What's accepted SW canon?

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Dec 11, 2010 2:45 pm

WILGA wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Oh, on a sidenote. The ANH may be written by Lucas (officially I mean), that doesn't change much towards its canonical status. Remember the Ewok movies, all made by Lucas. They're directly treated as C-canon.
Says who?

Lucas or Chee?
Chee, indirectly, as he includes television in C-canon; but like for any rule, there are exceptions; notably with G-canon, which is anything Lucas made; and yet we see that despite his involvement in TCWS, they rank only T, and TFU still seems to rank C.
Lucas has said, that all that is coming from him, is highest canon. That's what is the important thing here.
I don't recall Lucas saying anything like that. That's more like some employee comment, and not necessarily of the fresher batch.
Let's assume that Lucas has made an exception for the Ewok movies. Has he done it also for the ANH novelization?
I'm not going to extrapolate on an assumption since I'm not even agreeing with what it stems from. As for the ANH novelization, it could largely rank as G canon as a whole.
I get the feeling that Chee's statements, when they refer to anything from Lucas, is spoken within the confines of the two trilogies, nothing else; and that follows, otherwise Chee would be contradicting himself with the T rank, and other things such as the SW Special and so on.
RSA's canon wars site claims that Lucas often dissociates himself from the TV material produced in the 80s btw.

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Praeothmin » Mon Dec 13, 2010 12:49 am

Yes he did, big time, especially the "SW Holiday Special"... :)

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Mon Dec 13, 2010 4:02 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:I'm not going to extrapolate on an assumption since I'm not even agreeing with what it stems from. As for the ANH novelization, it could largely rank as G canon as a whole.
I get the feeling that Chee's statements, when they refer to anything from Lucas, is spoken within the confines of the two trilogies, nothing else; and that follows, otherwise Chee would be contradicting himself with the T rank, and other things such as the SW Special and so on.
RSA's canon wars site claims that Lucas often dissociates himself from the TV material produced in the 80s btw.
I think Chee's kinda gone a bit batty with this whole "T canon" thing. When you have George Lucas himself telling everyone that the TCW CGI series is nothing less than an actual chapter of the OT and PT storyline, then why not place it in with the same G canon rank as the movie novelizations, the screenplays, radio dramas and all of that? Why have an intermediate ranking? All the interviews and such they seem to dance around that question just like they dance around Lucas' parallel universe statements.
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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Dec 13, 2010 5:32 am

Perhaps T for "almost as high as the movies, but with Lucas on TV". :/
Also because it's cartoon CGI and it doesn't score as well as live action.

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Mon Dec 13, 2010 7:18 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Perhaps T for "almost as high as the movies, but with Lucas on TV". :/
Also because it's cartoon CGI and it doesn't score as well as live action.
That doesn't wash, either since you could make a similar arguement about the novelizations of the movies, and the NPR radio plays. Why not have R-canon while we're at it for the NPR material? Also the live-action TV series, if that ever gets made, will also be placed in T-canon. No, this is just a poor and unnecessary decision on Chee's part.
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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Dec 14, 2010 3:13 am

Well I suppose he considered that this show borrowed a lot from the EU, and wasn't as "mature" as the movies or the books, and may very likely be inferior to the movies in terms of canon.
So, it kinda holds, but it's obvious it's not perfect.

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:00 am

Borrowed? A little maybe, but it's fairly stomped the shit out of the EU. Just ask poor Karen Traviss among others.
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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by User1462 » Fri Dec 17, 2010 3:16 am

The only continuity that Lucas mentioned was that he didn't re-use names.
The EU Completists, however, will cherry-pick from various quotes and bending them to fit their argument, like a bird picking up whatever it needs to weave its nest.

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Dec 17, 2010 6:25 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:Borrowed? A little maybe, but it's fairly stomped the shit out of the EU. Just ask poor Karen Traviss among others.
-Mike
I think it borrows just as much as it stomps the crap. Have you seen the spoilers of season 3?
Assaj Ventrress, that was pure EU, and in fact like many things, it really feels hamfisted.

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Praeothmin » Fri Dec 17, 2010 1:02 pm

UniveralNetguru wrote:The only continuity that Lucas mentioned was that he didn't re-use names.
The EU Completists, however, will cherry-pick from various quotes and bending them to fit their argument, like a bird picking up whatever it needs to weave its nest.
And sometimes he let the guys in the EU add background info on characters from the movie, that isn't retconned in the following movie...
Like it or not, GL does affect the EU a lot (like when he specifically tells authors they cannot kill a character named Anakin, even though he didn't create the second character, just because of the name), and sometimes draws from it...
The EU Completists, however, will cherry-pick from various quotes and bending them to fit their argument, like a bird picking up whatever it needs to weave its nest.
Movie purists do the exac same thing: they will twist and turn every sentence said by Lucas to try an discredit the EU just because it states something that doesn't agree with "their" version of SW...

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Fri Dec 17, 2010 6:42 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:Borrowed? A little maybe, but it's fairly stomped the shit out of the EU. Just ask poor Karen Traviss among others.
-Mike
I think it borrows just as much as it stomps the crap. Have you seen the spoilers of season 3?
Assaj Ventrress, that was pure EU, and in fact like many things, it really feels hamfisted.
Ventress has been in the TCW since the movie and season one there's nothing new there. Besides which the Ventress of the EU and the TCW one have more than a few differences, and the character was actually not an EU creation, but was a character concept for a villian before Count Dooku was eventually finalized and chosen. I seriously doubt that much of her EU background will be incorportated into the TCW version, if any at all.
-Mike

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Dec 18, 2010 4:59 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:Borrowed? A little maybe, but it's fairly stomped the shit out of the EU. Just ask poor Karen Traviss among others.
-Mike
I think it borrows just as much as it stomps the crap. Have you seen the spoilers of season 3?
Assaj Ventrress, that was pure EU, and in fact like many things, it really feels hamfisted.
Ventress has been in the TCW since the movie and season one there's nothing new there. Besides which the Ventress of the EU and the TCW one have more than a few differences, and the character was actually not an EU creation, but was a character concept for a villian before Count Dooku was eventually finalized and chosen. I seriously doubt that much of her EU background will be incorportated into the TCW version, if any at all.
-Mike
Oh I know about the Sith Lady thing, but there's quite a difference between a character with a name, a style, an attitude and a set look and just a sketch.
Hell, I'd even throw in Aurra Sing if it wasn't for the fact that her pitiful brief appearance in TPM was just meant to sell crap and let the EU flesh her out. Then fat Goerge returns and says thanks for the good work keeping this character alive, now I'll exploit her.

Oh and Mandalorians. Right from the EU, Traviss' spin aside.
Plus those EU names George takes. Hell, wasn't Coruscant first coined by Zahn?
Lucas had even grabbed Secura for the movies. Because a Jedi Twi'lek with boobs, traditional Jedi outfit be damned, was just too good to let pass.

Season 3 spoilers:
Dathomir witches, plus another Sith apprentice - being as imaginative as the EU here, and Darth Maul returning, somehow, probably as a spirit... just like it happened so many times in the EU.

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sat Dec 18, 2010 7:20 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Oh and Mandalorians. Right from the EU, Traviss' spin aside.
Um, no. The TESB novelization refers to the group of "a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars.", and some of the background information from Lucas at that time refers to the Mandalorians. So it's not strictly an EU invention, though the EU, like with Aurra Sing, fleshed them out into something else. In the case of Aurra Sing, as you already admitted to, she was a pre-existing character, and her EU background has yet in any real way to surface in the TCW.

At any rate, you're left with a small handful of examples. So while George Lucas does take a few things from the EU, he seems mostly unaware of what goes on in it, and as with Coruscant, the name had to be brought to his attention while he was considering a name for the city-covered planet.
-Mike

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by Praeothmin » Sat Dec 18, 2010 9:23 am

Yes, strangely enough, Coruscant in the EU described the city-wide planet at the center of the Empire, and Lucas used it to describe the city-wide planet at the center of the Empire/Republic...
While I agree (as I've said many times) he may not be aware of everything, I'm pretty sure (and examples like these tend to infer heavily) he's got a pretty good knowledge of what the EU contains in general...

And this still doesn't make the EU invalid, and it fits pretty well with "if it does not contradict the higher canon, then it is good"...
I know a lot of people don't like the EU because it has many good things for SW, but it also has many bad things.
And those same people then give the Federation things like the Genesis device, even though it was never heard from or seen after TWoK.
Same thing with Transphasic torpedoes and armor: while the Feds do have the technology, they never, ever used it, even when it would have been necessary...

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Re: What's accepted SW canon?

Post by User1462 » Sun Dec 19, 2010 11:48 pm

Praeothmin wrote:Yes, strangely enough, Coruscant in the EU described the city-wide planet at the center of the Empire, and Lucas used it to describe the city-wide planet at the center of the Empire/Republic...
While I agree (as I've said many times) he may not be aware of everything, I'm pretty sure (and examples like these tend to infer heavily) he's got a pretty good knowledge of what the EU contains in general...

And this still doesn't make the EU invalid, and it fits pretty well with "if it does not contradict the higher canon, then it is good"...
Er, no, it doesn't...not at all. That's the wishful-thinking invention of EU-Completists and fanbois, so that they can cherry-mine the endless-fanwank known as the Expanded Universe, to support their fanbois EU-niverse with the ridiculous claims presented therein.

Rather the FACT would be the opposite: i.e. that EU material is only canon, if it's corroborated by the G-canon.

Again, here's the actual quotes:
]LUCAS: I don't read that stuff. I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions."
- George Lucas, Flannelled One, Aug. 2005 - "New Hopes" interview in Starlog #337
Leland Chee, 2006 at StarWars.Com:
"The only relevant official continuities are the current versions of the films alone, and the combined current version of the films along with whatever else we've got in the Holocron. You're never going to know what George's view of the universe beyond the films at any given time because it is constantly evolving. It remains elastic until it gets committed to film or another official source. Even then, we know there's always room for change.
[...] Anything not in the current version of the films is irrelevant to Film only continuity."

- Sue Rostoni, Lucas Licensing (LLP Managing Editor), Sept. 2005 - StarWars.com forum post:

"Within the issue of Starlog magazine with the War of the Worlds cover is an interview article with George Lucas. He stated something which he had said before, which is that he doesn't follow the SW EU, he doesn't read the books or comics. He also said that when they started doing all this (which is allowing other storytellers to tell their own SW tales), he had decreed that the Star Wars Universe would be split into two just like Star Trek (I don't know nuts about Star Trek, so don't ask me about that), one would be his own universe (the six episode movie saga), the other would be a whole other universe (the Expanded Universe). He continued to say that the EU tries as much as possible to tie in to his own universe, but sometimes they move into a whole other line of their own.”
So there you have it: there's 2 universes, whatever the EU-fanbois may say.
I know a lot of people don't like the EU because it has many good things for SW, but it also has many bad things.
More like IT'S ...NOT....CANON.
It's a FANWANK which LFL publishes-- PERIOD.
And those same people then give the Federation things like the Genesis device, even though it was never heard from or seen after TWoK.
Doesn't matter, it's film-canon.
Same thing with Transphasic torpedoes and armor: while the Feds do have the technology, they never, ever used it, even when it would have been necessary...
More like Transphasic torpedoes and bat-armor were introduced in "Endgame," and that was the latest-year installment of "Star Trek" ever seen (before Star Trek 2009); therefore of course we wouldn't see them in following productions like "Enterprise," since they were set long before even TOS.

The only Star Trek year seen after Endgame, was Star Trek 2009. And guess what? Now they have RED MATTER! BWAHAHAHHAHHAHAA!
Unlimited POWAAAAHHHHH!!!!

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