Star Wars: The Force Awakens (SPOILERS)

[EdSolo]

That 'under Disney' thing completely discounts the Star Wars Story Group.  And that's a group of people who worked for Lucasfilm while George Lucas was still at the helm.  THEY are the ones who made the call over what's canon and what is not canon, with Kathleen Kennedy having the final decision.

As for Luke's development?  You've got to think that between the events of Episodes 4 and 5 that Luke has probably gotten into a scrap or two.  The Rebels have essentially been on the run since the Battle of Yavin.  They weren't just sitting around on Yavin IV, eventually deciding 'Hey, let's go somewhere where we can go skiing year round!'  Also keep in mind that the Empire has been relentlessly trying to identify who exactly destroyed the Death Star.  By TESB we know that Darth Vader has learned the identity of Luke Skywalker well in advance of their duel at Cloud City, and so has the Emporer.  And when Luke summoned his lightsaber and took out the Wampa?  It looked like he's had some practice before that.

Who owns the story group and Lucasfilm?  It is Disney.  So, the canon under Disney means that once Disney purchased Star Wars, the Story Group was created and announced that what was known as the EU became Legends, that everything going forward from that point was canon on par with the movies.

As for Luke, again, you are looking at this from 2015/6 eyes.  When the movies came out, they were the only official canon with an EU source to overwritten at Lucas's whim.  While it is easy to assume a bunch of stuff happened in the three years between ANH and ESB, none of it was official, so the only actual training we saw Luke undertake before he met Yoda was the limited time with Ben on the Falcon.  He then goes on to make a strike on a Sith Lord and then outright defeat him another year later with limited training.  Putting any of Luke's training aside, let me quote Han Solo, "Good against remotes is one thing.  Good against the living?  That's something else".  While Luke may have practiced telekinesis, it is highly unlikely he had any one on one saber training, unless we assume Yoda had another lightsaber on Degobah.  While we can take Lucas's limited view on things like how Leia "knew" her mother after seeing her for a few seconds, Obi-Wan stated that Vader betrayed and murdered the Jedi.  This could mean when he destroyed the temple, but I doubt it would be limited to just that act.  Legends had Vader hunting down Jedi during the Purge.  The new canon has not gone there yet, but I would think that at least a few Jedi escaped order 66 and Vader had a hand in hunting them down.  Even as Vader I think it is safe to assume he has had much more dueling experience than Luke ever had.

[Jesse James]

Here is where "EU" and "Canon" becomes silly to me.

I find Disneys use of "canon" a joke at this point.  So anyone with enough $ could've bought Star Wars and told you what are facts and what are not about a world that doesn't even exist and woikdlnt exist if not for George Lucas?  Donald Trump could've bought it and be dictating to fans what is/isn't "real" in the whole thing?  As far as I'm concerned, even the movies are now just some very nice "EU".  And I say that in the sense that the old EU was always a thing where as a fan, in your own mind, you take or leave and hopefully enjoy it like the original movies entertained you.  I don't get hung up on someone insisting something be a "fact" in a world that doesn't exist. 

You can't be that rigid and inflexible with your own imagination, to me.

So for my $, Luke had 4 years of on film and off film adventures, and he used his saber throughout them, and his skills with a saber grew to where by ROTJ he was fairly confident and competent.  Coupling that with Vader's age and disabilities (definitely slowed down from his days as Anakin), then Luke held his own on their 2nd meeting.

I think Rey is more a warrior than Luke was (he was a good shot and pilot but otherwise a kid), and that aids her against a wounded, cocky, and at the same time emotionally unsure inside, Kylo Ren. 

Now if you're looking at the old movies as if only what is seen on screen matters, regardless of old EU or your own imagination of what took place in that 4 years for Luke, then the point of having a conversation about it is moot from the get go.  I choose not to agree with that.  Just as I may choose old EU over new because I can't say I really care that Disney could afford to "change the facts" at their whim.  I totally understand why they want that flexibility and in general I am cool with their ideas, but at the end of the day, why are they any more important than a Timothy Zahn?  For me, Lucas will always have some "higher" say over everyone else.

But that's just me.  Everyone should just enjoy it how they wish.

[Nicklab]

I get the whole reasoning between the new Canon and the conversion of the previously existing EU into Star Wars Legends.  And I think some of the issues that Lucasfilm was trying to avoid was something that the PT ran into:  being painted into a figurative storytelling corner.

The way I understand it, these are the things that are now canon:
All of the Star Wars Saga films (Episode I - VII)
Clone Wars animated series (The Dave Filoni series, Not the Tartakovsky series)
Star Wars Rebels

As for print?  I'm not sure the date at which that transition was made.  But it certainly seems that the new run of Marvel Comics are canon (the original run is not), and the Dark Horse comics are Legends.


I wouldn't lay too much blame at the feet of the Star Wars Story Group.  They've got a hefty job to do in managing this content for multiple release formats.  But I think that classifying a lot of that EU as Legends material was necessary to clear the way for the new Saga and Anthology films so they wouldn't be beholdant to some novel, comic or game that was written 10 or 20 years ago that the majority of the movie going audience has never heard of and will likely never read.

And don't think that everything was great in this regard when George Lucas was still running things.  There was a really big dustup with author Karen Traviss who had written a number of books about the Mandalorians.  A lot of her work got thrown by the wayside when George Lucas decided to incorporate the Mandalorians into the Clone Wars animated series.  Lucas regarded his story ideas as more important and disregarded all of this backstory that Traviss had established with Lucasfilm approval, and the story arcs with the Mandalorians on the Clone Wars series just plowed over all of that work.

[EdSolo]

Here is how it worked in terms of canon.  The films were the top level and CW (the cartoon, not the comics, or the micro series) was level below that and about the books and comics.  Lucas always reserved the right to overwrite the EU at any time.  While there was a continuity where contradictory items were either retconned or removed from continuity, it was never on the same level as the movies.  Like was mentioned above, the Karen Traviss Mando novels are a prime example.  She detailed the culture and the training of the clones.  Lucasfilm decided that having pacifists ruling Mandalore was a better idea and essentially threw the Traviss stuff out of continuity, hence why she quit writing Star Wars novels.  The Dark Horse comics were similarly run rough shod over.  Dathomir is another case where Lucas's daughter essentially took credit for the whole concept of the Nightsisters without giving any credit to Dave Wolverton.

Fast forward to the Disney purchase.  Disney purchased all the rights to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Lucasfilm.  Lucasfilm created the Story Group and really did the only thing they could by shoving all that was the EU into what is now Legends.  Regardless of any of us who have read enjoyed many of these novels, the general public has not.  Imagine trying to go into what was the newly announced Episode VII trying to explain to the general public that Han and Leia eventually got married, had a set of twins named Jaina and Jacen and then another son named Anakin.  Much later Luke gets married to a Mara Jade who worked as an assassin for the Emperor and was tasked with killing Luke.  They eventually have a son named Ben.  A group of aliens invade the galaxy and they can't be sensed in the Force and they do a number on the New Republic and the newly formed Jedi.  The essentially destroy Coruscant as it was seen in the prequels.  Anakin dies as a teenager fighting said aliens.  Jacen is captured and tortured, eventually sending him down a dark path, because heaven forbid we would have been smart enough to distinguish Anakin Solo from Anakin Skywalker, hence the mandated killing of said Solo.  Years go by, and Jacen is trained by obscure Marvel comics character Shira Brie aka Dark Lady of the Sith Luymiya, who was trained in secret by Darth Vader.  Jacen takes over the government, kills Mara and becomes Darth Caedus.  His twin sister is then trained by Boba Fett and the Mandalorians.  She eventually suceeds in this task.  Han and Leia are left to raise Jacen's daughter in secret.  Jaina eventually marries Jagged Fel, son of a former Imperial ace pilot and eventually will become Empress of the Imperial Remnant, or so we are to assume because in the future their are Force wielding Fels who are in charge of the Empire.  Oh, and Chewbacca is dead because the aliens mentioned above dropped a moon on him and he sacrificed himself to save Anakin Solo who was then mandated by Lucasfilm to be killed off since they could not have Anakin Skywalker in the prequel movies at the same time their is Anakin Solo in the books.

That is where we would have been this past December (or May if the original date was pushed) if the EU were raised to canon and forced to be followed as the template.  Way too much meta knowledge to please us geeks who read all these books.

When the Story Group was established and they relegated EU to Legends, they said they could pick and choose what to use from Legends.  If the Thrawn in Rebels is true, that does not mean all the Timothy Zahn novels become canon.  The Story Group has said that canon contains all the episodic movies, all the spin-off stand alone movies, the Clone Wars series (but not the Gendi series), the Rebels series, including the unfinished episodes, all novels and young reader novels starting with A New Dawn, all the Marvel comics, all video games going foward.  The Dark Horse series, Son of Dathomir, counts as both in the Legends continuity and the new canon.  It is included in the new canon because it is adapted from unused Clone Wars scripts.  The on-going MMO The Old Republic has been branded Legends and is currently the only on-going Legends series.  That is why Lucasfilm has stated the ST Finn fights was one of his four squadmates from his training days per the short story in the young adult novel Before the Awakening.

[Jeff]

Nice to see "epic continuity rants" are no longer just for comic book nerds anymore. 

[Dave]

Wow.  You guys have read a lot more of the books and comics than I have.  I gave up after about the 25th novel after the Thrawn series, and have only read about 1/2 of the comics. 

Not to poke the bear, but didn't Lucasfilm / Dark Horse ignore most of the story lines from the original Marvel comics at some point?  And weren't some of the original books considered non-canon as well - e.g. Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

I personally like that the new movies will not be forced in to some crazy continuity Twister game. 

[Nicklab]

I personally like that the new movies will not be forced in to some crazy continuity Twister game. 

THIS.

This is ultimately what the whole CANON vs LEGENDS is all about.  I know that the Zahn-Thrawn trilogy is one of the most beloved story arcs of the EU, but even that is something where if the movie had treated that as part of the backstory, TFA might have lost the audience in serving those story points.  But more likely TFA would have been a completely different movie.

[EdSolo]

Wow.  You guys have read a lot more of the books and comics than I have.  I gave up after about the 25th novel after the Thrawn series, and have only read about 1/2 of the comics. 

Not to poke the bear, but didn't Lucasfilm / Dark Horse ignore most of the story lines from the original Marvel comics at some point?  And weren't some of the original books considered non-canon as well - e.g. Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

I personally like that the new movies will not be forced in to some crazy continuity Twister game.

Initially, the original Marvel stuff was ignored back in the days of the Zahn novels and SOTE.  After Dark Horse got going for a while, the old Marvel stuff was worked into continuity.  I think Dark Horse even got to release omnibus editions of the old Marvel stuff at some point.  Some stuff needed to retconned or shoe horned in since the three years between ANH and ESB were pretty full for the big three.

[EdSolo]

I personally like that the new movies will not be forced in to some crazy continuity Twister game. 

THIS.

This is ultimately what the whole CANON vs LEGENDS is all about.  I know that the Zahn-Thrawn trilogy is one of the most beloved story arcs of the EU, but even that is something where if the movie had treated that as part of the backstory, TFA might have lost the audience in serving those story points.  But more likely TFA would have been a completely different movie.

Yes, that is why I support the whole Legends thing even though I own and have read all the adult novels and a lot the younger reader stuff that has been released since the original ANH novelization.

There would be just too much to have to adhere to if Disney were to follow the old EU and would severely handicap themselves.  Not only would they have to adhere to all the characters that had died, they would also have a far future endpoint to build towards due to the Legacy comics.

The Zahn trilogy is always held up as an EU story that feels the most like Star Wars and many EU fans wanted to see that trilogy as Episodes VII to IX.  While it does well on the page, it would make a really boring trilogy.  There isn't too much in the novels to adapt as an action movie.  Even if it were made at the time of the novels release, it just wouldn't have been that great.  While Thrawn is/was a tactical genius, I don't know how well that would translate to the big screen.  I'm not sure where they are going to go with Snoke, but Snoke could have more potential, especially if he is skilled in the dark side.

[Jesse James]

Nice to see "epic continuity rants" are no longer just for comic book nerds anymore. 

And this is why I take the "hippie" stance on this that I do...  Like what you like, ignore what you don't, and don't let Disney or anyone else tell you that your version of Star Wars is somehow "wrong".

I was never a huge EU supporter before...  I liked random things, but not all of it, and so I ignored a lot of it and didn't even read a lot of it once I saw what it was about.

At the same time, I mixed things that didn't even have a place in Star Wars into my Star Wars.  My favorite one I go to was a fan-made level to DF2: Jedi Knight that had Kyle Katarn infiltrating a base supposedly working on a biologic weapon, only to find it's the Aliens from Aliens, and of course Katarn shuts something off he shouldn't have while there, and chaos ensues.  The guy coded new Alien AI (and obviously a skin), he had the Stormtroopers ignoring you to fight the aliens at times, he had facehuggers...  It was awesome, and turned from a cool mission wandering out an elaborately designed base map with all kinds of puzzles to solve, to a map where you just wanted to escape as quickly as possible to your end point.  It's still one of the best things I ever played, and just so much fun, and for me, Aliens are in there somewhere.   Predator too (have one in the Cantina, having a beer, with a Trandoshan).

Have fun with it how you want...  And don't put all your hopes and dreams into what Disney does, or doesn't do.  Rebels kinda blows from an adult POV (IMO), but it's part of their new official stuff...  I like some of it, but it's disappointed me personally, but Star Wars didn't end for me because of that.  I still love it.  Just like E1 didn't ruin my childhood, nor did Han shooting first (but man, that was a close one).

[JediJman]

To be fair, have there EVER been any Hollywood movies that are entirely faithful to the original source material?  Especially when you're talking sci-fi/fantasy stories?  The Avengers movies have a ton of huge differences versus the original stories, from the original lineup (Cap, Hawk, BW were not originals) to character origins (Stark made the suit in Nam, and Stane doesn't take over for 200 issues, Ultron was made by Pym, not Stark, etc.). 

The writers and directors have to have some creative license to mix things up a bit, to take the best of what came before and mold it into something new.  I am a huge believer in maintaining continuity within a medium and get ticked when that doesn't happen, but I view the stories from the comics vs. the novels vs. the movies as just alternate realities of a sort.  I think the Walking Dead TV Show vs. Comic has helped me adjust to this kind of thing over the years.

[Diddly]

Time to start deciding where to buy the BR/DVD!

Best Buy gets an exclusive Kylo Ren Steelbook Case

Target has exclusive packaging and 20 minutes of bonus content

And there's a BB-8 cover rumored to be exclusive to Walmart

[Nicklab]

That BB-8 cover looks nice!  But I think the bonus content on the Target version might be the way to go.

[Qui-Gon Jim]

Target pre-order will also nab you a $5 GC right now.

[Jeff]

Official Announcement from StarWars.com.  Follow the link for all the cover/case pics.

All releases =
Packaged with the film is a galaxy of bonus content that will take fans inside the making of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, including an in-depth documentary, featurettes, and more. Secrets will be revealed through extensive footage, never-before-seen deleted scenes, and exclusive interviews with the actors and filmmakers. Bonus features include*:

- Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey – For the first time, discover the complete story behind the making of The Force Awakens, revealed through in-depth footage and exclusive interviews with the actors and filmmakers in this feature documentary
- The Story Awakens: The Table Read – Cast members familiar and new reflect on the memorable day they all first came together to read the movie’s script
- Building BB-8 – See how the filmmakers brought the newest droid to the screen, creating an instant fan favorite in the Star Wars
- Crafting Creatures – Watch movie magic as the filmmakers bring a cast of new creatures to life
- Blueprint of a Battle: The Snow Fight – Go deeper into the epic, climactic lightsaber battle between Rey and Kylo Ren
- John Williams: The Seventh Symphony – The legendary composer shares personal insights of his work on Star Wars and The Force Awakens
- ILM: The Visual Magic of The Force – An insider’s look into the remarkable digital artistry of the movie’s visual effects.
- Force For Change – Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. See how the Star Wars: Force for Change initiative has united Star Wars fans all over the globe to help others
- Plus Deleted Scenes
* Digital bonus offerings may vary by retailer

Note: The 3D version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be available later this year.

TARGET
The Target Star Wars: The Force Awakens Blu-ray Combo Pack comes with exclusive packaging and an added 20 minutes of bonus content, including never-before-seen interviews with Daisy Ridley and John Boyega and a deeper look at the movie’s costumes and weaponry

WALMART
The Walmart Star Wars: The Force Awakens Blu-ray Combo Pack comes with exclusive BB-8 packaging and an exclusive Star Wars Galactic Connexions trading disc

BEST BUY
The Best Buy Star Wars: The Force Awakens Blu-ray Combo Pack features exclusive SteelBook Packaging