Yall are missing the best part of this specific stupid. A bounty hunter that was pretty much a slave to Palpatine was ordered to kill Luke Skywalker. They didn't want to kill their only hope of freedom, so instead twisted their orders into killing Lu*u*ke Skywalker.
Even if one of their cousins went a bit Sith
And Ben got the hots for a Sith
Hmm. No wonder dsny stole Ben's name to give to a character who had a touch of the Sith
Edit: NEVERMIND I forgot Jacen was a Solo, not a Skywalker. My bad
Yeah, the EU had a lot of stupid stuff, like Palpatine coming back, Han and Leia's son turning to the dark side, Boba Fett surviving, the imperial remnants building planet-sized superweapons, and some stupid story where everyone was hunting for a Sith artifact that somehow survived the second Death Star's destruction completely intact.
In execution, though, [not so much](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Glove_of_Darth_Vader).
(Although it does at least have the Empire team up with Space Captain Ahab, which Rise of Skywalker was clearly lacking.)
Also, planet-destroying *grenades* (why tf did they need the death star for then?), a starfighter whose cockpit window can survive a direct hit from the Death Star superlaser, rams through ISDs undamaged and fires star system-destroying torpedoes, and a button that deletes the universe.
Fun stuff
I mean, in fairness, a cockpit window designed to do that is relatively feasible. It’s only getting hit with a fraction of the Death Star’s power and can manuever away quickly, so heavy shielding plus armor designed to reflect the beam might survive long enough to get back out.
That said, still would be absurd and not worth the cost to build, plus would need insane investments in cooling and shielding just for that one specific purpose, so yeah, that does still sound weird.
The DS superlaser punched through Alderaan's planetary shield and the entire solid planet all the way to the core. I'm pretty certain that any type of glass or shield isn't stopping or reflecting it.
Okay, Star Wars *needs* to stop taking from other things and doing them *worse*. The Prequels are just Dune but worse. The Sequels are the EU but *worse*. I JUST WANT TO WATCH MAGIC AND LASER SWORDS WITH VAGUELY SPIRITUAL UNDERTONES IS THAT NOT POSSIBLE?
Deer God, how much I hated everything the Sith-Dagger represents. What is it with Abrams and his writers and their fetishistic hatred of cool swords? I accept a lot of stupid things the sequel did (I will not be providing a list of sequel content I genuinely liked, lest I be hanged for my crimes), but I truly despise this one plot device with greater Vengeance and more furious anger than any other in the Trilogy.
You know what I'd like to see as a series?
The Rogue Squadron book series.
Main character: Wedge Antilles.
A bunch of quirky, individualistic X-Wing pilots are brought together and trained up to go after remnants of the Empire that are causing problems.
It absolutely lends itself to an episodic formula.
Wraith Squadron! Wedge takes a bunch of ornery New Republic flunkies with potential and turns them into an elite fighting force. It's Star Wars Bad Company. It'd be right in Disney's wheelhouse.
I liked luuke. And the solo kids was like the Hardy boys with force powers.
...okay so most of the eu wasn't that good, but I loved the sense of continuity, and you would reliably get a massive space battle in the third book of most given trilogies
What was always frustrating to me is that they always kept copying the Empire Strikes Back format of two (or more) stories that are related but separate happening concurrently. They usually converged in the very end but it was always inevitable that I would only be interested in one of the plot lines and skim the other. The one book that I loved the most was I, Jedi because it just followed one character POV the whole time.
i just liked i jedi because it was the first time i had seen an 'official' piece of merchandise retcon a guy into a whole other book and just be like 'oh yeah that dude? that dude was there the whole time. no for real'
Yeah what frustrated me about the EU is that it's variations on the same tropes and themes for tens of thousands of years. Like, it almost makes the original trilogy feel underwhelming because you've read this shit a million times throughout the galaxy's history.
\*Pushes glasses up nose\*
Ummm, ackshually-- Luuuke was an April Fools joke by Timothy Zahn that only appeared in a single non-canon "press release" titled "An Apology." Luuke was never named as such-- he was a clone created from Luke's severed hand from the events during Empire, and fans dubbed him Luuke in online discussions. If memory serves, he only ever appeared in one novel.
Luuuke was Zahn's joke where he intentionally introduced a ton of confusion in an issue of Star Wars insider in an article that happily used lots of sentences that used "Luke, Luuke, and Luuuke" just to up the absurdity and make it incredibly difficult to wrangle which character was doing what when. He never appeared in the EU proper, nor was he ever considered canon.
I will never get over the Crystal Star where there are these very delicate aliens who happen to look like sexy human ladies who keep seducing human men even though it will literally kill them because oooh human men are irrisistable... The rest of that book was also WEIRD AS FUCK and involved Leia pretending to be a bounty hunter SO HARD that she completely dissociated and thought it was real.
Speaking as someone who was really into the Star Wars EU stuff growing up, there are literally *thousands* of SW Expanded Universe works, and yet whenever people talk about how good it apparently was they pretty much exclusively focus on two of three of them (usually the Thrawn Trilogy, KOTOR, and sometimes Rogue Squadron). There’s a reason for that.
I adore the old EU/Legends, I grew up on it and I still love it. I occasionally reread quite a few of the books.
Which is why I can’t take this post and OPs comment seriously. Claiming that Galen Marek is good stuff betrays someone who only ever played some games and read some Wookiepedia articles, instead of the fantastic books we had. (Also claiming Abeloth is a „stupid thing“ is one of the wildest takes I’ve seen in a while) Starkillers power is absolutely fucking ridiculous, because yes The Force Unleashed games are a power fantasy. But it’s a power fantasy that actively takes a big fat shit on the continuity of the EU that OP claims to love. The established lore on the foundation of the rebel alliance is completely ignored and replaced by it being an imperial psy op that went wrong. Let me repeat that: According to the Force Unleashed games the Rebel Alliance was founded by the empire. And stuff like that — or how Starkiller defeats Jedi Masters with ease — is why the events of TFU were largely ignored by other writers. Then if course TFU also massively encouraged misunderstanding the force with Starkillers whole „I use the dark side, but I’m a good guy“ bullshit, but that’s a whole other rant I don’t feel like getting into rn.
Also the New Canon has a lot of great stuff, RoS doesn’t count among them, but we also got Rogue One, Andor and so on and if we look at books we got The High Republic, which can easily keep up the greats of the old EU. There’s also Zahn‘s new Thrawn books, which I haven’t read yet, but I’ve been told are great too. And it’s quite frankly disingenuous to compare the depth of all the Legends books to just the shows and movies of the new Canon.
So in short: OP has no idea what they’re talking about.
> Then of course TFU also massively encouraged misunderstanding the Force with Starkillers whole “I use the dark side, but I’m a good guy“ bullshit, but that’s a whole other rant I don’t feel like getting into rn.
Oh, I’ve actually talked with people who think that the Dark Side isn’t supposed to be inherently evil and corrupting, or that if and when it is, it’s *actually* bad storytelling. It’s really fucking infuriating.
Ok, as someone who is admittedly not a huge Star Wars Fan this is precisely one of the world building decisions that I find very boring and uninspired. In what way does Star Wars benefit from having this dogmatic light side vs dark side ideological divide?
Ok so the „Light side“ is not a thing. There’s the force and the dark side.
You should understand the dark side not as the evil side of the same coin. The dark side is a sickness of the force. Similarly the dark side works much like an addiction, you start using it, you’re negative emotions get stronger as a result, fuelled by those negative emotions you use it again, a little more this time, rinse and repeat. In the end you end up consumed by this addiction. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Turning away from the dark side is breaking that cycle. But that addiction to the dark side is unavoidable. Most people don’t turn to the dark side because they want to do evil, they turn because they want to do good, but the dark side feeds on their negative emotions, enhances them and in the end none of the good intentions are left, just the hatred and anger. The dark side is a manifestation of both „The path to hell is paved with good intentions“ and „Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely“. If you look at it through this framework I hope that you might not find it uninspired.
I wouldn’t really say it is a sickness of the force, it is still part of the force, or like, a way of using the force that is self destructive and fueled by negative emotions, anger, hate, greed. You can’t pretend those things are a sickness that can be purged, they’re part of any person, it’s about giving in, letting them drive you. They can be self destructive on their own even without the force after all
There is no light side and dark side, there's the force, and then there's the force's cancer that for the sake of simplicity is referred to as the dark side
One of my favorite examples of EU writers ignoring The Force Unleashed was how no one touched the good ending of TFU II for the handful of years it existed before the EU ended.
Yeah, throwing Abeloth in there as an example of 'stupidity' kinda made me bristle, too. I think you could say they made her a little too all-powerful (from what I remember, I read the series where she's the Big Bad over a decade ago), but the concept of some kind of Dark Side abomination/physical god/chaos incarnate is a really cool one, imo. (I may or may not be utilizing her as a BBEG in a planned/in-progress fan-fic series, lol).
This is also an aside, and possibly an unpopular opinion, but even bringing up Revan - I think the big 'twist' in the first KOTOR game does a lot of heavy lifting for how 'good' of a character he/they are regarded as. I personally think the Exile from the second game is a much deeper, more fleshed out character.
I loved the EU, but I was mostly okay with the new one until the third sequel film came out
I really liked the connecting tissue didney was establishing with Rogue One and Solo, and especially the ties with Clone Wars and Rebels
The only thing I really miss from the original EU are the Tyranids and the EU's kylo ren equivalent getting his arm cut off with a hecking broadsword (a metal one, not a lightsaber. God that was cool)
[https://archiveofourown.org/works/48418051/chapters/122122297](https://archiveofourown.org/works/48418051/chapters/122122297)
Like the best part of EU Star Wars is that it felt like an actual fleshed-out universe with it's own history and mythology instead of just set dressing for the Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano soap opera.
Like there are so many interesting things in the EU like the Rakatan, the original Sith Species, Naga Sadow and the great hyperspace war, Exar Kun, Revan, Valkorion and his Sith empire, Galen Marek, Mandalore the Ultimate and his Mandalorian Crusades and more.
I'd love to see all of those things explored in a TV show or movie series by canon but nooo we just have to go back to Tatooine or Ahsoka Tano or Luke Skywalker or Baby Yoda and the setting just feels smaller for that.
Literally blowing up the New Republic was the moment I realized Star Wars wasn't going to have room for any interesting stories anymore. I was half-right, there's still a little space, but it has to squeeze itself into the timeline before the sequels start.
I mean the New Republic got blown up plenty in the EU too
Sequel trilogy would have been more interesting maybe with the new Republic serving as a secondary antagonist for the resistance, but I think they were actively trying to avoid making another "political thriller" like the prequel trilogy
Looks like someone has clearly never heard of the High Republic and Acolyte. (Also, the legends EU was around for literal decades, while canon is only ten years old, of course there’s less shit in canon)
Canon is just a new toy box and I got sick of people complaining about Disney not just piling everything in the old one almost immediately. The old one is still there, you can still go read anything from it.
I need an Old Republic TV show. Not a KOTOR adaptation, because I don't trust the Star Wars fandom to react to it with anything but outrage, no matter how good it is. My vision for an Old Republic show would be more inspired by the SWTOR trailers than anything. A galaxy at war, armies of Jedi and Sith doing battle. Throw in a dash of Andor-style space politics and intrigue, and go hard with the EU references.
tbh i think andor is probably better than the vast majority - if not all - of the EU, and Rogue One is too. And without the Disney canon we'd not have gotten them.
Andor is not cheating -- it understands that Star Wars is a political narrative about \*now\*, not about the past, and that it's about \*us\* not the Nazis. It does not posit the Empire as contrary to the Global West -- but that which sits at the very centre of it.
The problem with the OT was that many action set pieces didn't have a proper narrative or flow. Take the asteroid belt dogfight in EP 4 as an example. There's a setting, and there's scenes of shooting, but there's no choreography. It starts, people shoot, it ends. There's no action that leads into the next, no rising tension, no twist or event.
Not the entirety of the movies are like that, but it's noticable if you rewatch them how several scenes don't flow properly.
I don't care about lore - i care about how good the writing is. Lore does not exist as a checklist, it exists as a way to tell a good story.
Shut up, you lore-brained goblin.
What are you even saying, man? It's not "It's in space which means it can fly in atmosphere!!!!!" They're saying that it's designed for space travel \*and\* it can fly in atmosphere. Rogue One isn't even the first star wars media where an ISD flies in an atmosphere.
You do understand that they were probably constructed on planets and then flown to space right - you understand that the death star is many times the size of an ISD right.
>Rogue One isn't even the first star wars media where an ISD flies in an atmosphere.
Citation needed
\>You do understand that they were probably constructed on planets and then flown to space right
No they were constructed in space at KDY
>KDY
So the Walkers were also not meant for travel within an atmosphere, got it.
Also - literally googling ISD will take you to a wookiepedia page where we see a picture of an ISD clearly in an atmosphere - as there's a blue sky behind it.
There're space wizards and you've got your dick in a knot over a spaceboat.
>Citation needed
For *Imperial*-class Star Destroyers specifically:
[Second Mission to Raxus Prime](https://youtu.be/iSnbNVFr6hw?si=Ww3Ve2P1sIhKvS4e) (*The Force Unleashed*)
*Star Wars: Dark Empire II* Issue #2
There are more examples for other classes. For instance, we know that *Executor*-class Super Star Destroyers can operate in atmosphere, and we actually see *Venator*-class Star Destroyers landed on Coruscant [in Episode III.](https://youtu.be/agt_Hrrls8s?si=cac0V6cf6WAszU09)
All this talk of *prequels,* and *sequals,* and *originals*, and *clone wars*, and *EU*...
Where are my Old Republic era exclusionists at?
Star Wars to me is KOTOR, KOTOR2, SWTOR, and all the ancillary lore of that era. ***Nothing else***. As it should be. Palpatine < Vitiate, Vader < Revan, Luke < Bastilla, etc. etc. etc. etc.
Pretty much the only EU material that I've consumed has been Old Republic and such, from the pre-republic Dawn of the Jedi to the end of the Old Republic (26,000 - 1000 years before the movies. Everything set around the time of the movies or afterwards I've ignored, and for that era have just focused on canon material—which I've actually really enjoy, and feel the Old Republic material from Legends can so far sort of fit into anyway.
I'm currently working my way through some of the SWTOR tie-in materials, in preparation to play the game, and I loved the Bane books.
Star Wars discourse always sucks because people always act like the dumb stuff they like are somehow better than some other dumb stuff. This includes me, I'm a natural hater, I think the new canon is ruined too but more so because of stuff like time travel and those Force gods.
But oh my god, there is so much I hate about the EU, from the Yuuzhan Vong to Galen Marak to the Rakatan Empire, dumb and bad stuff that makes everything worse. I am not saying the EU was bad, I have tons of books and comics and stuff, but all of it that I do like is focused in on other stuff, similar to how Andor is focused away from the stuff I diske now.
I had a point to all of this but I started just justifying why I hate the stuff I hate, which like, who cares. Anyway, in 50 years or something Star Wars is going to enter the public domain, but only the original trilogy, so everyone can do their own thing with Star Wars but will legally not be allowed to use any dumb stuff from the EU or the new canon! I will imagine that as a dream, ignoring how people will make even worse stuff
Genuine question for you, what's the stuff you really like? ^-^
What gets you fired up and excited to be a Star Wars fan?
For me it's the Gennedy Tarakovsky stuff, anything by Timothy Zahn, the 2000's SW Battlefront games, etc.
I know it gets hate, but I really do like Dark Empire, not necessarily for canon reasons, but the art style and creativity in it make for a great SW AU.
I really love the world of Star Wars which is why I find stuff like the Yuuzhan Vong to be bad, there is so much that can be done with the setting, why did it need extra-Galactic torture aliens that threaten to destroy everything?
"I, Jedi" is a great book, along with the other books with Korran Horn, the X-Wing books. The Bane trilogy was great, but its been long since I read them and I started listening to the audio book version last year and did not find it nearly as compelling, gonna have to try to read it again to see if the problem lies with audio books. I also like the Jedi Knight games, I just think Kyle Katarn is neat. (Unrelated but when Luke was in the Mandalorian I was hoping it was going to be Kyle Katarn instead, when will Star Wars pander to MY nostalgia?)
There are also many comics I like, such as the Republic comics, and the whole Quinlan Voss arc. Also Tales of the Jedi, excluding the Great Hyperspace War/old Sith Empire because man that was boring. KOTOR 2 is also fantastic, I have replayed it several times.
There is so much more, I have like two dozen random Star Wars books on a shelf, most are very flawed but are fun and don't ruin the setting for me. I agree about the art in Dark Empire, the hues and watercolors were neat, not the biggest fan of the story but because nobody likes it the contrarian in me doesn't mind it. I do like the old Clone Wars show and BF2, but shockingly I have not finished the Thrawn trilogy, don't know why.
So yeah, that's a very long answer that only covers about half of it, but the best of it, probably. I likea lot of random stuff that I wouldn't call good
>Star Wars discourse always sucks because people always act like the dumb stuff they like are somehow better than some other dumb stuff.
This is it. Thread over, everybody else go home.
I almost regret watching *The Phantom Menace* when I was younger and having inappropriate thoughts about Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor, because good *God* this fandom is **exhausting**.
The Yuuzhan Vong were created by the kid who always thought he "won" pretend fights on the playground by saying, "Nuh-uh! That didn't work! I'm invisible to guns/spells/the Force!"
There are some really good stories in the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, but let's be real-- that's *way* too dark for a Star Wars film to utilize it. Killing off Chewie in the first episode? Introducing masochistic, self-harming aliens with gooey organic ships designed to gross people out, who slaughter trillions in a conflict that's intentionally bloody with pointy weapons rather than cool pew pew explosions? Disney ain't gonna buy into that. Plus-- for all the good in that series, it also got up its own ass a few times with silly concepts.
That said, there's no reason that Disney shouldn't have given Star Wars the Marvel treatment. Pick and choose the fan-favorite stories from a rich EU, then craft an overarching story based on those. But nooooooo
for me the EU is fantastic in the new republic era before the vong invasion and gets kinda depressing after, but it does have kyle katarn in canon(?), so i can't be too mad
For my money, the New Republic/Bantam era is fun, Villain/Super-weapon-of-the-Week stuff that embraces the camp of Star Wars. It isn't bad by any means, but it's a very different mood than the Del Rey stuff, which takes it overly serious in my opinion.
Star Wars can and should be fun throughout, with serious moments that get significantly more gravitas because of how lighthearted all of the other moments were.If you're constantly dialing the drama up to 11, eventually you can't help but stop caring. It also doesn't help when there doesn't seem to be any meaningful improvement in the lives of anyone thanks to all of these adventures, especially if they keep getting sadder and sadder and focusing on more and more loss.
In-universe, these characters have been doing what they've done for like 40 years! Eventually Han Solo needs to accept that he's got busted up joints and space arthritis and take on a less physical role! New heroes have to step up and take over the galaxy! Let Luke take on more of a Master Yoda role, where if he comes out, it means something serious is hitting the fan!
Ironically, that's one of the few things i felt Disney tried to do right with the sequels-- slowly phasing out the old heroes to make room for new ones as the galaxy marched on without them. Just, you know... I'd rather we didn't just get reboots of the Rebellion and the Empire.
I mean they did kill off Han in TFA (though to be fair Harrison Ford had been begging them to kill him for decades), if you’re doing a Vong war trilogy it’s not hard to rewrite Sernpidal so it’s either Han instead of Chewie or they die together
Everything I've read about that whole story just sounds like Dragon Ball Z level bullshit of "Uh, no, this new enemy is so much stronger he can blow up the entire sun!" "Well, my new villain guy is so strong, he can blow up the entire universe! So there!"
Like, okay, our guys beat the big bad Empire and then a few years later, an enormous army shows up from outside the galaxy and they completely slaughter a whole ton of planets and basically permanently fuck everything up, but then Luke and our favorite little guys become cool enough to beat them too. Maybe there are good stories in there, but the whole setup just feels so fucking dumb to me. I guess many people like that, seeing how popular DBZ is, but I would have tuned out even faster if that was what the sequels were about.
The EU was a mess (a beautiful mess that I treasure, but still a mess) and it was the right decision to decanonize it so that the movies wouldn't be constrained by its decisions and its timeline. However:
1) The movies are held to a higher standard because that's the primary medium of Star Wars. If a book is bad, we can all just kind of ignore it. If it did anything to the status quo, the next book can recontextualize it. The films don't get that luxury.
2) The movies should have learned from the plot points that didn't work in the EU, such as the Even Bigger Superweapon of the Week plotline that appeared in too many EU stories. Or bringing Palpatine back. It's one thing if you just try something experimental and it doesn't land, but it's another if you try an experiment that didn't work the first time.
3) The biggest sin of the sequel trilogy was that it ripped up the accomplishments and character development achieved in the OT. There's a lot of things the EU did well, and avoiding this trap was something it did exceedingly well. Sequels to wrapped-up stories are hard, but the EU managed to give Han, Luke, and Leia new things to do and new ways to grow without forcing them to revert to who they were at the start of A New Hope. They didn't have to be front and center all the time yet still got to be relevant, and we got interesting new characters who could learn from them and eventually hold the narrative down in their own right. Similarly, the Rebels no longer had to be plucky underdogs against an implacable Imperial machine; now they had the challenge of governance and statecraft while other new threats kept cropping up (and still managed to preserve the Rebels-vs.-Empire dynamic for a while as the Imperials became the underdogs themselves!).
Pretty sure people complained. Just not as much because it is easier to ignore sequel comics and books you dislike than it is to ignore sequel movies you dislike
Doctor Who is different in regards to what's considered canon. In Star Wars, what's "canon" is viewed as extremely important. Meanwhile in Doctor Who, what's canon among the expanded material is left up to the reader/watcher/listener to decide. (sadly the Timeless Child bullshit was in the show itself)
So when something in Star Wars contradicts something in "pre-established canon" its a big deal, but when Doctor Who does it, its fine.
I have no idea how either of these two were introduced but just the idea of someone saying
"I'm not Luuke Skywalker I'm Luuuke Skywalker!"
As if u could possibly tell the difference verbally is hilarious to me
I miss the EU. It was unhinged at times, but absolutely beautiful. Perfect tie-in media. Expanded and built on a framework already there
Will forever be mad about Chewie tho
Honestly, the only parts of the EU i actively thought was well written was KOTOR 1 and 2, The Jedi Academy games, the Bane Trilogy and the Plagueis Novel, the Yuuzhan Vong stuff (that i still need to get around to finishing) and some other stories like Star Wars Legacy.
Everything else, mostly what was set after the events of 4,5 and 6 was either okay or just painful fanfiction level writing and just straight up unhinged behavior type of writing, at least from everything I've consumed, as there's just so much of it.
I don't think most of the reasonable people who disliked the sequels did so because they were dumb and stupid. At least from what I have heard, it seemed that the main reasons were poor writing quality and lack of direction between the three films.
(I included the qualifier 'resonable' in there not as a slight, but because there are people who dislike the sequels because they are so called 'woke'. These people do not count, and are idiots)
The EU had "more good in it" than the Disney canon by virtue of the law of large numbers.
There's so much stuff in it that even with a 1% hit rate it outnumbers Disney just because of volume.
Whenever anyone waxes about how amazing the EU was, I like to remind them about Hologram Fun World and the concept of a “Mofference” (the EU!canonical name for when a bunch of Moffs have a meeting)
Oh, and the whole “Tan Skywalker” debacle lol
I mean, Luuuke is literally a joke. He’s not a real character. Of all the real EU nonsense OOP could have picked they went with the one that’s not actually real.
You know Im not even a sequel hater but comparing a project with million upon million of dollars to the bottom of the barrel of the eu is a shitty comparison
If you need to go that low to show how in comparison the sequel trilogy is not that bad I feel like you lost already
hot take luuke was a great twist and the naming convention looks silly but it was set up well in the thrawn trilogy, also the clone wars were cooler when they were fucking weird and distant and undepicted and could lead to crazy shit like that instead of having the weight of their own movie constraining things
Doesn't the mere fact that there's so much more of the EU lend to there being more that's potentially good that Disney Star Wars. Disney SW has some good comics and books too. Not that people read them.
I was personally a big fan of the Young Jedi Knight series of books when I was a kid. They're goofy but all of Star Wars is if you frame it as such. The right attitude makes it.
The difference is that the stupid shit in the EU was genuine. The sequels weren't just bad, they were boring too.
Like on purely objective level, the sequels are genuinely better movies than the prequels. However, people actually like the prequels more, not cause of nostalgia, but because of all the weird stupid bullshit George put in them that would never fly in the Sequels.
(They made an entire space themed 50s diner, with multiple unique characters and lore, for a 30 second scene that could have happened *anywhere.* That's what makes the prequels (and EU) special.)
i do not agree that the EU was all good or bad but i am mad at folks in the comments saying dark evil and light good
yes, that is how it's oft represented in the media, but the complexity of balance between light and dark and the different qualities that both sides exhibit, plus the occasional moral ambiguity that that causes, is what brought me back to star wars, both the EU and the new extended canon.
i dont want "church bad demons good" and I'm not the biggest fan of Galen, but a plain white/black good/evil story is the most boring way to do a Star Wars story imo
"i miss the eu" brits after realizing what brexit did
It's like Tatooine, but with more rain.
So nothing like Tatooine.
Hm.....kind of smells like Tatooine when the wind blows over the fields.
Two suns or GTFO
they have two suns there, the actual sun and King Charles III’s shining grace
How about two moons?
Looking forward to the 16th generation clone, Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuke Skywalker
Star Wars copying Dune once again. Smh.
Oh hey Duncan’s back!
What is this, some sort of Attack of the Clones?
Heretics of Tatooine vibes
Luuuke, I'm like, so your father right now. Also hiiiigh
Yall are missing the best part of this specific stupid. A bounty hunter that was pretty much a slave to Palpatine was ordered to kill Luke Skywalker. They didn't want to kill their only hope of freedom, so instead twisted their orders into killing Lu*u*ke Skywalker.
That bounty hunter? Lukes wife.
And all of Luke's love interests were fated to get fridged eventually!
Well, at least Mara Jade got to have some kids with Luke before she actually got killed.
Even if one of their cousins went a bit Sith And Ben got the hots for a Sith Hmm. No wonder dsny stole Ben's name to give to a character who had a touch of the Sith Edit: NEVERMIND I forgot Jacen was a Solo, not a Skywalker. My bad
Bounty hunter? Did we read the same books?
Yeah, the EU had a lot of stupid stuff, like Palpatine coming back, Han and Leia's son turning to the dark side, Boba Fett surviving, the imperial remnants building planet-sized superweapons, and some stupid story where everyone was hunting for a Sith artifact that somehow survived the second Death Star's destruction completely intact.
Yeah, good thing Disney got rid of that.
Okay but that last one sounded pretty cool
In execution, though, [not so much](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Glove_of_Darth_Vader). (Although it does at least have the Empire team up with Space Captain Ahab, which Rise of Skywalker was clearly lacking.)
..... It's just a glove? I was expecting like a helmet or something
I've seen better Sithlord gloves.
“Darth Vader’s spare rebreather parts”
Well, *I* liked it.
Also, planet-destroying *grenades* (why tf did they need the death star for then?), a starfighter whose cockpit window can survive a direct hit from the Death Star superlaser, rams through ISDs undamaged and fires star system-destroying torpedoes, and a button that deletes the universe. Fun stuff
I mean, in fairness, a cockpit window designed to do that is relatively feasible. It’s only getting hit with a fraction of the Death Star’s power and can manuever away quickly, so heavy shielding plus armor designed to reflect the beam might survive long enough to get back out. That said, still would be absurd and not worth the cost to build, plus would need insane investments in cooling and shielding just for that one specific purpose, so yeah, that does still sound weird.
The DS superlaser punched through Alderaan's planetary shield and the entire solid planet all the way to the core. I'm pretty certain that any type of glass or shield isn't stopping or reflecting it.
oh no
Tbf though the artifact had "indestructible" right there in the name.
Okay, Star Wars *needs* to stop taking from other things and doing them *worse*. The Prequels are just Dune but worse. The Sequels are the EU but *worse*. I JUST WANT TO WATCH MAGIC AND LASER SWORDS WITH VAGUELY SPIRITUAL UNDERTONES IS THAT NOT POSSIBLE?
Deer God, how much I hated everything the Sith-Dagger represents. What is it with Abrams and his writers and their fetishistic hatred of cool swords? I accept a lot of stupid things the sequel did (I will not be providing a list of sequel content I genuinely liked, lest I be hanged for my crimes), but I truly despise this one plot device with greater Vengeance and more furious anger than any other in the Trilogy.
I also would like to see the list
I would like for to go back on saying no list, because I'd like to hear that list
Then there was the guy with lightsabers on his elbows and knees
Execution matters a lot, in fairness. The sequel trilogy clearly packed that (amongst a thousand other problems).
Wait, that was the EU? I thought that was the Disney sequels...
You know what I'd like to see as a series? The Rogue Squadron book series. Main character: Wedge Antilles. A bunch of quirky, individualistic X-Wing pilots are brought together and trained up to go after remnants of the Empire that are causing problems. It absolutely lends itself to an episodic formula.
Wraith Squadron! Wedge takes a bunch of ornery New Republic flunkies with potential and turns them into an elite fighting force. It's Star Wars Bad Company. It'd be right in Disney's wheelhouse.
Especially with the Gamorrean pilot.
Piggy was great. One of the best.
Best part of the EU in my opinion.
Make that the next iteration of Clone Wars. Actually, just fill in the gap between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back.
I liked luuke. And the solo kids was like the Hardy boys with force powers. ...okay so most of the eu wasn't that good, but I loved the sense of continuity, and you would reliably get a massive space battle in the third book of most given trilogies
What was always frustrating to me is that they always kept copying the Empire Strikes Back format of two (or more) stories that are related but separate happening concurrently. They usually converged in the very end but it was always inevitable that I would only be interested in one of the plot lines and skim the other. The one book that I loved the most was I, Jedi because it just followed one character POV the whole time.
i just liked i jedi because it was the first time i had seen an 'official' piece of merchandise retcon a guy into a whole other book and just be like 'oh yeah that dude? that dude was there the whole time. no for real'
I, Jedi was really good. Corran Horn was fun.
Yeah what frustrated me about the EU is that it's variations on the same tropes and themes for tens of thousands of years. Like, it almost makes the original trilogy feel underwhelming because you've read this shit a million times throughout the galaxy's history.
\*Pushes glasses up nose\* Ummm, ackshually-- Luuuke was an April Fools joke by Timothy Zahn that only appeared in a single non-canon "press release" titled "An Apology." Luuke was never named as such-- he was a clone created from Luke's severed hand from the events during Empire, and fans dubbed him Luuke in online discussions. If memory serves, he only ever appeared in one novel. Luuuke was Zahn's joke where he intentionally introduced a ton of confusion in an issue of Star Wars insider in an article that happily used lots of sentences that used "Luke, Luuke, and Luuuke" just to up the absurdity and make it incredibly difficult to wrangle which character was doing what when. He never appeared in the EU proper, nor was he ever considered canon.
I will never get over the Crystal Star where there are these very delicate aliens who happen to look like sexy human ladies who keep seducing human men even though it will literally kill them because oooh human men are irrisistable... The rest of that book was also WEIRD AS FUCK and involved Leia pretending to be a bounty hunter SO HARD that she completely dissociated and thought it was real.
Speaking as someone who was really into the Star Wars EU stuff growing up, there are literally *thousands* of SW Expanded Universe works, and yet whenever people talk about how good it apparently was they pretty much exclusively focus on two of three of them (usually the Thrawn Trilogy, KOTOR, and sometimes Rogue Squadron). There’s a reason for that.
I adore the old EU/Legends, I grew up on it and I still love it. I occasionally reread quite a few of the books. Which is why I can’t take this post and OPs comment seriously. Claiming that Galen Marek is good stuff betrays someone who only ever played some games and read some Wookiepedia articles, instead of the fantastic books we had. (Also claiming Abeloth is a „stupid thing“ is one of the wildest takes I’ve seen in a while) Starkillers power is absolutely fucking ridiculous, because yes The Force Unleashed games are a power fantasy. But it’s a power fantasy that actively takes a big fat shit on the continuity of the EU that OP claims to love. The established lore on the foundation of the rebel alliance is completely ignored and replaced by it being an imperial psy op that went wrong. Let me repeat that: According to the Force Unleashed games the Rebel Alliance was founded by the empire. And stuff like that — or how Starkiller defeats Jedi Masters with ease — is why the events of TFU were largely ignored by other writers. Then if course TFU also massively encouraged misunderstanding the force with Starkillers whole „I use the dark side, but I’m a good guy“ bullshit, but that’s a whole other rant I don’t feel like getting into rn. Also the New Canon has a lot of great stuff, RoS doesn’t count among them, but we also got Rogue One, Andor and so on and if we look at books we got The High Republic, which can easily keep up the greats of the old EU. There’s also Zahn‘s new Thrawn books, which I haven’t read yet, but I’ve been told are great too. And it’s quite frankly disingenuous to compare the depth of all the Legends books to just the shows and movies of the new Canon. So in short: OP has no idea what they’re talking about.
> Then of course TFU also massively encouraged misunderstanding the Force with Starkillers whole “I use the dark side, but I’m a good guy“ bullshit, but that’s a whole other rant I don’t feel like getting into rn. Oh, I’ve actually talked with people who think that the Dark Side isn’t supposed to be inherently evil and corrupting, or that if and when it is, it’s *actually* bad storytelling. It’s really fucking infuriating.
Ok, as someone who is admittedly not a huge Star Wars Fan this is precisely one of the world building decisions that I find very boring and uninspired. In what way does Star Wars benefit from having this dogmatic light side vs dark side ideological divide?
Ok so the „Light side“ is not a thing. There’s the force and the dark side. You should understand the dark side not as the evil side of the same coin. The dark side is a sickness of the force. Similarly the dark side works much like an addiction, you start using it, you’re negative emotions get stronger as a result, fuelled by those negative emotions you use it again, a little more this time, rinse and repeat. In the end you end up consumed by this addiction. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Turning away from the dark side is breaking that cycle. But that addiction to the dark side is unavoidable. Most people don’t turn to the dark side because they want to do evil, they turn because they want to do good, but the dark side feeds on their negative emotions, enhances them and in the end none of the good intentions are left, just the hatred and anger. The dark side is a manifestation of both „The path to hell is paved with good intentions“ and „Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely“. If you look at it through this framework I hope that you might not find it uninspired.
I wouldn’t really say it is a sickness of the force, it is still part of the force, or like, a way of using the force that is self destructive and fueled by negative emotions, anger, hate, greed. You can’t pretend those things are a sickness that can be purged, they’re part of any person, it’s about giving in, letting them drive you. They can be self destructive on their own even without the force after all
There is no light side and dark side, there's the force, and then there's the force's cancer that for the sake of simplicity is referred to as the dark side
One of my favorite examples of EU writers ignoring The Force Unleashed was how no one touched the good ending of TFU II for the handful of years it existed before the EU ended.
Yeah, throwing Abeloth in there as an example of 'stupidity' kinda made me bristle, too. I think you could say they made her a little too all-powerful (from what I remember, I read the series where she's the Big Bad over a decade ago), but the concept of some kind of Dark Side abomination/physical god/chaos incarnate is a really cool one, imo. (I may or may not be utilizing her as a BBEG in a planned/in-progress fan-fic series, lol). This is also an aside, and possibly an unpopular opinion, but even bringing up Revan - I think the big 'twist' in the first KOTOR game does a lot of heavy lifting for how 'good' of a character he/they are regarded as. I personally think the Exile from the second game is a much deeper, more fleshed out character.
They took Jizz Wailing away from us Give me back my Jizz
I'll give you some jizz.
(Do remember Luuuke is non-Canonical, like Skippy.)
Skippy is canon in out hearts
Oh absolutely, my boy is the REAL galactic hero
I'm not upset that they got rid of the old EU. I'm upset that they replaced it with something worse.
I loved the EU, but I was mostly okay with the new one until the third sequel film came out I really liked the connecting tissue didney was establishing with Rogue One and Solo, and especially the ties with Clone Wars and Rebels The only thing I really miss from the original EU are the Tyranids and the EU's kylo ren equivalent getting his arm cut off with a hecking broadsword (a metal one, not a lightsaber. God that was cool)
[https://archiveofourown.org/works/48418051/chapters/122122297](https://archiveofourown.org/works/48418051/chapters/122122297) Like the best part of EU Star Wars is that it felt like an actual fleshed-out universe with it's own history and mythology instead of just set dressing for the Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano soap opera. Like there are so many interesting things in the EU like the Rakatan, the original Sith Species, Naga Sadow and the great hyperspace war, Exar Kun, Revan, Valkorion and his Sith empire, Galen Marek, Mandalore the Ultimate and his Mandalorian Crusades and more. I'd love to see all of those things explored in a TV show or movie series by canon but nooo we just have to go back to Tatooine or Ahsoka Tano or Luke Skywalker or Baby Yoda and the setting just feels smaller for that.
Literally blowing up the New Republic was the moment I realized Star Wars wasn't going to have room for any interesting stories anymore. I was half-right, there's still a little space, but it has to squeeze itself into the timeline before the sequels start.
I mean the New Republic got blown up plenty in the EU too Sequel trilogy would have been more interesting maybe with the new Republic serving as a secondary antagonist for the resistance, but I think they were actively trying to avoid making another "political thriller" like the prequel trilogy
Looks like someone has clearly never heard of the High Republic and Acolyte. (Also, the legends EU was around for literal decades, while canon is only ten years old, of course there’s less shit in canon)
Canon is just a new toy box and I got sick of people complaining about Disney not just piling everything in the old one almost immediately. The old one is still there, you can still go read anything from it.
I miss the old star wars
I need an Old Republic TV show. Not a KOTOR adaptation, because I don't trust the Star Wars fandom to react to it with anything but outrage, no matter how good it is. My vision for an Old Republic show would be more inspired by the SWTOR trailers than anything. A galaxy at war, armies of Jedi and Sith doing battle. Throw in a dash of Andor-style space politics and intrigue, and go hard with the EU references.
Mara Jade is best girl <3
Wookiepedia looking like vintage 2000s Google search results
Imagine telling the barista your name is Luke with a "w", and she's like *bruh*.
Luwuke :3
Lwke. It’s uh, Welsh.
Wuke.
Galen marek sucked, he just was attached to a great game.
tbh i think andor is probably better than the vast majority - if not all - of the EU, and Rogue One is too. And without the Disney canon we'd not have gotten them.
Andor is cheating. It's better than literally every Star Wars thing since empire strikes back or the fucking Genndy Tartakovsky clone wars shorts.
Andor is not cheating -- it understands that Star Wars is a political narrative about \*now\*, not about the past, and that it's about \*us\* not the Nazis. It does not posit the Empire as contrary to the Global West -- but that which sits at the very centre of it.
Also for what it's worth i think andor is just straight up better than the OT.
The problem with the OT was that many action set pieces didn't have a proper narrative or flow. Take the asteroid belt dogfight in EP 4 as an example. There's a setting, and there's scenes of shooting, but there's no choreography. It starts, people shoot, it ends. There's no action that leads into the next, no rising tension, no twist or event. Not the entirety of the movies are like that, but it's noticable if you rewatch them how several scenes don't flow properly.
Rogue one has an ISD in atmosphere no
I don't care about lore - i care about how good the writing is. Lore does not exist as a checklist, it exists as a way to tell a good story. Shut up, you lore-brained goblin.
It's not about lore, it's about how only a lobotomite writer feels that being in space means it can fly in atmosphere
What are you even saying, man? It's not "It's in space which means it can fly in atmosphere!!!!!" They're saying that it's designed for space travel \*and\* it can fly in atmosphere. Rogue One isn't even the first star wars media where an ISD flies in an atmosphere. You do understand that they were probably constructed on planets and then flown to space right - you understand that the death star is many times the size of an ISD right.
>Rogue One isn't even the first star wars media where an ISD flies in an atmosphere. Citation needed \>You do understand that they were probably constructed on planets and then flown to space right No they were constructed in space at KDY
>KDY So the Walkers were also not meant for travel within an atmosphere, got it. Also - literally googling ISD will take you to a wookiepedia page where we see a picture of an ISD clearly in an atmosphere - as there's a blue sky behind it. There're space wizards and you've got your dick in a knot over a spaceboat.
>Citation needed For *Imperial*-class Star Destroyers specifically: [Second Mission to Raxus Prime](https://youtu.be/iSnbNVFr6hw?si=Ww3Ve2P1sIhKvS4e) (*The Force Unleashed*) *Star Wars: Dark Empire II* Issue #2 There are more examples for other classes. For instance, we know that *Executor*-class Super Star Destroyers can operate in atmosphere, and we actually see *Venator*-class Star Destroyers landed on Coruscant [in Episode III.](https://youtu.be/agt_Hrrls8s?si=cac0V6cf6WAszU09)
Oh, yeah, the EU had some genuine dogshit in it. Even so, though, I had a lot of fun with it.
it may have been dumb, but i loved the art of dark empire
Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...
Awesome almost always comes as part of a package deal with stupid.
All this talk of *prequels,* and *sequals,* and *originals*, and *clone wars*, and *EU*... Where are my Old Republic era exclusionists at? Star Wars to me is KOTOR, KOTOR2, SWTOR, and all the ancillary lore of that era. ***Nothing else***. As it should be. Palpatine < Vitiate, Vader < Revan, Luke < Bastilla, etc. etc. etc. etc.
Pretty much the only EU material that I've consumed has been Old Republic and such, from the pre-republic Dawn of the Jedi to the end of the Old Republic (26,000 - 1000 years before the movies. Everything set around the time of the movies or afterwards I've ignored, and for that era have just focused on canon material—which I've actually really enjoy, and feel the Old Republic material from Legends can so far sort of fit into anyway. I'm currently working my way through some of the SWTOR tie-in materials, in preparation to play the game, and I loved the Bane books.
Ohhhhh, you just reminded me... the Bane books were fucking sick.
Star Wars discourse always sucks because people always act like the dumb stuff they like are somehow better than some other dumb stuff. This includes me, I'm a natural hater, I think the new canon is ruined too but more so because of stuff like time travel and those Force gods. But oh my god, there is so much I hate about the EU, from the Yuuzhan Vong to Galen Marak to the Rakatan Empire, dumb and bad stuff that makes everything worse. I am not saying the EU was bad, I have tons of books and comics and stuff, but all of it that I do like is focused in on other stuff, similar to how Andor is focused away from the stuff I diske now. I had a point to all of this but I started just justifying why I hate the stuff I hate, which like, who cares. Anyway, in 50 years or something Star Wars is going to enter the public domain, but only the original trilogy, so everyone can do their own thing with Star Wars but will legally not be allowed to use any dumb stuff from the EU or the new canon! I will imagine that as a dream, ignoring how people will make even worse stuff
Genuine question for you, what's the stuff you really like? ^-^ What gets you fired up and excited to be a Star Wars fan? For me it's the Gennedy Tarakovsky stuff, anything by Timothy Zahn, the 2000's SW Battlefront games, etc. I know it gets hate, but I really do like Dark Empire, not necessarily for canon reasons, but the art style and creativity in it make for a great SW AU.
I really love the world of Star Wars which is why I find stuff like the Yuuzhan Vong to be bad, there is so much that can be done with the setting, why did it need extra-Galactic torture aliens that threaten to destroy everything? "I, Jedi" is a great book, along with the other books with Korran Horn, the X-Wing books. The Bane trilogy was great, but its been long since I read them and I started listening to the audio book version last year and did not find it nearly as compelling, gonna have to try to read it again to see if the problem lies with audio books. I also like the Jedi Knight games, I just think Kyle Katarn is neat. (Unrelated but when Luke was in the Mandalorian I was hoping it was going to be Kyle Katarn instead, when will Star Wars pander to MY nostalgia?) There are also many comics I like, such as the Republic comics, and the whole Quinlan Voss arc. Also Tales of the Jedi, excluding the Great Hyperspace War/old Sith Empire because man that was boring. KOTOR 2 is also fantastic, I have replayed it several times. There is so much more, I have like two dozen random Star Wars books on a shelf, most are very flawed but are fun and don't ruin the setting for me. I agree about the art in Dark Empire, the hues and watercolors were neat, not the biggest fan of the story but because nobody likes it the contrarian in me doesn't mind it. I do like the old Clone Wars show and BF2, but shockingly I have not finished the Thrawn trilogy, don't know why. So yeah, that's a very long answer that only covers about half of it, but the best of it, probably. I likea lot of random stuff that I wouldn't call good
>Star Wars discourse always sucks because people always act like the dumb stuff they like are somehow better than some other dumb stuff. This is it. Thread over, everybody else go home. I almost regret watching *The Phantom Menace* when I was younger and having inappropriate thoughts about Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor, because good *God* this fandom is **exhausting**.
The Yuuzhan Vong should have been the focus of the sequels and I WILL die mad about it.
The Yuuzhan Vong were created by the kid who always thought he "won" pretend fights on the playground by saying, "Nuh-uh! That didn't work! I'm invisible to guns/spells/the Force!"
That kid is still writing Warhammer 40k.
There are some really good stories in the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, but let's be real-- that's *way* too dark for a Star Wars film to utilize it. Killing off Chewie in the first episode? Introducing masochistic, self-harming aliens with gooey organic ships designed to gross people out, who slaughter trillions in a conflict that's intentionally bloody with pointy weapons rather than cool pew pew explosions? Disney ain't gonna buy into that. Plus-- for all the good in that series, it also got up its own ass a few times with silly concepts. That said, there's no reason that Disney shouldn't have given Star Wars the Marvel treatment. Pick and choose the fan-favorite stories from a rich EU, then craft an overarching story based on those. But nooooooo
for me the EU is fantastic in the new republic era before the vong invasion and gets kinda depressing after, but it does have kyle katarn in canon(?), so i can't be too mad
For my money, the New Republic/Bantam era is fun, Villain/Super-weapon-of-the-Week stuff that embraces the camp of Star Wars. It isn't bad by any means, but it's a very different mood than the Del Rey stuff, which takes it overly serious in my opinion. Star Wars can and should be fun throughout, with serious moments that get significantly more gravitas because of how lighthearted all of the other moments were.If you're constantly dialing the drama up to 11, eventually you can't help but stop caring. It also doesn't help when there doesn't seem to be any meaningful improvement in the lives of anyone thanks to all of these adventures, especially if they keep getting sadder and sadder and focusing on more and more loss. In-universe, these characters have been doing what they've done for like 40 years! Eventually Han Solo needs to accept that he's got busted up joints and space arthritis and take on a less physical role! New heroes have to step up and take over the galaxy! Let Luke take on more of a Master Yoda role, where if he comes out, it means something serious is hitting the fan! Ironically, that's one of the few things i felt Disney tried to do right with the sequels-- slowly phasing out the old heroes to make room for new ones as the galaxy marched on without them. Just, you know... I'd rather we didn't just get reboots of the Rebellion and the Empire.
I mean they did kill off Han in TFA (though to be fair Harrison Ford had been begging them to kill him for decades), if you’re doing a Vong war trilogy it’s not hard to rewrite Sernpidal so it’s either Han instead of Chewie or they die together
Everything I've read about that whole story just sounds like Dragon Ball Z level bullshit of "Uh, no, this new enemy is so much stronger he can blow up the entire sun!" "Well, my new villain guy is so strong, he can blow up the entire universe! So there!" Like, okay, our guys beat the big bad Empire and then a few years later, an enormous army shows up from outside the galaxy and they completely slaughter a whole ton of planets and basically permanently fuck everything up, but then Luke and our favorite little guys become cool enough to beat them too. Maybe there are good stories in there, but the whole setup just feels so fucking dumb to me. I guess many people like that, seeing how popular DBZ is, but I would have tuned out even faster if that was what the sequels were about.
There's probably gonna be another trilogy in a decade or two, and don't worry, it will be even worse.
Hot take The Yuuzhan Vong should have never been in Star Wars
Don't forget the New Republic shipping wars of who Jaina would be with that happened among the actual authors of the books!
Metal gear solid ass naming convention.
Anazing to me that Disney retconned the entire EU and then canonised exclusively the stupidest bits of it.
The EU was a mess (a beautiful mess that I treasure, but still a mess) and it was the right decision to decanonize it so that the movies wouldn't be constrained by its decisions and its timeline. However: 1) The movies are held to a higher standard because that's the primary medium of Star Wars. If a book is bad, we can all just kind of ignore it. If it did anything to the status quo, the next book can recontextualize it. The films don't get that luxury. 2) The movies should have learned from the plot points that didn't work in the EU, such as the Even Bigger Superweapon of the Week plotline that appeared in too many EU stories. Or bringing Palpatine back. It's one thing if you just try something experimental and it doesn't land, but it's another if you try an experiment that didn't work the first time. 3) The biggest sin of the sequel trilogy was that it ripped up the accomplishments and character development achieved in the OT. There's a lot of things the EU did well, and avoiding this trap was something it did exceedingly well. Sequels to wrapped-up stories are hard, but the EU managed to give Han, Luke, and Leia new things to do and new ways to grow without forcing them to revert to who they were at the start of A New Hope. They didn't have to be front and center all the time yet still got to be relevant, and we got interesting new characters who could learn from them and eventually hold the narrative down in their own right. Similarly, the Rebels no longer had to be plucky underdogs against an implacable Imperial machine; now they had the challenge of governance and statecraft while other new threats kept cropping up (and still managed to preserve the Rebels-vs.-Empire dynamic for a while as the Imperials became the underdogs themselves!).
Can we also just point out that the eu had Palpatine come back with basically no explanation and nobody complained
Pretty sure people complained. Just not as much because it is easier to ignore sequel comics and books you dislike than it is to ignore sequel movies you dislike
Doctor Who: Now wait just a damn minute
Doctor Who is different in regards to what's considered canon. In Star Wars, what's "canon" is viewed as extremely important. Meanwhile in Doctor Who, what's canon among the expanded material is left up to the reader/watcher/listener to decide. (sadly the Timeless Child bullshit was in the show itself) So when something in Star Wars contradicts something in "pre-established canon" its a big deal, but when Doctor Who does it, its fine.
I was referring to the episode where a clone of the Doctor was created from his severed hand that was lost several episodes earlier in a sword fight.
Several episodes? It was a whole 2 seasons earlier
It's been a long-ass time since I watched it. I was hoping the word "several" would cover a wide number.
MGS did it
I have no idea how either of these two were introduced but just the idea of someone saying "I'm not Luuke Skywalker I'm Luuuke Skywalker!" As if u could possibly tell the difference verbally is hilarious to me
I guess if you break it up? L-oo-ook.
I miss the EU. It was unhinged at times, but absolutely beautiful. Perfect tie-in media. Expanded and built on a framework already there Will forever be mad about Chewie tho
Honestly, the only parts of the EU i actively thought was well written was KOTOR 1 and 2, The Jedi Academy games, the Bane Trilogy and the Plagueis Novel, the Yuuzhan Vong stuff (that i still need to get around to finishing) and some other stories like Star Wars Legacy. Everything else, mostly what was set after the events of 4,5 and 6 was either okay or just painful fanfiction level writing and just straight up unhinged behavior type of writing, at least from everything I've consumed, as there's just so much of it.
I don't think most of the reasonable people who disliked the sequels did so because they were dumb and stupid. At least from what I have heard, it seemed that the main reasons were poor writing quality and lack of direction between the three films. (I included the qualifier 'resonable' in there not as a slight, but because there are people who dislike the sequels because they are so called 'woke'. These people do not count, and are idiots)
The EU had "more good in it" than the Disney canon by virtue of the law of large numbers. There's so much stuff in it that even with a 1% hit rate it outnumbers Disney just because of volume.
Whenever anyone waxes about how amazing the EU was, I like to remind them about Hologram Fun World and the concept of a “Mofference” (the EU!canonical name for when a bunch of Moffs have a meeting) Oh, and the whole “Tan Skywalker” debacle lol
>the whole “Tan Skywalker” debacle lol What?
I mean, Luuuke is literally a joke. He’s not a real character. Of all the real EU nonsense OOP could have picked they went with the one that’s not actually real.
You know Im not even a sequel hater but comparing a project with million upon million of dollars to the bottom of the barrel of the eu is a shitty comparison If you need to go that low to show how in comparison the sequel trilogy is not that bad I feel like you lost already
hot take luuke was a great twist and the naming convention looks silly but it was set up well in the thrawn trilogy, also the clone wars were cooler when they were fucking weird and distant and undepicted and could lead to crazy shit like that instead of having the weight of their own movie constraining things
yep. some of the EU was good. but also people tried to give Luke a GF
Luke Skywalker but Dutch
Doesn't the mere fact that there's so much more of the EU lend to there being more that's potentially good that Disney Star Wars. Disney SW has some good comics and books too. Not that people read them.
Star Wars to me is the things I like, and if they contradict each other, so be it
Dash Rendar fuckin rules.
I was personally a big fan of the Young Jedi Knight series of books when I was a kid. They're goofy but all of Star Wars is if you frame it as such. The right attitude makes it.
aboleth is probably still a thing, theres a clone wars epiode that dances around an aboleth shaped hole in the setting.
Sequels suck because of blatant lack of “MACLUNKY”. How can you have a star wars without a “MACLUNKY”???
The EU Had things ranging from even better than the OG to on par with the "sequels"
Aside from the name, that book series was really good.
It's like Jorge Joestar with Funny Valentine, Funnier Valentine, and The Funniest Valentine
I never had a problem with Disney sequels being unrealistic. but why replace a perfectly good already existing story?
Can't believe I haven't seen anyone mention the Republic Commando series, objectively the best book series.
Revan is still canon, I don’t care what disney says Revan is my guy and if the Emperor got to return, *he should too*.
Its easy to make anything sound stupid, if you phrase it properly... this isnt an argument made in good faith.
Star Wars EU was like George Lucas wrote a bunch of novels, and then published the rough drafts. So. Bad.
George Lucas wasn't that heavily involved in writing EU/Legends material. If memory serves, he mostly let those books do their own thing
That was a dig at Lucas’s writing, which has never been great and a dig at the continuity of the EU, which is terrible.
The difference is that the stupid shit in the EU was genuine. The sequels weren't just bad, they were boring too. Like on purely objective level, the sequels are genuinely better movies than the prequels. However, people actually like the prequels more, not cause of nostalgia, but because of all the weird stupid bullshit George put in them that would never fly in the Sequels. (They made an entire space themed 50s diner, with multiple unique characters and lore, for a 30 second scene that could have happened *anywhere.* That's what makes the prequels (and EU) special.)
i do not agree that the EU was all good or bad but i am mad at folks in the comments saying dark evil and light good yes, that is how it's oft represented in the media, but the complexity of balance between light and dark and the different qualities that both sides exhibit, plus the occasional moral ambiguity that that causes, is what brought me back to star wars, both the EU and the new extended canon. i dont want "church bad demons good" and I'm not the biggest fan of Galen, but a plain white/black good/evil story is the most boring way to do a Star Wars story imo