Lucas´ specific involvement in EU?

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VT-16
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Lucas´ specific involvement in EU?

Post by VT-16 »

Poe and I in our duels came across quotes which described precisely how GL was in fact involved in the first two big EU projects of the '90's, the Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Empire, even contrasting this with later stuff saying that afterward he let Licensing take care of it.
I first posted this quote with a question on the New SW-canon sticky thread, but realized it would probably not be noticed by the majority. So I´m asking here:

What kind of involvement did Lucas have in these two projects? Did he come up with scenarios? Did he take some ideas for the original "third trilogy" and let the authors run with it? When you post stuff like the above, your gonna get questions from n00bs like me, ya know. :P
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Post by JME2 »

The rountable discussion on the CD that came with the hardback of TUF stated that all EU material and plans are brought to GL where he comments on them, makes suggestions, etc. DE and the Thrawn trilogy all got the basic approval and guidelines from GL.

(On a side note, he was the one who told Del Rey to kill off Anakin Solo due to the confusion with Anakin Skywalker; originally it was going to be Jacen)
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Post by Lord Pounder »

Fucking should have been Jacen. Anakin was the only Jedi who was effective against the Vong from an early stage, while Jacen was having his crisis. "OMG what am i gonna do i have force powers but shoudl i use them, oh but what if i hurt someone, oh dear i got a hair in my sack....." he was fucking pathetic.
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Post by Crom »

Why is it that Jacen had such a fit of conscience? We've never seen any other Jedi so paralyzed with doubt. Hell, Luke in RoTJ still fucked people up.
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Post by Cao Cao »

JME2 wrote:(On a side note, he was the one who told Del Rey to kill off Anakin Solo due to the confusion with Anakin Skywalker; originally it was going to be Jacen)
That's the worst reason ever.
Who would confuse the two? They have different surnames and exist in completley different time periods.
Smells like an ego fit to me...
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Post by Bob the Gunslinger »

I can easily imagin Lucas in a big furry ewok suit stamping his feet and screaming "NO! NO! NO! MY Anakin! MY Anikin!"
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Post by JME2 »

Cao Cao wrote:
JME2 wrote:(On a side note, he was the one who told Del Rey to kill off Anakin Solo due to the confusion with Anakin Skywalker; originally it was going to be Jacen)
That's the worst reason ever.
Who would confuse the two? They have different surnames and exist in completley different time periods.
Smells like an ego fit to me...
Believe me, Del Rey wasn't too happy with it; Edge of Victory was designed to help move Jacen into the kill-off and Anakin into the role Jacen had at the end of the series, but they had to do like the big guy told them.
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Post by Lord Pounder »

Sounds to me like Lucas is going senile in his old age.
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Post by Stormbringer »

Or just doesn't give a shit about the books anymore.
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Post by Tychu »

I dont know about that. Listen for one second. In a way Star By Star was like TESB. It was almost in the middle of the series and so far TESB and AOTC have been the darkest in their series (ROTS is suppose to be darker than both though). I mean in TESB we were left with OMG! whats going to happen, Vader just told Luke that he is his father, The Rebels have no home and are they doomed? Lukes big brother type of character Han is in the hands of a villian.

In the Star By Star we are left at the point of us asking, Whats going to happen to our SW galaxy characters. The strongest Jedi just died and now the weakling and self concious Jedi has to take the lead because the second strongest Solo kid (Jaina) now might go to the dark side?!!?

I would personal have like Jacen to die but Lucas did put his "force touch" in by trying to connect a book series set to star the next generation characters to similar crossroads their parents went through in the OT

the death of Jacen wouldnt have made it dark
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Post by Stormbringer »

the death of Jacen wouldnt have made it dark
Not as they wrote it. But then again that's because so much of the EU, and the NJO in particular is blatant hack-ery. Of course a death is going to have much emotional impact when you're hoping the self righteous little fuck dies.

So instead they kill of the one character that was some one you could like and connect with and who had a lot going for him story-wise as well. That makes no sense because it's needlessly wasting what you've built up.


To top it of course the big thing is, like the death of Chewbacca, it was an utterly pointless death. And it's not just the pointless way he died (I've seen that done right plenty of times in WH40K) but rather the fact that it had almost no emotional heft to it at all in story terms either.
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Post by Mange »

While I don't know anything specific about these two projects, the version of Vector Prime by R.A. Salvatore that is available for download for Hyperspace members over at the OS contains an interesting interview. In that interview it's stated that GL is more or less involved in all EU projects. It also mentions specific involvements by GL in the Vector Prime novel (which isn't one of the best EU novels).
I suggest that you read the interview, it's quite interesting when it comes to canon issues.
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