Canon vs. Legends

I'd say that the new "New Republic" era is different than the old one in Legends. Since Disney took a 30+ year break, we don't know exactly what went on in that time frame other than the formation of the New Republic government. Whereas with the old EU, it took off exactly where ROTJ ended. I remember reading the Truce at Bakura back in the day, it was a pretty good read! Can't remember much about what went on now lol. The characters in the new New Republic era have pretty much stayed the same, although few got changed like Luke & Han. I still miss hearing about Lando & Wedge. I do hope we get to hear from them again soon!

 

It's hard for me to consider all this new stuff (Even TFA) "canon", still. I'm sure I'll come around and all this new stuff will be normal. But a lot of the EU has been "canon" to me for over 20 years. It's hard for some new book to break that mold. I still haven't read any of the new novels, but I must give credit to the comics. Those for the most part are pretty good. But at the same time, most of the comics don't trample on the old EU standouts so far. e.g. Crispin's Solo trilogy, Thrawn Trilogy, Jedi Academy trilogy, Shadows of the Empire and others.

I'm sure I'll come around, but I still have a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth from the canon wipe. It's hard to shake off 25 years.

 

Yeah, I know Lawson sadly has refused to come back to play his character. But Disney could easily get someone else to replace Lawson, maybe Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be the closest candidate. I wouldn't mind as long as Wedge is back in and gets more character time like Hawkeye (AKA Agent Barton) in the later Avenger movies

 

Overall I prefer the new canon, especially now that I've read Empire's End. It's still to be seen what the new republic era is gonna be like.

 

Well... the Legends books and comics are still there. Lucasfilm hasn't burned them all. But what it has changed is that they are not canon anymore.

So far the canon material has lived up to my expectations and has fixed some of the issues I found with the Legends: lack of consistency on the character development and continuity issues. Personally, I'm a big H/L fan and at first I found kinda disappointing that the Solo children (Jaina/Jacen/Anakin) were no more and instead we got Kylo Ren. I was also sort of mad that Leia didn't train to be a Jedi and that didn't acknowledge her Skywalker inheritance. However, that is one of the foundations of the ST: how denying a legacy, with some unknown dangers still lurking around, can bring problems later on.

And yeah, many might be mourning the loss of certain epic characters like Mara Jade, etc. But so far we've gotten really good new characters as Rae Sloane.

Indeed. I'm confident that they will.

Agree. With a Story Group overseeing all the released material, we can expect to have more consistent storylines and plots.

 

I love the fact that our heroes had peace time for 20 some years before war again. In the old EU, they had to keep the battle going because the way the story was told. I found some of the characterizations of people we already knew sometimes out of character or hokey in the old EU. I like some of the books, but others not so much, and I think I much prefer the ones closer to the ROTJ period than later. Thrawn was a really cool character, and I love how they added some of it to the new canon in new ways, like the Nightsisters. They are a lot different than in the book, but still have some of those cool aspects. I am sure after Luke is introduced in the movie, there will be some books filling in that peace time of Luke on various adventures looking for artifacts, and Jedi history and such, and I am looking forward to that. I liked how they had part of the battle of Jakku in Lost Stars from different perspectives, then revisited it with Empire's End from another perspective. The Shattered Empire comic was great. It would be nice I know for there to be more novels with the continuation of some of the old EU characters like Jaina and that little girl (who's name I can't remember) and whoever else was left, but there is always fan fics. I really loved those Aftermath books, I reread them all 3x even the last one. I went back to the first one and reread it again after finishing and found some new things. There were some inconsistent things in the old EU, and some of the best writers are now writing for the new canon, and it's more Star Wars. I actually have found myself reading some of the EU books I never read, and I can separate them really well.

 

Agree! I am looking forward to learn more about all the post-ROTJ adventures of Luke. And it makes more sense from a certain point of view to have him detached from the remaining conflict and focused on his mission as the last of the Jedi. If the prequels and Rebels have taught us something is that most of the Jedi knowledge had been wiped out by Order 66 and the Rise of the Empire, so of course he would be more interested on finding any remaining Jedi artifacts and pieces of knowledge rather than being part of the New Republic and living in Coruscant.

 

The new Canon is way more believable. As much as I loved some of the tales from the E.U. a lot of it would be crazy to me... it just didn't feel like Star Wars. Some of it really was ridiculous and I cringe to think it was actually Canon at some point.

Someone mentioned The Truce at Bakura - an E.U. turn of events that happen after RoTJ. The Ssi-ruu were the 'bad guys' in this story;


Shocking. The Ssi-ruu is just a ridiculous idea - sorry if you love this story but this is just my opinion. To me, it's like someone just watched too much Jurassic Park.

My other pet-hate of the E.U.... the Yuuzhan Vong:


It's like a horrendous mix of the Orcs from LotR and Star Trek. To me, stuff like this just doesn't look or feel like Star Wars.

The new Canon with it's new films, TV Shows, books, and comics are way more consistent and beautifully produced... and this is only the beginning.

 

The end of Empire's End did have some kind of open-endness to it, as to suggest there may be a bit more to the story earlier on at a later date, the suggestion of Wedge and his school, and Jas and her crew, Sloane, Hux and the evil children and some other things that could be taken as "imagine what will happen we are hopeful" or "we are going to continue this later on"

 

The new canon has inconsistencies too. For example, in Lost Stars, Vader's star destroyer was not at the battle of scarif...because the battle of a scarif didn't exist yet I guess. If Lost Stars is actually as "important" in canon as RO, as the story group claims, why would they override the book for a movie? Because they needed Vader to get butts in the seats. And apparently didn't feel it necessary to obey book canon to get him there. I was pretty disappointed by that when I read it the other day. Took me right out of the story.

Side note on lost stars: I really didn't like how the author used modern English slang like: "Hot" for attractive, "bang" for you know what, and "badass". Those are just a few I remember. Lost Stars was average at best for me. Reading Lords of the Sith now. It's WAY better.

I rambled, sorry. My point is, the new canon is already showing cracks after just a couple years. So I think that the "consistency " argument doesn't really hold up in the comparison. I'm sure there will be plenty of stinkers in the new canon. just as it was in the old EU.

 

Well I think inconsistencies are inevitable from time to time, even with the Story Group overseeing things. Another thing to keep in mind is that even though everything being released right now is Canon, that doesn't mean all forms of media are created equal. At the end of the day, while fans like us who frequent these forums often devour each new book and comic release, the vast majority of Star Wars fans will never read a single page of that stuff.

More importantly, the directors, producers, actors and others involved in making the movies have very little knowledge of Canon material either. Granted, the Story Group is there for consultation purposes and they have more influence than the people who handled the EU back in the day. Even then though, you can't convince me that they would be able to convince a big shot director to change anything about his vision for his movie because of some minor detail in a book.

I don't think we'll probably run into anything overly egregious, but as time goes on we will definitely see more little Canon hiccups occur here and there.

Spoiler: Mini Star Wars word rant

As for the earth words and expressions issue, I agree wholeheartedly. It doesn't ruin anything for me but it is distracting. I honestly think that it must be an edict from the Story Group at this point, as it happens far too often. What bugs me about that if that is the case though, is that they apparently think the readers are too dumb or that we can't relate to these stories unless they use earth terms, which I find kind of insulting to be honest.

I haven't read the book myself, but when reading @Hard Case 's review of the Empire Strikes Back young readers novel, he mentions how they changed one of Han's lines for the book. In the movie Han says "There isn't enough life on this rock to fill a star cruiser". In the book they change "star cruiser" to "refrigerator". Apparently they think kids are dumb too. Here's the thing though, if a kid is old enough to read the book, then chances are that they have seen Star Wars and they can manage to figure out for themselves that a star cruiser is a space ship. Additionally, if a parent is reading the book to their young child and their child asks them what a star cruiser is, I think the parent is probably more than up to the task of explaining that to their kid. While that example is from a kids book, I think the general gist applies to adults reading the adult novels as well.

When I first started reading EU novels back in the day, I was never confused by the terms they would use to describe Star Wars versions of real world stuff. Duracrete and durasteel were obviously stand-ins for concrete and steel. The refresher was obviously the bathroom, etc. I don't think that my understanding of this is some indicator of superior intelligence on my part, but rather an indicator that book readers in general can grasp this stuff with out the authors and editors holding our hands and trying to make things more "relatable".

As for comparisons between the EU and the new Canon stuff, I think well be able to get a better picture of that in 2020 after the current movie trilogy wraps up. As of right now, authors are seriously throttled when it comes to the details of anything post RotJ at this point. Once the movies come out and they don't have to be so careful about spoilers then I think things will loosen up and change quite a bit.

Also to keep in mind at this point, a crucial part of the EU back in the day was the stories in the videogames. A lot of fan favorite stories and characters came out of games like the Jedi Knight series, Knights of the Old Republic, Republic Commando and so on. Whereas in the new Canon, we have yet to see a story driven game(technically we've had some minor stuff in mobile games, but that doesn't really count ).

That being said, I do think the new Canon material is shaping up enough that we can definitely see certain trends that are probably going to remain pretty consistent for the most part. I think the biggest difference at this point is the scale at which they can tell their stories. From the time the EU was created in earnest, starting with Heir to the Empire in novels and Dark Empire in comics, it was generally believed that there would be no more Star Wars movies post-RotJ. The Prequel Era was off limits, but anything after the OT was wide open. With that in mind, authors were free to craft stories as epic as they liked. On the plus side, they had much more creative freedom. On the downside though, they had much more creative freedom . We got epic sweeping stories covering a range of topics and eras. Take the New Jedi Order for instance. No one will deny that the series was pretty divisive among fans. On the other hand though, most fans are probably being dishonest if they deny the epic and sweeping nature of the series, whether they enjoyed it or not. Heck, we even got series like the Legacy of the Force series(which was excellent btw) where we witnessed Jacen Solo's fall to the dark side and his tragic confrontation with his sister Jaina. Later yet, the Star Wars Legacy comic series took place over a hundred years after the movies.

Stuff like that isn't going to happen in the new Canon on that scale anymore. For instance, if Jacen and Jaina were in the new movies, there is no way in Heck that they would allow a story as important and epic as the one in the Legacy of the Force to be told in book form rather than in the films.

As for the Canon books though, they have a marked advantage over the EU based on the fact that they are actually considered Canon by the folks in charge now, whereas Lucas never considered the EU truly part of his Canon. Worse yet, George still meddled with the EU anyway from time to time. For instance, the New Jedi Order series was actually supposed to be about the Sith rising again and threatening the galaxy and Luke's fledgling Jedi Order. Lucas didn't like that though, so he nixed it, leading to the creation of the Yuuzhan Vong in place of the Sith. He also personally ordered the death or Anakin Solo as he thought having two Anakins would confuse fans. So the books weren't considered true Canon by the creator(although they were official Canon in the eyes of LucasFilm), but they still had to dance to his tune.

I would say that the Canon books have used their limitations to double down on the character study aspects however. A lot of EU material wasn't nearly as character intensive as the new Canon stuff is(although some of it was). In a way, the Canon stuff has used its weakness of scale to strengthen other aspects.

Additionally, with the new books being Canon, there's now a legitimate chance that we will get to see some of our favorite new characters show up in other forms of media like the movies and TV shows. Fingers crossed for a Rae Sloane appearance in Rebels or one of the movies someday. Whereas George Lucas wasn't likely to ever acknowledge most EU characters in his stuff(it did happen occasionally though).

Also, with the Story Group in charge, there should be much more consistency in the quality of the stories themselves and, therefore, fewer peaks and valleys in the quality of the stories. I think we can rule out seeing anything as drastic as the Yuuzhan Vong appearing, however we also probably won't get as much stuff that pushes boundaries in a good way like the KotOR series. Like Hard Case said, the quality of the new stuff has been more consistent so far, but there hasn't been anything that has wowed me in the same way as the best EU stuff either(even though there has been some really good Canon stories).

 

I really feel like Rogue One proved this. There's lots of potential for our new stories to include non-film characters.

 

I enjoy the New Canon immensely. The only thing I miss about the old canon is how they handled the New Republic. It progressed organically from fledgling government-in-transition to a stable democracy consistently under threat (Because its Star Wars). In their rush to return to the status quo of the OT, they sort of swept that under the carpet in favor of a barely functioning government.

This may sound silly, but they still could have had the same dynamic as the OT films with an embattled, but inherently good, New Republic fighting the threat of the First Order. It seems more rich for storytelling possibilities.

That being said, the New canon is excellent, and I still enjoy the highlights of the EU as Star Wars stories, even if they aren't part of the regular timeline anymore.

 

The Devastator was not actually at the Battle of Scarif. It arrived actually when the Profundity and the rest of the ships are about to go to hyperspace, when the plans were already taken by the rebels and the Death Star had fired the single reactor towards Scarif.

From what I recall, the Story Group had mentioned that the movies have preponderance vs the rest of the material - I might be wrong, anyways - but so far the book do not mention anything that contradicts the movie specifically. Maybe the Battle of Scarif was already in the timeline by the time Lost Stars was written but the Story Group didn't want to give that away yet. Who knows?

It is like some other bit of info some have argued is contradictory from Lost Stars: where Thane Kyrell said to Rieekan that no one had ever captured a Star Destroyer, and then we find in the "The Last Flight of the Harbinger" that the Main 6 had already done so before TESB. This fact is confirmed by Han Solo in Aftermath:Life Debt when they board the Star Destroyer above Kashyyyk. And again, that potential lack of consistency could be explained this way: Thane Kyrell was no longer with the Empire when the Harbinger happened, and the official version was that the Harbinger was destroyed. Maybe the Alliance High Council didn't want to publicize it that much, or Kyrell was not part of the Alliance when it happened. Let's remember this folk had his own personal turmoil LOL.