What are your hopes for the new Star Wars EU/continuity?

[Hypaspist]

The SW novel also adds an interesting introduction which outlines the events leading up to the movie. It actually is pretty much the political story of Episodes I-III-the Fall of the Republic, the Clone Wars, the Jedi purge-with one major difference-the Emperor is portrayed as weak and a recluse (and no mention is made of him having the force), hardly the mastermind of the movies.

It's the way the force is established in the prequels that bothers me so much. It has been demystified to the point of DBZ style power levels, and the defining feature of Jedi seems to pretty much be their ninja abilities. With Obi Wan, you never knew what he was going to be capable of next, but it usually involved using the force to outwit the foe. Then when we saw that Yoda could move massive objects, it was a big surprise and showed how in tune with the force he was. I think the best allegory for the prequels is how they ripped off this concept to have him throw things at people.
If the Emperor was so powerful, it was because he was malevolent. It's ironic that he said in Ep. III that the Sith and Jedi are almost exactly the same - and that's completely true! They all get all kinds of worldly power and it turns down into a struggle between rival factions. It would make more sense if he had no power but was still evil...and the way I always saw it was that he was reclusive because he was basically this completely evil guy who had to pull the strings from the shadows.

The prequel novels aren't really straight adaptations, they have a lot of added material that isn't in the films, such as the history of the Sith in TPM, a lot of stuff in AOTC's opening and Anakin's motivation makes more sense in the ROTS novel.

All the novels also pretty much use most of the deleted scenes, such as the Biggs stuff cut from the original film. I think the reason it was cut was to make the opening fast paced and not disjointed-originally the blockade runner scenes were mixed with the Bigg's scenes (Luke sees the space battle, for instance, while repairing a Moisture Vaporater).

There was an excellent 'making of' on Youtube for the original movies that showed these. I wish I could find it: it kept the pace of the films exactly, but overlaid them with a pre-production scene portion every now and then.

 

[Masiral]

I never paid much attention to the Star Wars EU fandom. Can someone here fill me in on how the Yuuzhan Vong were regarded?

It's a good series. Some of the books could probably be skipped, but it also includes one of the best EU novels, Traitor.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

My hopes are a good strong story. And a yellow lightsaber, canonized.

 

[Wadjda]

Pretty sure the stupid no Jedi Wookie and 3 lightsaber color for the good guys is thrown out.

 

[Masiral]

Pretty sure the stupid no Jedi Wookie and 3 lightsaber color for the good guys is thrown out.

There's already been a Wookiee Jedi on The Clone Wars.

 

[Unicron]

I never paid much attention to the Star Wars EU fandom. Can someone here fill me in on how the Yuuzhan Vong were regarded?

I haven't read the relevant books, so my own experience is kind of limited. But on a conceptual level, I've never been overly fond of the Vong. They seem like a Borg derivative in some ways, without the emphasis on technology, and their ships are rather ugly IMO.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Yeah, they were kind of a Klingon/Borg/Hellraiser kind of mix, and didn't really feel "Star Wars". Originally, the NJO was going to be Dark Horse's storyline (and they did eventually do some NJO-era comics), but Del Rey wanted to do something that would set them aside from the Bantam era, so they took up the storyline. Nom Anor, who is more or less the Darth Vader analog of the NJO, actually debuted in the Crimson Empire II comic series.

 

[Wadjda]

Did it work in terms of making a good profit?

 

[Mr Light]

I'd be very interested to see a sales chart of every SW novel!

 

[Masiral]

Did it work in terms of making a good profit?

It must have - the series went on for 19 books, many of which hit the New York Times Bestseller List, and the SW novel line has been going strong ever since.

 

[Mr Light]

It was originally supposed to be longer, but some books were cancelled from the series. Dark Tide was supposed to be 3 not 2 books, and I believe an entire trilogy was cancelled from the final year.

 

[Turtletrekker]

^That trilogy was to be written by prolific Star Trek author Jan Michael Friedman in what was to be his first ever Star Wars work.

 

[Masiral]

It was originally supposed to be longer, but some books were cancelled from the series. Dark Tide was supposed to be 3 not 2 books, and I believe an entire trilogy was cancelled from the final year.

Dark Tide was really just compressed, and the MJF trilogy was replaced by the Edge of Victory dulogy in order to

Spoiler: Just in case...

feature Anakin Solo more before his death

, so really only 2 books were lost overall.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

The books got progressively darker and darker as the years went on so I'd like to see a return to more swashbuckling adventure stories. I don't mind having darker elements but those have far outweighed the fun adventure elements.

 

[Mr Light]

The final series, Fate of the Jedi, was actually quite fun. It much lighter material than the Vong War and the Legacy of the Force series. Aside from the early time-wasting books, I think it's an excellent series that tells a great story and works as a good ending to the EU franchise (which it retroactively ended up being).

There was just something intensely satisfying about seeing Luke not hesitating to slice up Sith left and right, after him being crippled with indecision through pretty much every book series before that. He was finally facing the enemy of his people and had no question about what needed doing.

 

[Wadjda]

Daala the Chie of State.

 

[Masiral]

There was just something intensely satisfying about seeing Luke not hesitating to slice up Sith left and right, after him being crippled with indecision through pretty much every book series before that. He was finally facing the enemy of his people and had no question about what needed doing.

I loved that we finally got that. Luke absolutely destroying a squad of Sith sent to kill him after he had literally been to hell and back - that's the kind of awesomeness I hope we see in Episode VII.

 

[Wadjda]

You want to see action Luke, read Mindor.

 

[Corran Horn]

The books got progressively darker and darker as the years went on so I'd like to see a return to more swashbuckling adventure stories. I don't mind having darker elements but those have far outweighed the fun adventure elements.

I agree - each successive series got farther and farther away from the OT time-wise and theme-wise. There's nothing wrong with mixing things up a little and of course there have been dozens and dozens of EU books and much ground tread - but to me, it had gotten so far off the path it just wasn't interesting anymore. There was also a period of about 10-15 years in-continuity where the Governments flipped around 3 times.

I gave up a book or two into Fate of the Jedi. I did read Crucible and when at the end Han, Leia, and Luke basically go off to take a long rest I wanted to do the same wrt the EU.

 

[Mr Light]

I actually loved Fate of the Jedi. Yeah, the first 2-3 books were horrendous time wasters. But after that, it got quite excellent. It had my favorite bad guys from the post-Thrawn era and it was the best portrayal of Luke in the EU as well. It was just a lot of fun. It wasn't as relentlessly dark as NJO or LOTF.