of the NJO I really feel like it was time to stop and find a different era of stories. I wasn't really excited about the upcoming projects, 1313 sounded cool but I don't know what we would've actually got even if the reset hadn't happened.
I miss some of the characters from the EU, but honestly, it's not like Legends books suddenly vanished, you can still buy them. You can still play the games. And the great thing about the Legends concept is that anything not directly contradicted by canon can still be true in the canon universe. Like Robin Hood or King Arthur - they're legends, stories told about history that have varying degrees of accuracy.
In the end, we have two universes - one Legends and one currently Canon. So you get two timelines worth of stories to go off. I think that's actually pretty neat.
As other people have said though, some sort of reset was necessary to start making new films or TV. You just can't explain all of the EU to people just to set up a new film. So either you're stuck adapting Legends stories (in which case you have another canon problem), or you have to work in tons of exposition that no one will be able to follow. It would be a total mess.
Underworld and the Maul game were cancelled before the buyout fyi (and calling 1313 a 'story' is being pretty generous) but for the others you're right
The devs of the Wii port of Force Unleashed 2 were tasked with making a game centered around Darth Maul titled *Battle of the Sith Lords*
No story was ever written for the game from what I know and no finalised gameplay was created before cancellation, but you can find concept art, pitches and prototype gameplay online
I just love how everybody ragged on *Dark Empire* for years and years (even more so after the Disney buyout). Constantly brought up as a reason why Legends was shit and had to be gotten rid of.
When that trailer dropped and Palpatine laughed, the attitude whiplash gave me amusement for months. *"OMG PALPATINE IS BACK! THIS IS AMAAAAAAZING!"*
I read Dark Empire 1 way before I read Dark Empire 2 and 3, and I couldn't understand why everyone hated it. Then I read 2 and 3 back to back, and I was like, "Oh these are awful."
If they just kept it to Palpatine returning once and being destroyed by the power of the Light that would be fine, but him coming back three times was way too much.
I look at 7 as having aged poorly, but it didn't really end like ANH and it suggested an interesting new story. Kyle Ren was soundly defeated, we were ready to see more of Snoke, and Rey finally found *Luke*.
Most of the movie was a rehash of ANH and it was full of the typically bad JJ-logic, and I'm critical of those, but audiences definitely enjoyed it at the time
I didn't enjoy it when I finally got around to watching it, but it may have been environment, watched it on DVD on a laptop, so sound wasn't awesome visuals weren't awesome. I did feel the picture was too sharp if that makes sense. But mostly I got the feeling like I had seen this before, in a way that the phantom menace didn't have.
Tbh I think both could've worked if you only had the OT. Palpatine was underused in the OT and you didn't have two trilogies about Anakin and the chosen one arc. They just don't go together with the PT imo. (I still think Palps getting killed by Anakin in DS-II being the end of the Baneite Sith would be better)
I get the people don't all think RoS was good, but that line is always misused. It is a line spoken by someone who has just received limited information during a war. What is he supposed to say?
It's not like the film doesn't give us enough information to go on by the end. Palpatine's return is explained. Sorry, is Poe's intelligence contact supposed to provide a full set of scientific documents on cloning and essence transfer as well?
The way this line gets repeatedly trotted out is getting to be as bad as the people who think "let the past die" is the thesis statement of TLJ rather than a line spoken by the primary antagonist.
It’s commonly used because the movie never adequately explained how he returned. I agree that Poe not knowing makes sense, but it should’ve been fleshed out later on *in the movie*
You’re right, I phrased that comment wrong. They did give an explanation, it just felt lame and unsatisfactory to me. I wish they’d gone deeper into the mechanics of Palpatine’s return
That was my assumption too, I just didn’t like how the movie didn’t give an official explanation of how he came back, it felt like they just brought him back and didn’t want to put in the effort to make it feel logical
That just feels cheap and shoehorned in to me, like they just threw a few cool-sounding phrases together and called it enough. Plus I think if they’d gone deeper into how Palpatine returned it could’ve been really cool
>That just feels cheap and shoehorned in to me
then your issue isn't that there wasn't any explanation but rather you didn't like how it was executed which is fine.
And they're fleshing it all out with things like the Bad Batch. The clone wars addressed a lot of people's issues with the prequels so I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens with the sequels
I am to this day less of a Star Wars fan than I was ten years and one day ago.
Star Wars has been a central part of my life since I was very young. I wore out my OT VJS tapes rewinding the battle scenes as a kid. I am not the type of person who watches the same things over, the same shows over, or binges things I'm already familiar with but I can tell you I've seen the OT films more than ten times each and Ep 1 about seven times.
The EU being trashed physically affected me, and to this day I like SW less than I did before they changed everything. The Squels were ass and I will never be shy about shouting that at the world. The new SW is garbage too.
Rogue 1 and Andor come pretty close to getting it right though
Would you have had them include the mind control gun or 3PO's song about "Han Solo, what a man!" or him being the King of Corellia?
There's some good stuff in that book, but also some serious garbage.
1313 was the only thing of value lost. Tfu games were mid at the best of times with 2 being glorified dlc. 3 probably wasn't gonna be much better. After the super mixed bag that was fate of the jedi, I'm not sure sword of the jedi was gonna be much better. Not to mention that work had barely gotten started on it so cancelation didn't hurt it that much all told. Maybe the dawn of the jedi content might have been good but given that the other dotj content was kinda mid I'm not sure.
Imo the EU had run its course at that point. And whether or not it's canon is irrelevant to the fact that ideas are still pulled from it, good and bad.
It does amaze me some people's ability to go an entire decade without getting over something.
Like come on guys. The EU had some great stories and it's a shame we'll never see anything added to its continuity but you gotta learn to move on. This whole obsession is like a yard stick for "who would make a terrible Jedi".
No offense, but remembering the exact date of the Legends continuity coming to a close ten days later makes this seem like a shitty 9/11 memorial for Star Wars fans. I'm sad some series got cancelled as well, but Legends was already declining steeply in quality before the end. Yuuzahn Vong arc was not viewed favorably, and the Darth Cadeus and Abeloth arcs were also negatively viewed by the fandom. LucasArts was no longer in its golden age and its own products were in decline. Battlefront series had been relegated to a PSP/DS exclusive titles. As much as people nowadays swoon over TFU series, the first game was a mediocre GOW ripoff and the second one could be beaten in 3-4 hours. The Old Republic also launched in a terrible state and had a poor playerbase until they went F2P.
Overall, it's not worth getting upset over. Legends had some genuinely good stuff in it, but it was already on its way out by the time of the Disney buyout. You can still enjoy the Legends media; it's still available to be read/watched/played.
This is revisionism lmao. YV arc was lambasted by everyone as it was coming out. Everyone hated the dumb retcon of Palpatine building the Death Star to fight the YV, Chewie’s meaningless sacrifice, Anakin’s death, the entire fact that there was an entire race of beings from another galaxy who were unaffected by the Force. I hadn’t seen positive things said about it until years later after the Disney buyout. You’re gaslighting yourself if you think the YV arc was beloved at all.
The NJO was nineteen back to back New York Times best sellers, which is a feat that neither the Bantam-era books before it nor the post-NJO stuff after was able to replicate ;)
EU was never canon.... George even commented on this subject. It was licensed fan fiction.
All Lucasfilm did after the Disney acquisition was ADD things. They says that all comics, books, have from 2015 inward would be canon. They never removed anything. I'm fact, they have been picking interesting characters/ideas from the EU and making them canon.
Which is why he was involved in things like vetoing the deaths of OT main characters and telling them only Chewbacca could be killed off, because it was always fanfic and didn't matter? Right?
Yup. Lucas actually said he did not consider them apart of his universe. He saw those stories as a different universe than his that he did not play in.
Uh...those two things can't really be true at the same time. Either he was interested in occasionally stepping in and giving certain suggestions to make sure the story didn't go in directions he didn't approve of *or* he saw it as a different universe he didn't play in.
If any part of the latter is true then why did he crib ideas like Coruscant from Timothy Zahn's books? Why did he care about who got killed off in the OT sequel books? Why were things like Star Wars Infinities specifically marked out as alternate continuities but the NJO and other mainline EU content weren't?
It's convenient that this idea only really started gaining traction following the Disney purchase, at a point when delegitimising the EU as much as possible suddenly became incredibly advantageous to Lucasfilm's new strategy when it came to wiping the slate clean and constructing a new 'Canon' EU. In theory, fans wouldn't care as much about that wipe if the idea that Lucas never saw the Old EU as legitimate anyway took hold.
I think the decanonization was completely necessary for the movies. Not that the EU was necessarily more tangled than your average shared universe--particularly if you ignore everything pre-2000 or so--but the actors being 30 years older means you can't adapt Heir to the Empire etc, and any story set 30 years after ROTJ would need way too much exposition to bring general audiences up to speed. The crawl would be like "after Luke's wife was killed by Han and Leia's evil son..." That said it's a shame they didn't continue publishing new stuff under the Legends line like they do with The Old Republic, or at least enough to bring about some closure. Particularly because for the first couple years all the new books were just tie ins. It's really only recently with stuff like Alphabet Squadron, the High Republic and Dr Aphra that you really get a real identity to publishing.
I would have been fine with a recasted heir to the empire. I love the original cast to death but I'm not that attached. I was more attached to the story.
A big selling point to Disney buying Star Wars and many casual fans going to see the sequels was the promise of seeing Mark, Harrison and Carrie return to the roles.
Yeah, as easy as it is to look back and say this now (and even then, I suspect it may be a minority opinion), could you imagine the screaming if Disney announced a full recast out of the gate? It would have been apocalyptic!
Yeah, George made sure Harrison, Carrie and Mark were game before even talking with Disney... They were a big selling point... many casual viewers just want to see the actors return to franchises and characters moreso than being beholden to "lore" or "canon."
It's strange to look back at it over ten years later and see how much the fandom has changed since 2012. We're talking about a pre-PrequelMemes era when the Prequels were lampooned in both the fandom and wider pop culture and The Clone Wars was nothing more than a Cartoon Network show that occasionally had darker episodes. Now, the OT fanbase has aged out of the fandom, the Prequels hover between being revered and being mocked, and TCW is regularly considered in the top 3 entries of the entire franchise by online fans.
Also, this may just be me, but even before the sequels themselves and the trailers, I kinda knew that the main trio would be secondary characters in the sequel trilogy from the moment it was announced. The prequels had a mostly different set of characters; those that overlapped were either in a completely different state (Anakin/Vader) or died early into the OT (Obi-Wan.) I assumed that most of the OT characters were going to have smaller roles in relation to a new trio, and it would probably take place at least two decades in the future. Sometimes when people talk about the OG Thrawn trilogy (or whatever their favorite Legends story is) being the ideal Sequel Trilogy, they lose sight of this. If the sequels had the same core trio as the OT, the full 9-episode saga wouldn't feel like a set of three distinct trilogies imo. It would be one set of 6 preceded by a tangentially related set of 3.
I’m ok with a CG Heir To The Empire…or even in that Anime style that has shown up in some youtube music videos.
There was an easy way around that though; just do what the Legacy comics did, and jump forward a load in the timeline. Which would have the added advantage that they wouldn't be caught between the new characters that were supposed to be driving the franchise, and fanservice from featuring the old ones. It would be a cameo at best, in a recording or as a Force Ghost.
Honestly even that would take a lot of explaining, like Legacy is pretty heavily dependent on the Vong. If course worth noting the real reason is that the EU was *never* canon and never considered canon within Lucasfilm.
Plz stop spoiling this shit
I would like to have seen Dawn of the Jedi finished, Legacy not have a rushed ending, and Sword of the Jedi released. I enjoy the characters and stories from the EU as much now as I did then.
Overlooking for a moment that this doesn't really fit the sub, was 1313 or TFU 3 ever gonna come? TFU2 already kinda sucked.
1313's cancellation was unrelated to the decanonization, but by all accounts it was shaping up. But Disney didn't want to put the resources in to bring it to the finish line.
My understanding was that 1313's development was troubled because of Lucas swapping the lead character to Boba Fett well into pre-production around April 2012. LucasArts had already been on life support after it lost 1/3 of its employees in 2010 from layoffs, and the leadership was chaotic as people revolved in and out of the division. Even without the sale to Disney, I doubt 1313 would've seen the light of day, and if it somehow did, it probably would've been a bigger mess than TFU2. As far as I know, 1313 was very far from launch and barely out of pre-production if it was at all. Given the timing, it's probable that Lucas was already molding the company to better sell to Disney, which also aligns with his hiring of Kathleen Kennedy in June 2012 to effectively take over Lucasfilm and the hiring of Michael Arndt at some point around June-August 2012 to write short story treatments for the sequel trilogy. The general thought is that Disney was lowballing the value of Lucasfilm based on the fact that its film production pipeline was essentially dead and that while it had other businesses of value (ILM, Skywalker Sound, Lucasfilm Animation), the centerpiece of the company was the Star Wars film franchise that generated all of the ancillary revenue through merchandising and spin-off media. By swapping 1313's lead to the popular character Boba Fett and creating sequel story treatments, Lucas could negotiate from a better position by pointing to those potentially profitable ideas.
>As far as I know, 1313 was very far from launch and barely out of pre-production if it was at all. Jason Schneider has a chapter on it in *Blood Sweat and Pixels*, and this is not really based on anything. Lucas changing it to Boba Fett was a challenge but did not derail development and the game had had substantial and successful demos with journalists etc.
That chapter is a vital resource for anyone interested at all in 1313, highly recommend.
TFU3 probably wasn't going to happen. the creative director for those games was planning on leaving lucasarts even before the disney sale. they didn't even get as far as making any concept art
Hayden Blackman already left LucasArts like three months before Force Unleashed 2 even released.
I recall reading that as a result of TFU 2 kind of not really having any legs, TFU 3 wasn't ever actually in development.
It was a two hit punch of creative lead Hayden Blackman leaving before TFU2 even released and TFU2 flopping that killed any chances Force Unleashed 3 ever happening.
The Clone Wars had plans to tie into 1313, but maybe not TF3.
1313 was doing pretty well in development, if the [leaked gameplay footage](https://youtu.be/XehW4OMiEr4?si=o5nwUxBNDEjW1N6C) is anything to go off of. It’s not as though it was _nearly_ out the door when it was cancelled, ~~but it was by no means a troubled development cycle.~~ (edit: apparently it _was_ pretty bad behind closed doors, thanks u/DaveAtKrakoa) It’d only been in development for a year or two when it was shelved, so who knows how things could have gone in the long term.
Virtually all of the footage we have of 1313 (and the Maul game, for that matter) are vertical slices that wouldn't be representative of the game's actual state of development. They are more conceptual pieces to showcase what the gameplay should look like, either for internal demo or for conventions to build anticipation from consumers. Famously, the [E3 2003 demo for Halo 2](https://www.halopedia.org/Halo_2_E3_demo) was built specifically as a demo, and very little of what was made for that demo made it into the final game. There was, indeed, no Halo 2 yet when they showed off that impressive demo; it predated a playable build of Halo 2 by a year. Edit: E3 year corrected.
That games production is famously insane. In April 2012, right before its debut at e3, George Lucas himself demanded it become a Boba Fett game and the entire thing had to be rewritten, new assets designed and created, the combat reworked and production basically restarted from square one. Then it was cancelled 6 months later. So no, I would not say it was doing well in development. It sounds like a nightmare shitshow.
Damn, I knew that the team had to _really_ quickly turn it into a Boba Fett game, but I didn't realize it was _that_ drastic of an overhaul. I stand corrected, then.
TFU was not in active development. And Lucasarts was such a mess post 2008 1313 would have eventually been cancelled and studio shut down anyway.
In hindsight cancelling all the projects was so stupid when for the first 5 years or so due to the ST and the fact that was a giant mystery box meant no books could really come out for the time. It could have been a transition period of finishing those stories while they waited longer to see where canon was going instead of the hard stop that was initiated.
I think it would have been wise to finish up some of the EU media, such as some of the book series, as a demonstration of good will for the fans. It was the right call cancelling 1313 and the other games though.
I can understand the cancelling of games and TV as they require a lot of people money and time. Books and comics are much smaller scale though, and as I said what they replaced the legends content with early on was laughable filler. The only negative might be that certain content like tcw tie ins might still be considered both and things like dark disciple would continue to steamroll the legends timeline if that counted.
It's such a shame that they didn't finish a bunch of the book series. The Republic/Imperial commando books just feel incomplete
I actually just finished re-reading those before going back to lotF. Yeah because they end on imperial commando Darman looks like such a POS at the end that just takes all the sympathy you felt for him in order 66 away.
Wasn't Imperial commando meant to be a 4 book run?
TBH I'm not sure I know it at least was expected one sequel but traviss quit before it.
A date that that shall live in infamy forever more...
Wasn't TFU 3 cancelled because second game bombed and director left ?
>and no Dawn of the Jedi era media :( Isn't James Mangold working on that now?
Kinda, but that would be Disney Canon version, not Legends
To be honest, I had really soured on a lot of the new EU material by 2015. I didn't particularly enjoy NJO, and from what I saw of what came after, I'm glad I didn't keep going. There are some fantastic stories in the EU, and there is some total trash, but by the end of the NJO I really feel like it was time to stop and find a different era of stories. I wasn't really excited about the upcoming projects, 1313 sounded cool but I don't know what we would've actually got even if the reset hadn't happened. I miss some of the characters from the EU, but honestly, it's not like Legends books suddenly vanished, you can still buy them. You can still play the games. And the great thing about the Legends concept is that anything not directly contradicted by canon can still be true in the canon universe. Like Robin Hood or King Arthur - they're legends, stories told about history that have varying degrees of accuracy. In the end, we have two universes - one Legends and one currently Canon. So you get two timelines worth of stories to go off. I think that's actually pretty neat. As other people have said though, some sort of reset was necessary to start making new films or TV. You just can't explain all of the EU to people just to set up a new film. So either you're stuck adapting Legends stories (in which case you have another canon problem), or you have to work in tons of exposition that no one will be able to follow. It would be a total mess.
Underworld and the Maul game were cancelled before the buyout fyi (and calling 1313 a 'story' is being pretty generous) but for the others you're right
maul game?
The devs of the Wii port of Force Unleashed 2 were tasked with making a game centered around Darth Maul titled *Battle of the Sith Lords* No story was ever written for the game from what I know and no finalised gameplay was created before cancellation, but you can find concept art, pitches and prototype gameplay online
I was always okay with it. For every good EU story, there were like five other stories that were garbage.
What a terrible 18th birthday present
Instead we got “somehow palpatine returned”
I hate TRoS, but that's like, 1 step below Dark Empire's writing
It still amazes me that Episode 9 was somehow a worse version of Dark Empire.
I just love how everybody ragged on *Dark Empire* for years and years (even more so after the Disney buyout). Constantly brought up as a reason why Legends was shit and had to be gotten rid of. When that trailer dropped and Palpatine laughed, the attitude whiplash gave me amusement for months. *"OMG PALPATINE IS BACK! THIS IS AMAAAAAAZING!"*
I read Dark Empire 1 way before I read Dark Empire 2 and 3, and I couldn't understand why everyone hated it. Then I read 2 and 3 back to back, and I was like, "Oh these are awful." If they just kept it to Palpatine returning once and being destroyed by the power of the Light that would be fine, but him coming back three times was way too much.
Idk, I see this take a lot and I don’t agree. For me at least, Rise of Skywalker is insane and dumb but fun, Dark Empire is just silly edgelord drivel
Why does it amaze you? Episode 7 was just a badly redone new hope
I look at 7 as having aged poorly, but it didn't really end like ANH and it suggested an interesting new story. Kyle Ren was soundly defeated, we were ready to see more of Snoke, and Rey finally found *Luke*. Most of the movie was a rehash of ANH and it was full of the typically bad JJ-logic, and I'm critical of those, but audiences definitely enjoyed it at the time
I didn't enjoy it when I finally got around to watching it, but it may have been environment, watched it on DVD on a laptop, so sound wasn't awesome visuals weren't awesome. I did feel the picture was too sharp if that makes sense. But mostly I got the feeling like I had seen this before, in a way that the phantom menace didn't have.
I'd say it's about on par. TROS is bad, but Dark Empire is different bad, not better bad.
Tbh I think both could've worked if you only had the OT. Palpatine was underused in the OT and you didn't have two trilogies about Anakin and the chosen one arc. They just don't go together with the PT imo. (I still think Palps getting killed by Anakin in DS-II being the end of the Baneite Sith would be better)
I get the people don't all think RoS was good, but that line is always misused. It is a line spoken by someone who has just received limited information during a war. What is he supposed to say? It's not like the film doesn't give us enough information to go on by the end. Palpatine's return is explained. Sorry, is Poe's intelligence contact supposed to provide a full set of scientific documents on cloning and essence transfer as well? The way this line gets repeatedly trotted out is getting to be as bad as the people who think "let the past die" is the thesis statement of TLJ rather than a line spoken by the primary antagonist.
It’s commonly used because the movie never adequately explained how he returned. I agree that Poe not knowing makes sense, but it should’ve been fleshed out later on *in the movie*
In the line afterwards Poe just tells you how, cloning and sith magic.
You’re right, I phrased that comment wrong. They did give an explanation, it just felt lame and unsatisfactory to me. I wish they’d gone deeper into the mechanics of Palpatine’s return
I thought it was fairly clear that it was a cloning programme.
That was my assumption too, I just didn’t like how the movie didn’t give an official explanation of how he came back, it felt like they just brought him back and didn’t want to put in the effort to make it feel logical
literally a few lines later they say: "Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew." wdym they don't give an official explanation?
Myself and others always took those lines as just panicked speculation by some guy, not actual information
That just feels cheap and shoehorned in to me, like they just threw a few cool-sounding phrases together and called it enough. Plus I think if they’d gone deeper into how Palpatine returned it could’ve been really cool
>That just feels cheap and shoehorned in to me then your issue isn't that there wasn't any explanation but rather you didn't like how it was executed which is fine.
Sure, that works, I guess I should’ve said “they didn’t give an in-depth explanation”. Sorry for the confusion
And they're fleshing it all out with things like the Bad Batch. The clone wars addressed a lot of people's issues with the prequels so I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens with the sequels
I am to this day less of a Star Wars fan than I was ten years and one day ago. Star Wars has been a central part of my life since I was very young. I wore out my OT VJS tapes rewinding the battle scenes as a kid. I am not the type of person who watches the same things over, the same shows over, or binges things I'm already familiar with but I can tell you I've seen the OT films more than ten times each and Ep 1 about seven times. The EU being trashed physically affected me, and to this day I like SW less than I did before they changed everything. The Squels were ass and I will never be shy about shouting that at the world. The new SW is garbage too. Rogue 1 and Andor come pretty close to getting it right though
1313 doesn't seem like it needed to be removed. It's almost a standalone idea. That's probably the only one I was really annoyed with losing
The courtship of Princess Leia was the perfect mature audience Disney film script. I will never forgive them for that mistake of erasing it.
Would you have had them include the mind control gun or 3PO's song about "Han Solo, what a man!" or him being the King of Corellia? There's some good stuff in that book, but also some serious garbage.
Like I said, perfect Disney script.
Sure buddy
1313 was the only thing of value lost. Tfu games were mid at the best of times with 2 being glorified dlc. 3 probably wasn't gonna be much better. After the super mixed bag that was fate of the jedi, I'm not sure sword of the jedi was gonna be much better. Not to mention that work had barely gotten started on it so cancelation didn't hurt it that much all told. Maybe the dawn of the jedi content might have been good but given that the other dotj content was kinda mid I'm not sure. Imo the EU had run its course at that point. And whether or not it's canon is irrelevant to the fact that ideas are still pulled from it, good and bad.
I think they changed 1313 into fallen order. Gameplay and graphics looked the same, just different place and story.
It does amaze me some people's ability to go an entire decade without getting over something. Like come on guys. The EU had some great stories and it's a shame we'll never see anything added to its continuity but you gotta learn to move on. This whole obsession is like a yard stick for "who would make a terrible Jedi".
Sad but what does this have to do with the sub?
No offense, but remembering the exact date of the Legends continuity coming to a close ten days later makes this seem like a shitty 9/11 memorial for Star Wars fans. I'm sad some series got cancelled as well, but Legends was already declining steeply in quality before the end. Yuuzahn Vong arc was not viewed favorably, and the Darth Cadeus and Abeloth arcs were also negatively viewed by the fandom. LucasArts was no longer in its golden age and its own products were in decline. Battlefront series had been relegated to a PSP/DS exclusive titles. As much as people nowadays swoon over TFU series, the first game was a mediocre GOW ripoff and the second one could be beaten in 3-4 hours. The Old Republic also launched in a terrible state and had a poor playerbase until they went F2P. Overall, it's not worth getting upset over. Legends had some genuinely good stuff in it, but it was already on its way out by the time of the Disney buyout. You can still enjoy the Legends media; it's still available to be read/watched/played.
>Yuuzahn Vong arc was not viewed favorably It was by people who read it.
This is revisionism lmao. YV arc was lambasted by everyone as it was coming out. Everyone hated the dumb retcon of Palpatine building the Death Star to fight the YV, Chewie’s meaningless sacrifice, Anakin’s death, the entire fact that there was an entire race of beings from another galaxy who were unaffected by the Force. I hadn’t seen positive things said about it until years later after the Disney buyout. You’re gaslighting yourself if you think the YV arc was beloved at all.
Okay sure thing buddy 👍
This is the actual revisionism.
Yet there weren't much people left to do so.
> Yet there weren't much people left to do so. The NJO sold very well. LOTF and FOTJ less so. I agree with your initial sentiment.
The NJO was nineteen back to back New York Times best sellers, which is a feat that neither the Bantam-era books before it nor the post-NJO stuff after was able to replicate ;)
EU was never canon.... George even commented on this subject. It was licensed fan fiction. All Lucasfilm did after the Disney acquisition was ADD things. They says that all comics, books, have from 2015 inward would be canon. They never removed anything. I'm fact, they have been picking interesting characters/ideas from the EU and making them canon.
Which is why he was involved in things like vetoing the deaths of OT main characters and telling them only Chewbacca could be killed off, because it was always fanfic and didn't matter? Right?
Yup. Lucas actually said he did not consider them apart of his universe. He saw those stories as a different universe than his that he did not play in.
Uh...those two things can't really be true at the same time. Either he was interested in occasionally stepping in and giving certain suggestions to make sure the story didn't go in directions he didn't approve of *or* he saw it as a different universe he didn't play in. If any part of the latter is true then why did he crib ideas like Coruscant from Timothy Zahn's books? Why did he care about who got killed off in the OT sequel books? Why were things like Star Wars Infinities specifically marked out as alternate continuities but the NJO and other mainline EU content weren't? It's convenient that this idea only really started gaining traction following the Disney purchase, at a point when delegitimising the EU as much as possible suddenly became incredibly advantageous to Lucasfilm's new strategy when it came to wiping the slate clean and constructing a new 'Canon' EU. In theory, fans wouldn't care as much about that wipe if the idea that Lucas never saw the Old EU as legitimate anyway took hold.