I know it's early still, but which do you prefer?
shareOh this is a good question! Challenging as well...never cared for the EU...too comic bookish. But now with TLJ the new canon seems on that road as well. I guess current as there may be a way to get the train back on the tracks??? Damn conundrums!!!
shareAs far as Luke’s concerned? The old EU....
shareEU all the way. The novels and games in particular were much better than this stuff. The Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn would have made a far superior sequel trilogy to these films.
Also, in my view, I don't care if Disney paid $4Bn, they have no right to declare EU to be non-canon. Lucas licensed the EU stuff, and that's good enough for me.
EU was never "movie canon," it was always EU. Even Lucas made that clear, like back when Shadows of the Empire was coming out and Lucas made pains to point out that it's actually an official canon Star Wars story.
The EU had its own little subset of canonicity even before Disney got involved:
Canon in the Holocron continuity database
In 2000, Lucas Licensing appointed Leland Chee to create a continuity-tracking database referred to as the Holocron continuity database. The Holocron followed the canon policy that had been in effect for years, but the capabilities of database software allowed each element of a story, rather than the stories as a whole, to be classified.
The Holocron's database included a field for a single letter (G, T, C, S, N or D) representing the level of canonicity of that element; these letters were since informally applied to the levels of canon themselves: G-canon, T-canon, C-canon, S-canon, N-canon and D-canon. As part of his work with the Holocron, Chee was responsible for the creation of this classification system, and he spent the early stages developing and refining it. It was discontinued with the April 2014 reboot.
G, T, C and S together formed the overall Star Wars continuity. Each ascending level typically overrode the lower ones; for example, Boba Fett's backstory was radically altered with the release of Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones, forcing the retcon of older source material to fall in line with the new G-canon backstory. However, this was not always absolute, and the resolution of all contradictions was handled on a case-by-case basis.
Yea if I remember correctly the letters represented the level of which the canon was catogorized as bullshit. IE Movie canon trumps all with guest appearences in video games being the furthest to the B.S. side. IE darth vadors appearence in Soul Calibur being the lowest of canon which at the time was called D canon the scale may have gone lower since that time cause we all know lucas retonnced his own story pretty harshly.
How much of boba fetts story was retconned? I remember a nerd told me all the storm troopers were clones of fets back in the early 90s (Before the original films got reconned with digital add ins) which was shocking to me at the time considering how minor a character fett played in the movies, but apparently had a huge lore based around him outside the films.
George was happy to pull certain things from the EU. Coruscant, for example.
shareAnd I'm glad he did. Coruscant is exactly what you'd expect the galactic capital to be. There's plenty of good ideas in the EU.
shareAbrams seems to have borrowed some influences from them as well... Especially if Kylo and Rey had been discovered to be siblings.
I found this interesting, Disney re-canonizing certain things from EU: https://io9.gizmodo.com/everything-star-wars-has-reintroduced-from-the-old-expa-1792224856
The EU was already inconsistent and needed to be reworked. I don't think it needed to be completly destroyed but it definitly needed fixing. Plus we need new stories not an already told yet unfilmed canon getting in the way.
shareFrankly i never read any of the EU books. But if the EU books don't end with Luke turning to a poof of smoke. Then its probably better. Personally my love for Star Wars begins and ends with the original trilogy.
share