After Revenge of the Sith, I was pretty
much done with Star Wars. The prequel trilogy was a massive
disappointment for me, and the quality of secondary materials dropped
considerably after 1999. I'd occasionally peek back in to see what
was happening or buy the occasional video game, but Star Wars as a
whole wasn't the all-encompassing obsession that I had grown up with.
Then Disney bought the entirety of the
property in 2012 and in 2014 the new owners decided to wipe the
slate, as it were, and deleted the Expanded Universe continuity in
one stroke. 37 years' worth of officially licensed material, be it
books, shows, comics, games, made-for-tv movies, whatever, was thrown
out the window to make room for a new “Canon” continuity where
everything from that point was now officially official and the only
survivors of the previous continuity were the six theatrical movies
and the animated Clone Wars TV show that was airing at the time.
From a business standpoint, I get it.
Disney spent a fat wad of cash getting Star Wars, they were damn sure
going to milk it for what it was worth, and that meant new movies,
new books, new games, and new everything.
Everything else? Right into the memory
hole, except for whatever characters and items that the powers that
be deemed worthy of being elevated to Canon, like Grand Admiral
Thrawn. Oh sure, they're still reprinting the old continuity, now
branded as “Legends” but that's because Disney loves money and
its a move to placate old fans bitter about the Wipe.
If I sound bitter three years after the
Wipe, that's because I am. George Lucas didn't rape my childhood with
the Prequels like so many people joked about in the early 2000s for
the simple reason that all those stories and games that I consumed
with my parents' hard-earned money as a boy still counted. I could
still point people to them and say “the Prequels suck, sure, but
Wraith Squadron is amazing” and not get too many funny looks.
Now though? Like tears in the rain. The
Expanded Universe is gone and only the grognards are left to bear
witness to its passing. The new generation of Star Wars fans, both
the casuals that only watch the movies and the diehards that consume
the books and comics, are now being told that this is fine. This is
good. The Expanded Universe was a convoluted mess that was difficult
to follow and was nothing but glorified fan fiction anyway and it
never mattered. There were no strong female characters. There was no
diversity. It belongs dead and forgotten.
Lies.
The hell with that. It mattered to me.
It mattered to enough people that a constant barrage of New York
Times Bestseller novels and a growing video game empire in the early
90s provided the raw financial capital and an audience hungry for
more that emboldened Lucas to release the Special Editions and then
new movies to huge (financial, if not critical) success.
Without the Expanded Universe, I doubt
that would have happened.
So with that said, and since I have a
tendency to rage against the dying of the light, I am going to go
through the Expanded Universe as a literary body and give them a fair shake. Because while there certainly were bizarre missteps
and insane oddities in that patchwork continuity, there were some
truly amazing stories that NuCanon hasn't surpassed.
1 comment:
You are preaching to the choir. Saw a link on twitter to your Heir to the Empire review. I'm convinced that Disney doesn't get Star Wars and probably never will. No strong female characters? Mara Jade laughs. A character I take more seriously than Rey any day. Looking forward to your other reviews. Especially the odd duck ones.
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