Looks fun. I like that we're going to start pulling together some broader plot elements that can drive the cinematic universe forward. It's time!
Star Wars Expanded Universe Thread
- Thread starter Triggermv
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Looks fun. I like that we're going to start pulling together some broader plot elements that can drive the cinematic universe forward. It's time!
Yeah wonder if they will take themes from him but create a new version in Canon
Now I understand why the Star Wars brand partners are furious with Disney. It is clearly no longer a theatrical brand. Its now considered a D+ brand.
Oh god, a Mary Sue Star Wars movie!
www.engadget.com
Three new Star Wars movies are coming, including one with Daisy Ridley as Rey
Rey (Daisy Ridley) will form a new Jedi Order in a movie set 15 years after 'The Rise of Skywalker.'
www.engadget.com
Which will be hitting theaters in 2025 at the earliest. Also, that is if they aren't pushed back or cancelled. They have a track record of announcing and then changing their plans. Must be getting their queue from Marvel.
In the mean time the brand suffers due to low quality D+ content. Apathy is setting in.
D+ content is fine. Some actually enjoy it even if you don't. Besides, we waited 16 years with no movies, then another 10. 6 years is almost nothing. We've had more content in the latest gap than close to the other two combined, yet people always find something to complain about. It's the nature of nerdom.Which will be hitting theaters in 2025 at the earliest. Also, that is if they aren't cancelled.
In the mean time the brand suffers due to low quality D+ content.
I don't remember any "brand damaging" content during those 16 years. In fact, most seemed to enjoy the expanded universe content. Disney knows they have problems with the content quality, Bob Iger even mentioned it during a recent shareholders call. I don't think anything will change unless KK gets shown the door after Indy 5 and Disney cleans house at Lucasfilm.
It's amazing for me to hear the words "Heir to the Empire" in a big budget live action Star Wars project.
In the late 80s and very early 90s when everyone moved on from Star Wars I really didn't. In those days at age 10-14 I could buy pretty much all new Star Wars merch and books just with my paper route money. A few novels, a few comics, a few trading cards, the SNES video games, a couple PC games...that was about it.
I must have read Heir to the Empire back in 1992 three times waiting for the other two books to release. I bought the paperback but bought the next two as hardcover not being able to wait. Basically any time I'd be in the back seat of a car driving anywhere or it happened to be light enough to read on the way to one of my wrestling tournaments I'd be reading that book for a year.
I know it won't be retelling this story, but it's enough of a nod to scratch the itch of how bad I wanted three movies from those three books.
The novels of that era ranged from excellent to just ok/boring. None of them were horrifically bad that I read. I read about 10 of them, I'm sure I missed some.
Some Darkhorse comics of that era were were great but it kind of ran into the same thing most comics do where the stories layered upon each other to the extent where the amount of content makes the entire narrative a little too much.
There was a table top roll playing game and a card game like Magic the Gathering that were actually insanely devoted to what source material they could pull from the original trilogy. The Lucasfilm video games those years were also insanely accurate and dedicated to source material.
I loved most of it and Phantom Menace kind of landed with a thud to me other than the score and the one lightsaber battle.
The Marvel comics series that ran when the actual movies were still new is/was trash. Actually the 70s/80s childrens books and books with record are much better than those.
We have to be careful what we wish for.
Part of the reason for theatrical hesitancy is mass audiences in Asia didn't grow up with Star Wars and don't flock to it the way they do for other franchises. These are movie goers who think the Transformers and F&F franchises are great. I don't know the answer but I think chasing that lowest common denominator could result in something worse than sequel and prequel trilogies. I have my significant problems with the prequels/sequels but they are high art compared to any Transformers movie.
Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor were bigger piles of bantha poodoo than almost anything that has come since.
But agreed that KK needs to go.
For me as a lifer fan I can finally sort my Star Wars into categories. It's a lot more enjoyable when you can get over the idea of everything meeting some personal lofty standard..
The core that I love and will rewatch:
Original Trilogy
Andor
Rogue One
Mando
Revenge of the Sith (this one is on the edge but good slightly outweighs the bad)
Stuff I sort of like but don't feel the need to always revisit:
Most of the animated stuff
Solo
Sequel Trilogy
Obi Wan (could have been epic with slight tweaks)
Book of Boba Fett
Stuff I might put on in the background once in a while to confirm why I dislike it:
Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Some of the minor animated stuff
Assorted one offs from my childhood like the Ewok movies and Droids/Ewoks cartoons
Anything can get bad when you expand it without the original creators. Even with the original creators sometimes it's not the same.
As a huge Lynch fan I look at Season 2 of Twin Peaks. First season flawless, first few and last few episodes of Season 2 great...the middle where Lynch wasn't tightly involved and they caved to network demands sucked. Then he comes back 25 years later and 18 episodes that are insanely crazy in pure Lynch way...because he was involved with all 18 and they let him go totally nuts with no restrictions.
Lynch is an exception that he's still the same Lynch 40 years later in old age...with Star Wars that's not an option. Lucas isn't involved and Lucas in the 00s/10s/20s doesn't seem like 70s/80s Lucas anyway.
The options are we have all this content like we do now and 50% of it might suck, or we put all our eggs in one basket and hope the small handful of projects have excellent creative vision writers/directors/producers. I think the "tons of projects and I'll sort out the good stuff on my own" is the better way to go.
That's a good list. Personally, I'd relegate Kenobi and BOBF down a tier and pull up TPM.
Yeah, that's the beauty. There's enough out there that everyone can finally form their own Star Wars. When it was just 6 movies and cartoons/comics/novels there was this massive disappointment that 2-3 of the movies were not up to standards.
It turns out Andor was kind of what I had always been looking for, more than Rogue One even. This Ahsoka series looks promising like it might scratch my Timothy Zahn movie itch but I'll have to find out. It's all fun, nobody should be super deflated by any one project.
I do laugh about what they could do to REALLY piss people off...before Han's situation in EpVII I thought for a moment about Chewbacca being killed. That'd be like murdering everybody's dog in front of them.
The run of the Thrawn trilogy/Dark Empire/Jedi Academy trilogy completely revived the franchise. The Thrawn trilogy alone has sometimes been credited as one of the reasons Lucas decided to make more movies.
The X-wing novels were fantastic to at least good. The blue print for the Rogue Squadron movie is right there.
I did dig some some of the Tales of the Jedi stuff that Darkhorse put out around that time. Although, one of my favorites is the Star Wars: Legacy series. It was their last big thing before the Disney bought the franchise and the comics ended up over at Marvel. It follows Luke's great-grandson, I think, as he comes to grips with his legacy as a new Sith empire emerges.
Around the time of The Phantom Menace, they started the New Jedi Order series. I seem to remember that series taking a long time to come out, but it was really 19 books over a 4 year period, which was insane. The Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi series weren't quite as good, but still entertaining.
They literally did that with the first book of the NJO series. It made some news, not quite Death of Superman stuff, but it was noteworthy. His death wasn't even particularly noble. While he was saving people, he literally just got left behind as one of the Solo kids decided to launch the Falcon as a moon was crashing into the planet they were on.
Rumors of Thrawn being the "heir to the empire". Holy ****, that line right there is huge for those of us who have read the books and knows what that means.
I have high hopes for Thrawn and hopefully an ascendency series eventually but can see how they want Thrawn to the be the bad guy for now. Where is Vanto?
Was listening to the IGN interview. Jon and Dave are going to bring the New Republic stories together in the movie Dave is going to direct.
