Star Wars Canon about to be completely redefined

[Alyeska]

The first major change due to the sale to Disney is taking place. In essence, a partial reboot. The EU is going under the chopping block. Core content will remain canon, everything else gets tossed. A reboot without rebooting the actual movies.

Ars Technica goes into detail

[Thanas]

I want them to keep the Zahn stuff, everything else can go and die already.

[Alyeska]

Was just mentioning the same with a friend. Keep the Thrawn triology, or use it as source material in the new movies. Gut the rest. This becomes a partial reboot. And I bet the old canon would still have writers. I'm hoping for some more Wraith Squadron books.

[Thanas]

I think the other Zahn stuff is good enough as well. Nevermind that this would also cure the crap job the EU made of the Chiss (and keep the hints Zahn made about a clone intact).

[The Vortex Empire]

I'd keep Zahn, the X-Wing/Wraith Squadron Series, and Kotor 1 and 2. That's all I can think of worth saving.

[Knife]

I'd say get rid of all of it, even Zhan. Look, they were OK books and definitely not the worst, but lets move on. Axe it all if it was not on screen and lets move into the future and new things.

[Eframepilot]

If they keep the Zahn trilogy, they're stuck with Jacen and Jaina as the Solo twins. That's rather limiting.

Dark Empire is gone for sure, though.

[Wicked Pilot]

I'd say get rid of all of it, even Zhan. Look, they were OK books and definitely not the worst, but lets move on. Axe it all if it was not on screen and lets move into the future and new things.

I'll second you're getting rid of Zhan. I thought he was a good author, and wrote some great books, but in the end I though his scope was just too small for Star Wars.

[Broken]

While Zahn has a couple decent books and ideas, if your going to clean house on the expanded universe, really clean it. Nuke it from orbit and rebuild from the ground up. That way you don't have folks cherry-picking their personal favorite book, character, idea, etc and trying desperately to shoehorn it into the new EU.

[Knife]

I'm assuming they are clearing the way for 3 new movies and don't want it limited by cries and whines of 'but what about xyz in book abc?" Too many years and too many books with too many events to maneuver around. Now, doesn't mean they can't cherry pick fan favorites out and put it in the new cannon, or even referenced in the movies.

[Darth Holbytlan]

The first major change due to the sale to Disney is taking place. In essence, a partial reboot. The EU is going under the chopping block. Core content will remain canon, everything else gets tossed. A reboot without rebooting the actual movies.

Ars Technica goes into detail

You mean Ars Technica wildly speculates about those difficult-to-interpret Leeland Chee tweets. I'm not too impressed with Ars Technica, here. Labeling the article as an "Op-Ed" doesn't really excuse writing the whole thing as though it were confirmed fact.

In truth, I'm pretty much expecting the EU to be thrown out—or have its organs harvested Niven-style for the new canon. It's even what I would prefer happen, to the degree that I deserve an opinion on the subject at all—I've only really read the Thrawn trilogy, and I wasn't that impressed. But this article doesn't confirm crap.

[Ralin]

Throw it all out. I love the old EU, but the best way to do this is to start fresh. No one benefits from a weird thing where older books aren't canon anymore except when they are because someone working for Disney liked Thrawn and decided to give him a throwaway reference in one of the new movies or something and people are constantly straining to reconcile the older books with stories by new authors who know nothing about the old canon and wouldn't give a fuck if they did.

Ideally I would like to see them split the EU into two separate continuities so that older story lines can continue and not be affected by the newer Disney stories, but I know damned well that's not going to happen. The EU had a good run, and it's not like the stories I liked are going to cease to exist.

[Napoleon the Clown]

The only argument I can think of for keeping Zahn's stuff (any of it) is that the name Coruscant was first used in the Thrawn Trilogy and that ended up making it into Episode 1. And that's not much of an argument.

Really, Zahn wrote some good books. If they end up being ejected from Star Wars canon, whatever. The books and stories will still exist, they just won't be part of that universe. I figured pretty much all of the EU was gonna get tossed out when they announced that Episode VII was going to be made without using stuff from the EU. If they decide to use bits and pieces of the EU that were actually good, cool. If they decide to not use any of it, that's fine too. Prior to all this, the stuff in the EU didn't really matter unless Lucas felt like paying attention to it for a movie. He was never under any obligation to respect stuff in books, games, or comics. All that's changed is that they're being more explicit about it.

[RogueIce]

Hopefully the pre-ROTJ stuff will not be exempt if they chuck it out; I'm willing to sacrifice Zahn's books if it means Gary Stukiller and Traviss' crap never existed.

Episodes I - VI and TCW is the only stuff presently released that I'd keep, personally. The rest can be discarded. Yes we'll lose some good, but we will also shed much, much more crap in the process. A fair trade, I'd say.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'll be happy as long as the Yuuzhan Vong get canned. And the whole "lols Jacen falls to the Dark Side" bollocks.

[ZOmegaZ]

It's definitely possible for the EU to continue separate from the movie continuity. Star Trek has, what, three commercial continuities going right now? Four?

[Thanas]

Yeah and they all suck. Only decent one I can remember was the DS9 relaunch and even that got extremely crappy the time they Spoiler

brought Sisko back

[Purple]

Honestly I hate this. I liked the old system just as it was. In fact, I don't really care about the actual content and what's thrown out or kept. It's the fact that they are changing the system that I hate. There is nothing to be gained by taking something that is beautifully complex and transforming it into something that is simple. All you lose is the beauty inherent in the complexity.

[Napoleon the Clown]

What beauty? The old canon system was a fucking mess and the majority of stories in it are shit. Sometimes change is good. Simplifying something can make it easier to keep track of everything. There are still gonna be all the wonderful retcons and conflicting information after new material starts coming out. All this means is that the bullshit excuse of "biased historical accounts" isn't there anymore.

[Connor MacLeod]

Frankly are we saying 'Keep the Zahn stuff' because we want to keep Heir to the Empire? Because that's really the good Zahn stuff. Everything else is of middling to poor quality (Hand of Thrawn was so so, and alot of the stuff after it was pretty meh. (Outbound Flight was really uninspiring overall, for example.) I've heard alleigance is good but I never got around to reading it.

Also when it comes to canon you don't HAVE to accept the way they think of these things strictly speaking. The old stuff could still be one 'continuity' whilst the other stuff is still there, or you could find some way to rationalize the old with the new depending on the course the new movies take. There's lots of ways to handle it that don't require an either/or, quasi religious approach to these things.

Fuck, Sw fans have been 'defining' canon in their own terms for years now, so this is hardly revolutionary.

[Thanas]

Allegiance is great, Scoundrels is ok - better than Outbound Flight, but not HTTE worthy. Survivors Quest is good too.

[Havok]

LAWD GLORIOUS LAWD, YOU HAVE ANSWERED MY CALLS AND HEARD MY WORDS AND I PRAISE THEE!!

I'd say get rid of all of it, even Zhan. Look, they were OK books and definitely not the worst, but lets move on. Axe it all if it was not on screen and lets move into the future and new things.

This. The Zahn books were great and I loved them and their nostalgia value will never fade, but they don't sit well with me, especially once the saga was completed and most certainly now, hogtying the new movies and even new EU stories.

[Ralin]

Also when it comes to canon you don't HAVE to accept the way they think of these things strictly speaking. The old stuff could still be one 'continuity' whilst the other stuff is still there, or you could find some way to rationalize the old with the new depending on the course the new movies take. There's lots of ways to handle it that don't require an either/or, quasi religious approach to these things.

Fuck, Sw fans have been 'defining' canon in their own terms for years now, so this is hardly revolutionary.

Personally, I wish they'd done it this way from the beginning. I was a big EU fan growing up and the thing that most made me dislike Lucas was his casual disregard for what other Star Wars authors had written. Yes he owned the setting and was totally within his rights to do whatever he wanted with it, but if he didn't intend to respect other authors' work he shouldn't have invited them to play in his sandbox to begin with.

And yes, you don't need something to be labeled Official Star Wars Canon to enjoy it and you can pick and chose whatever you want for your own headcanon, but it still sucks to see plot lines and characters that you were invested in cut short or radically changed because someone higher up decided he wanted to follow ~his vision~

[Havok]

Lucas is as much a shrewd businessman as he is an artist. He knew his fans wanted Star Wars and he wasn't ready to give them any. It's not a matter of respect... and in fact, if it were we would have had NO Star Wars anything except the prequels, because first and foremost there needs to be respect to the initial stories and the EU pretty much shit all over them.

For me, I'm glad that ALL the post EU is gonna get chopped. I mean like I said, I liked the Zahn Trilogy, but it also introduced some total crap, Mara Jade lessens what Vader was. Thrawn lessened what Vader was in my eyes as well. The anti-force bugs. The whole way that the galaxy gets set up, with one section of the galaxy staying the Empire, etc., etc.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Eh, I'd say Lucas has better business sense than artistic sense. Most of the best stuff in the movies came about because of other creative minds being involved. Yeah, he had a good initial vision, but the stuff that made it great came from other people. The prequels sucked ass because so much more of it came from Lucas. Hell, the movie that's generally regarded as the best in the entire saga wasn't even directed by Lucas. He can plant good seeds, I'll give him that. But he doesn't do so well fleshing things out.

That isn't to say he's a complete hack that has no clue how to create a good, solid story. He's just more a businessman than a story creator. Asking to keep marketing rights for the series was probably one of the best moves in cinema history, and I'm sure that a lot of FOX execs spent quite a long time kicking themselves over that.