Rewrite the Star Wars Expanded Universe

[anon_user]

Thoughts on superweapons?
Personally, I'd rather they had never been introduced - the Sun Crusher, the Galaxy Gun, Centerpoint, the Death Star prototype, all of them. Zahn didn't need to give Thrawn any superweapons to pose a threat, and superweapons tended to be one of the worst crutches of the EU (the Solo kids have been kidnapped being another). I'm curious what you all think, though.

 

[crackersncheese]

Thoughts on superweapons?
Personally, I'd rather they had never been introduced - the Sun Crusher, the Galaxy Gun, Centerpoint, the Death Star prototype, all of them. Zahn didn't need to give Thrawn any superweapons to pose a threat, and superweapons tended to be one of the worst crutches of the EU (the Solo kids have been kidnapped being another). I'm curious what you all think, though.

Right on the money. You know how MacCaulay's always up about how nukes are telltale signs of lazy writing? Superweapons are Star Wars nukes.

 

[TheSevenLeggedFallyDowner]

Superweapons are like any other plot device: okay in moderation, but cliched if you go too far with it. At some point it stretches the willing suspension of disbelief and you go "Seriously?! This again?!" It was fine doing it twice in the movies, but I can't see doing it more than once more in the EU. Certainly not a dozen more times.

 

[Thande]

I thought their most clever use was in "Isard's Revenge" and "Rebel Dream/Rebel Stand" by Stackpole and Allston respectively. Both of them used the fact that people overreact to the threat of superweapons and make mistakes rushing to stop them. In fact both superweapons were hoaxes. (And before you ask, those books were written before the Iraq war).

 

[anon_user]

Rebel Dream/Rebel Stand was awesome for a number of reasons, and that was definitely one of them.

On another note, how should Chewbacca be used better?

 

[BlackWave]

I dunno. I thought he was used adequately enough as it is.

 

[Spengler]

Ban the Yuuzhan Vong concept, stop that history repeating stuff where the New Republic just collapses and the Empire takes everything over again, use my influence make sure the Prequels don't stink.

If you are referring to the dark horse series I'll have you know that that is one of the few good things that has happaned to star wars in years.

Here are the rules I lay out
1. UNless you really make a good impression and have a story that gets good intitial reactions from some trustworthy fans you will have to write a story about a periphery character before you can use the big four in any major capacity.
2. Try to ensure that most stuff inviolving multiple main characters has at least two authors. A new author may beven be set with a veteran author (for instance setting up Zahn with Tom Veitch along with Mark Richardson)
3. Concerning the clone wars, I will set up a system where for anything written about them to be considered cannon your book has to be able to reach new york best seller list.
4. Convince Lucas to bring Kirshner out of retirement and have him direct the prequels or get his friend Spielberg to have a go at them.
5. Have one of the alright authors write a book that gets rid of a large part of the marvel comic book stuff. Primarily to prevent some idiot author trying to bring back any of the storylines back.

Oh and I forgot two others

6. have it so that there are maybe six or seven jedis in hiding.
7. Super weapons have to be okayed by me and there will be no hutt super lasers, sun crushers and no doomsday chip in droids implanted by hitler expy.

 

[John Farson]

If you are referring to the dark horse series I'll have you know that that is one of the few good things that has happaned to star wars in years.

How so? To me that just renders the events of the movies moot. What was the point in starting the rebellion, killing Palpatine and overthrowing the Empire if the same damn thing happens barely a 100 years or so later?!!

Now, if something like that were a thousand years later that would be a different thing, but this... this just rends everything pointless, in my opinion, no matter how well written the individual stories might be.

Imagine, for a second, that in Middle Earth, about a 100 years after Return of the King, Sauron's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate comes from the East, fishes the One Ring from Mount Doom and subjugates most of Middle Earth, so that the Good Guys have to fight the whole damn thing over again. That's what I feel about Legacy.

 

[rvbomally]

How so? To me that just renders the events of the movies moot. What was the point in starting the rebellion, killing Palpatine and overthrowing the Empire if the same damn thing happens barely a 100 years or so later?!!

Now, if something like that were a thousand years later that would be a different thing, but this... this just rends everything pointless, in my opinion, no matter how well written the individual stories might be.

Imagine, for a second, that in Middle Earth, about a 100 years after Return of the King, Sauron's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate comes from the East, fishes the One Ring from Mount Doom and subjugates most of Middle Earth, so that the Good Guys have to fight the whole damn thing over again. That's what I feel about Legacy.

But isn't that what's great about it? The idea that you can never truly defeat evil and tyranny. That your enemies yesterday can come back tomorrow. That your actions today can be rendered futile in due time. It adds a cynical touch to Star Wars. Honestly, I would have preferred the New Republic/GFFA becoming the Empire in all but name rather than being replaced by the actual Empire, so the heroic rebels of today are the tyrants of tomorrow.

 

[Spengler]

How so? To me that just renders the events of the movies moot. What was the point in starting the rebellion, killing Palpatine and overthrowing the Empire if the same damn thing happens barely a 100 years or so later?!!

Now, if something like that were a thousand years later that would be a different thing, but this... this just rends everything pointless, in my opinion, no matter how well written the individual stories might be.

Imagine, for a second, that in Middle Earth, about a 100 years after Return of the King, Sauron's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate comes from the East, fishes the One Ring from Mount Doom and subjugates most of Middle Earth, so that the Good Guys have to fight the whole damn thing over again. That's what I feel about Legacy.

But the empire isn't evil in the series. Which Sauron unquestionably is. PLus its got the descendants of Anakin at the head.

 

[anon_user]

This is a series aimed at kids, remember, and one that plays on mythic tones - cynicism doesn't really fit well, in my opinion. The overarching plot of the original trilogy is about Han losing his cynicism and finding himself a cause, Luke growing into a Jedi, Darth Vader himself getting redeemed - it's a very idealistic Galaxy. That's a large reason why I'm not fond of having the (New) Republic go bad, or collapse.
***
I don't know if you could get Kirshner or Spielberg to direct the prequels. You're only in Lucasfilm Licensing, after all. Still, it's worth a shot.
***
I like the idea of Veitch (who writes for the Dark Horse Star Wars comics) and Zahn collaborating, even though I don't like Dark Empire (which Veitch created) - I think having the comics and the books be more integrated would be a good thing. Especially from the perspective of Lucasfilm Licensing - after all, it's a good way to build the comic brand if the comics are well-integrated into the main plot of the EU.

Who's Mark Richardson?

 

[Spengler]

This is a series aimed at kids, remember, and one that plays on mythic tones - cynicism doesn't really fit well, in my opinion. The overarching plot of the original trilogy is about Han losing his cynicism and finding himself a cause, Luke growing into a Jedi, Darth Vader himself getting redeemed - it's a very idealistic Galaxy. That's a large reason why I'm not fond of having the (New) Republic go bad, or collapse.
***
I don't know if you could get Kirshner or Spielberg to direct the prequels. You're only in Lucasfilm Licensing, after all. Still, it's worth a shot.
***
I like the idea of Veitch (who writes for the Dark Horse Star Wars comics) and Zahn collaborating, even though I don't like Dark Empire (which Veitch created) - I think having the comics and the books be more integrated would be a good thing. Especially from the perspective of Lucasfilm Licensing - after all, it's a good way to build the comic brand if the comics are well-integrated into the main plot of the EU.

Who's Mark Richardson?

Writer of Crimsome empire that fallows the fallout of palpatines last death as the remnants of the empire tear themselves apart. Also he liked the idea of a threat from the unknown regions in visions of the future. Maybe have him and zahn work on a way to actually make a credible and not obvious rip off of species 8472.

 

[G.Fieendish]

Superweapons are like any other plot device: okay in moderation, but cliched if you go too far with it. At some point it stretches the willing suspension of disbelief and you go "Seriously?! This again?!" It was fine doing it twice in the movies, but I can't see doing it more than once more in the EU. Certainly not a dozen more times.

I suspect that the only viable superweapon in this context, is the World Devastators from the Dark Empire comic books, & they should really stay firmly in the background, as a McGuffin, in that somehow New Republic Intellgence works out that a Imperial faction (Zinj, say) is producing weapons, such as TIE Interceptors for example, in greater numbers than they should, and NRI can't tell where they're coming from...
Eventually, they discover that the source is the Prototype World Devastator, just completed before the Battle of Endor, & undergoing "shakedown" tests when the battle happened...

 

[John Farson]

But isn't that what's great about it? The idea that you can never truly defeat evil and tyranny. That your enemies yesterday can come back tomorrow. That your actions today can be rendered futile in due time. It adds a cynical touch to Star Wars. Honestly, I would have preferred the New Republic/GFFA becoming the Empire in all but name rather than being replaced by the actual Empire, so the heroic rebels of today are the tyrants of tomorrow.

If I wanted to read about how all that we do is ultimately futile, how we might defeat the bad guys today but that ultimately evil and entropy will triumph in the end, how the universe is vast and uncaring etc... I'd go read Lovecraft or something similar (incidentally, I am a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos).

When I want my fiction to be idealistic (i.e. that while good may suffer setbacks, sometimes bad ones, but ultimately wins out in the end) I watch SW movies and/or read the comics and books (up until Zahn's excellent Hand of Thrawn duology; I've pretty much tuned out everything that comes after that. Also, I haven't really read anything between Crimson Empire II and Hand of Thrawn).

 

[Roslin's Wig]

And let's not forget the travesty that was "Legacy of the Force". Seriously...what the fuck. I understand they wanted to return SW to its original simplistic worldview, Sith vs. Jedi and black vs. white, but they went about it in a totally wrong way. And shat all over Matthew Stover's legacy by turning the supposedly enlightened Jacen Solo into a cartoonish Sith Lord who eats babies for dinner and pisses on the graves of those he murdered.

 

[lord caedus]

And let's not forget the travesty that was "Legacy of the Force". Seriously...what the fuck. I understand they wanted to return SW to its original simplistic worldview, Sith vs. Jedi and black vs. white, but they went about it in a totally wrong way. And shat all over Matthew Stover's legacy by turning the supposedly enlightened Jacen Solo into a cartoonish Sith Lord who eats babies for dinner and pisses on the graves of those he murdered.

Amen. One of the worst parts about turning Jacen into a Sith is that, pretty much post-Sacrifice, he gets owned pretty much every goddamn LOTF novel and is only allowed to escape Luke/death through contrived circumstances until Jaina (who, for some reason is nearly as strong as her brother although Jacen spent 5 years learning esoteric Force techniques & a year falling to the dark side and learning Sith techniques and Jaina has pretty much just sat around and got beat up by Mandos for a month) can kill him.

 

[TheSevenLeggedFallyDowner]

I have mixed feelings about Legacy of the Force. The idea of Jacen turning to the dark side had a lot of potential to be a fantastic storyline. Instead they made it rather ridiculous. It makes sense that Jacen would dabble in the dark side. He essentially made it his life's goal to study the force, examining it from every concievable angle, and trying to gain knowledge of every aspect he could regardless of the source. It's sort of hard to do that when you close yourself off to an entire chunk of it by labelling it as the "dark side." His idea in Betrayal that he could become a Sith and tap into the full power of the dark side without being "evil" was an interesting one. I would have liked to see thta fully developed. Instead he uses that as his rationale for turning at the end of Betrayal and then within a book or two he has utterly forgotten it and become a standard puppy-eating Sith monster. I guess the point we're supposed to get is that the phrase "good Sith" is an oxymoron, and that once a person gives in to the dark side it twists them into a mockery of their former self. I just wish they had handled it better. The transition was sudden and forced instead of a gradual fall. It was an awkward one-dimensional end to one of the EU's few thoroughly interesting characters.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Wasn't Jacen, by Sith standards, a fairly "good" Sith anyway?

His motives were a united galaxy, whether under his rule or united against him, not personal power. He never harmed his wife or daughter--unlike Anakin, who attacked Padme and choked her into unconsciousness.

(In fact, didn't he leave himself vulnerable to Jaina in order to warn them to run?)

Knight Templar or Well-Intentioned Extremist, not Complete Monster.

 

[crackersncheese]

Wasn't Jacen, by Sith standards, a fairly "good" Sith anyway?

His motives were a united galaxy, whether under his rule or united against him, not personal power. He never harmed his wife or daughter--unlike Anakin, who attacked Padme and choked her into unconsciousness.

(In fact, didn't he leave himself vulnerable to Jaina in order to warn them to run?)

Knight Templar or Well-Intentioned Extremist, not Complete Monster.

It's a show vs. tell thing. We're told he's a sympathetic villain, but we're shown him crossing the Moral Event Horizon. Basically, it's a writing failure.

 

[Jord839]

Ah, Legacy of the Force. Must you make me rant about you at every opportunity on multiple sites?

But then what would I have for my username?!

But seriously, if they had made Jacen become Caedus in a way that progressed somehow from where he was at the end of The Unifying Force, and was well-written, I'd have been behind it. Legacy of the Force, was, honestly, a monumental trainwreck that wasted story potential, characters, and was riddled with author favoritism (TRAVISS, and to a much lesser extent Allston & Denning), dropped/ignored plotlines, illogical character actions (see: every single Jedi before Jacen killed Mara), very "forced" changes with no in-universe reason for the changes, and other egregious violations of storytelling or common sense.

I have mixed feelings about Legacy of the Force. The idea of Jacen turning to the dark side had a lot of potential to be a fantastic storyline. Instead they made it rather ridiculous. It makes sense that Jacen would dabble in the dark side. He essentially made it his life's goal to study the force, examining it from every concievable angle, and trying to gain knowledge of every aspect he could regardless of the source. It's sort of hard to do that when you close yourself off to an entire chunk of it by labelling it as the "dark side." His idea in Betrayal that he could become a Sith and tap into the full power of the dark side without being "evil" was an interesting one. I would have liked to see thta fully developed. Instead he uses that as his rationale for turning at the end of Betrayal and then within a book or two he has utterly forgotten it and become a standard puppy-eating Sith monster. I guess the point we're supposed to get is that the phrase "good Sith" is an oxymoron, and that once a person gives in to the dark side it twists them into a mockery of their former self. I just wish they had handled it better. The transition was sudden and forced instead of a gradual fall. It was an awkward one-dimensional end to one of the EU's few thoroughly interesting characters.

I have to vehemently agree that LOTF was a giant waste of paper and potentially good characters. Now, a large part of that is my being a Jacen fan, and I can't stand how badly he was written. Don't get me wrong, the him falling to the Dark Side thing isn't necessarily a bad idea, it was just very poorly written and handled. It does make sense, a little, when you take into account Vergere's idea that the Force was one and that it was personal moral flaws that caused people to fall, rather than an addiction to the Dark Side. Indeed, before his contact with Vergere, Jacen's more paralyzed by fear of the Dark Side and terrible consequences tha either of his siblings. It's not until Vergere teaches him the "Choose and Act" and "Be the Gardener" ideas that he starts to think there's a way around the orthodox idea. So, the basic idea makes sense, and combined with a fear of losing his secret family(ironic echoes of Anakin not entirely bad in this case) should have turned him into a more Lawful Evil type of person to try and head off the conflict.

They should have made him harsh, but with the paramount goal of order, not senseless villainy like burning Kashyyk. We should have seen those good intentions gradually slip away with the Dark Side, proving his view of the Force wrong(I don't actually like that idea, but the majority seems to). Above all, make him competent and an actual threat when the Jedi turn against him, or, hell, bring some Jedi to follow him as well considering his influence after the Vong War. No getting pantsed by illusion Luke starfighter or the Mandos. Finally, don't have everyone immediately turn their backs on him as "too far gone" like they did early in the actual series, he's far better than Vader at the time and he's apparently beyond redemption? Really? Basically, it should have been a reminder of the evils of the Dark Side can turn even the best after so long fighting an enemy outside of the Force, a terrible reminder of the Jedi's own vulnerability. I'll leave more detailed plotlines to other people.

It's a show vs. tell thing. We're told he's a sympathetic villain, but we're shown him crossing the Moral Event Horizon. Basically, it's a writing failure.

Exactly. He should have been shown as sympathetic and slowly losing control, not immediately cackling and killing everyone who dares oppose him.