Star Wars Past EU Officially Decanonized by Lucasfilm

[Tom]

Only the 6 official films, the Clone Wars series and the New 'Rebels' show will be treated as official canon going forward.

https://movies.yahoo.com/news/lucasfilm-unveils-plans-star-wars-expanded-universe-050000805.html

In an attempt to end months of fan speculation, discussion and concern, Lucasfilm has released a statement about the position of the “Expanded Universe” of the Star Wars franchise in relation to the new movie trilogy.

“While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, [Franchise creator George Lucas] always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU,” the statement explains, clarifying that the official canon for the franchise consists of the six movies to date, as well as the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series.

“These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align,” the statement states.

The upcoming new animated series Star Wars Rebels is also identified as canon. It continues, “In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe,” adding that elements introduced in the Expanded Universe material remain available for use in future; Star Wars Rebels will feature concepts that first appeared in roleplaying games related to the series in the 1980s, it points out.

More to come...

 

[Turtletrekker]

Well, despite claims from Lucasfilm, the EU was never really canon. Calling it such was just a gimmick to get people to whom such irrelevancies matter to buy the books.

 

[Tom]

True, this serves mostly to stop people from speculating that the plot of the new trilogy will be connected to the EU.

 

[Jedi_Master]

The EU was never canon, although some ideas that were in the West End RPG books were sprinkled into the prequels.

75% of the EU materials never deserved to be canon anyway.

 

[indianatrekker26]

http://starwars.com/news/disney-pub...relaunch-of-star-wars-adult-fiction-line.html and now they just announced 4 new star wars novels, with full cover artwork. I am interested in all 4.

 

[Set Harth]

The EU was never canon, although some ideas that were in the West End RPG books were sprinkled into the prequels.

You mean like the balance between the light and dark sides of the Force?

 

[Enterprise1701]

Booooooooooooooooooooooo.

 

[The Old Mixer]

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

 

[Relayer1]

As I posted (in more words) elsewhere -

Good !

 

[JoeZhang]

Only an idiot would think otherwise - "we want you to write bold new adventures - oh and you have to be consistent with 20 years of crap knocked out by 100s of different authors".


That doesn't mean they might not lift stuff from there but you didn't need to be Jedi to see this coming.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

I'm happy about this. I've been disappointed in the EU since the end of the New Jedi Order series. Hopefully the new stuff won't suck like the last two major novel series.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, this isn't so much an announcement as a clarification for all the deluded fanboys who were convinced Episode VII will be a word-for-word adaptation of 'Heir to the Empire', 'Dark Empire' or one of those tedious NJO era stories. The EU has never been canon, that's why there's a separate name for it. Otherwise it'd just be call "the Star Wars Universe" with no delineation.

Of course as TCW has proven, that doesn't mean they won't draw certain characters, backstories, concepts etc. from certain EU sources when and where appropriate.
Clearly there are still fans working at Lucasfilm.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUm0Lo6DL-E[/yt]

 

[Set Harth]

The EU has never been canon, that's why there's a separate name for it.

The separate name is simply to distinguish it from the films.

 

[Relayer1]

Chewies not dead anymore

 

[Set Harth]

What, no love for Crix Madine?

 

[Greylock Crescent]

And in other news, the sky is declared to be blue.

This was a great decision.

 

[Avro Arrow]

That doesn't mean they might not lift stuff from there but you didn't need to be Jedi to see this coming.

Judging by ROTS, Jedi weren't exactly the high benchmark for seeing things coming...

 

[suarezguy]

I hate disregarding past stories for a new one, if you want to do so why not just make something brand new? And somehow a partial sequel feels even worse than a reboot. I know more people will watch the new films than read the novels and comics but if you were willing to publish and sell them and have people to enjoy them, it seems pretty cheap to suddenly say the events didn't happen within the fictional universe.

 

[Reverend]

I hate disregarding past stories for a new one, if you want to do so why not just make something brand new? And somehow a partial sequel feels even worse than a reboot. I know more people will watch the new films than read the novels and comics but if you were willing to publish and sell them and have people to enjoy them, it seems pretty cheap to suddenly say the events didn't happen within the fictional universe.

It's partially a matter of the sheer volume of material reaching a critical mass so that it becomes increasingly difficult to create anything new at all.

More to the point, as has already been stated, they're not "decanonising" anything because it was never canon to begin with. Hell, the EU could never keep things straight anyway, which is why there's that anal and ridiculously ungainly multi-tiered canonicity scale. All they've done is said that from here on out, all of the new stuff *will* be canon.

 

[BillJ]

I hate disregarding past stories for a new one...

Why? J.J. Abrams isn't going to break into your house and steal your novels. And how does them deciding to go in a different direction impact the enjoyment of the novels that you've already read?

Two of the best Star Trek novels ever, "Strangers from the Sky" and "Federation" got overwritten later on by both the TV series and Star Trek: First Contact. The latter in no way impacted my enjoyment of the former. I think it's great that we can get different stories about the same basic events.