Mara Jade - Will She Be Canon?

I was going to mention that one but I didn't want to give the wrong impression. Good pics

 

Good to know again with the Shannon name error I made earlier, they did pick a good choice to portray her.

 

We're discussing what is stated in the Heir to the Empire novel. We already know the book is no longer canonical.

As for the movie scene, I have conducted a short investigation into your claims. And quite frankly I find your claims bogus.

Here's your movie proof.

First, you will notice on the 'object' in the first picture you posted that the 'lightsaber' is awfully large, akin to Darth Maul's saberstaff. Also note the 'hand' portion is black, just like the gloved cybernetic hand Luke fought with in ROTJ. Small problem-in ESB Luke fights barehanded:

Maul's saberstaff for reference:

And Luke holding his old man's blade in one hand:


Second, you will notice the large amount of fabric. It's simply too much to have come from Luke's jumpsuit, never mind the impossibility that the fabric would have remained on Luke's severed hand due to the wind shear in both the shaft and the exterior. And of course, if we go back and look at the duel we see that Lord Vader makes a clean cut. No fabric:

"All to easy.."

Third, there is a huge timing problem. In the exterior shot the 'object' is seen falling ~50 yards away from Luke. However, this is also the second time right after the duel that we get a shot through Luke's eyes. The first time, Luke gazes into the depths of the interior shaft and.. the hand is not there:

The hand is not visible around Luke at the bottom of the shaft which you can see at 7:38 in this video. Also note that as the trapdoor opens at 7:48, the exterior hatch opens as well. Even if the hand had already fallen through the trapdoor, it could still be laying on top of the exterior hatch and would support the 'object' being Luke's hand. But we do not see Luke's hand fall out there either.

Of course, if the trapdoor and exterior hatch opened simultaneously when the hand made it down there, Luke would never have seen his 'hand'(As established in the earlier shot of Luke looking down the shaft).

Now, of course, maybe it went into a different shaft and something funky happened with the wind and well it just conveniently plopped out right when luke hit the bars. Maybe it's just like the Prequels and you gotta extrapolate wind currents in industrial shafts to understand whats really going on..
Well, as we see here the population of hatches on the underside of Cloud City is pretty spartan.

And again, we see the 'object' dropping from a point pretty close to Luke's perspective.


Only problem is, nothing but Luke fell out of that hole.

I don't know what the 'object' actually is. But I also don't need to know. That's because I'm absolutely certain of what it is not, and that would be Luke's severed hand. Which ultimately means that Heir to the Empire does not conflict with The Empire Strikes Back.

I rest my case.

 

I for one would love to see a Mara type character. Though I doubt she will be named Mara Jade it would be cool to see Luke get a love interest. G.L. stated when asked about a love interest for Luke ( I am paraphrasing here.) ( we still haven't seen the sequel trilogy yet) which leads me to believe that he (Luke) will have a love interest atleast mentioned.
I personally am hoping for a Skywalker child from Luke as if he doesn't have a child the skywalker name dies with him. And the story of starwars has to this point been about the Skywalker line.
Even if Leia has kids they would be Organa or Solos not Skywalker.
I want the Skywalker name to be the central hub to the new trilogy. Not just the bloodlines. That said there has to be a Mara type character to provide a vessel for a Skywalker baby to be carried in......I dont think the midi- chloreans will divinely impregnate Luke...there for he needs a women. Maybe not shown in 7 but atleast mentioned and maybe shown in future installments.

 

How do you know the cylindrical object is too large to be Luke's lightsaber? Did you measure it? Is there something next to it to give it a sense of scale?

Your biased opinion is making you see things. The hand portion is not black. Quite the contrary, it looks quite lightly-colored to me.

How do you know it's fabric? Did you hold it, touch it, feel it? During the practical effect of Luke getting his hand amputated, Mark Hamill held a prosthetic hand, which in turn held a lightsaber. David Prowse then knocked the prosthetic hand holding the lightsaber out of Mark Hamill's hand, which was hidden under his shirt sleeve. If you notice from this photograph, more than his hand was amputated. A portion of his arm was amputated as well, which would logically mean that a portion of his shirt sleeve was removed, hence the fabric you claim you see. Also, his shirt sleeve was buttoned around his wrist, which would hold the fabric. Have you ever tried to pull a buttoned shirt sleeve up your arm? It doesn't go up very far, does it?

This can easily be explained away by the fact that Luke weighed much more than a lightsaber, hand, and fabric. Once Luke dropped through the first hatch, the second hatch must have known that something large and heavy was coming its way, and opened. The lightsaber, hand, and fabric must have been sitting on the second hatch for a few minutes until Luke fell down. I realize a shot of the lightsaber, hand, and fabric falling into the clouds was unnecessary for Irvin Kirschner to show, but he showed it nonetheless. Why would he go through the trouble of showing something falling if it weren't important? Your theory is that it's some random trash. Why show some random trash falling through the sky?

Do you know what assuming does? Re-read Occam's razor.

How can you say "nothing but Luke fell out of that hole"? Are we all just imagining the object?

You're worshipping at the altar of Heir to the Empire, where, to me, an obvious contradiction exists between it and the movie it's based on. Your religion's dogma is blinding you from understanding logic and common sense.

 

No, what I did was completely debunk your purist argument. And to add insult to injury, I did it by playing the classic "Argue only from the movies" game purists like yourself constantly demand we all play by. I see it all the time over on Sam's Channel on YT. Unfortunately for you, it was just too easy to take your dead theologians and pompous rhetoric and smash it to pieces with cold hard facts. And it was a joy to do so. It always is.

Since you don't seem to understand how loose Luke's sleeves really are:

That's a lot of meat on that arm showing. Wonder where I've seen that before? Oh, yeah:

Yeah, I already debunked that in my last post. Go back and read it this time.

I did measure it. And then compared the ratio to Luke and Maul. It favors Maul.

It's black as night.

No, but you're imagining something besides Luke plopped out of that hatch.

You might want to go read a thing or two about terminal velocity, because you just Nuked the Fridge. I don't care how much Luke weighs, that hand had waaay too much of a head start for Luke's weight to even matter. By the time he looks down that shaft Mr. Handy is long gone.

Seriously, Occam's Razor? Please.. You're playing high card against a full house.

 

Speaking of Talon Karrde I wonder will he appear In TFA, he was like a father figure to Mara. Just saying?

 

Chill out, it's just a movie.

 

I would love it if he got any role in the ST. I would hate to think that the only thing they could figure out what to do with the EU was to take Kybo Ren's name and replace one letter.

 

Well Talon was a rich guy the republic could use someone like him.

I was thinking the same thing.

 

I think Leanne Best is cast as Mara Jade, using Karen Gillan's hair wig. I think she's being kept hidden because it would be a spoilerific clue to the plot. I highly doubt every single EU character will be discarded. In fact, I think TFA will have a few EU plots boiled down to the essentials, combined with new ideas that'll be expanded upon in the next films

 

I still think ti would be between Kate Beckinsale or Angie Everheart to play her.

 

The wig rumor was debunked. It's not true.

 

Well she said it first, then someone had to clean up her mess. I mean...come awwn

 

Who needs a wig seriously in a duel or a running scene returning blaster fire it would get shot off her head.

 

That is true, and his network was very valuable to the New Republic. But.. I think there's a reason they are building 4 Hutts over at TFA. And with the recent 'DeathStar3' rumor via MSW combined with an earlier concept art piece discussed last summer showing Leia addressing Hutts.. I think that's the direction they're gonna go for moneybag characters.
Also, this movie is probably not going to be heavily plot focused. And Talon Karrde really shines in more intellectual plots. It's going to be a 'fanboy' film, and franky I can respect that. I'm more crossing my fingers that 'Looper' is going to make Talon Karrde happen, as he would make a superb character to make a Lando-style intro halfway into the ST.

 

Hello all,
I’m new to this site and only just found out about the announcement regarding the EU. I know I’m way late to the party but I thought I would give my two cents (more twenty five cents with how long this is) on it and other things I’ve read in this discussion and perhaps on other sites as well (I’ve been all over the internet looking for information on this and may not be able to keep them straight).
First, the argument regarding EST, Heir to the Empire and Luke’s original lightsaber: First of all, Luke’s original lightsaber re-appeared in ‘The Last Command’ the third book of the trilogy not ‘Heir to the Empire’ which was the first. I went back and watched the scene and noticed that there is approximately four minutes between Luke’s hand being cut off and Luke jumping off the platform himself (He jumps from a different place than where his hand fell as well). He falls for a few seconds before being sucked into one of many tubes whose purpose is unknown and slides through clean and debris free tubes until he comes to a stop at what looks to be the lowest section of this tube. There is no indication of anything loose in the tube with him including his severed hand and lightsaber.
As he starts to get up the trap door opens beneath him and there is another short slide before he falls out the bottom of the city onto an antenna or something. At that point an object is seen falling but it is light grey in color with no real defined shape to it. There is no indication if it fell out of the tube with Luke or was knocked loose during the fall. I don’t think it was meant to represent his hand or lightsaber but merely to underscore the peril Luke was in to add drama to that moment and the subsequent rescue attempt by Leia. The hand and lightsaber were likely sucked into a different tube and could have been expelled into the atmosphere but also could have been found and turned over to the Empire eventually finding its way to the Emperor’s storehouse. There is no definitive proof in either the movie or the book regarding the fate of the hand and lightsaber.
Now to the announcement and, most importantly, Mara Jade’s fate. I’m of two minds about this honestly. On the one hand, I’m in favor of at least a partial reboot. The EU began to lose me when everything switched to Del Rey and the beginning of the NJO series. I wasn’t happy that they killed off Chewie and was even less satisfied with their explanation for the decision. Killing characters for the sake of adding realism to a Sci-fi / fantasy / space opera saga was, to me, the very definition of an oxymoron. The very purpose of the saga is an escape from reality not a place to have it shoved in your face. Real life does that enough. We didn’t need it nor particularly want it in the galaxy far, far away given the reaction it received.
I was a kid when the first movie came out in 1977. It was the aftermath of the Veitnam war. The country was going through an energy crisis and a bad economy. Star Wars gave us an escape from that harsh reality as we watched good triumph over evil. The good guys having some rough moments but ultimately winning in the end. It gave us hope that things could get better and that we would be okay. At the very least we had two hours where we weren’t thinking about or worrying over the problems that were the reality of the day. When the prequels came out, there was 9-11 and the war on terror. Our finest young men and women were coming home in body bags but the movies, like them or not, provided the same escape from that reality that the OT did 30 yrs prior. The novels should have done the same thing as they did in the 90s under Bantam but Del Rey decided to unleash a race of beings from outside the galaxy and destroy nearly two-thirds of the galaxy before they were stopped and kill major characters all for the sake of reality.
I persevered beyond Chewie’s death and came to love the development of the Anakin/Tahiri duo and could see them as one of the heroes/pairings to carry on once the big four (I include Mara as Luke’s wife) stepped back and let the next generation take over only to see Anakin killed off a few books later and Tahiri destroyed first by being made half Vong then turning dark. I also came to absolutely detest Jacen in the series. I still persevered but then came Legacy of the Force. When they killed off Mara I was done. I only finish Legacy to see Jacen finally pay for killing her. I have not nor do I intend to read anything beyond that in the timeline.
I have no problem wiping all of that out of existence and, with what we know of the movie, it’s pretty clear it has been. Chewbacca was killed in the first NJO book set about 20-21yrs after ROTJ while the new movie has Chewie alive 30yrs after ROTJ so NJO didn’t happen. If NJO didn’t happen, then nothing after it happened either. The real question is the 20yrs prior to NJO or the Bantam years as I like to call them.
I love all of it and own all the novels. I do understand and agree with others who say much of it can be done away with but there are a few essentials that I would be outraged if they were gotten rid of such as Zahn’s excellent trilogy and ‘Shadows Of The Empire’. There are some others I would like to keep but those are the ones I would truly hate to lose. I would even be okay with losing the Thrawn duology or at least the parts where Luke and Mara get together (I always wanted them together much sooner in the timeline so they could have more than one child like Han and Leia did). I would have no problem leaving it intact if it was moved forward in the timeline to right after or within a few years of the trilogy rather than a decade.
Most importantly though is for my favorite EU characters to finally get recognized as canon none more so than Mara Jade. She has been woven into many canon events and even referenced (or at least the name she is said to have used in Jabba’s Palace) in the ROTJ Radio Drama. In fact, her character has been carefully woven into the very fabric of the canon universe without causing a single continuity issue. They can fit her in with the new movies if they want to along with the essentials of the EU without hindering any story they want to tell. Mara is just too good and popular of a character to throw her away after all she has added to the saga the last twenty years. To the argument about having another redhead in black leather this time wielding a purple lightsaber with them already having Scarlett Johansson with red hair and black leather as Black Widow in the Marvel movies I would say this. Mara only wore black and carried a purple lightsaber when she was the Emperor’s Hand. From the Thrawn Trilogy forward, she wore green jumpsuits and used blasters and Luke’s old lightsaber which is blue. If she is in the new movies/canon and they stay at least with Zahn’s characterization of her, she’ll be wearing green not black. Thanks, for listening and sorry it’s so long winded.

 

I disagree with you on most of the Del Rey era novels (I loved the NJO and almost everything beyond), I do agree it's a shame to lose the Bantam era novels as well. However, everything was erased; the new canon contains only the movies, TCW and Rebels tv series, and any content from about 2013-forward (first new novel was A New Dawn, first new comic was Marvel: Star Wars). While I, and many others, would love to see the Thrawn Trilogy be included in the new canon, it's just not going to happen; we're going to get a new story to fill in that time period, while those classic characters and events are now designated "Legends" along with the entire previous EU.

 

Why cant they introduce Thrawn or MJ back in? It's like saying Wolverine, Storm and Nightcrawler aren't canon because Stan Lee didn't create them originally. BS, they can adapt any character they want, the way Marvel does etc