Is there confusion with the timeline?

In 1997, during the SE exibithions, I remembered people leaving the movie theather complaining thinking the movies were something new...hahahah. A lot of people dont get informed before going to see a movie.

 

After getting an initial idea about something some tend to put blinders on to any cues around them that their initial understanding was incorrect. In any group of people you can straight tell them something and there will always be a few that will simply straight ignore you either because they are internally or externally distracted. It is one of the most frustrating aspects of my life but it's something I have learned to expect although at times catch myself reverting to the idea "come on this is simple no one could not get this" only to be proven wrong.

 

That thing annoys me so much.How can you not know there's a new canon? This people go ahead with calling themselves fans while they don't know a simple fact..the comment section on the new trailer is rubish....

 

Most of the people in my office thought R1 is the follow up to TFA. I had to explain it to them.

 

A good friend of mine (let's call him Glen, because that's his name) who waited in line with me to see TPM in 1999 several months back came over to watch TFA because he was busy with real life (messy divorce) when it was in theaters and afterwards I showed him the first trailer and he was upset that they recast Rey so soon. That was his gut reaction from the first few seconds of that trailer. He saw a white brunette British gal and thought that's what I was showing him. Next he says "another Death Star?".

Then he figured it out, all in the span of a few seconds. At first people that aren't spending all day on the Internet will be confused, maybe. It'll take the popular culture a few weeks or months to get used to the idea that SW is moving away from episodic storytelling and that the wider universe is opening up but they will get there.

That's my only example of this happening, and it was a very brief moment of confusion for him.

 

They are casual fans who read things on the internet...unlike most of us here who go through everything thoroughly..

 

This is so true. I overheard so many ridiculous complaints when leaving the theater after TFA showings. It's okay to be a casual fan, or no big fan at all and not having read all available material before the movie, but some people wouldn't get certain things if the movie would break the 4th wall and straight up tell them. Ignorance is really not strong enough for these people, it's more information immunity... no amount of marketing material is ever going to get through to them and neither should Lucasfilm try to.

Another good example is Pablo Hidalgo's tweet in which he mentioned how people after seeing Phantom Menace thought that little Anakin would grow up to become Luke - Vader-shadow and clearly-not-being-named-Luke notwithstanding...

 

I can understand how casual fans make the mistake about the Bothan spies being in Rogue One. While both ANH and ROTJ involve stolen plans to the Death Stars and have a briefing scene before the final attack, Mon Mothma only appeared in ROTJ where she talks about the Bothans. Because Mon Mothma is mostly know for that scene, it is understandable that casual fans will make the mistake when they see the trailers of Rogue One.

However, if you call yourself a hardcore fan and you think that Bothan spies stole the plans to the first Death Star, then I will call you out.

 

There never was an old canon though .

I cracked up laughing when Filoni said him and Lucas never considered legends to be canon. This is another example of casual fans assuming instead of absorbing. Plenty of books from as far back as the early 90s said that the right to decide what really happened lay with George Lucas and Lucasfilm.

 

I know, but there are fans who still say it. It was long stated by Lucas that he had his own universe(his works) and they had their own(their works) so the decanonization after Disney's acquisition was just formality of the obvious.

 

I know, I was just giving an extra example of casual fan assumption.

 

Except here's the thing though, the books and other supplementary material in the EU was always marketed as if it was canon. Did they use the word canon often, of course not, at least not until the levels of canon were established by Leland Chee.

Here's the thing about the weird relationship that the EU always had with the movies, seeing as how the films came first, and those were in the public consciousness, the EU was always beholden to the films, rather than simply being adaptations of them. To illustrate the oddness of this relationship, look at another huge franchise, the MCU. When the MCU began with Iron Man, it was an adaptation, able to pull from decades of Marvel stories. They were able to do what they wanted since it was an adaptation. The inverse is also true, the folks writing the comics aren't beholden to what happens in the movies. If say, in the films they decide to kill Tony Stark off, the folks writing the comics don't have to do the same, and obviously the reverse holds true, if a comic writer replaces Cap, the folks making the movies aren't required to do the same.

The reason I mention Marvel and the MCU is to point out the uniqueness of the situation with LucasFilm and their approach. It's not terribly often that we see huge expansive multimedia efforts tied to the continuity of a property without it being an adaptation. With the EU(and even current canon), the films were treated as gospel, no creative fidgeting allowed in that respect. For the most part, for a long time this didn't cause many issues, after all, for years at the beginning of the EU proper(which really started with Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and the Dark Empire comic) there were only three films to consider. LucasFilm had creative input to offer to creators of course. The Tales of the Jedi comics set during the time of the Old Republic had to have a lot of story elements and designs approved by LucasFilm, especially in regards to the look of the Sith and their culture.

Even when the PT films were released, there were surprisingly few continuity issues to deal with. A Boba Fett short story had to be wiped from continuity, and some simple retcons involving Jedi and marriage were required as well, plus a few small blips here and there. The reason for this was simple, the writers in the EU hadn't really been allowed to do much with the timeframe covered by the PT, even mysterious things like The Clone Wars that Obi-Wan mentioned in ANH were only touched on briefly and in passing.

With capable guys like Leland Chee overseeing continuity, there really weren't that many continuity issues for quite some time(although fans can definitely debate the quality of the stories themselves). The major cracks didn't start to show until a little show called The Clone Wars came out. Prior to the release of TCW, the Clone Wars timeline had been well mapped out by the EU. Each passing episode of TCW seemed to throw more and more wrenches into the continuity though. This led to all kinds of retcons in EU material, some of them rather messy(the multiple deaths of Evan Piel being a highlight). In one case, an ongoing book series was actually cancelled(that series being the Republic Commando book series) due to storylines from TCW blatantly contradicting it(the revelation that the Mandalorians were by in large a pacifist people). Obviously, this created a very messy situation. Can you imagine how messy things would get at Marvel if their comic book writers were constantly forced to retcon things they were writing because of the films?

Even then though, Leland Chee created the levels of Canon, stating that the movies and TV show were at the top, followed by the other forms of media. Essentially, the events in the EU were still considered to have happened, unless they were specifically contradicted by something that George Lucas chose to do in one of his own projects.

This did make one thing very clear, the creator, George Lucas himself didn't bother to take the EU into account when writing his own material(although he would occasionally cherry pick the stuff he liked, Aayla Secura and the Nightsisters of Dathomir being examples). It was pretty clear that Mr Lucas didn't really consider the EU to be canon, however, this is where things get muddy and confusing for some. Despite George Lucas' feelings on the matter, officially, the folks at LucasFilm did treat the EU as canon, even if they had to institute levels of canon and resort to messier and messier retcons to maintain their continuity.

Had the EU been allowed to do its own thing at that point, essentially just form a separate continuity so they didn't have to retcon something every time a new episode of TCW came out, things would have been much less messy and the confusion over canon wouldn't have been nearly as great.

Simply put, simply saying the EU was canon(not according to George Lucas), or the EU was never canon(not according to public statements from LucasFilm) really grossly oversimplifies the situation, and perceptions vary a great deal depending on which source a person preferred to go with(George Lucas or LucasFilm).

If we're being perfectly honest, I think the reason that the confusion persisted was simply due to money. Blatantly saying that nothing in the EU counted would have hurt the sales of their material, and George Lucas obviously knew that, otherwise as the owner of the company he would have simply made sure that the folks at LucasFilm were saying the same things that he was, he was the man in charge after all .



Anyways, as for the main topic of this thread, yes, there is still confusion about Rogue One and it's timeline, and said confusion will remain up until and even after this film's release. I showed my parents the new trailer the other day, and despite seeing both Vader and the Death Star, they were still confused. Perhaps naturally, they assumed that the next Star Wars film would be a sequel to TFA. Their confusion isn't because they are dumb, but rather because they are used to movies being released in a certain fashion. If you think about it, to the average moviegoer, it is a little odd to create a sequel to a movie from decades ago one year, and then the very next year, to create a prequel to an even older movie in the series.

Now it wasn't hard to explain things to them being as how I'm in the know, but lots of people out there are just casual fans like my parents, and they won't have someone like us to clarify things for them. Definitely expect more confusion from members of the general masses when this movie is released, although I expect backlash to be minimal(but we will definitely see some from some of the dumber members of society).

 

Same experience. When I showed the first trailer to my parents, my mom was slightly confused (she's seen all of the movies except AotC, but isn't a giant Star Wars fan) and I had to explain the movie to her. My dad caught on quicker, but that's only because he loves the OT and the Death Star gave it away for him.

 

I believe there is a segment of the general public who may end up confused because they don't follow it closely. They saw TFA because it was the new SW movie and now there is a newer one and they are going to assume it is a sequel.

As far as the Bothan mistake. I find it fascinating how Mon Mothma's brief appearance and line of "many Bothans have died..." struck a such a a chord with so many people that we are seeing so many people that many are asking about the Bothans in relation to Rogue One. If your a hardcore fan like us you should know better. However, I have talked to people who are SW fans that are not hardcore, but definitely are more knowledgeable than the casual viewer and they are also making the mistake.

 

Yes Vader the White there are people like that and I myself have encountered many of them. You have to remember that we are not what is considered simple ''fans'' but we are HARDCORE FANS. Many of us simply don't like SW, we LIVE SW and many different people just don't think as we do. There are tons of SW fans out there that are not exploring the net like we do being up to date on everything SW. We love EVERYTHING SW as many of us collect tons of merchandise, see the movies over and over again, play the games, read the books, magazines and comics and so much more. Many people I know saw TFA and loved it and the only thing they saw after that was the RO trailer. They love the movies but they are not like us that are so deep into the mythos and they had no idea that a prequel was coming after TFA. These people are not like us but yet they still consider themselves fans and who are we to say they aren't. They are fans but just not DIE HARD fans. A few people got sad when I told them about RO being a prequel as they were already real pumped cause they were expecting to see the next adventures of Rey, Finn, Poe and company and I can assure you that just like them there are going to be tons of fans that while they might like RO, they are going to come out of the movies feeling angry cause the new SW movie didn't have nothing to do with Rey and company.

 

I'm with you 100% Merman. The same thing happened to me back when the PT came out. You have no idea how many people came out of the movies being really sad or angry cause they didn't see Luke, Han or Leia in the new movies. It's just as you said, these people are fans, just not diehard hardcore fans like we are.

 

I get you. To this day there are still a few people I know that look at me odd when I mention A New Hope. You can say The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi and they're cool and instantly understand but mantion ANH and they give you this puzzled look till you tell them it's Star Wars.