WIRED has a geek article on SW canon

[Tyralak 12,068]

I Sense a Disturbance in the Star Wars Canon

 

 

 

# By Chris Baker Email Author

 

# August 15, 2008 |

 

# 2:38 pm |

 

# Categories: Movies, sci-fi

 

 

 

The release of The Clone Wars movie has sent some hard-core Star Wars fans into a tizzy.

 

 

 

"Yeah, it’s Star Wars," wrote JackBauer24 in a post about the animated Clone Wars on The Galactic Senate website. "Star Wars from a man who cares little about established continuity. It’s Star Wars that takes place in a time period already over-crouded (sic) with conflicting stories and source materials. I understand that Lucas wanted to continue the story into television, but Jesus Christ, couldn’t he have picked a point in the saga that wasn’t filled with stories, some of which HE HIMSELF approved?!"

 

 

 

The flap among the fanboys isn’t so much because of the quality of the movie, which opened Friday to mixed reviews, but because of the role it plays in the overarching Star Wars continuity. In fact, the keepers of Lucasfilm’s well-manicured franchise had to come up with a new level of reality for Clone Wars to inhabit — just the kind of move that can get Star Wars superfans’ Wookiee suits in a twist.

 

 

 

"The Clone Wars takes place chronologically between Star Wars films Episode II and Episode III," says Henry Gilroy, a seasoned scripter of animated film and TV who wrote the film as well as the CG TV series due later this year. "We follow the adventures of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as other Jedi fighting to preserve the lofty ideals of the Republic against Count Dooku and his cronies who are threatening to tear the galaxy apart."

 

 

 

The new CG Clone Wars also takes place between a couple different levels of canonicity. As every hard-core Star Wars fan knows, there are differing levels of reality in the franchise’s continuity. The novels, videogames and comic books are all part of what is called the Expanded Universe.

 

 

 

Many Lucasfilm employees spend their days making sure that the different pieces of this vast merchandising empire all fit together and are based on the same physical reality, whether it’s the color of lightsabers or the distance from one planet to another.

 

 

 

But there’s another, higher level of canon — the canon of the films — which is often called "G Canon," since George Lucas himself is intimately involved in it.

 

 

 

"Even though it was animated in a stylized CG form, George made it very clear to director Dave Filoni and myself that the animated movie was continuing the story of the live-action movies," says Gilroy.

 

 

 

The events in the CG Clone Wars fall somewhere in between the Expanded Universe and the G Canon of the films. And it’s up to people like Leland Chee, an employee of Lucas Licensing, to educate the many different artists working in the Star Wars universe about what has come before.

 

 

 

"He’s like the king continuity geek," says Gilroy. "He’s an encyclopedia of Star Wars

 

knowledge combining all the hundreds of comics, dozens of novels and games too. There is just so much in the Expanded Universe (everything not in the movies), it was great knowing Leland was there to prevent any grave inconsistencies from coming to pass."

 

 

 

Chee also had to determine how the events that play out in the CG Clone Wars

 

film and upcoming TV shows would coexist with the rest of the Star Wars world. The action didn’t quite fit with the films, and didn’t quite fit into the Expanded Universe.

 

Finally, Chee had to create another, intermediary level of canonicity:

 

T Canon.

 

 

 

Since Chee announced this new level of reality in the Star Wars universe, some fans have been disgruntled. The blog at the Canon Wars site, which tracks the doctrinal disputes of the Star Wars universe, has a fun post on the hue and cry.

 

 

 

According to Gilroy, the Clone Wars CG offerings will give us a fresh perspective on the characters from the prequel films. "Take

 

Anakin Skywalker, for example," he says. "We’re going to see another side to him in the movie — when he was a champion of the

 

Republic and a great Jedi hero. So he’s not the brooding, petulant kid we knew from the movies, but the best friend and comrade-in-arms of

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi, as well as a playful big brother-like mentor to his new padawan, Ahsoka Tano."

 

 

 

Lucas weighed in on the new additions to his story line. And even though the Clone Wars

 

CG offerings exist on their own level of reality — below the films but above the books, comics and videogames — Lucasfilm continuity geeks like Chee nit-picked inconsistencies.

 

 

 

"Once I wanted to use the Toydarians, a race of aliens from the movies, in a comic book story, and Leland told me it wouldn’t make sense — so I swapped them out for a new alien civilization," Gilroy says. "A guy like that is indispensable in a galaxy that has grown as large as it has."

 

 

 

UPDATE: Leland Chee posts in the comments below, noting that his job also entails helping to repair rifts in the space/time continuum of Star Wars. (Look for additional coverage of him and the Lucas Licensing department on wired.com next week.) Chee writes:

 

 

 

Luckily in my role in Lucas Licensing, not only do I have the opportunity to nit-pick, but I also have the opportunity to work with our authors to explain the inconsistencies to make everything cohesive.

 

We did this with Boba Fett’s backstory (much of it was attributed to

 

Jango). We did this with the stormtroopers being clones (not all stormtroopers are clones explaining the height differences of stormtroopers and the degredation of their markmenship). We did this with the very early EU deaths of Jan Dodonna (captured) and Hobbie

 

Klivian (crashes alot). And rest assured, we’re already working it all out with The Clone Wars animated series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Report this post

[Mr. Oragahn 0]

Shame on you, Tyr.

[Tyralak 12,068]

You're out of luck. I have no concept of shame.

[Praeothmin 532]

What I find amusing is that it is very clear that the guys working on TCW look up to Chee to provide information on any continuity issues between TCW and the EU.

 

Over at SFJ, there's a nice thread where we discuss what is accepted in the SW Canon, and some told me explicitely that Chee wasn't important, that the continuity and Canon policy was not followed by anyone making SW movies or TCW, that it was only there for the writers and creators of EU products...

 

And here, one of the two most important guys in TCW (aside from GL himself) states they look up to Leland Chee for continuity...

 

I can't wait to see how this comment will be interpreted...

 

 

 

And also that GL himself stated (and it is also stated in TCW commentaries and making of) that TCW is part of the movie continuity, and that only the fact that it is CG and on TV does it get a T-Canon rating...

[Khas 12,158]

Is this that "StarWarsStarTrek" stooge you're talking about?

[Praeothmin 532]

Is this that "StarWarsStarTrek" stooge you're talking about?

 

 

 

Nope, KirkSkywalker and 2046 aka Darkstar...

[enigma 521]

Nope, KirkSkywalker and 2046 aka Darkstar...

 

 

 

He's been openly mocked for that over at SDN (among other reasons. ). I think he was nitpicking about what is or is not canon and ignoring the official canon.

[Praeothmin 532]

He's been openly mocked for that over at SDN (among other reasons. ). I think he was nitpicking about what is or is not canon and ignoring the official canon.

 

 

 

I so hate that Canon interpreting nonsense of theirs.

 

I mean, it's pretty damn simple:

 

Everything mentioned is good, except when it directly contradicts, or implies a contradiction, with higher Canon...

 

I love the ICS (all of them), because they give us a good physical description, and satisfy the geek in all of us, even though I believe (and I'm just stating my belief here, not wishing to start a new ICS thread) they don't match the movies in firepower.

 

Same thing with TCW, I like the show a lot, and while I think Anakin has better character devellopment than in the movies, I hate the depiction of the Battle droids, because they are even stupider than in the movies, so when discussing them, you need to use movie intelligence (again, stating my opinion)...

 

Darksaber?

 

SW and valid...

 

Suncrusher?

 

While I think the idea is stupid, nothing contradicts higher Canon, so SW and valid...

 

Centerpoint station?

 

Same thing as for the Suncrusher...

 

 

 

Let's say we've had a lot of animated discussions about this, me being a semantic jerk and all...

[Questor 501]

I so hate that Canon interpreting nonsense of theirs.

 

I mean, it's pretty damn simple:

 

Everything mentioned is good, except when it directly contradicts, or implies a contradiction, with higher Canon...

 

I love the ICS (all of them), because they give us a good physical description, and satisfy the geek in all of us, even though I believe (and I'm just stating my belief here, not wishing to start a new ICS thread) they don't match the movies in firepower.

 

Same thing with TCW, I like the show a lot, and while I think Anakin has better character devellopment than in the movies, I hate the depiction of the Battle droids, because they are even stupider than in the movies, so when discussing them, you need to use movie intelligence (again, stating my opinion)...

 

Darksaber?

 

SW and valid...

 

Suncrusher?

 

While I think the idea is stupid, nothing contradicts higher Canon, so SW and valid...

 

Centerpoint station?

 

Same thing as for the Suncrusher...

 

 

 

Let's say we've had a lot of animated discussions about this, me being a semantic jerk and all...

 

 

 

That is the SDN interpretation of canon...

[Tyralak 12,068]

That is the SDN interpretation of canon...

 

 

 

With the obvious ICS firepower exception, of course.

[Questor 501]

With the obvious ICS firepower exception, of course.

 

They don't agree that it is contradicted by the movies, they - with some justification - point out that we never actually see the heavies impacting anything that we can use to calculate. And since serious debate on this topic died there around AotC, using evidence post-AotC is disingenious at best.

 

 

 

Attack SDN for what it is NOW, don't simply trot out old arguments that would barely get a look from 90% of members there. The last time I went into the fiction section at all, I was looking for a movie review, and that was quite a while ago - Avatar, I think.

 

 

 

EDIT: I should also note that most of the high end firepower discussions there root themselves in reactor scaling from the DS, rather than in the ICS. (and the fact that that is a similar route that Curtis claims to have used, does not in any way link the people that use it (and used it long before the AotC ICS was published) to the ICS, the way that a lot of trekkies claim. Attempting to use the DS novel as justificaiton for lower energy costs is just an argument from ignorance. We have no way of knowing the energy costs of shifting objects as large as a planet into hyperspace, although the surprise at the hyper capable nature of the Death Star seems to imply that that level of energy is not an everyday thing.

 

 

 

Also, the knee jerk reactions to attacks on Curtis come not from the use of the numbers, but from the fact that many of them are attacks on a person a lot of us would have called a friend by a person that a lot of us found odious, and not for his views on STvsSW. Tyralak has never been a member of that camp.

[Praeothmin 532]

That is the SDN interpretation of canon...

 

 

 

With some omissions and a lot of "creative interpretation", yeah, sure...

[Praeothmin 532]

They don't agree that it is contradicted by the movies, they - with some justification - point out that we never actually see the heavies impacting anything that we can use to calculate. And since serious debate on this topic died there around AotC, using evidence post-AotC is disingenious at best.

 

 

 

See, that's the very way of interpreting I don't like...

 

If ships from AotC really, truly could take GTs before they were destroyed, then the command "ball" of the Federation fleets would not have been destroyed by the Sphat cannons, which in no friggin way shot even close to KT firepower on them...

 

The fighter's Supposedly KT guns?

 

Never seen, and we have seen fighters hit asteroids (namely Jango's guns).

 

So no, they aren't right in saying we never saw the weapons hit anything quantifiable.

 

 

 

Plus the movies show us Acclamators without any guns, as does TCW.

 

Again, ICS is wrong...

 

 

 

Even in TESB, we see an asteroid being vaped (let's say it was a 100KT event) by a shot that came from the top of the ISD.

 

Models and original ICS show us only HTLs and Ion cannons up there, so we are supposed to believe that the ISD fired its GT guns at 0.000001% of maximum power?

 

 

 

That is why the discussion did not die for many people, and not just rabid Trekkies... :shrug:

[enigma 521]

I so hate that Canon interpreting nonsense of theirs.

 

I mean, it's pretty damn simple:

 

Everything mentioned is good, except when it directly contradicts, or implies a contradiction, with higher Canon...

 

I love the ICS (all of them), because they give us a good physical description, and satisfy the geek in all of us, even though I believe (and I'm just stating my belief here, not wishing to start a new ICS thread) they don't match the movies in firepower.

 

Same thing with TCW, I like the show a lot, and while I think Anakin has better character devellopment than in the movies, I hate the depiction of the Battle droids, because they are even stupider than in the movies, so when discussing them, you need to use movie intelligence (again, stating my opinion)...

 

Darksaber?

 

SW and valid...

 

Suncrusher?

 

While I think the idea is stupid, nothing contradicts higher Canon, so SW and valid...

 

Centerpoint station?

 

Same thing as for the Suncrusher...

 

 

 

Let's say we've had a lot of animated discussions about this, me being a semantic jerk and all...

 

 

 

I got to see the first episode of TCW and was baffled as to how comical the battle droids were. It was if they took the droids from TPM and ratcheted the slapstick to level 11 and dropped them in TCW.

 

 

 

I'd prefer to just sweep the TCW under the carpet and pretend it did not exist just like I do with Voyager.

[Praeothmin 532]

I got to see the first episode of TCW and was baffled as to how comical the battle droids were. It was if they took the droids from TPM and ratcheted the slapstick to level 11 and dropped them in TCW.

 

 

 

Yeah, this bugs me too.

 

While we did get the drift that they were cheap and easily replaced in the PT, they became utterly moronic in TCW...

 

 

 

I'd prefer to just sweep the TCW under the carpet and pretend it did not exist just like I do with Voyager.

 

 

 

I don't, for the reasons above:

 

Anakin is a better character in TCW, and even the clones have personnalities, and we see the series touch on emotions or depht of character we've never seen in the movies...

 

And frankly, some episodes are more mature then any of the PT...

[Questor 501]

See, that's the very way of interpreting I don't like...

 

If ships from AotC really, truly could take GTs before they were destroyed, then the command "ball" of the Federation fleets would not have been destroyed by the Sphat cannons, which in no friggin way shot even close to KT firepower on them...

 

The fighter's Supposedly KT guns?

 

Never seen, and we have seen fighters hit asteroids (namely Jango's guns).

 

So no, they aren't right in saying we never saw the weapons hit anything quantifiable.

 

 

 

Plus the movies show us Acclamators without any guns, as does TCW.

 

Again, ICS is wrong...

 

 

 

And I'm sure that all of that would have been hashed out on SDN at the time... except for one thing: NO ONE CARED ANYMORE! Curtis was defended because he was a friend and the person attacking him was a known jerk.

 

 

 

Seriously, I understand that the STvsSW debate DID die around the time AotC came out, but confusing the corellation of those events, with AotC ICS killing the debate is putting the cart before the horse. For a lot of people I knew at the time, AotC killed Star Wars. Enterprise's first season had just ended, so it was obvious Star Trek was on its last legs. Why keep debating?

 

 

 

AotC was BAD, even by the previously established standards of pulp sci-fi. In hindsight, it's even worse. Lucas took one of the best actresses of her generation and put her oposite a plank of wood, and expected a romance to be beleivable. He tried to tie way to much together, and wrote a story that was non-sensical. I rewatched AotC one or two times. I NEVER rewateched RotS. I haven't read an SW novel since AotC, and I haven't bought an EU product since then either. Its not a protest, I lost interest! So did a lot of people.

 

 

 

When you are trying to condemn SDN, condem it for a lot of things, but condemning them because they ignored evidence that was brought to light as the debate was dieing due to lack of interest is just stupid.

 

 

 

Even in TESB, we see an asteroid being vaped (let's say it was a 100KT event) by a shot that came from the top of the ISD.

 

 

 

Models and original ICS show us only HTLs and Ion cannons up there, so we are supposed to believe that the ISD fired its GT guns at 0.000001% of maximum power?

 

 

 

They also show bolts coming from the underside of the ship, where models and the original ICS (ignoring the hypocrisy here) show no weapons. Obviously, there was another cloaked ship there firing!

 

 

 

That is why the discussion did not die for many people, and not just rabid Trekkies... :shrug:

 

 

 

 

If we were discussion other groups, that would be relevant, but you are specifically discussion SDN, where the discussion DID die.

[Praeothmin 532]

And I'm sure that all of that would have been hashed out on SDN at the time... except for one thing: NO ONE CARED ANYMORE! Curtis was defended because he was a friend and the person attacking him was a known jerk.

 

 

 

Seriously, I understand that the STvsSW debate DID die around the time AotC came out, but confusing the corellation of those events, with AotC ICS killing the debate is putting the cart before the horse. For a lot of people I knew at the time, AotC killed Star Wars. Enterprise's first season had just ended, so it was obvious Star Trek was on its last legs. Why keep debating?

 

 

 

AotC was BAD, even by the previously established standards of pulp sci-fi. In hindsight, it's even worse. Lucas took one of the best actresses of her generation and put her oposite a plank of wood, and expected a romance to be beleivable. He tried to tie way to much together, and wrote a story that was non-sensical. I rewatched AotC one or two times. I NEVER rewateched RotS. I haven't read an SW novel since AotC, and I haven't bought an EU product since then either. Its not a protest, I lost interest! So did a lot of people.

 

 

 

When you are trying to condemn SDN, condem it for a lot of things, but condemning them because they ignored evidence that was brought to light as the debate was dieing due to lack of interest is just stupid.

 

 

 

Funny thing is, this "lack of interest" did not boil over from SDN to SB, it seems, because over there, where there are a lot of avid SDNers (Vympel, Apocalypse at the time, Schatten, Ted C, Kane Starkiller, Aratech, etc...), there were still debates, except they usually ended in "ICS iz da rulerz, Star Wurz winzzzzz!".

 

And these acts of ignoring existing pieces of Canon continues even today, even at SDN (look at the recent SW vs ST threads), so while some SDNers may have indeed stopped debating because they weren't interested anymore, a lot more stopped debating because they felt the ICS had crushed any possible debate.

 

Go read SB threads dealing with SW vs ST from that time period.

 

Heck, there were even special rules put in place so no one could start debates stating "Movies only, no ICS"...

 

 

 

 

 

They also show bolts coming from the underside of the ship, where models and the original ICS (ignoring the hypocrisy here) show no weapons. Obviously, there was another cloaked ship there firing!

 

 

 

 

I didn't know the ISD models didn't show guns on the underside, I thought there were MTLs near the Tie fighter Bay.

 

And again, since its clear some anal retentive people don't seem to understand what I say:

 

ICS are valid, even the AotC one, as long as no contradiction exists between them and the movies.

 

Do I need to write it in 3 languages for you to understand it?

 

Should I add it to my signature so I won't have any idiotic argument how I use EU and ICS information?

 

 

 

But still, the difference is we clearly see an ISD fire it's weapons, except we've never seen acclamators fire even one single shot, even in TCW when they should have in ship to ship battles...

 

 

 

 

 

If we were discussion other groups, that would be relevant, but you are specifically discussion SDN, where the discussion DID die.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, but since many SDNers kept discussing SW vs ST over at other sites, it is clear the dicussion only died at the SW fortress that was, is, and always will be the most fervent defender of "Star Wurz rules over Star Turk!"...