It fleshed out anakin's character and gave more motivation for anakin's fall imo. Regardless it's a terrible excuse to discard Europe including the rots novelization which is the best SW book period imo.
Regardless for what it's worth, Ahsoka being anakin's apprentice ended up driving one of the few tcw-quality rebels episodes, twilight of the appretince is one of the best episodes from any Star Wars animated show. It also happens to be surrounded by crap filler
I'd also add that ahsoka's trial showed the council having lost their way.
Then off course Star Wars lost its way with disney which(in addition to replacing tcw with a vastly inferior show, replacing the far superior post Rotj eu with a film that made the previous saga pointless, and disregarding all previous lore) decided to wreck ahsoka's character with a terrible novel that completely chucked promising story arcs(like Ahsoka liberating mandatore) for a story no one cared about, glossed over important character moments(like a reunion with anakin, saying bye to Rex), and portrayed Ahsoka as a useless, forgetful, idiot.
The old "canon hierarchy" was not a measure of any actual canonicity whatsoever. That whole Canon Heirarchy was only for use for the Holocron Database. It was a filing system, nothing more. It was literally like the dewy decimal system in the Library, they were search engine filters.
So if they wanted to look up ships from the EU, they would put 'ships' in the query section, than C-canon for the search perimeters.
It was not a policy that denoted any canonicity at all.
Leland Chee never even met George Lucas. They never spoke, in their whole lives. He had no authority over anything canonical. The Holocron was for Lucas Licensing's use.
So here's the simple way of saying it.
The Expanded Universe was never canon. George Lucas said many, many times they were completely separate universes. Those things do not ever happen in his canonical universe.
The only things that were ever Official Star Wars canon were the 6 movies and The Clone Wars series [2008] Lucas's direct works.
Quotes that prove this [It won't let me post links unfortunately so you'll have to verify quotes] -
"I think people over emphasize the importance of the canon level. The intent of the canon levels was, as the main intent was 'if someones looking for the ships from a film, they can than use those fields to check for them only in the films,and thus seperate that from what was in the EU. So we can look at it case by case. I think there is an over emphasis of what those fields mean and what they represent".
~ Leland Chee
"That 'level of canon' thus helps in terms of bookkeeping. Those 'canon levels' are for the holocron."
~ Pablo Hidalgo
ForceCast #273: The Galaxy Is Reading - Interview with Leland Chee and Pablo Hidalgo, 2013 Starts at about the 1 hour mark so 1:00 - 1:02 mark
..
"The dual universe question comes up often. I know George Lucas has mentioned it being two universes , but that’s not how I see it. His vision is definitely not beholden to ours, but ours is definitely beholden to his."
~ Leland Chee 2012
...
"I didn't have any direct contact with George about Star Wars. - I would see some notes based on the interviews or the meetings. But I did not have direct contact with George about Star Wars continuity."
~ Leland Chee
...
'And what goes in the blank timeline spaces of the Film Only universe - can we never know the history or background of that Star Wars universe like we can in
the EU Star Wars universe?'
"Nothing. That's why it's film only."
~ Leland Chee, 2007
..
Here's the big one.
'Sorry Tasty, a rather long and boring question about continuity, canon and
the Holocron…
Much earlier this year, I participated in a debate in the Can We Get "The Canon Argument" Out of the Way Now... thread on this board and had a long discussion with another poster on the canonicity of the EU.
The poster had argued that based on George Lucas’s quotes in Cinescape in July 2002 and in Starlog in August 2005, where he mentions the films and the EU and films being “two separate worlds” and the EU being a “parallel universe”, that there are officially two different Star Wars universes or continuities: George Lucas’ Star Wars universe, which is the ‘real’ Star Wars universe, consisting of the 6 Star Wars movies and only those films; the stories set out in the EU do not happen, nor are a part of that universe or story.
- The Expanded Universe’s Star Wars universe, which is not the same as the ‘real’ Star Wars universe, but is it’s own spin-off universe based on it; it does not reflect George Lucas’ vision of the story of what ‘really happens’ in Star Wars.
When I mentioned your statements about the different canonicity levels in Star Wars, he argued that they were only applicable to the EU Star Wars universe, and didn’t apply to George Lucas’ Star Wars universe. Further more he posited that since Lucas Licensing and LucasFilm Ltd are separate entities, that the statements of Lucas Licensing employees do not and cannot override George Lucas’ quotes, or the quotes of LucasFilm Ltd employees, since Lucas Licensing cannot know or comment accurately about the policies of LFL.
I on the other hand argued that there was only one official Star Wars universe or continuity, which is made up of both the Star Wars films and the EU and contains materials of different levels of canonicity as described in your blog. I contended that the quotes of Lucas where he mentions “two worlds” were not supposed to be taken literally; he was describing how his work on the films was ‘his world’ and he didn’t get involved in the EU which was ‘a separate world’.
Additionally, I argued that LucasFilm Ltd and Lucas Licensing, being divisions of the same company, worked together closely and thus each division was aware of and could comment with accuracy on the policies of the other.
I was wondering which of our arguments were correct? Or are we both off the mark in some way? Many thanks!'
a rather long and boring question about continuity, canon and the Holocron…
ANSWER -
"The only relevant official continuities are the current versions of the films alone, and the combined current version of the films along with whatever else we've got in the Holocron. You're never going to know what George's view of the universe beyond the films at any given time because it is constantly evolving. It remains elastic until it gets committed to film or another official source. Even then, we know there's always room for change. Though the Holocron is maintained by Licensing, it is utilized by folks throughout all the Lucas companies."
..
Two universes, two continuities. And for those who are wondering about the George Lucas Quotes that speak to this. See below -
"I don't read that stuff, I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world. But I do try and keep it consistent. The way I do it is they have a Star Wars encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it and see if it has already been used. When I said other people could make thier own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have TWO universes: My Universe and than this other one. They try to make THIER universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get
enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions."
~ George Lucas, August, 2005
..
"Howard Roffman [President of Lucas Licensing], He once said to me that there are two Star Trek universes: there's the TV show and then there's all the spin-offs. He said that these were completely different and didn't have anything to do with each other. So I said, "OK, go ahead."
~ George Lucas 2008
..
"Within the issue of Starlog magazine with the War of the Worlds cover is an interview article with George Lucas. He stated something which he had said before, which is that he doesn't follow the SW EU, he doesn't read the books or comics. He also said that when they started doing all this (which is allowing other storytellers to tell their own SW tales), he had decreed that the Star Wars Universe would be split into two just like Star Trek, one would be his own universe (the six episode movie saga), the other would be a whole other universe (the Expanded Universe). He continued to say that the EU tries as much as possible to tie in to his own universe, but sometimes they move into a whole other line of their own."
~ Confirmed by Sue Rostoni,Lucas Licensing Publishing, 2005
..
“There are two worlds here,” explained Lucas. “There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books."
~ George Lucas, Cinescape, 2002
..
"Q: What do you think of the Expanded Universe of books?
A: "The books are in a different universe. I've not read any of them, and I told them when they started writing I wouldn't read any of them and I blocked out certain periods."
~ George Lucas 2003
..
"TVGuide: Yet novelists have written "Star Wars" sequels using the same characters and extending their stories.
"Oh, sure. They're done outside my little universe."
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, November 2001 - TV Guide interview
..
"The question selected from The Furry Conflict poll was: How much does the
Expanded Universe influence the movies?
"As I asked him, Lucas leaned back a moment and said to me “Very little.” When he first had agreed to let people write Expanded Universe books, he had said “I’m not gonna read ‘em” and it was a “different universe” and that he wanted to keep away from the time period of his saga. He jokingly complained, however, that now when he writes a script he has to look through an encyclopedia to make sure that a name he comes up with doesn’t come too close to something in the EU."
- "Marc Xavier", November 2003, "The Furry Conflict and the Great ‘Beard‘ of the Galaxy (report based on a Q&A session with George Lucas which occurred at USC on 11-19-03)
Feb 20th, 2017 02:17 AM
