Dave Filoni was a big fan of the games. Apparently he fought to get them in or something
Star Wars Books Thread
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Dave Filoni was a big fan of the games. Apparently he fought to get them in or something
Admittedly that is probably not the best example since that role could theoretically have been filled by Arc Troopers (which they already had the assets for.) This was more a case of "wouldn't it be cool if...". It does however cut down on the conceptual works since they had the ready-made designs as well as the original assets to work from, and they were able to re-purpose it later when Gregor showed up.Dave Filoni was a big fan of the games. Apparently he fought to get them in or something
Well, this is a franchise where the movies were revised with practically every release.
In all seriousness, I think you're right. On the other hand, with the current batch of tie-ins bringing synergy between materials to a whole new level, the official announcement that the tie-ins are now on the same level of canonicity as the movies, and just the nature of a reboot in and of itself, I think it's kind of hard in retrospect to see Legends has having full canon status, since it's doesn't seem to have operated or been treated differently than any other non-canon tie-in line.
I loved that episode, the Arc wasn't good, but I loved the episode Gregor was in.
When they did a shot from his POV they made the visor UI look like the one from Republic Commando, which was awesome.
About 3/4th of the way through reading the 'Phantom Menace' novel (it's a surprisingly quick read.) Not much to say about it as it mostly just sticks to the script. What is interesting is a slightly more detailed account of the formation of the Sith and the rise and fall of their Empire, mostly at their own hands. I can only assume all of this came straight from Lucas as unlike the ROTS book, I can't see any attempt to reference or tie-in any EU material.
One thing that stands out for me that I didn't expect is Jar Jar. Now to be clear, I've never been much of a Jar Jar hater. Sure, he's annoying and pointless but I don't feel like he ruined that first movie as some fans seem to.
That said, somehow the book makes him actually seem more irritating and tiresome. I never fully appreciated before just how superfluous and tacked-on he is. Literally every scene he's in just just causing random slapstick in the background while every other character does their best to ignore him. He performs no real function within the plot itself. His only story impact is in unintentionally motivating Amidala to return home, knowing there's an army she can recruit. Admittedly, it's an effective scene, but it's really his only character interaction that doesn't involve him being told to be quiet and stop touching things and where he actually speaks like a person.
With it being so apparent even on paper (and thus no blame lies with Ahmed Best's performance) it's baffling how it took Lucas & McCallum until viewing that first rough edit to realise they'd made a huge misstep.
I'm just speculating but the only thing I can think of is that Lucas was concerned that the material would be too dry, what with the Jedi needing to be so serious, the droids no longer being the POV characters as in ANH and every other major player being in similarly serious roles of politicians, servants and soldiers. So he created a character to embody all the comic relief that would usually be organically woven onto the situations and character interaction. Then promptly neglected to give the character any other traits or even a role within the plot.
Yeah, that arc really didn't need to be 4 episodes. Maybe two at most. Hell, the Gregor story could have been entirely it's own thing, or slotted into some other stand-alone set-up.
One thing that stands out for me that I didn't expect is Jar Jar. Now to be clear, I've never been much of a Jar Jar hater. Sure, he's annoying and pointless but I don't feel like he ruined that first movie as some fans seem to.
That said, somehow the book makes him actually seem more irritating and tiresome. I never fully appreciated before just how superfluous and tacked-on he is. Literally every scene he's in just just causing random slapstick in the background while every other character does their best to ignore him. He performs no real function within the plot itself. His only story impact is in unintentionally motivating Amidala to return home, knowing there's an army she can recruit. Admittedly, it's an effective scene, but it's really his only character interaction that doesn't involve him being told to be quiet and stop touching things and where he actually speaks like a person.
With it being so apparent even on paper (and thus no blame lies with Ahmed Best's performance) it's baffling how it took Lucas & McCallum until viewing that first rough edit to realise they'd made a huge misstep.
I'm just speculating but the only thing I can think of is that Lucas was concerned that the material would be too dry, what with the Jedi needing to be so serious, the droids no longer being the POV characters as in ANH and every other major player being in similarly serious roles of politicians, servants and soldiers. So he created a character to embody all the comic relief that would usually be organically woven onto the situations and character interaction. Then promptly neglected to give the character any other traits or even a role within the plot.
Yeah, that arc really didn't need to be 4 episodes. Maybe two at most. Hell, the Gregor story could have been entirely it's own thing, or slotted into some other stand-alone set-up.
Think so. According to the Essential Reader's Companion, the Phantom Menace novel's backstory was developed by Lucas with no ties to Legends, and the idea of different iterations of the Sith Order rising and falling was to reconcile the novel with the rest of Legends.
Those are some interesting insights, and I appreciate you sharing. I might have to read it again, as I really liked the different asides and information we get about Anakin and the history of the Republic in the novel. I didn't remember the parts of about Jar-Jar, so that's interesting.
(Note: I know Reverend won't see this, but whatever)
I was going to say that technically, Delta Squad isn't in TCW. Four Clone Commandos appear, but there were hundreds of Commandos. That's what I always thought, that it was just some random clone commandos. Then, I looked at Wookiepedia just now, and it was actually Delta Squad. As if I needed another reason to hate Filoni, he apparently specifically asked for them to be incorporated into the episode (even if it was just a small thing). Its nice to know he really is petty enough to give the middle finger to fans of the game/books (they weren't a huge part of the RC novels, but they were in them). He ruins mandalorians, takes a whole book series out of continuity (and it couldn't have been put back in, even Traviss basically said there wasn't a way to fix the huge continuity issues) and then takes a victory lap (two years after the last RC book, but to be fair, with how long animation takes the episode was probably written about a year before it aired)
Anyway, on the actual topic of the thread, I've started Aftermath: Life Debt, and its not very good. The new Imperial in charge is really annoying, I wish it was just Sloane in charge. The Rebel team are all irritating, they basically just complain and whine at each other, when Temin isn't getting pointless lectures from his mother. Hopefully the book will pick up (its getting to the meat of the story now, a few chapters in), and its not a bad book so far, but I honestly at this point liked the first book better.
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I followed precisely none of that.
Oh, a thing I forgot to mention. Does anyone think that Catalyst seems a little underwhelming, based on the info they've given? It seems to just be the story of the parents of the main Rogue One character, but they can't tell that much since the movie is going to be partially about that plot line. It seems like kind of a limiting focus for a prequel book, although I admit its hard to thing of another element of Rogue One (based off what we know) that could be used as the basis for a prequel story. Its really weird that they're making a prequel book for a SW movie anyway, at least one that leads so directly.
I was really hoping that the new canon books weren't going to have to release a movie prequel book every year, especially since they seem to only release 4-5 novels a year. There really wasn't a TFA novel tie in, so I was hoping that trend would continue. It feels like a waste to use one of the handfull of SW novels as a prequel to the yearly movie when there are literally hundreds or even thousands of stories that could be told. I'd think that just releasing a SW book around the time of the movie would be good enough, without tieing a novel into the movie. I mean, I'll still read it, it just seems like a bit of a waste, and the book seems like it might be held back by having to not deal with stuff the movie will be doing. I can't imagine the ending will be particularly satisfying anyway, it will probably just end in a cliffhanger that will lead into the movie. Oh well. It could still be pretty good, and next year we'll finally see the end of the (so far very average) Aftermath trilogy, which will open up a slot for another SW novel even if a yearly tie in takes a spot away.
I was really hoping that the new canon books weren't going to have to release a movie prequel book every year, especially since they seem to only release 4-5 novels a year. There really wasn't a TFA novel tie in, so I was hoping that trend would continue. It feels like a waste to use one of the handfull of SW novels as a prequel to the yearly movie when there are literally hundreds or even thousands of stories that could be told. I'd think that just releasing a SW book around the time of the movie would be good enough, without tieing a novel into the movie. I mean, I'll still read it, it just seems like a bit of a waste, and the book seems like it might be held back by having to not deal with stuff the movie will be doing. I can't imagine the ending will be particularly satisfying anyway, it will probably just end in a cliffhanger that will lead into the movie. Oh well. It could still be pretty good, and next year we'll finally see the end of the (so far very average) Aftermath trilogy, which will open up a slot for another SW novel even if a yearly tie in takes a spot away.
In that case, one might presume (though not necessarily assume) that for the most part this is the version of events the LFSG are going with.
Reading it back now it specifically says that the Sith Order was founded almost 2000 years prior to TPM, which means they were around for a little under a thousand years before the whole thing collapsed, leaving Darth Bane the sole survivor.
Interestingly it says the Sith began with a single Jedi dissident who tried to bring his views on the dark side to the council, but they were rejected and he left the order. In the beginning he was on his own, but eventually others who had previously followed his studies joined him and recruited others. When the ranks of their Sith cult numbered about 50, they began to directly oppose the Jedi.
The war against the Jedi was "vengeful and furious and ultimately doomed." It seems the selfish nature of the dark side manifested immediately as the original Jedi dissident horded power only for himself, leading his disciples to begin plotting against him and each other. Once he was dead, it seems the war they started against the Jedi became a free for all, ultimately ending with their own self destruction. In the end, they were all wiped out in just the space of a few weeks.
During all of this, Bane stood aside and let the other Sith Lords tear into each other and he went into hiding as the Jedi finished off the last remaining stragglers. When they were all dead, he re-emerged.
We pretty much know the story from here on out: he started alone but as time went on and grew old he sought an apprentice. Trained them to be a master and seek their own apprentice in turn, thus establishing the "Rule of Two".
You don't get a specific chronology, but since it says this began almost two thousand years ago and ended one thousand, we can presume that most of the intervening centuries were taken up by endless Sith infighting. No clue exactly when the Sith founder was knocked off. Some species live for centuries so he could have survived right up until the final years of the age of Sith rule. Plus of course the Sith are known to go to extreme lengths to extend their lives, so that's also a possibility.
This actually lines up with the line in TCW about Sith Empires plural. I can see most of them being very similar in principle to what we saw Maul try to assemble. Small groups of Sith Lords gaining control of planets and sectors though assassination, coercion, using the greed of mercenaries and criminals to control populations and slave labour to keep the whole thing running. Multiply that by the fifty Sith they started with and you could potentially be looking at dozens of Sith Empires at once, spread all over the galaxy and most of them spending as much time and energy fighting each other as the Jedi and whatever was left of the Old Republic in that time.
It also ties nicely into the Utapau/Kyber crystal arc and it's reference to a time long ago when great wars were fought with terrible super-weapons powered by giant kyber crystals (like the one we see on Malachor.) It stands to reason that there would be an insane arms race between the various Sith factions, each trying to wipe out all the others first.
Think the European Dark Ages or Japan's Sengoku Jidai* if it was fought with nuclear, biological AND chemical weapons and you get a vague sense of the endless chaos and carnage.
*Yes that second word sounds familiar and no it isn't a coincidence
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There kind of was, it was called Lost Stars.
I'm not getting into that again. Suffice it to say, there was no novel made for a general audience that acted as a prequel to SW: TFA. Even Lost Stars didn't actually act as a prequel, it just had a bit of its own version of the Battle of Jakku at one point. so, even if I counted it as a SW novel (as opposed to a YA book), it still wouldn't be a TFA prequel, especially not in the way that Catalyst is a prequel for Rogue One.
One of those parents is a main character in the movie, and the novel also focuses on another main character of the movie, Director Krennic. And it does seem much more of a prequel to Rogue One than any of the pre-TFA novels were a prequel to that movie last year.
I feel like the land battle could have been excised completely, with the focus remaining on Padmé's strike team going after the Viceroy, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan battling Darth Maul, and Anakin and the Naboo pilots attacking the droid control ship in orbit. The goal of the starfighter attack could have been to knock out the droids so that Padmé's team could reach the Viceroy.
(Note: I know Reverend won't see this, but whatever)
I was going to say that technically, Delta Squad isn't in TCW. Four Clone Commandos appear, but there were hundreds of Commandos. That's what I always thought, that it was just some random clone commandos. Then, I looked at Wookiepedia just now, and it was actually Delta Squad. As if I needed another reason to hate Filoni, he apparently specifically asked for them to be incorporated into the episode (even if it was just a small thing). Its nice to know he really is petty enough to give the middle finger to fans of the game/books (they weren't a huge part of the RC novels, but they were in them). He ruins mandalorians, takes a whole book series out of continuity (and it couldn't have been put back in, even Traviss basically said there wasn't a way to fix the huge continuity issues) and then takes a victory lap (two years after the last RC book, but to be fair, with how long animation takes the episode was probably written about a year before it aired)
I think I saw that episode, or at least the clip. I can't see how it was a middle finger, esp. since it didn't overwrite anything in the Clone Commandos game/novel series. It just showed one more event in their lives that the books didn't cover and didn't do any damage. I thought it was one of the better Legends homages in the series, personally.
Not really, but then again, I'm not really trying to anticipate what the book will be, but more taking an interest in reading it to get primed for the movie. Lucino did mention that we will get some additional insights into Jyn Erso that will allow readers to have a better understanding of her character when watching the movie. I don't know, I guess I don't think it needs to be "big" or "earth-shattering" to be worth my while.
IMHO, I'm taking it on a case-by-case basis. If it's a good book and interesting story, I don't really care if its a prequel to a movie or not.
There was that little thing called "Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and Before the Awakening. Now, I am aware that you did clarify that you meant the longer novels, but they did publish some prequel stuff to TFA. (I'm not trying to get into a debate, but, IMHO, Before the Awakening seems to be the closest analogue that TFA has to Catalyst.)
TFA's model actually might be a good balance; spreading out the direct movie tie-ins across the GA and YA lines. It allows more space for additional stuff to be published and allows for flexibility in story format (I doubt Before the Awakening, essentially a collection of three short stories, would've been long enough to be an adult novel.)
We've got years of storytelling ahead of us. I don't see the need to fill in everything at once. Also, historically, IMHO, the farther away you get from the movies and the movie characters, the less interesting the stories got, IMHO. Besides, it is possible that the kinds of stories you want are being saved for the big and small screens, with the printed materials adding additional context and supporting stories to that.
Some of us really like learning more about events that relate to what we saw onscreen, I guess.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. In a reboot the situation can be characterized as the start of a new canon separate from the prior canon. They don't normally say: btw, the canon before we rebooted wasn't canon then. Just the fact that Disney made it clear the EU was decanonized implies there was something to decanonize in the first place.
But the novel doesn't show different iterations of the Sith Order rising and falling, other than the whole Darth Bane/Rule of Two thing. It says that the order came into existence 2000 years prior to the film era. That totally blew off the rest of Legends, which had the order in existence thousands of years before that.
Fair enough.
Yeah, that's true. Other sources, like the New Essential Chronology added retcons and the idea of different Sith orders rising, falling and being replaced later down the line. It wasn't perfect (retcons rarely are), but it was good enough for the time and was one of the more reasonable fixes made to keep Legends in line with the movies and TCW.
This point stood out to me. As much as I enjoy almost every Star Wars book I have read, regardless of classification or era, the ones that draw me in the most on the ones that connect to the films in some way. I thoroughly enjoyed most, if not all, TPM tie in material. I had the novelization, as well as Anakin, Amidala and Maul's journal, which were all incredibly interesting and covered different material and different perspectives.
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