Lucasfilm announces a new direction for the Star Wars EU

Full press release here.


TL;DR: All new EU material made from now on will be 100% part of the main SW canon. Old EU fiction will remain in print, just with a "Legends" banner on their covers.



This sounds like a good idea overall. Still, I get why some might be upset over this (the comments on the official Facebook post of this news has plenty of examples ), so let's try to keep this relatively civil.

 

Ah crap, I just posted the same thing LOL. Mods can delete my thread.

 

It looks like here is the new John Jackson Miller novel that's a prequel to Rebels that the release mentions...

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/JoshWildingNewsAndReviews/news/?a=98820

 

Until they contradict it again.

It's starting to feel like the thing with Charlie Brown and the football.

 

So, you're saying it's LucyFilms, instead of LucasFilms

 

CHEWIE LIVES!!!

 

I like it. We'll have to take that it's all cannon at face value - there's bound to be some conflicts along the way, but I see it as a huge step in the right direction.

I purchased the hardback of Heir To The Empire when it was first released and followed the previous EU novels for years before eventually quitting due to utter lack of interest during the Vong war. This is enough to get me interested again. Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in !

Oh, and WELCOME BACK CHEWIE !

 

I made it through the NJO/Vong storyline, but "Swarm War" (or whatever it was called) bored me to tears, and I never looked back.

 

I'm not quite sure that is what it says "past tales" seems to suggest that *reprints* will have legends on the cover but nothing new will be published?

 

So basically, everything the EU ever did set after ROTJ is no longer in canon, and probably everything before ROTJ, too. I knew this would happen. So, when the last post ROTJ EU book is published (there are a few supposed to come out, unless they get cancelled) the Star Wars Universe will officially be dead. You know, JJ Abrams wasn't even able to kill off the Prime Star Trek Universe, we still get books with Picard, Sisko, etc. But, he has officially killed my favorite Sci Fi book universe. Yes Disney made the decision and JJ probably had nothing to do with it, but its his movies that have caused this, so he gets to be the face of this disaster to me.

The EU has always made the Star Wars universe great for me, not the three good movies and 3 bad movies. Many of my favorite Star Wars characters never showed up in a movie. Every truly great Star wars story (like The Thrawn Trilogy) was done in the expanded universe. The movies were definitely important, but even the original trilogy, as great as it is, can't hold a candle to the stuff that came out of it in the EU.

This is it, the whole Star Wars franchise is completely dead, it doesn't even get a book life line like Trek has. Instead, its all JJ/Disney Wars, all the time! With books made for non fans, just like the movies are made for non fans. Screw the large amount of EU fans (and regardless of what EU fans will tell you, the EU seems to make more than enough money to be profitable, and it has a lot of fans), you get a bunch of tie in crap that follows movies made by a 3rd rate action movie director and a few hack writers.

You know, say what you want about the Transformers movies, but Michael Bay's movies didn't eliminate the possibility of unconnected comics or tv shows. Abrams ruining the movies has nuked a well loved franchise worse than freaking Michael Bay could ever do. I will now literally only have Star Trek to give me any good new tie-in Sci-Fi in book form. There is nothing like being a Sci Fi fan and having every thing you enjoy in the genre being slowly destroyed by one a-hole's work. At least he won't get his hack claws on Doctor Who, the only remaining sci fi franchise I really like that is still active now (thank god Firefly and Babylon 5 are far, far away from hacks and corporate idiots at this point).

I'll still collect the old stuff and read that, but SW is dead, outside of a possible few last books it will no longer produce anything worthwhile. The work of a huge amount of writers, many of them very good, thrown away without a second thought, outside of maybe a few names and a reference here or there. That's one and a half franchises ruined in about 5 years, I don't think anyone has massacred Sci Fi like JJ Abrams. It is a horrible time to be a Sci Fi fan, and there doesn't seem to be any hope of a recovery for the two biggest Sci Fi franchises.

 

Whilst I accepted that you loved the old EU and will miss it, it's was always going to happen if they made some more movies. It was utterly inconceivable that they would constrain new movies with all that baggage. The old Treklit continuity only survived by accident - they were preserving the TV shows, not the novels.

You have no reason to assume that the new tie-ins will be bad - in fact, it sounds as if there is going to be more in the way of editorial planning and I for one are hoping for a positive outcome. I view large amounts of the old EU as being very poor and can quite see why they would like to start again. I'm really happy with this - I might like it more this time.

Give it a chance - you might like it too...

 

Well, good for Disney. They can do whatever they want, that doesn't mean I have to support or accept it. All I can do is hope for the new EU to completely bomb and lose Disney a bunch of money. It won't happen, because as the prequels showed SW fans will throw their money at even the worst junk with the SW name attached to it, but a guy can dream.

 

That adage would explain three-quarters of the old EU too...

 

They're starting over to make their job easier.

 

You're being generous.

kirk55555 - why don't you put aside your preconceptions and just give it a go ? It may or may not surprise you, but you cannot possibly be certain at this point.

If it is still crap, what have you lost by checking it out ?

 

I think it's also worth pointing out here that other than Kevin Hearn, who is a great writer (at least judging by the first novel in his Iron Druid Chronicle series, which I just read a couple months ago)r, they seem to be using mostly the same writers. So chances are if you liked what James Luceno, JJM, and people like them were writing before, you'll probably still like it now.
I'm very curious to see they do with this new EU. It will be interesting to see how much they rebuild things differently now that we have the PT and CTW to use as background, instead of just the OT and old comics and books. You could tell reading some of the earlier novels after the PT came out that the people behind the books had a very different idea of what the history was than we saw in the PT related stuff.
I wonder if they will just dump everything from the old books and stuff, or if they will keep things that won't be contradicted by the new movies and Rebels?

 

So "Crucible" was the final Star Wars novel then? I thought it was the first book in a new nine book series. I haven't read it since it came out but wasn't it introducing a new cosmic Force threat? And didn't it end with the big three semi-retiring?

I still would have wanted to have seen how Luke died and what became of Ben and Jaina...

But I completely understand why they have to reboot.

 

Here we go again. Listen, I'll give you this, you're 100% right that at the end of the day, this sucks for fans of the EU who want to see it continue, because that's clearly not the direction they are going. You have every right to be both saddened and disappointed by that decision because it's not what you were hoping for. That's completely fair.

Where you lose everyone with any sense of rationality is your personal attacks on Abrams and the current Disney regime and your absolute certainty that what they put out won't be any good. Why not at least be open to the possibility that they will create something new for you to enjoy?

 

Da OT plus Thrawn Trilogy are my canon, Lucas and Disney don't own my brain!

 

I like Star Wars quite a bit, have since 1977.

What's the EU?