Current Events > How do you feel about Star Wars fans who are upset the EU wasn't adapted?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think they're being pretty unreasonable and their anger stems entirely from nostalgia.

Also they're me.

It bugs me that they decanonized certain things that WERE confirmed canon before. Clone Wars 2003 (ok, technically de-canon'd pre-Disney, but it still pisses me off) and The Force Unleashed come to mind.

Indeed. Kathleen Kennedy seems to have made the mistake of giving each directing/writing team *too much* autonomy. I'm not sure how the creative process worked with the MCU, but the movies all sort of fit together in a way that the Star Wars ones did not - my guess is Feige had some sort of an overarching plan on where he wanted the MCU to go and then the screenwriters basically filled in the rest, whereas with Star Wars that was certainly not the case.

I agree that the lack of a roadmap and not giving them the time they needed were the primary issues. There's plenty of shared blame to go around, but I'd place the lion's share on the executions. Michael Arnt was trying to plan out a cohesive saga, but Disney executives insisted that the film be released by 2015. Then only provided 2 years (instead of the previous 3 years) between Episodes 8 and 9. It really was shortsighted.

I'm told a big reason for this is that investors wanted their money back asap. Have movies always been this beholden to what the investors want? It seems shortsighted. You'll get your movie back regardless and the IP will have fare more longevity if the movies excel. I'm not saying Star Wars is dead or not still making money, but the Sequel trilogy ending on such an anemic note feels like a blow that the franchise is still trying to recover from.

I get that the planning was rushed. But it wouldn't have taken long at all to at least agree on the parentage of the protagonist or who the final villain would be. It is just utter incompetence at the highest levels.

I brought it up probably a dozen times on ce, but JJ Abrams wrote a three movie treatment and attempted to coordinate with Rian Johnson to make sure those exact things you highlighting were consistent. Daisy Ridley confirmed that Johnson got all of those notes and chose to use literally none of them. He actively sabotaged the trilogy.

Wow. I wasn't aware of that. I will have to look into it more. If true, he is an even bigger target of scorn than before.

In an interview with the French publication Le Magazine GEEK (which has been translated thanks to the efforts of Tumblr user daisyridleys), Daisy Ridley was asked about whether or not Reys backstory had been decided before The Force Awakens wrapped or if it had been resolved with The Last Jedi. Ridley herself didnt seem to know the answer to that specific question, so she explained what she understood about the overall writing process:
Heres what I think I know. J. J. wrote Episode VII, as well as drafts for VIII & IX. Then Rian Johnson arrived and wrote TLJ entirely. I believe there was some sort of general consensus on the main lines of the trilogy, but apart from that, every director writes and realizes his film in his own way. Rian Johnson and J. J. Abrams met to discuss all of this, although Episode VIII is still his very own work. I believe Rian didnt keep anything from the first draft of Episode VIII.

https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2018/03/daisy-ridley-says-j-j-abrams-wrote-story-drafts-for-star-wars-episodes-viii-ix.html

Thanks for posting that. I guess Abrams did try to keep the movies cohesive for the future other directors even without guidance from executives. Granted, with executives not doing anything to enforce any type of cohesion, Johnson did whatever he wanted and made the terrible, base-shattering film that he did. Sad.

Abrams big screw up was trying to force things back on track by jamming 2 movies worth of plot into 1 rather than just starting over to deal with everything Johnson broke.

Rey and Kylo are just a walmart-brand remake of Jacen and Jaina, with the blood relation removed for plausible deniability.

Kylo Ren is also potentially named after Kybo Ren from the old Droids cartoon.

...of what?

-claim to not be using the EU as a framework

-immediately make characters that are obvious EU reboots

I don't know, maybe you can tell me.

Im still waiting for the reveal that the Knights of Ren are somehow evolved from Sabine Wrens clan. Lol.

They're not. They've been detailed pretty significantly in the comics. The TL;DR is that they're a dark side cult, used to be big news but haven't been big in a long time. Vader encountered them, and Luke and a young Ben fought them as well. Their leader is Ren, and they hold in high esteem a lightsaber that is also named Ren.

Yeah Ren named himself after the lightsaber. The lightsaber I believe belonged to the original Ren who created the cult in the first place.

And then Ben killed Ren.

When?

The tiers of canon meant he left things alone unless these conflict with his ideas. It isn't like he ever planned to change anything in the past during the time of Darth Bane or further back in time like Tales of the Jedi. Not even that ended up being safe under Disney...

Before TFA. Specifically 28 ABY. How do you think he took control?
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ren_(human)#
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b527cfe0.jpg

If the EU had remained intact and George Lucas had made his own sequel trilogy, there very likely would've been a lot more retconning that needed to be done. Because the EU stories taking place post-ROTJ had largely been written on the assumption that sequel movies would never happen, and thus went into immense detail about the events after the Empire fell. It certainly wouldn't have been as clean as the prequel retcons, and likely entire swaths of the EU would've gotten slapped with an "Infinities" (non-canon) label. But there still wouldn't have needed to be a complete jettisoning of the EU.

I brought it up probably a dozen times on ce, but JJ Abrams wrote a three movie treatment and attempted to coordinate with Rian Johnson to make sure those exact things you highlighting were consistent. Daisy Ridley confirmed that Johnson got all of those notes and chose to use literally none of them. He actively sabotaged the trilogy.

JJ never actually wrote a 3-movie treatment. He was never planning on/planned on doing another Star Wars movie after TFA. There was no script, no synopsis that JJ made for the other two films.

George left Disney with a three movie treatment, which Disney shredded, yet still kept a few parts of (mostly character roles and archetypes, but stuff like Luke being a hermit was part of it). Pablo Hidalgo even said TLJ is very close to George's VII.

Pablo Hidalgo even said TLJ is very close to George's VII.

Go back and read the link:
https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2018/03/daisy-ridley-says-j-j-abrams-wrote-story-drafts-for-star-wars-episodes-viii-ix.html

JJ says "I had no intention to return,"

The script for VIII is written. Im sure rewrites are going to be endless, like they always are. But what Larry and I did was set up certain key relationships, certain key questions, conflicts. And we knew where certain things were going. We had meetings with Rian and Ram Bergman, the producer of VIII. They were watching dailies when we were shooting our movie. We wanted them to be part of the process, to make the transition to their film as seamless as possible.

Rian has asked for a couple of things here and there that he needs for his story. He is an incredibly accomplished filmmaker and an incredibly strong writer. So the story he told took what we were doing and went in the direction that he felt was best but that is very much in line with what we were thinking as well. But youre rightthat will be his movie; hes going to do it in the way he sees fit. Hes neither asking for nor does he need me to oversee the process.

That's what's so stupid. Someone should have brought Abrams/Johnson in a room together and said "This is what's going to happen in each one" and then the screenwriters just figure it out. Instead it seems as if the directors were given too much autonomy and too little time.

I suggest reading through that whole SWNN article, there's a lot of quotes in there that show a lot more planning than people think actually happened (and a couple other quotes from Daisy Ridley saying she thought TFA answered all that needed to be said about Rey's parentage)... but no evidence that Abrams had any drafts of VIII or IX. He was an executive director on TLJ, but had no intentions on actually filming it or IX until Disney was in a panic after Book of Henry and Jurassic World bombed.

(Kylo Ren is the final Villain. What if Vader didn't redeem himself and instead became the final villain? It's a fascinating setup)

I wanted to answer the question of the topic but are we just not talking about the old EU anymore? Is this another "Star Wars sequel venting" topic?

Because if so, never mind.

I just hate how hesitant they are to cover the Sith from previous eras.

The EU in the post-Endor years?
-Exar Kun's spirit was dealt with by Luke's academy.
-Palpatine mentioned recovering Naga Sadow's force knowledge through the force.
A lot of the Fallen 12 Jedi/Jen'jidai who were exiled and created the Sith ended up being brought up in one form or another.
-Sorzus SynR, emulus Dreypa, and Karness Muur were brought up via their talismans with some other stories around the last two impacting the present day.
-XoXaantrained Darth Krayt
-Darth Andeddu (possibly one of the 12) is responsible for Palpatine figuring out essence transfer.

There are more, but just the ones that immediately came to mind.

If you meant Canon/Disney Star Wars, it would be good to see their take on KOTOR or Darth Bane fleshed out.

I do think a good step would be to go far in the future, far in the past, or far from what the main story look place. Not retconning or fully rebooting the series. Just a new location in the galaxy that doesn't interact with the main story at all to give the series a soft reboot.