A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Could Mara Jade Skywalker be incorporated into a canon Star Wars TV series or a movie? Yes, but it probably would not be done in a way that fans of the old Expanded Universe would like. As originally written in the 1990s and early 2000s, the iconic Emperor’s Hand who becomes an ally (and more) to Luke Skywalker would not be a good fit for the current canon. Why? For starters, the ship for making Mara Jade, aka Mara Jade Skywalker, into a canon character (i.e., a major supporting character in an official Lucasfilm Ltd. production) sailed a long time ago in a production company that operates in a land not very far away (California). Mara Jade is a character whose most important story arc occurs in the 1991–93  Thrawn Trilogy  ( Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising,  and  The Last Command ). She was created by Timothy Zahn, a Hugo Award-winning author whose  Star Wars  novels stand out like diamonds in a sea of zirconias in the muddled mess that is the  Star Wars  Expanded Un

Are Star Wars animated series only placeholder canon until the movies decide what actually happened during that time frame? No.  Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels,  and  Star Wars: Resistance  are coequal in canon to the live-action films. Especially  Star Wars: The Clone Wars,  because that series was created and executive produced by George Lucas and was the last  Star Wars  content he personally oversaw. The only animated series that meets the “placeholder” criteria is the 2003–2005  Star Wars: Clone Wars  2-D micro-series created by Genndy Tartakovsky and co-produced by Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network. Intended as a means to bridge the three-year in-universe gap between  Attack of the Clones  and  Revenge of the Sith,  Tartakovsky’s series was just one of many elements in Lucasfilm’s multimedia Clone Wars campaign, as well as a backdoor pilot to George Lucas’s CGI animated series.  Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In the early days of  Star Wars: The Clone Wars,  Luca

Marvel Special Edition #3 Featuring Star Wars  collected issues 1-6 of the official Star Wars comics adaptation. Cover art by Ernie Chan. © 1977 Marvel Comics and 20th Century Fox Film Corporation Is Star Wars part of the Marvel Universe? No. The  Star Wars  franchise (including films, animated and live-action TV series, and novels) properly belongs to Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company founded in 1971 by George Lucas, who ran it until October 2012. That’s when he sold Lucasfilm and all of its intellectual property to The Walt Disney Company for $2.2 billion in cash and $1.855 billion in stock. Marvel Comics, which itself is now also owned by The Walt Disney Company, has had a long relationship with  Star Wars,  starting as early as 1976. Back then, the comics publisher was one of the first companies to show interest in Lucas’s space-fantasy film set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Marvel artist Howard Chaykin created the very first  Star Wars  teaser poster

© 1978 Ballantine Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (as The Star Wars Corporation) Should the Star Wars Expanded Universe (Legends) be continued even though Disney made it non-Canon? No. Contrary to the belief held by many  Star Wars  fans who really dig the Expanded Universe (EU) novels, comic books, roleplaying game supplements, and even video game backstories, Lucasfilm Ltd. always considered them apocryphal. In other words, as far as the company and its founder, George Lucas, were concerned, the EU that began with the publication of Marvel Comics’  Star Wars #7  in October of 1977 and Alan Dean Foster’s  Splinter of the Mind’s Eye  several months later was  never  canon. Marvel Comics' Star Wars #7 was arguably the first Expanded Universe publication. © 1977 Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd. As I wrote in my answer to  What exactly did Disney add and remove from the Star Wars universe/story? The main issue behind  What exactly did Disney add and remove from the Star

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know (or should know) that one of my pet peeves is cognitive dissonance. It doesn't matter if it involves politics, interpersonal relationships, or pop culture, but I am easily annoyed when people willfully ignore facts and publicly express notions that are based on personal opinion or political dogma. For instance, in the Star Wars fandom, there is a subgroup of fans that continually ascribe decisions made by Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company that creates content for both the Indiana Jones and the Star Wars franchises to its parent company, The Walt Disney Company. No matter what it is - whether it's the announcement that a new film or TV series is being considered or that a new book is going to be published, it's never Lucasfilm that gets credit (or the criticism) for the decision, it's Disney.  Allow me to illustrate by sharing yet another Star Wars- related item from Quora. In the Star Wars category, Jensen

Dan Perri's classic logo for Star Wars. ™ Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) If there's one current trend that I hate on social media is the myth that "Disney" makes editorial decisions re Star Wars and Indiana Jones.    What exactly did Disney add and remove from the Star Wars universe/story? What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. -  The Captain,  Cool Hand Luke One of the most persistent myths about  Star Wars,  the franchise, and especially the business end of how the films and other media products are made is that The Walt Disney Company “adds and removes” elements of the  Star Wars  story. Not a day passes in which I don’t see any mention on social media - usually derisive and hateful - about how “Disney” did this, that, or the other thing to  Star Wars. Lucasfilm, which was founded in 1971 by George Lucas, did not magically disappear in 2012 after The Walt Disney Company acquired it. The company still exists.

(C) 2016 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. Jacket design by Scott Biel On November 15, 2016, Del Rey Books, an imprint of Random House, published Star Wars: Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel. Written by James Luceno ( Star Wars: Cloak of Deception and Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader ), this 352-page book is the exciting prequel to director Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm's first film of its stand-alone Star Wars Anthology series.  Released a month before the theatrical debut of Edwards' film and Alexander Freed's novelization (also published by Del Rey), Star Wars: Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel tells how Galen Erso, a brilliant research scientist, is recruited by his friend, Lt. Cmdr. Orson Krennic, to work on Celestial Power, a top secret project for the Galactic Republic.  It is a time of turmoil in the galaxy. As the Clone Wars flare up across thousands of planetary systems, Erso, a polymath with a special interest in the mysterious and po