What are absolute canon Star Wars?

Visual Novel Community Off Topic
#1

What are the absolutely, unquestioned canon offerings of Star Wars? I don’t mean all the EU stuff… I mean what Lucas himself has stated as “the final word” of what happened in the Star Wars saga? I am correct to assume the following?

[list]A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Shadows of the Empire (the material produced by Lucasfilms)
Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Revenge of the Sith[/list]

Does the The Force Unleashed count? I assume not, since its only from LucasArts, and NOT Lucasfilms. So is this EU material?

What about the upcoming CGI movie, Star Wars: The Clone Wars? Seeing as how it’s been paid for by George Lucas himself, I assume its canon?

#2

Wikipedia says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon#The_Holocron):

So the Clone Wars movie (being a compilation of several TV episodes) only counts as second-level canon, not absolute canon.

I’m surprised that G-canon includes the novelisations, though. There are plenty of contradictions in those. For example, Obi-wan says that Owen Lars was his brother in the Return of the Jedi novelisation. The radio plays take plenty of dramatic license, too. The ANH radio play included the scene that was restored in the ANH Special Edition (Jabba confronting Han in the hangar bay), but the radio play replaced Jabba with a character called ‘Heater’ (if I’m remembering correctly). They can’t both be canon.

#3

This is a common mistake. Movies with these titles were indeed proposed, but shortly into production on the first one, a mysterious portal opened and a guy with some kind of superadvanced technology came thru. He claimed he was from the future and that there was no choice, he had to change the timeline in order to save the future. Then he somehow teleported (we think – some speculate he simply turned on some kind of optical camo device, then waited until everyone decided he had left).

George Lucas was never found. What appear to be plasma burns were found spelling out “My eyes!” and “The horror … The horror!” and “Meesa Jar Jar Binks” carved over and over in his office. Some have said this last was a reference of something to have been included in the as-yet untitled Star Wars Episode 1, but all the production materials seem to have gone missing.

So no, those movies never happened. Any phantom memories you might have of them will fade, as the pseudoantiretrotime effects propagate.

#4

LOL, that’d make a great B-movie: George Lucas Must Die! The trailer could have a typical deep-voiced announcer guy delivering the tagline: “To save a galaxy far, far away… George Lucas Must Die! Coming to your sector, Summer 2009!”

It makes me wonder, though. Lucas keeps pointing out that the prequels are popular with kids, and it seems that lots of kids do prefer the prequels, if only because it’s something they’ve had immediate access to within their lifetimes (and possibly also because the effects appeal to people with ADD).

In the mid- to late 90s, Star Wars was dying a slow death. There was no new cinematic product. The books and comics were a niche market; they didn’t have the same mass-media impact that new Star Wars movies would have (and have had).

So are the OT (original trilogy) fans complaining because Lucas put out three new movies with the Star Wars name on them? (That’s what I think of them as; they aren’t ‘Star Wars’ movies to me.) Would OT fans have preferred it if Star Wars had continued to fade from public awareness until only they (‘the few and the proud’) were still obsessed with it? Is it a kind of elitism and snobbery (“my Star Wars was better than yours”), or is it also because the prequels, well, just weren’t very good?

Being a Star Wars fan post-prequels just doesn’t feel the same anymore, because Star Wars is now also “those shallow special effects fests” as well as the original movies (or at least the first two) that I loved. The quality of Star Wars feels diluted to me now, and I don’t feel as strongly about being a Star Wars fan as a result.

#5

I was actually planning on not even watching Episode 3 at all. Then a friend of mine was like “What do you mean you have no plans to see it?” and I explained that after 1 and 2, I no longer cared. It didn’t matter to me at all, what happened. Then he was like “but don’t you just want to see it?”

Considering I’d just explained no, I didn’t … after we went back and forth a bit I realized what he was trying to say was ‘I want to go, but I don’t want to go by myself. Want to come? Please?’ so I said “sure, grab your coat. Let’s go.”

It was … better. But that wasn’t very hard.

#6

I guess I still had enough of an inner geek that I did have to go and see Episode 3 when it came out. But that was it. I’d learned from the previous two films and went in with zero expectations, guessing that Episode 3 would just deliver more of the same. It did, I was able to cross ‘Episode 3’ off my list of things to see, and I’ve never felt the need to watch it again. I was just doing my duty as a fan of ‘Star Wars’.

I feel the same way about Indiana Jones 4, after having seen it. It was a similarly hollow experience, and not a movie I need to see again any time soon (though I’m pretty sure I’ll end up renting it eventually when it comes out on DVD, out of curiosity if it’ll stand up at all now that I’ve had more time to think about the things that didn’t hold up for me in the movie).

They’re not movies that stand on their own as good films, in my opinion. They’re movies that are riding on the coat-tails of better predecessors in the series, cashing in on audience goodwill.

#7

So my question is what were you really expecting, ie what would have made you think “Wow! This is just like the first 3 movies?”

5 is still my favorite, but 3 was still good.

#8

For me, I think it came down to two main elements: the characters and the story. I have no complaints about the visual effects in the prequels; they were good stuff.

Characters: In the OT, we were introduced to the characters before they were put in peril. We saw Luke’s everyday life on Tatooine, and how he longed for something more exciting. We were introduced to Han and immediately knew who he was: the scoundrel and womaniser (with a heart of gold). But it was mostly through Luke’s eyes that we started seeing the greater conflict between Rebellion and Empire. He was the everyman; I could relate to him.

In the PT, the main characters are often Jedi. They’re superheroes. They have amazing powers. They’re cool. But they’re not us. (I know that Luke became a Jedi in the course of the OT, but that just appeals to a lot of people’s hope that they’re ‘special’. But I didn’t find Luke all that sympathetic in RotJ anyway. His problems were suddenly too metaphysical.)

But anyway, in the PT, there never seemed to be time for any real character moments or development. We had to guess at the relationship between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, which should have been emphasised to justify Obi-Wan defying the Jedi Council to train Anakin. There didn’t seem to be any respect, let alone friendship, between Anakin and Obi-Wan in Episode 2. I won’t even talk about the Anakin-Padme ‘romance’.

Basically, in the PT, I couldn’t immediately relate to any of the characters because they were all rather esoteric. And the movies didn’t give me any reason to start relating to them or caring about them.

Story: The OT gave us an immediate hook: there’s a civil war in the galaxy. The Rebellion is fighting to overthrow the evil Empire. If our heroes don’t get the Death Star plans to the rebels, the Empire will dominate the galaxy. There was an urgency driving the plot of the first movie.

I didn’t feel any such urgency about Episode 1’s plot. Nasty Japanese aliens are blocking trade routes. Am I meant to care? Is it meant to be thrilling when the characters who haven’t been explored at all win against the nasty Japanese aliens?

ESB had a very simple structure - it was a chase movie. “The Empire is chasing us, so we’d better keep running. Oops, they caught us. Yay, we escaped!”

I have no idea what the storyline of Episode 2 was. Obi-Wan discovers a clone army. People fly to a bunch of different planets. Some evil guy is building an army. The clones come and save everyone. That’s the main failing of the PT, in my opinion - it’s mostly backstory, and that backstory isn’t integrated particularly well into the primary plot of each movie. If the PT had focused more on Anakin’s personal journey - given us more insight into his character, made his romance with Padme more plausible and his friendship with Obi-Wan more convincing… then it could have been amazingly tragic seeing his fall. As it is, he came off like a moody teenager who got suckered into being a Dark Lord of the Sith because he had issues about his mommy.

So that’s what I wanted from new Star Wars movies. Characters I could care about, and an involving story that put those characters in situations that would show us more about who they were. Instead, I got movies filled with a lot of pretty special effects (and admittedly one very kickass lightsabre battle).

#9

I admit the characterization in Episodes 3 to 6 are far superior to the prequel trilogy, but I enjoyed the setting of the prequel better. In 3 to 6, we get this totally one sided tale of how evil the Empire is. That Jedi were nothing but glorious heroes who did no wrong (except for evil Darth Vader), and the Rebel Alliance was filled with everything good and just. It made it seem like the Empire took everything away from a peaceful galaxy, and beat the Republic through brute force.

It was too fairytale. Too clean. Too black and white.

In Episode 1 to 3, we see the Republic was stagnant and corrupt. That it would rather go to war and FORCE members states to remain in the organization, rather than let them peacefully leave. It shows us that Jedi only want to maintain the status quo ¬ñ they allow slavery and decadence to exist, so long as it is the will of the Republic. Also ¬ñ while it’s probably not Lucas’s intention ¬ñ he made the Sith seem not as “evil” per se. Yes they are heartless and ruthless, but the Sith are an alternative view of how the Force works ¬ñ that the Jedi, much like the Republic they serve, ruthlessly crushes independent thought and freewill. Yes… one could claim Palpatine did it all. That he was the puppet master. But the Republic didn’t rot in the lifetime of a single human. It was already festering with maggots before he got there… Palpatine just fed them.

The most delicious part: the Republic IS the Empire. It was transformed, not conquered. That was an awesome touch. Granted it was rip from real history (Romans anyone?), but I didn’t expect that.

#10

I didn’t mean to say that I needed the PT to be a classic ‘good versus evil’ story (though that’s a very strong hook). I also appreciated the subtlety of Palpatine’s rise to power over the course of the PT, and I think a good, dramatic story could have been told against the morally ambiguous backdrop of the Clone Wars. Anakin questioning himself and the role of the Jedi, for example, and slowly coming to believe that Palpatine’s view is the right one.

Instead, Lucas painted this complex backdrop and put a very simple connect-the-dots plot in front of it, without putting any elegance or sophistication into the ways he connected those dots. ‘Obi-Wan and Anakin meet. Obi-Wan takes Anakin as his apprentice. Anakin meets Luke and Leia’s mother. Anakin falls in love with her. Anakin is seduced by the dark side of the Force.’

It’s like those things were happening completely independently of the Clone Wars. It would’ve been nice if the historical arc (how the Clone Wars began and were fought) had been interwoven with Anakin’s slow fall to the dark side. He could have started out bright and idealistic, but slowly started to question the Jedi’s authoritarian ways over the course of the war (and not in the shallow “the Jedi won’t let me stay up past my bedtime” way they did this in Episode 2). In my opinion, it would have made Anakin’s fall much more dramatic if we could understand and appreciate his reasons for turning (and not just to save his girlfriend).

#11

Is this a typo, or were you deliberately lumping Revenge of the Sith in with the first three films?

#12

See, this is what the story should have been.

What we got, though, was Anakin being soooooooo stooopid as to stretch credulity. In Revenge of the Sith, some stuff goes down that, if Anakin was paiyng attention, should have clued him into the fact the Emperor was a lying sack of sh*t. It should have been obvious, for example, that the Emperor could never actually give him Padme. If Palpatine did that, Anakin wouldn’t need him anymore - and we all know what Sith do to people they have no further use for. And the Emperor’s hypocritical attacks on the Republic were all too transparent, as it should have been obvious that the Emperor was the one behind the rebellion in the first place. (He knew exactly where to find all the rebel leaders, and he was the only one to consistently profit from it.)

What should have gone down was this: Anakin’s mother dies, but he doesn’t fall cause of some whiny BS. He finds out that slavery on Tatooine is a more or less open secret, that the Republic pretends to want to do something about it but needs the Hutts too much. He finds out that the Emperor is controlling the rebellion, all to play the Republic off against itself – but when confronted, Palpatine says “This just goes to show how pathetic the Republic really is. Look at this plan! Look how ridiculous it is! Yet it works beautifully. The Jedi are too weak to deal with any REAL threat – all they do is equivocate and bury their heads in the sand when confronted with people who just won’t deal”, and Palpatine sells Anakin on the Dark Side by simply saying “we are the only ones who see the rot. We seize control. It is for their own good. Only we see it, only we can save them.” (‘Only I have the power necessary’ being one of the paths to the Dark Side, of course.)

That would have been pretty badass. Instead we get … tripe? Poorly directed tripe? With a central romance almost totally lacking in chemistry?

#13

Actually…I think it was. If you go back to watch OT you’ll note Luke is the only one who refers to a “light side” and a “dark side”. Even Yoda doesn’t.

I think in the PT Lucas may have been showing that the balance was off, that just as in the OT where Sith Lord and his apprentice were masters and no Jedi appeared it caused turmoil, so to did the fact that a lack of any Sith for centuries (the Jedi mention this at some point) has created it own problems.

Lucas could have done this better though, much better.

#14

Well in keeping with the original question The Force Unleashed will include a canon end where you die . However there will be like eroge multple ends that are uncannon where you not only overthrow your master but your master’s master. At least, thats what Game Informer said. :?

#15

That would have been a really good way to make Anakin’s relationship with his mother relevant to his overall character arc. I didn’t see what purpose she served in the existing PT except as a poor excuse for him to give in to ‘rage’ and not follow the whole ‘a Jedi shall not love’ malarkey.

A hatred of slavery combined with his love for his mother could make him feel angry and guilty about leaving her on Tatooine and never returning for her. If Palpatine could then manipulate those feelings into contempt for the Republic… it would have really resonated. (That’s if the mother was really needed in the PT at all, of course, which I think is debatable.)

#16

What, you mean, like, “Is that a lightsaber in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

#17

That was a typo. Did it twice too. :oops:

That whole train of thought however, is different from what Lucas wanted. :stuck_out_tongue:

According to the prequel, Anakin betrayed the Jedi because their ideals did not resonate with him. What you guys are proposing, has Anakin finding fault with the Republic itself. Nothing wrong with that - I totally agree with the notion - but Lucas wanted Anakin’s hate to be personal with the Jedi themselves. Jedi don’t own slaves, they even try to avoid owning droids, so the whole “mommy is a slave” would have more resonance for Anakin fighting against the Republic, than fighting against the Jedi. The original Star Wars trilogy, specifically pointed out that Darth Vader focused his hate against the Jedi - not the Republic (which turns out to be the Empire anyways). Understandably, its easy to have it where Anakin transfers his hate against the Jedi, because they allow the Republic to rot… but it doesn’t justify why he would hate ALL Jedi, since some Jedi would most likely hold the same views (or even some Jedi joining his cause), without needing to fall to the Dark Side. Freeing slaves and overthrowing a corrupt Republic are not evil ideals, if Jedi can oppress freedom and allow evil to fester around them without becoming Sith. It’s the good 'ole “Tyranny of Good” situation.

#18

Yeah, i can understand that. He felt hate for the ones with power to do something, but they were not doing too much because of their ideals. He thought they were hiding something he believes he needed to save everyone too… a bigger power. So they hate them.

Of course, to have his old master Obi Wan to cut off his hand and legs, and then let him to die burned in a vulcanic planet didn’t help in his hate for the jedis either. :lol:

By the way, guys… do someone here know something about THIS: :twisted:

http://gordonator.com/2008/08/11/new-st … announced/

#19

I think that could have been integrated into Nandemonai’s idea - Palpatine would just need to flip it around so it seemed like he wanted to restore the Republic to its former glory. He could ‘show’ Anakin that the Jedi are the problem and need to be removed, because the Republic was being coddled and smothered by the ‘guardianship’ and manipulation of the Jedi.

That would feed directly into Anakin’s resentment of the Jedi Order as an institution, and might (possibly) convince him to go along with the killing of all of them (what few are left) instead of taking it on a case-by-case basis. After all, Anakin wasn’t personally responsible for many of the Jedi deaths in Episode 3. Palpatine is devious enough to be able to convince Anakin that a purging is required. And if Anakin starts to have doubts after the fact - well, too late, and all the more tragic.

#20

Indeed, fighting against the republic, and thus only by extension fighting against the Jedi, would have made the whole idea seem better. I don’t think Palpatine would even need to hide to Anakin behind a “restoring the republic” he could just come out and say how an Emperor could be better and list what the Republic has become under Jedi stewardship, thus linking Jedi with Republic decline and Palpatine with Empire and rejuvenation.