Star Wars General Discussion (dedicated to Houde)

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This is a discussion thread for the Generals of Star Wars. General Grievous, General Kenobi...

Or, maybe it'd be better to just have a thread for general, non-specific Star Wars stuff.

I'm starting this because there was an amusing piece of news this morning and I didn't really have anywhere to post about it...

Tupac was supposed to audition for 'Star Wars: The Phantom Menace' before he died

Rick Clifford, the former chief engineer of Death Row Records, recently gave an interview in which he went into great detail about his time spent with Tupac and brought up some information not a lot of people knew before. One of the most interesting supposedly unknown facts was that the rapper was set to audition for a role in George Lucas' Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Tupac, in addition to being one of the greatest rappers to have ever lived, was just starting to break into the acting game prior to his 1996 murder and apparently discussed a role he was up for in Star Wars with Clifford. Tupac told Clifford to 'keep his fingers crossed' about a role in a George Lucas movie back in 1996 and that he was up for a role as a Jedi.

While the only way to confirm this is to ask Lucasfilm, the timeline Clifford sets up checks out as Tupac's revelations about a Star Wars role came in 1996 which is right around the time Lucas was making casting decisions for a scheduled 1997 production start date.

Many people forget that Tupac was a gifted actor and was well versed in the dramatic arts, especially in Shakespearean theater. Given how successful rappers like Ice Cube and Sean Combs have been in the acting game, it's interesting to imagine where Tupac would be in his acting career and if he'd be a Hollywood heavy hitter had he lived.
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This just came out yesterday: Lucasfilm Have Convened A Star Wars Story Group And They're Working On Defining A Single, Coherent Canon

Leland Chee is employed by the company on their Story Team and has been answering questions on Twitter about how it all works.

Here's the thrust of what he was saying, in quotes from his feed, and folding a question into the answer:

Star Wars Canon is now determined by the Lucasfilm Story Group which [Pablo Hidalgo] and I are both a part of.

Story Group has a hand in all facets of Star Wars storytelling, including movies, TV, games, and publishing. More so than ever, the canon field will serve us internally simply for classification rather than setting hierarchy.

[Disposing of the hierarchy and having one cohesive canon is] definitely a primary goal of the Story Group.
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Star Wars: Episode VII Rumor Says Breaking Bad's Jesse Plemons Is A Frontrunner

Actor Jesse Plemons has impressed a hell of a lot of people over the last few years, putting on acclaimed performances on both Friday Night Lights and the final two seasons of Breaking Bad, but more recently Plemmons has managed to impress the man at the helm of one of the biggest upcoming blockbusters in Hollywood: J.J. Abrams. The Wrap is now reporting that the filmmaker was so impressed with Plemons' audition tape for Star Wars: Episode VII that the young actor is being called in to meet with Abrams face-to-face and try out in person.

Because of the insane level of secrecy surrounding the project, we have absolutely no idea who Plemons could potentially play in the highly-anticipated sci-fi sequel, but sources say that he is currently "in contention for a lead role." Disney/Lucasfilm had no comment on the story, but The Wrap uses words like "favorite" and "frontrunner" to describe Plemons' current status in the casting process. While it seems to be entirely speculation, the site notes that the actor does bear at least some resemblance to original series star Mark Hamill and suggests that being 25 could make him a perfect candidate to play the son of a 60+-year-old Luke Skywalker.

Plemons has spent most of his career on the small screen, also previously starring on the short-lived series Bent and taking single episode roles in shows like Children's Hospital, NCIS, CSI and Grey's Anatomy, but he has managed to get some big screen experience as well. Most recently he played Phillip Seymour Hoffman's non-believer son in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, but other credits in his filmmography include Greg Mottola's Paul, Peter Berg's Battleship and Jody Hill's Observe and Report. Personally, I'm among the fans who know him best as "Meth Damon" - the psychotic young neo-nazi from Breaking Bad - but landing a role in Star Wars: Episode VII could change that completely.
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After Breaking Bad I can't see him as anything other then the worst human being alive. He better be a Sith.
 
http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/fu...on-past-movies-animated-tv-series-1201164253/

So I'm massively confused regarding this announcement. Does this mean all previous Star Wars novels, comics, video games, etc are now not considered a part of the canon? It's already been stated Episodes VII-IX will ignore the Expanded Universe continuity and go their own direction, essentially confirming all the novels and comics occurring after Return of the Jedi are no longer canon. It's also confirmed the only real canon is the films and Clone Wars TV series. So I suppose this is all a massive reboot of the Expanded Universe stuff. Kind of sucks for all the hardcore SW fans who've been buying and reading all those other stories created in the last 37 years.

It does make it easier for me to timeline the SW universe, though. But yeah, these new novels are considered canon.
 
So in further reading, essentially this is a way for Disney to wipe the slate clean and start over in terms of the Expanded Universe. It does make sense, in a way, since the sheer huge amount of novels, comics, video games, etc released before Disney acquired the SW property was a big deterrent to me getting back into SW, and I imagine for a lot of other people who have the completionist mindset. I suppose this means all the Dark Horse SW comics are non-canon now, and when their license runs out and Marvel begins publishing the SW comics, those new ones will fall into the new canon.

So essentially, the new Star Wars official canon is going to be:

Star Wars - Episodes I-IX (Films)
Star Wars - The Clone Wars (CGI animated film)
Star Wars - The Clone Wars (CGI animated series)
Star Wars - Clone Wars (Animated series)
Star Wars - A New Dawn (Novel)
Star Wars - Tarkin (Novel)
Star Wars - Heir to the Jedi (Novel)
Star Wars - Lords of the Sith (Novel)
Star Wars - Comics (new comics published by Marvel starting in 2015)

So, no more hundreds of novels and comic series, dozens of video games on multiple consoles, no more Ewoks or Droids animated series, no more Ewoks live action films, no more Holiday Special, etc.

I'm ok with this. I was a huge SW fan as a kid in the early to mid-90's, but lost interest once I got into high school (because...girls, duh). I've always been interested in getting back into it (and time lining it), but there was just too much stuff to tackle.

Now, it's more than manageable. I only hope they either keep Zahn's Thrawn trilogy as canon or redo it so it fits the new Expanded Universe canon, because those novels were fantastic.
 
I'm actually really happy they're doing this because the EU was never canon anyway. Now it will be and I can keep up with it.
 
wyokid said:
I'm actually really happy they're doing this because the EU was never canon anyway. Now it will be and I can keep up with it.
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Exactly my reasoning. I'm looking forward to it. Between the new films, and this reboot of the novels, comics, and games, it makes Star Wars easily approachable again. It also gives me a reason to finally sit down and check out The Clone Wars.
 
Ultimate Houde said:
First time I'm seeing this thread.

I'm going to shut down E's site, and BURN IT.
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I'll burn you first, Gorilla Hands.

As for this, it's obviously a money grab but at least it makes sense for fans. I don't really get into much of the EU stuff anyway so it doesn't mean much to me, but my understanding of it was that the EU was non-canon anyway so they're just basically making it official.

I wonder if they will ever do some kind of story or something that tells how the pre-Disney EU became removed from that universe's reality.
 
E said:
I'll burn you first, Gorilla Hands.
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Two men enter. One man leaves.


As for this, it's obviously a money grab but at least it makes sense for fans.
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It definitely is, but more importantly it erases all the EU continuity stuff (that went back thousands of years before the Prequels and a hundred years after Jedi) so that Episodes VII-IX can tell the story they want without needing to worry about the fact Chewbacca is dead in the EU, that two of the three kids Han and Leia had are dead, etc (apparently the EU had gotten really grim dark over the last ten years). The spin off films, focusing on character origins and set at various times throughout the series, was also a big reason for it.

Personally I'm glad its being done not only for that, but to make the SW universe EU more accessible, at least for a few years.


I don't really get into much of the EU stuff anyway so it doesn't mean much to me, but my understanding of it was that the EU was non-canon anyway so they're just basically making it official. I wonder if they will ever do some kind of story or something that tells how the pre-Disney EU became removed from that universe's reality.
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While Lucas never saw it as canon, for most EU fans it was the closest they were ever going to come to seeing what happened after RotJ.

And the difference is, now the novels, comics, and video games are intended as official canon, with the story group overseeing everything to make sure it fits. I'm sure future movies may screw something up, but I'm sure they'll retcon the discrepancy to explain it away, as has often been done with the multitude of continuity problems in the original EU. At least now it's all under one roof, which should make the continuity problems between the EU material non-existant.
 
There was a tiered canon to the Star Wars Universe. Anything that came out in a film or TV series was level A canon, the books were level B. So they were canon insofar as they didn't contradict the A-level material. And when certain aspects of the prequel trilogy and clone wars tv show & movie contradicted previously established elements of the books, those books/elements became non-canonical.
 
Yeah, Lucas respected, and in certain case loved, the EU, but it was never canon.
 
So I read an interesting article about Marcia Lucas, George's ex-wife who divorced him in 1983. The article did a great job of explaining that Marcia was the counter to George's overly-cerebral approach, was the main motivation in him making American Graffiti (to show her that emotion was easy to pull off in film, it was the cerebral stuff that was tough). She was editor on many of his films and also edited films by Scorsese. Anyway, she won the Academy Award for editing Star Wars (along with two other editors), and it was her influence and editing approach that made Star Wars what it was, preventing George from cutting some of the more humorous and character-driven aspects of the film. She even influenced Obi-Wan's death in Act II.

Anyway, her lack of involvement with the Prequels is often regarded by fans as a reason they lacked personality. It's also believed the love story of Anakin and Padme, including the perceived betrayal of Anakin by Padme in RotS, is influenced by their divorce. It does she'd new light on the Prequels and the vast difference in tone and general feel between the original trilogy and prequel trilogy.
 
I'm watching the timeline as it is before any new material comes out so I can be up-to-date/refreshed. I'm only 10 minutes into Episode One and this is a LOT worse than I remember it being.
 
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