Hardly pointless, since the point of a novel is to entertain, not establish canocity or a real world history.
Star Wars Books Thread
- Thread starter Mr Light
- Start date
My reasoning is that the cartoon Thrawn has literally nothing in common (outside of a name and vague appearance)with the real version. So, Zahn is either lying or an idiot.
No, they won't. They'll grow up to be fans of the less interesting SW version of Skeletor/Mum-Ra/every 80s cartoon villain that Rebels calls Thrawn. So, no, there will be no one becoming a fan of Thrawn because of rebels, because the actual character of Thrawn has never been used on Rebels.
In your opinion. But, if he did, it wouldn't have connections to Rebels or be written just like the shit Rebels character.
Yeah, the same hacks in animation that sunk TCW (it was getting cancelled anyway, but the "Lost Season" and the revealed scripts for it are all complete garbage) and the hacks in the book department responsible for Legacy of the Force now get to do what they want without whoever was holding them back before. It turns out, shit writers not having to conform to old continuity make more shit then when they are constrained by old stories.
At the bare minimum, he's prevented the real Thrawn from showing up in the books. Now, the books haven't proved they could do him right, but they damn sure had a better chance before Rebels stole the name for their almost totally original, shitty, character.
That's not true. Thrawn could easily have had his own book without Rebels, or shown up in other books/comics/etc. He's one of the most popular EU exclusive characters, he was going to show up in a book or comic eventually.
No, you're not getting what I'm saying. If a book is designed to specifically tie-in to a movie like Catalyst was, but doesn't add anything important, its failed. That's different then the old EU publishing books completely unrelated to the movies. If the whole point of the book is to tie in to a movie, it needs to do that in important ways. Catalyst needed to be a book about Jyn, K2, Cassian, etc. Its completely pointless as it is.
Nope. YA/kids books don't count, novelization changes are against the director/writers wish's and aren't canon, and out of universe non-Fiction books like the visual guide also don't count.
So, no. We've gotten absolutely nothing about any cast member, from Jyn all the way to the people who I can't name because the movie, while I enjoyed it a lot, did a shit job with the characters. So, until Donnie Yen, Donnie Yen's friend and the imperial pilot get real backstory so I an remember their damn names, which Catalyst would have done if it was competent, we haven't gotten anything with them. We also need stuff for the characters that got slightly more focus. Why was Jyn in prison? Where did K2 come from? Why is Cassian a gigantic asshole? A better movie would have had stuff like this, but since it didn't a good general audience book could have done it. Catalyst should have been about stuff like that, not unneeded backstory of side characters.
No, they aren't. They add nothing to the picture, any word that is not in the original script doesn't count. Personal enjoyment and feasibility of watching the movie are subjective, obviously.
Is Pellaeon there? Are the Noghri? Nope. Is Outbound Flight mentioned? Nope. Instead, its all Rebels connections, and Thrawn being written like the incompetent idiot the cartoon uses the name for.
So, its all just a set up for the terrible Rebels villain they call Thrawn, like I've been saying. No connection to the real character they stole the name/look from. Also, I'm betting the "problems" he solved are as asinine and badly done as the crap Rebels gave him, which he couldn't even handle there because a bunch of the most incompetent rebels in history escaped him easily.
There are no Rebels connections in Tarkin. Lords of the Sith has a TCW connection that Rebels also uses, but that doesn't make it a Rebels connection. I've yet to read a New Canon comic that has a Rebels connection (outside of that awful Kanan comic, obviously). so, yeah, the books controlled by people like Filoni reference their little kids cartoon a lot, but not all the time.
If Filoni had the best of intentions, he'd quit and let someone else run the various things. If he cared one bit about telling good Star Wars stories, he'd let that happen. Thrawn should never have been in Rebels. The show can't handle complexity, its just a 80s filmation style show made with crap CG in 2017. Its just another He-Man, Thundercats, etc, except cartoons mostly evolved past that simplistic, lazy style in the last 20+ years.
Well, I have to at least try it. That way, at least I can say I tried, which can be important when discussing things. Its not to see if its any good, I know its a crap book already. Its just to see how bad it gets.
Well, we all get enjoyment from different things. If they're going to do a novelization, it needs to stick to the material on screen, or not exist. I mean, I don't think they should exist anyway, but if Disney really needs the money they should make sure the book faithfully adapts the story, and not add non canon crap that could color perceptions of the characters or events in ways the writer/director didn't intend.
Why should the first two appear at all? Those are from later in the timeline. As for the last one, that would have taken place before the novel, and if I don't miss my guess is mentioned or at least referred to have happened. Otherwise, where would Thrawn have run into Anakin Skywalker?
To be fair, the Heroes of Yavin escaped from Thrawn as well in situations were they probably shouldn't have aside from the fact that they are the heroes.
Are you talking about novelizations in general or just Star Wars novelizations? I love reading novelizations because of the additional stuff they add. Since novels can take their time and get more in depth they allow for a lot of extra worldbuilding and backstory, which often times does come directly from the creators of the movies. I just finished the Dark Crystal novelization, and there was some extra behind the scenes stuff in it that talks about how the ACH Smith, the author of the novelization, worked closely with Jim Henson on the novelization, so all of the stuff not in the movie, of which there's quite a bit, either comes from Henson directly, or was approved by him.. I'm pretty sure the PT novelization authors also worked pretty closely with George Lucas when they were writing the novels, and the current novelization authors are working with the Story Group so whatever they add to the books is also canon, and "counts". There are a lot of novelizations that don't add anything new, and those are pointless.
I can't remember if I've mentioned it here yet, but I've started reading the second volume of Darth Vader, and it's been great so far. I'm only part way through #8 and I'm already thinking Thanoth is a great addition to the cast.
Readers and audiences will add in things from their own experience that writers and directors don't intend. It doesn't make it pointless. That's actually a good thing, because the audience is engaged with the material.
Given the fact that the material on screen can be changed up to the minute it gets released, and books are published different and under different guidelines, this standard feels arbitrary. It's basically hiring an author and telling him don't add anything, no words, no phrases, no characterization. Just what it's in the script. Why bother hiring the writer at all?
Novelizations provide enjoyment-period. That's what they are for, not to be a 1-to-1 rehash of on screen material. Otherwise, why adapt it?
As I said, I would rather have a novel adaptation than the Blu-Ray DVD. I derive more enjoyment from those works that all films because I'm engaged with it on a mental level that forces me to use my imagination.
That's why Thrawn's presentation in Rebels doesn't bother me. Because my imagining of him hasn't changed and if I read the book, guess what? He's still there. So, I can enjoy both.
Translation: He doesn't agree with you, so he must be wrong." We, of all people, should know who deals in absolutes like that.
I became a TMNT fan through the 2012 Nick cartoon and subsequently became interested in earlier installments. I became a Spider-Man fan through the movies and subsequently began reading and collecting Spider-Man comics. I've heard stories of people who liked the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies deciding to watch the Star Trek TV shows.
It happens. Besides, how do we know that new audiences won't want to read about Legends Thrawn or like him on his own terms? Case in point, I like different versions of Spider-Man despite then not matching up in every little detail. I've also enjoyed reading old Star Trek novels despite them sometimes conflicting with later canon events.
Tell you what, if you decide to try the book, let me know if I was right or not.
Public opinion doesn't seem to be with you there.
Business as usual, in other words.
I don't even know where you're going with this.
Well, there's a book for you to check and see if the novelists do better than the TV show.
Possibly, however canon rarely imports Legends characters. Also, popularity is not a given that they'll come back. Mara Jade arguably edges out Thawn in terms of popularity and she hasn't come back.
And, depending on what Rebels does or does not with Thrawn, who's to say that he couldn't get more books (or appear in non-Rebels stories)?
Then Catalyst did not fail (and unlike you, I read the darn thing, so I actually know what I'm frakking talking about here). (Also, the director and writers of the movie were involved with the making of the novel.)
Catalyst needed to be what it needed to be, not what we wanted it to be. And, as I said before, the other characters are covered and could well get more coverage in the future.
That's not out call, and the people who make those decisions have said that they do. (Now, if you want original novels with the characters, that's another thing, and I would be all for that.)
Let's see about that:
Read the novelization.
Read the novelization and Rebel Dossier.
I will concede that his backstory is not really dealt with outside of the Visual Guide.
So, the problem is not that the information isn't there, you just don't want to read the sources it came from. I don't know what to tell you.
You are wrong about that, I've said as much, LucasFilm and those to decide what is and is not canon have decided that you're wrong. Please stop repeating this misinformation as fact. Headcanon is all fine, but it carries no weight in analyzing how the franchise works.
True.
What part of "his backstory is straight from Legends" did I not make clear. (Also, Chimera, Chiss culture, analysis of art to learn about species, fear of invaders from the outside, lack of political savvy.)
You walked right into that one, but I'll let it go.
Read the book (or a good chunk of it) and then I'll hear you out.
I think it's actually a pretty clever mystery.
- Darth Vader (comic) connects with Rebels
- Lost Stars and Bloodline have Rebels connections.
- Beware the Dark Side (a ROTS novelization) has a Rebels connection.
- Rogue One is full of tie-ins (the Ghost and Chopper cameo, Hera is paged over an intercom, Hammerheads play a role in the final battle, etc.), and conversely, Rebels paves the way to the movie as well.
- Adventures in Wild Space has a book set on Lothal.
So, no, there is plenty to go around.
In your opinion, which is not that of an expert.
Well, you're not going to be objectively right. My opinion is already completely formed, and rock solid. I'll hate read it, but that just means I'll probably get about 10 pages in and return it to the library before I give into the urge to destroy the crap book. Still, my opiniuon couldn't be anymore correct, from my perspective, then it is now. The attempted hate reading of "Thrawn" will just be a bit of masochism my nerdiness basically demands.
Nope. The book titled Thrawn is not about the actual Thrawn, we've established this. If Rebels hadn't stolen the name, then the books could have done something. But, now its just a sellout and/or yes man writing a book about a saturday morning cartoon villian, its not, in any way, a book connected to the actual character of Thrawn.
If they ever use Mara Jade on Rebels I'll probably die from a hate caused aneurysm, and if I survive that I'd never give a penny of my money to any non-film Star Wars thing ever again. The only thing that stops me from completely losing my shit about the new canon is that they haven't touched Mara. If they do, well let's just say it will probably inspire a hate filled rant so long it will technically be a short story
Thrawn will never appear in the new canon. To this day he hasn't appeared and never will. The idiot cartoon villain with his name will never be more then what he is, no matter if he appears on stuff outside of Rebels or not.
The same director and writers who didn't bother to give their main cast needed characterization contributed to a pointless tie-in novel that added nothing and fixed none of the problems the movie had? I'm shocked.
There was no reason to tell any kind of story about Galen or Krennic. Absolutely none. The two soon to be Mos Eisley Cantina criminals who jyn bumps into deserve a book more then Galen or Krennic, because they at least have a story that we don't already know.
Novelizations don't count, have no canon additions, and are just the movie in a worse form.
The non-fiction, non canon book for 8 year olds is no more relevant then, say, a coloring book. At least a coloring book would have some entertainment value.
Nope. the problem is there is no canon information. Until they write a general audience book or comic about the characters, we will continue to be completely in the dark about all the main characters. We'll never know why Jyn was in jail, or what happened with the guardians. We'll never know where K2 comes from. They could do this easily, but they have to have hacks like Claudia Grey crap out some more shit for the Twilight crowd instead.
If Pellaeon isn't on the ship, its not the Chimera (also, the Chimera doesn't have a shitty "ship tattoo" of an animal on the bottom). The other stuff will probably be as badly handled as the references to Thrawn looking at art where in Rebels. They think if they slap on a Thrawn paintjob it might convince people their blue idiot is Thrawn, but the writing hilariously misses the point of everything. I'd shudder to think what Dave Filoni's newest yes man wrote about the Chiss, but since the real thrawn doesn't exist it makes sense that real Chiss don't, either.
It doesn't matter if you hear me out or not. I'm not trying to change your opinion.
I read that comic, and you're going to have to site your sources and examples. It also can't be a little reference in the dialog, or to some ambiguous SW thing (if, say, someone just mentions Lothal at some point, that doesn't really count).
Shitty books from one of the worst authors to work on Star wars novels? Just the kind of thing I'd expect to connect to Rebels.
Unless someone time traveled, the shit ROTS novelization doesn't reference Rebels. Not that it matters, because novelizations don't count.
Rebels does not pave the way, them paying Whitaker (probably a metric ton of money) to do a voice cameo in their shit show doesn't mean anything. As for Rogue One, it did reference the show. Its also something Filoni's friends would be working on, and connected to the new canon. Personally, I'll forgive it the references if its revealed in something else that Ezra, Hera, Kanan, etc all die painful deaths, either during the battle or by getting captured by Vader during the battle. Outside of that, the references were lame but could have been completely removed and only improved the movie.
A crap kids book references Rebels. I'm really surprised. I did say that all the crap new canon stuff references Rebels. I said that, and then you went on to mention almost universally garbage books, along with one flawed movie and one comic that I know didn't have any big references.
There is absolutely no reason to adapt a movie into a book, except to cheaply make money. But, if they're going to do it anyway, they need to adapt it faithfully. No additions at all, it should be the script turned into a book, with the only differences being describing the action and settings in detail, which would be in a script because that's the stuff you see.
That makes no sense to me, since the point of an adaptation is to present additional information (i.e. The Petition of 2,000 in ROTS, or Anakin's encounter with a Tusken Raider in TPM) that sheds greater insight to these characters by taking advantage of the book form, versus the film format.
It's basically handcuffs on the author's hands to say "word for word-no additions or creativity."
Man, this thread continues to be a mess. Guys, let it go. You're never going to change the mind of someone so closed-minded, whose sense of reality is so narrowly formed. All you're doing is filling page after page with the same discussions over and over ad nauseum.
That said, it's encouraging to hear the new Thrawn novel seems to be well received. I hadn't actually realized it was releasing this soon. Going to have to make a point of grabbing a copy this weekend to dive in. Without wading back through the dung storm that this thread has become, how was the Ahsoka novel? I've always been kind of conflicted about the character, but at her best she's been a solid addition. Curious, how much of the novel is story from the end of the Clone Wars? Does it focus there, or mostly move into the Dark Times period?
I mostly enjoyed Dark Disciple, I felt like it did a pretty good job of adapting Quinlan's comic story to the much simpler Clone Wars narrative style. And I was surprisingly impressed by the treatment of Ventress. She really grew into a much more interesting chracter as TCW moved along, and the novel did a nice job following up on those developments. So now I'm itching to get into some more of the new canon.
Ahsoka or Tarkin next? I'm tempted to read the Rebels prequel novel as well, but I'm not sure I'm interested enough in the characters there. Thanks for any opinions!
That said, it's encouraging to hear the new Thrawn novel seems to be well received. I hadn't actually realized it was releasing this soon. Going to have to make a point of grabbing a copy this weekend to dive in. Without wading back through the dung storm that this thread has become, how was the Ahsoka novel? I've always been kind of conflicted about the character, but at her best she's been a solid addition. Curious, how much of the novel is story from the end of the Clone Wars? Does it focus there, or mostly move into the Dark Times period?
I mostly enjoyed Dark Disciple, I felt like it did a pretty good job of adapting Quinlan's comic story to the much simpler Clone Wars narrative style. And I was surprisingly impressed by the treatment of Ventress. She really grew into a much more interesting chracter as TCW moved along, and the novel did a nice job following up on those developments. So now I'm itching to get into some more of the new canon.
Ahsoka or Tarkin next? I'm tempted to read the Rebels prequel novel as well, but I'm not sure I'm interested enough in the characters there. Thanks for any opinions!
Much like hate watching, sitting through something you irrationally hate from the outset, so that you can raise your blood pressure dangerously high and come close to destroying the medium presenting it you. Resulting in logging in here and spending in the order of weeks to several years derailing any attempt at rational discussion on the topic for all involved. Typically avoiding any argument that disproves your claims and making sweeping, often angry generalisations in the process.
See: Star Trek 2009, any book-to-movie adaptation, any anime-to-movie adaptation etc
I know that was wordy, but I've done this so you can all copy/paste later.
I liked it. Aside from a few flashbacks and interludes, one of which is straight out of the unfilmed Siege of Mandalore episodes, it's a relatively contained story that picks up about a year after Order 66. It's not clear exactly how much time the story covers, but it's probably on the order of a few months. A year at most.
Sounds like a pretty wasted few hours to me
I'm not sure how interested I am in a self-contained novel about Ahsoka. I was rather hoping for the fallout of her final arc on TCW. It feels weird to skip over what is a relatively huge series of events, what with Order 66 and such. Still, worth giving a shot. Did you read Tarkin as well? What did you think of that, if so? Which would you recommend first?
I suspect they're saving the nitty-gritty of that for another venue.
That said, the novel does have some significant scenes and hints at what went down in Order 66, including Rex's involvement. The book even opens on a glimpse of her showdown with Maul on Mandalore, presumably right before everything goes to hell.
There's also a re-framing of her introduction scene told from Anakin's perspective and a neat scene with Bail that actually sheds a lot of light on the early rebellion. Take from that what you will.
Yeah, 'Tarkin' is a much more sweeping story. Though the core narrative is again contained, it goes into way more detail about his background, thought processes and motivations. I forget exactly when in the timeline it takes place, though I want to say it's something like 5 years after RotS.
As for which to read first: personally I enjoyed Ahsoka more, but it really depends on how invested you are in either of these characters.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like some interesting stuff in both. I think I'll check out Tarkin first though. Thanks for your opinions.
This definition is fantastic. I heartily approve the length of it.
Similar threads
