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Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Primer
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Primer
Like the gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, there’s a lot of time (30 years, to be exact) to cover between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Today, we’ll highlight the stuff worth reading, playing, and watching to get you up to speed before the film releases later this week.
Comments
People who haven't spent the last few decades getting a PhD in all of the bloated wiki-exposition have a chance to experience the wonder of Star Wars as it should be. I don't need to know the protocol for cleaning the restrooms on a First Order Star Destroyer, and I think they will deliver in not giving out that info. The force may be back to being that ambiguous concept it was in the past, not a genetic lottery.
It may be that as the next two movies come out and the gaming (both Video and Tabletop) industry strive to build hot sellers, they will likely invariably commit the same sin of explaining everything so that they can stat-up the cousin of Poe Dameron, or explain the manufacturing supply chain that results in the DL-44 blaster pistol. It's inevitable, and not always awful, that these things get explained, but ofttimes they make bad choices. One Zahn book had the wookkies on their homeworld speaking the queen's English while Chewbacca was revealed to have a speech impediment to explain the much beloved chewbacca language. IG-88 was the heart of the second death star and had secretly overthrown the empire. Han and Leia lived boringly ever after with a bunch of kids thrown in the mix like an 80's sitcom or something.
Worst of all I think is the Old Republic. Every bad trope and simple-thinking creative choice is crammed into that schizophrenic setting. A setting in which the most paper-thin connection to actual Star Wars is exploited and diluted into a universe that is little more than a monster movie of giant aliens and dungeon planets. In realizing the abundance of Sith and Jedi, the tension of their abilities as viewed by mundane characters, and the alien nature of their thinking became realized in a paradox of the silly. Old Repubic was supposed to be the mythical past, but it just ended up being a mess of crammed together elements that held no trace of Joseph Campbell or the original mystique of the struggling nascent Lucas.
Cheers for the decision to make a new start for Star Wars.
I think the comics should be focused on more than the novels. They atleast were consistently good.
Leia was a good spinoff. Explains some of the character.
Shattered Empire (or whatever it was called) was Finn's parents was decent.
The Star Wars seems funny but with the Vader crossover, it's crazy interesting. All the moving pieces between IV and V that explains a LOT (like Vader learning about Luke).
They were ALL hands down better than the garbage that was Aftermath.
Just like George messed with the originals (Han did shoot first) it seems Disney wants to mess with the EU to suit themselves. Probably so they can market and merchandise stuff exclusively.
@MikeB
I think the comics should be focused on more than the novels. They atleast were consistently good.
Leia was a good spinoff. Explains some of the character.
Shattered Empire (or whatever it was called) was Finn's parents was decent.
The Star Wars seems funny but with the Vader crossover, it's crazy interesting. All the moving pieces between IV and V that explains a LOT (like Vader learning about Luke).
They were ALL hands down better than the garbage that was Aftermath.
Poe's parents, not Finn's! :)
I'll reserve judgement on The Force Awakens until I've seen it. You never know, it might not be too bad. I won't be holding my breath though.
@MikeB
I think the comics should be focused on more than the novels. They atleast were consistently good.
Leia was a good spinoff. Explains some of the character.
Shattered Empire (or whatever it was called) was Finn's parents was decent.
The Star Wars seems funny but with the Vader crossover, it's crazy interesting. All the moving pieces between IV and V that explains a LOT (like Vader learning about Luke).
They were ALL hands down better than the garbage that was Aftermath.
This. The novels so far have been just horrible. I even tried reading the J. Jackon Miller Rebels prequel to my nephew that loves SW and it was horrible even for a tween targeted novel. J. Jackson Miller is just a horrible writer and seems to be the well that SW goes back to very regularly for writing duties.
The comics have all been well written and the stories strong at pulling those SW faithful into new stories and drawing new fans in with back stories for the existing characters. The Vader book is by far the strongest and this Vader Down crossover event, thusfar, has been gripping and intriguing.
Star Wars comics have always outshone Star Wars novels though. The Dark Horse years of the SW comics were very strong, while at the same time the EU was being ruined by hack writing and the Yuuzhan Vong (I am actually not the stringent hater of the Vong that most SW fans are, but those novels were just awful for the most part).
I have to admit I've never given any credence to EU material. If it didn't come from the pen of Lucas it wasn't canon, in my book. Then he gave us episodes 1, 2 and 3 and and fucked it all up, all by himself. To my mind Star Wars is the original trilogy and everything else is all a load of old bollocks.
I'll reserve judgement on The Force Awakens until I've seen it. You never know, it might not be too bad. I won't be holding my breath though.
I'm sorry that you missed the Thrawn trilogy. If there was one piece of EU content I was sad to see go, that was it. I highly recommend it.
That reminds you why he is feared so much. I don't want to spoil too much but him force lifting that <REDACTED> was probably one of my favorite moments in comic history.
Kinda the antithesis of the Maul thing.. where he looks awesome and then chokes.
Not really a fan of Disney coming in and rewriting "canon" to suit themselves. Some of the expanded universe stuff was great, some rubbish but it is all part of Star Wars history to a lot of fans.
Just like George messed with the originals (Han did shoot first) it seems Disney wants to mess with the EU to suit themselves. Probably so they can market and merchandise stuff exclusively.
I think there was probably just too much of it. They wanted the freedom to continue the films free from a 1,000 books and other mediums with all these different side stories and what not. Even just keeping track of that in order to not accidentally do something that would contradict one of those stories would be a MASSIVE headache.
Pretty sure it doesn't have anything to do with merchandising since they own the IP and can do whatever they want with it. Obviously...
They basically want to relive the experience of seeing the original trilogy and it's just not possible.
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jmcdermottuk said:
I have to admit I've never given any credence to EU material. If it didn't come from the pen of Lucas it wasn't canon, in my book. Then he gave us episodes 1, 2 and 3 and and fucked it all up, all by himself. To my mind Star Wars is the original trilogy and everything else is all a load of old bollocks.
I'll reserve judgement on The Force Awakens until I've seen it. You never know, it might not be too bad. I won't be holding my breath though.
I'm sorry that you missed the Thrawn trilogy. If there was one piece of EU content I was sad to see go, that was it. I highly recommend it.
Yeah the Thrawn trilogy is my favourite part of the EU.