Down the crapper: Star Wars Expanded Universe



It's been implied for months and now we finally received confirmation that it is the case. Lucasfilm has just issued a statement explaining that the entire Expanded Universe is no longer official canon:

For over 35 years, the Expanded Universe has enriched the Star Wars experience for fans seeking to continue the adventure beyond what is seen on the screen. When he created Star Wars, George Lucas built a universe that sparked the imagination, and inspired others to create. He opened up that universe to be a creative space for other people to tell their own tales. This became the Expanded Universe, or EU, of comics, novels, videogames, and more.

While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align.

Now, with an exciting future filled with new cinematic installments of Star Wars, all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected. Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy's direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.

"We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon," said Kennedy. "We're set to bring Star Wars back to the big screen, and continue the adventure through games, books, comics, and new formats that are just emerging. This future of interconnected storytelling will allow fans to explore this galaxy in deeper ways than ever before."

In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe. While the universe that readers knew is changing, it is not being discarded. Creators of new Star Wars entertainment have full access to the rich content of the Expanded Universe. For example, elements of the EU are included in Star Wars Rebels. The Inquisitor, the Imperial Security Bureau, and Sienar Fleet Systems are story elements in the new animated series, and all these ideas find their origins in roleplaying game material published in the 1980s.

Demand for past tales of the Expanded Universe will keep them in print, presented under the new Legends banner.

On the screen, the first new canon to appear will be Star Wars Rebels. In print, the first new books to come from this creative collaboration include novels from Del Rey Books. First to be announced, John Jackson Miller is writing a novel that precedes the events of Star Wars Rebels and offers insight into a key character's backstory, with input directly from executive producers Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg, and Greg Weisman.

And this is just the beginning of a creatively aligned program of Star Wars storytelling created by the collaboration of incredibly talented people united by their love of that galaxy far, far away...

StarWars.com. All Star Wars, all the time.

3 commentaires:

Anonymous said...

I always had a feeling it was all meaningless. After all it is all science fiction anyway. Let's get back to the real Star Wars... Oh wait a minute....

Scott said...

I'm okay with this.

WE still have the original EU. Now we have just doubled up and have differing branches to enjoy.

Don't get me wrong - there are things I would love to see up on the big screen from the EU, however, I'm just as happy keeping them in my books where they belong.

Anonymous said...

Geaorge Lucas is a complete smeghead!

If he was concerned about this issue he should have had creative controls in place to keep things with the Star Wars brand cannon.

Oh wait, he did... Authors who wrote these stories had to go through a vetting process where so-called Lucas "experts" had to approve story elements to make sure they fit into his vision and were concidered "cannon"

Personally, I thought some of the material I read was very low quality and didn't really fit into the Star Wars genre as invisioned by Lucas, but then again I'm not an expert or cannon lawyer. Guess there was never a "no backsies" clause when working for Lucas Arts.

I didn't hear him complaining when the dough was rolling in from the legions of fans that purcased EU material...

Brian Dailey, who wrote some of (in my humble opinion) best Han Solo novels, and wrote and produced the very excellent radio adaptation of the original trilogy was praised by Lucas himself.

Mr. Dailey was on his death bed as he finished the radio series. At the time, Lucas concidered the radio series cannon. But now, something I thought improved on the original; adding little details that made the story better as a whole, is considered a false memory.

Overall, I never really took allot of it seriously, afterall, its just a fairy tales within a fairy tale. Star Wars flavored, but not as tasty as the original. But to do this after all this time and the disrespect given to some of the creativity and hard work that went into it, leaves a very bad taste in my mouth...