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Star Wars: Episode VIII
Tova:
--- Quote from: Castlerook on 11 Oct 2017, 04:38 ---
--- Quote from: Tova on 10 Oct 2017, 22:51 ---Well, I don't actually expect the film specifically to resemble The Empire Strikes Back myself, for whatever that is
--- End quote ---
You do realise that The Force Awakens resembled The Phantom Menace which in turned resembled A New Hope. A mentor figure dies in the first film of the trilogy - Han died to a Force user as did Qui Gon as did Obi Wan. A lone pilot blows up the massive station in the finale of the first film - Am I talking about Poe Dameron, Anakin Skywalker or Luke. Likewise, the heroes have to get off a desert planet with little law to deliver a vitally important message - Jakku or Tattooine (twice)?
In turn Attack of the Clones resembled The Empire Strikes Back, as did Revenge of the Sith to Return of the Jedi.
Star Wars has become formulaic. The whole series is interchangeable at this stage, just swap out characters and the plot remains pretty much the same.
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It hasn't become formulaic. It always has been. A New Hope is itself formulaic.
Same goes for the merch. George Lucas was just as cynical about it from the very first film. This isn't somehow new. Rewatch Spaceballs if you need convincing.
The Disney films aren't in some way less worthy of our attention than any other film in the franchise. If you don't like them, then of course that is your prerogative. No-one said you had to like them, canon or otherwise.
Akima:
The thing about "canon" is that it has to be a shared, generally accepted view to mean anything at all. To say "that's not canon for me" is to say no more than "I don't like that". Shakespeare's canon, for example, is essentially just the accepted text of the works accepted by most scholars as being written by him. For one individual to decide that, say, Hamlet is "not canon" just doesn't really mean anything. This shared nature of canon makes "ownership" of the canon a peculiar concept. Could Disney buy the rights to J.R.R.Tolkien's books, and declare that the Silmarillion was not canon? Would it mean anything if they did? Does the fact that a canon is the work of a single author make a difference?
Long-running fictional "universes" with multiple authors are a relatively new thing (I'm not going to get into traditional collections of often-anonymous stories like the Ramayana, Greek myths etc. where questions of "ownership" don't generally arise*). I think comic-books are probably the earliest example, and, even where one publisher has controlled the property since its creation, re-boots, re-imaginings, multiple universes etc. typically make continuity and canon meaningless. Even the owners of properties less tangled than comics, like Star Trek, for example, pay no real attention to the continuity of their universes, where it might get in the way of telling a good story, or just lazy writing (Yes, Star Trek: Enterprise, I am looking at you).
It seems to me that "canon" has changed its meaning to something like "officially recognised" which is quite unlike its dictionary definition. Beyond that, I don't think canon is a thing any more.
*Questions of ownership, and canon, definitely do arise with regard to the traditional collections of stories that are regarded as religious works, but the fictionality of them is arguable, and potentially likely to cause offence, so it's best to leave them out, I think.
Method of Madness:
I don't know if the majority of people agree with me that the "canon" of Star Wars refers to the movies and nothing else, but it's a far cry from just me. Canon discussions rarely go well, so...I probably shouldn't have brought it up. I'll work on doing that less.
Neko_Ali:
In this case it's an important distinction because of the widespread and greater mythos around Star Wars through dozens of writers of novels comics and other adaptions. Lucas pretty much let everyone go willy-nilly with what they wanted to do, but the understanding was only the movies were canon unless he said so. Disney dropped a firm line of what is and isn't canon, and it does include the official alternate media since they took over, plus the Clone Wars cartoon as well as the movies. That's not something that's open to interpretation. Kind of like saying the Earth is flat. People can think it is all they want, but the reality of the situation is they are wrong.
In the end it was probably the best way they could handle it. The long standing book series have developed a life of their own, but it would conflict with everything Disney wanted to do. It would have been the same case if Lucas was in charge of the sequel trilogy. But they still left it open so that they could pull elements they liked from Legends, like Grand Admiral Thrawn, and use them in the canon universe.
Method of Madness:
--- Quote from: Neko_Ali on 11 Oct 2017, 16:16 --- but the reality of the situation is they are wrong.
--- End quote ---
...how, though? For decades, the movies are canon view worked, but just because Disney suddenly decides otherwise, that's no longer even a valid alternative?
Edit: My point is, they can use whatever they want in their future movies if the books are secondary and that they can be rendered no longer true if the movies contradict them, but declaring that the books are movie-level canon restricts them more, does it not?
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