Will The Disney Star War Sequel Trilogy Stand the Test of Time

[Yukaphile]

https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Canon

Look at this. I told you there were levels of canon, right up until Disney axed Legends and terminated it in favor of this new, inferior "continuity."

[Yukaphile]

Leland Chee is the one who knew how to organize levels of canon. And Disney is just pissing all over that with their ignorance.

[Actarus]

For me, the issue with Rey's parents being nobody is that the films had drawn that mystery out for far to long and it was built up, both in and out of universe, that her parents were important only for Last to come out and say that her parents were no one of any importance. If her parents were nobodies then that SHOULD have been addressed at the end of Awakens so the films could set the foundation for the rest of her character arc.

Basically this for me. Some of TLJ's defenders (including people involved with Star Wars) have been pretty disingenuous in pinning the disappointment regarding Rey's parentage on fans' being upset that their headcanons didn't play out on screen. If it were just Rey obsessing over her parents/family, I might agree, but the big mystery was obviously played up for all it was worth both on and off-screen. Among other things, Han, Leia, and others acted pretty strange around Rey from the very beginning, then you have all the little cute stuff like Obi-Wan calling to Rey in her vision and cutting away just before Han tells Maz who she is.

It's akin to an Agatha Christie mystery if Poirot were to gather all the suspects together for the dramatic denouement, only to reveal that the victim was actually murdered by some random vagrant that you never met. Of course that's going to disappoint people.

Maybe it is time for a "nobody" hero. Luke was that in a sense, and yet I'd be fine with someone unrelated to the Skywalker line... but maybe you should actually build a story that sets that up properly. Make Rey recognize her own value and then force others to take her seriously, rather than the weird route they went with where everyone already seemed to see her as the greatest person ever and the galaxy's last hope.

Why should we believe what Kylo Ren said? How should he know that Rey's parents were drunkards? The dark side vision Rey had was showing her her greatest fear. That she is alone. Kylo used that to lure her to his side. He basicaly said: "Who cares about your past? Who cares who your parents were? You are who you are, and you have me!"

[Winter]

Look, the President at Lucasfilm calls Legends non-canon, insists it was never canon, and that's a startling kind of ignorance to the product you're in charge of. It had layers of canon, and that was a horrible business move, to wipe Legends clean without being as respectful as possible to all the writers who'd worked on it over the years. Yes, I'm still furious they terminated Legends in so brazenly insulting a manner and haven't gotten the hint from scores of fans trying to bring it back. They should have handled this more diplomatically, saying perhaps Legends was never canon, but it's now part of a separate but still valid continuity with layers of canon, but oh no, that would totally go against their attempts to reboot Star Wars as "something new, respected, and official." Which is the impression I get from them, that just... doesn't hold up to what we see on the screen, and what they're doing. They're control freaks through and through, and they're killing Star Wars doing so in a way worse than the prequels. At least the prequels didn't make Legends non-canon and shoved it off into a meaningless limbo state that has fans aching for its absence. The sequels have. And that's why I've boycotted every movie since 2015, and I won't lie, a tiny part of me is thrilled the films are doing so poorly. I hope they crash and burn, because if the writers are just going to be this lazy with their stories these days, then I hope the movie industry does implode like Spielberg and Lucas predict, so they can stop trashing our beloved childhood series like Star Wars, Star Trek, ReBoot, etc, etc...

There are no layers of canon. It is canon, or it is not. The term comes from religion. The Canon is the list of the books which are considered inspired and officially part of the Bible. The other books that were rejected are apocrypha. For George Lucas, the only important storyline was the one told in the movies. The EU was never "canon" to begin with. When he wrote the prequels, he did not follow what was told in the EU. No dreadnaughts or Victory-class SD, no Clone Masters that were the enemies during the Clone Wars, etc. He wrote his own story, and chose some elements he liked in the EU. Therefore, it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone if Abrams and Johnson gave the F-word to the EU. The difference with Disney is that they chose to include other media into the movie continuity: books, comics, tv shows. So they had to draw a line: these are part of the movie continuity and those are not, which they called Legends. Either way, they are all works of fiction, so you can still enjoy Legends stuff all you like.

If I may offer up a counter argument, what "Is" and "Isn't" is ultimately down to the individual. For Lucas, Legends wasn't canon unless he said so and during the Clone Wars a LOT of Legends was being worked into what he considered canon. Sure a lot of it was changed, Ventress for one had pretty much the same journey but a number of both minor and major details were changed to make it better fit with Lucas' canon (case in point Ventress remained loyal to Dooku until she finally left and was made into a part cyborg while in CW turned on Dooku and remained a whole person for the rest of the series).

There was rumor of including Thrawn and C'baoth for a story arc but it never happened for whatever reason, again rumored I could be wrong on this. And There WAS a episode or arc planned to set up for the Yuuzhan Vong and their eventually invasion. I also think it should be noted that Lucas himself was apparently more involved in the series then people realize with him apparently giving out ideas and was also fully on board with a lot of EU ideas being put into the show.

Also, and I fully admit this is just a theory I have about the series and I have ZERO proof to back this up, but I think Timothy Zahn had based some of his story off Lucas' original plans for a sequel Trilogy to use for The Thrawn Trilogy. I also think that Lucas was greatly influenced by Zahn's work on TTT.

My "evidence" for this theory is how similar the basic concept for TTT's plot is the same as Lucas' original idea for his Original Sequel Trilogy. Luke finds and mentors a mysterious young woman who is the main protagonist for the Sequel Trilogy and she is ultimately the one who kills the evil Emperor. The key difference here are, of course, that the mysterious other was Original Luke's Twin Sister while Mara has no relation to the Skywalker family until she marries Luke and the Evil Emperor is split into two characters, that of Grand Admiral Thrawn and Dark Jedi C'baoth.

Over on Lucas' side the Prequel included a Lot more politics, features a clone army of Storm Troopers, the main villain is more of a chess master rather then the direct Darth Vader and also features Coruscant as a major location throughout the Trilogy.

Now again, this is just a theory and short of asking Zahn and Lucas I doubt we'll ever know if I'm right but I do feel that Lucas Did have a soft spot for the Original EU and would often work it into his work and most of the time it felt like it was out of respect to the EU writers and fans.

Honestly the only time I can ever think of Lucas speaking of the EU in a negative light is when Luke and Mara got married despite him asking the writers NOT to do that and criticizing the Death of Mara. I don't remember where I read it but soon after Mara was killed I had read a magazine about Lucas' overall dislike of killing off Mara and felt that had she been one of his OC he would have NEVER let her die. Again, I read this article years ago and remember it mostly because of how ANGRY I was for the series killing off my favorite character so I could be misremembering.

But back over to what is Canon. For years the Legends was considered canon and Lucas himself was often working to get the series into his canon as much as possible. So for me, and many others, Legends was canon and still is. What is and isn't canon really comes down to which series you prefer and as of right now, I see everything up to Luke and Mara getting Married canon. Everything in the Legends continuity after that, not so much as I'm not the biggest fan of where the series went after that.

And as for the Disney Era, well I enjoyed Awakes, Rebels and Rogue but I've yet to see Resistance and Solo and I like Last as much as I do Troy Denning's run on the series, which is to say not at all. So I consider them their own canon that anyone is fine to like as they see fit and I see the Prequels as canon and enjoy them and that was even before the Clone Wars came around.

[Winter]

/snip

While the main focus of DST Rey it feels like the filmmakers aren't really interested in exploring Rey's character which is only further compounded by E9 introducing 5 new characters instead of focusing on the characters they Already Have.

While I understand your point of view, I have to point out that they may have announced the introduction of five new characters, that does not tell us much about their importance. In The Return of the Jedi, we were introduced to many characters : Jabba the Hutt, Bib Fortuna, Mon Mothma, Crix Madine, Admiral Ackbar, Wicket, Moff Jerjerrod... the Emperor. Each of them didn't have the same importance. In TLJ, we also were introduce to many characters. But only one was important: Rose, which seems to be more or less the Lando of that movie. Well, if she returns in Episode IX, that is. The focus of TLJ was on Rey, Finn and Poe. It will be the same in Episode IX, plus maybe Rose.

Most of those characters were minor and only One, Jabba, was treated as a big deal. Mothma and Madine have one scene, that they share and Ackbar is a minor character there to give the Rebel fleet leaders a face for Lando to talk to. The thing about the 5 new characters coming in with E9 is that the filmmakers and actors have been building them up and are being played by some rather well known actors, most notably, for this channel, Matt Smith, aka the 11th Doctor.

If most of them are minor characters, okay I'll take back what I said but at the same time there shouldn't be this much build up to a few bit parts and as far as I know, toy marketing aside, the new characters in Return weren't treated as anything to get worked up about. The newer films already have, IMHO, to many characters and, IMO, the characters who are suppose to be the focus have gotten very little character development with Rey getting the shortest end of the stick as, like I've said before, she was pretty much just a tool to tell the story of Luke and Ren.

We're two movies in and we've actually gotten more backstory about Han's dice on the Falcon then we have about Rey. And speaking of which why is Disney so obsessed with those dice? I mean I don't remember them ever being that important or anyone talking about them, or what they mean to Han and yet Disney is giving them more attention then Rey's past.

In other words, Rey literally has less back story then a bloody pair of dice that Han just happened to have on his ship!

[Actarus]

Look, the President at Lucasfilm calls Legends non-canon, insists it was never canon, and that's a startling kind of ignorance to the product you're in charge of. It had layers of canon, and that was a horrible business move, to wipe Legends clean without being as respectful as possible to all the writers who'd worked on it over the years. Yes, I'm still furious they terminated Legends in so brazenly insulting a manner and haven't gotten the hint from scores of fans trying to bring it back. They should have handled this more diplomatically, saying perhaps Legends was never canon, but it's now part of a separate but still valid continuity with layers of canon, but oh no, that would totally go against their attempts to reboot Star Wars as "something new, respected, and official." Which is the impression I get from them, that just... doesn't hold up to what we see on the screen, and what they're doing. They're control freaks through and through, and they're killing Star Wars doing so in a way worse than the prequels. At least the prequels didn't make Legends non-canon and shoved it off into a meaningless limbo state that has fans aching for its absence. The sequels have. And that's why I've boycotted every movie since 2015, and I won't lie, a tiny part of me is thrilled the films are doing so poorly. I hope they crash and burn, because if the writers are just going to be this lazy with their stories these days, then I hope the movie industry does implode like Spielberg and Lucas predict, so they can stop trashing our beloved childhood series like Star Wars, Star Trek, ReBoot, etc, etc...

There are no layers of canon. It is canon, or it is not. The term comes from religion. The Canon is the list of the books which are considered inspired and officially part of the Bible. The other books that were rejected are apocrypha. For George Lucas, the only important storyline was the one told in the movies. The EU was never "canon" to begin with. When he wrote the prequels, he did not follow what was told in the EU. No dreadnaughts or Victory-class SD, no Clone Masters that were the enemies during the Clone Wars, etc. He wrote his own story, and chose some elements he liked in the EU. Therefore, it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone if Abrams and Johnson gave the F-word to the EU. The difference with Disney is that they chose to include other media into the movie continuity: books, comics, tv shows. So they had to draw a line: these are part of the movie continuity and those are not, which they called Legends. Either way, they are all works of fiction, so you can still enjoy Legends stuff all you like.

If I may offer up a counter argument, what "Is" and "Isn't" is ultimately down to the individual. For Lucas, Legends wasn't canon unless he said so and during the Clone Wars a LOT of Legends was being worked into what he considered canon. Sure a lot of it was changed, Ventress for one had pretty much the same journey but a number of both minor and major details were changed to make it better fit with Lucas' canon (case in point Ventress remained loyal to Dooku until she finally left and was made into a part cyborg while in CW turned on Dooku and remained a whole person for the rest of the series).

There was rumor of including Thrawn and C'baoth for a story arc but it never happened for whatever reason, again rumored I could be wrong on this. And There WAS a episode or arc planned to set up for the Yuuzhan Vong and their eventually invasion. I also think it should be noted that Lucas himself was apparently more involved in the series then people realize with him apparently giving out ideas and was also fully on board with a lot of EU ideas being put into the show.

Also, and I fully admit this is just a theory I have about the series and I have ZERO proof to back this up, but I think Timothy Zahn had based some of his story off Lucas' original plans for a sequel Trilogy to use for The Thrawn Trilogy. I also think that Lucas was greatly influenced by Zahn's work on TTT.

My "evidence" for this theory is how similar the basic concept for TTT's plot is the same as Lucas' original idea for his Original Sequel Trilogy. Luke finds and mentors a mysterious young woman who is the main protagonist for the Sequel Trilogy and she is ultimately the one who kills the evil Emperor. The key difference here are, of course, that the mysterious other was Original Luke's Twin Sister while Mara has no relation to the Skywalker family until she marries Luke and the Evil Emperor is split into two characters, that of Grand Admiral Thrawn and Dark Jedi C'baoth.

Over on Lucas' side the Prequel included a Lot more politics, features a clone army of Storm Troopers, the main villain is more of a chess master rather then the direct Darth Vader and also features Coruscant as a major location throughout the Trilogy.

Now again, this is just a theory and short of asking Zahn and Lucas I doubt we'll ever know if I'm right but I do feel that Lucas Did have a soft spot for the Original EU and would often work it into his work and most of the time it felt like it was out of respect to the EU writers and fans.

Honestly the only time I can ever think of Lucas speaking of the EU in a negative light is when Luke and Mara got married despite him asking the writers NOT to do that and criticizing the Death of Mara. I don't remember where I read it but soon after Mara was killed I had read a magazine about Lucas' overall dislike of killing off Mara and felt that had she been one of his OC he would have NEVER let her die. Again, I read this article years ago and remember it mostly because of how ANGRY I was for the series killing off my favorite character so I could be misremembering.

But back over to what is Canon. For years the Legends was considered canon and Lucas himself was often working to get the series into his canon as much as possible. So for me, and many others, Legends was canon and still is. What is and isn't canon really comes down to which series you prefer and as of right now, I see everything up to Luke and Mara getting Married canon. Everything in the Legends continuity after that, not so much as I'm not the biggest fan of where the series went after that.

And as for the Disney Era, well I enjoyed Awakes, Rebels and Rogue but I've yet to see Resistance and Solo and I like Last as much as I do Troy Denning's run on the series, which is to say not at all. So I consider them their own canon that anyone is fine to like as they see fit and I see the Prequels as canon and enjoy them and that was even before the Clone Wars came around.

Again, something is canon, or it isn't. That Legends/EU had been used to fuel official storytelling has never been a secret. However, introducing Malachor in Rebels does not make what happened in Malachor V in KotOR part of the film continuity, nor does the apparition of a Selkath in Clone Wars makes everything that happened on Manaan part of the official storyline. They introduced Thrawn in Rebels, which was great, but we have to realize that it is not exactly the same Thrawn as in TTT. Rukh was not the same at all, and he didn't kill Thrawn. Taking scraps of the EU does not make it "official". The "Ifs" and "Mays" are irrelevent.

As for George Lucas, he may have never said anything bad about the EU (it was giving him lots of money afterall), he did say that these stories were part of a parallel universe, and they were barely influencing his own writing. EU was its own thing, with its own continuity, taking into account the events shown in the movies. The reverse was not true.

But yeah, I agree, you are free to prefer Legends stuff if you like, but that does not make it "canon" since the idea of "canonicity" does not depend on the fans but on Lucas/Disney.

[Spaig]

https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Canon

The Holocron's database included a field for a single letter (G, T, C, S, N or D) representing the level of canonicity of that element; these letters were since informally applied to the levels of canon themselves: G-canon, T-canon, C-canon, S-canon, N-canon and D-canon.

[Yukaphile]

JUST WHAT I WAS SAYING. So for those ignorant morons at Lucasfilm to claim otherwise is just not the case.

[Winter]

One issue I personally have with the DST is how disjointed it feels from the Prequels and the Original Trilogy, which is only compounded if you prefer the Thrawn Trilogy as canon. Let's say you decided to watch all three Trilogies in chronological order but flipped between TTT and DST, going with the former the Trilogies Do actually feel like one single flowing narrative even if that is largely by accident given how all three were created but that's besides the point.

The key point here is how does each Trilogy end and how does that tie into how the other begins? Revenge of the Sith ends with The Empire in power, Vader is a broken man, Luke and Leia are given to their respective adoptive families and Obi-Wan and Yoda are now in hiding. A New Hope opens with The Empire still in power, Vader is still a broken man, Luke and Leia are living their lives and helping their adoptive families with their jobs and Obi-Wan is about to come out of hiding to confront the Empire.

Next up we have the end of the Original Trilogy and how it's ending ties into TTT. Return of the Jedi ends with the Empire defeated, Han and Leia are now together and Luke has now truly become a Jedi and with the help of his friends is ready to make a new future. Heir to the Empire opens with the Empire being rebuilt in secret by Grand Admiral Thrawn, Han and Leia are married and Leia is pregnant with Twins and Luke is trying to prepare himself to create a new Jedi order with the help of the New Republic.

Sure between these three Trilogies several years have past and a lot of things happened in that time but nothing of any real significance in regards to the main characters or the galaxy at large. The only plots points that go largely unaddressed is how other Jedi were said to have survived Order 66 and the creation of the Rebellion in the time between Revenge of Hope and the arrival of Thrawn and him regrouping the Imperial Remnant in secret.

But in the end, these are things that aren't really all that important and can, and are, easily explained away in the opening crawl or in bits of dialogue by the main characters. Obi-Wan quietly reflecting on how the Jedi Use to be protectors of peace before the Empire and Tarkin telling Vader that the Jedi have been wiped out fills in those gaps. And it's made clear from the very first chapter that Thrawn has been gathering what's left of the Empire in the time between Return and Heir.

Now let's take how DST opens and how it contrasts with how TTT starts.

Luke has disappeared, The First Order has risen in place of the Empire, The Republic is working with a group called the Resistance, Han and Leia are no longer together and they have a son that's gone full Darth Vader fanboy. There's also a super weapon that is more powerful then either Death Star, the Falcon was stolen from Han and the First Order is being led by someone we've never met called Snoke.


youtu.be/NsEIu6-lciA

See the contrast? TPT, TOT and TTT all pick up the plot threads of each story and use that as a jumping off point so if you're watch the first two and read TTT in chronological order you can follow each story as it unfolds.

Not so DST. It leaves you with more questions then answers and after it's all over and done with you realize that you know just as much going in as you did going out. And the REAL KICKER if you want to know what's going on, not only do you need to wait till the next film comes out, THAT FILM WILL RAISE EVEN MORE QUESTIONS WITH FEWER ANSWERS! At the end we still don't know who Snoke is while all the characters are fully aware of him, where did Starkiller Base come from, how did the First Order become so powerful, why was Ben Solo so seduced by the Dark Side and why would Luke even THINK of killing his nephew in his sleep?

We get a few hints but they honestly don't answer anything and, again, just raise more questions. It's implied that the First Order bought all their weapons off the Black Market...


youtu.be/oOCydGRcv1A

Sooo, where the Bloody Hell did Starkiller Base come from and who in their right mind would even think about selling it!?!

Karrde was hesitant to sell the Location of a bunch of Old Republic Dreadnought ships, which wouldn't be that useful without a LARGE crew of soldiers to pilot them. If it wasn't built sold to the FO then did they make it? It took countless resources just to build both Death Stars in secret and that's was when the Empire was in control of the Galaxy so how could the FO built something more dangerous then either Death Star that can kill a Star and a whole solar system at more or less the same time?

Did they just stumble across it? If so who built it and how did they know how to make it work? Actually never mind, all the tech we see in SB is all Modern (relatively speaking) so it had to have been something the FO made.

The reason I feel that the Disney Era, as of right now, will not truly stand the test of time is because it is, rather oddly, to disconnect from the other Trilogies in the series with Awaken and Last repeating to much of the major plot points of the Original Trilogy while also being to reliant on TOT.

By contrast one of the reasons TTT has stood the test of time is because it felt like a natural continuation of TOT while DST feels more like it's trying to take more risks without taking any real risks, if that makes any sense.

[Yukaphile]

They plan to address this in the new EU, but unlike the charm of the old Legends EU, Last Jedi has already contradicted the EU in a major way according to those invested in it, so... the excuse they give that this will "be a new, respected canon" that's less a mess than Legends is a lie. That's why they got rid of Legends, not just to make movies, but new supplementary material. It's a complete reboot that just wiped away 30 years of world-building for $$$ and it still enrages me, given how inferior the final product is.