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david-talks-sw · 1 year

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An argument I hear from time to time is the following:

"I don't care that this novel is considered Legends, if it was canon when George Lucas was in charge of Lucasfilm, it's still canon to me now. Whatever George says is what counts, I don't care what Disney says."

Putting the Expanded Universe's Star Wars and George Lucas' Star Wars in the same basket. And that's, uh... inaccurate.

So without further ado, let's explore:

George Lucas’ involvement in the Expanded Universe

Early years of the EU...

When the first bit of EU content came out in the form of the novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Lucas was too busy working on the films, so Alan Dean Foster wrote it by himself (which explains why Luke and Leia's relationship plays out romantically).

After the movies came out, when new material was going to be created, George told Lucas Licensing and other authors that the Prequel era was off-limits to write about, because he might tell that story one day.

Beyond that, they could go to town and write sequels, for instance. After all, part of why Star Wars was created was to let people's imagination run wild and George was happy to let other artists play in the sandbox he created.

That said, things were very clear from the get-go.

These weren't his stories.

The Thrawn books, Dark Empire, all this material was explicitly just Tom Veitch and Timothy Zahn and whoever else's creation. Not George's, who was described by Lucas Licensing's Lucy Autrey Wilson as "not very involved".

The most he did was answers "OK/Not OK" questionnaires about what the EU writers could or couldn't write.

Telling Yoda's backstory? Not OK.

Telling Han's backstory, between the Prequel and Ep. 4? OK.

Having someone wear Vader's suit after his death? Not OK.

The Emperor returning in a clone body? OK.

So that's it. That was his involvement in the 90s.

Him saying "don't write something set during this/that period".

"OK/Not OK" questionnaires.

It's also worth mentioning he didn't approve of Mara Jade, Luke's wife in the EU. In his mind, "Jedi don't marry".

Rather, the character herself wasn't an issue... until she married Luke. When Timothy Zahn asked for Luke and Mara to be married or engaged, back in 1993, Lucasfilm initially vetoed the idea.

According to Brian Jay Jones (author of "A Life", George Lucas' biography), in 1995 George convened a 'Star Wars Summit' wherein he gathered licensees and international agents to Skywalker Ranch to reinforce "the need for him to maintain quality control, especially in the areas of publishing, where some characters—such as Luke Skywalker, who’d been given a love interest in a fiery smuggler named Mara Jade—were living lives far beyond the ones he had written for them in the original trilogy".

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During the Prequels...

George Lucas was writing and directing three movies with large themes, shot almost back-to-back, commuting between Australia and California. That's hard enough as it is.

Also, in the 90s, most movies were still shot on film. During the making of Phantom Menace, Lucas shot parts of the film by combining prototype digital Sony cameras and using them in combination with videotapes, rather than shooting on film.

For Attack of the Clones, George worked with Panavision and Sony to develop fully digital cameras, which eventually became the standard.

As if that wasn't enough, by making the Prequels, Lucas and ILM were also creating fully-digitized worlds (Coruscant, Geonosis) and characters (Jar Jar, Yoda) and laying the groundwork for the CGI technology that has now become essential for today's blockbusters.

Having established all this...

Do you really think he had the time or the patience to read through a bunch of novels and guidebooks?!

Simply put: George Lucas was too busy revolutionizing cinema to be involved in the development of the EU.

So if you ask George who Tahl or Vitiate are, or what the Stark Hyperspace War or a vapor manifold are, if you ask him to recite you the Sith Code... he'll grumble and say "heck if I know".

He outright admitted that fans know more Star Wars lore than him.

Because SOMEBODY ELSE wrote that stuff.

And he let them do it because:

It made money. A lot of money, especially after TPM came out. Money that could fund his next films. You don't mess with licensing. Hell, it's why he was so cool with there being all those Star Wars parodies.

He didn't see those stories as canon anyway, so it couldn't hurt. He saw them as a separate universe, an alternate timeline wherein the films happened ALONG with all these other tales.

So associating the EU content with Lucas is unreasonable. He was too busy, so he just let Howard Roffman, Lucy Autrey Wilson, Sue Rostoni and Lucas Licensing do their thing and crank out new stories and transmedia content for the fans.

It was a one-way relationship. The licensing parallel universe needed to have some internal consistency AND adhere to what Lucas established in the new films movies (which was difficult because they weren't involved in the production process), but he didn't need to be in line or consistent with anything they established.

Now, George did set some guidelines/boundaries and there were obviously do's and don'ts. But once those boundaries were set and the brief was established, the authors had a lot of freedom and, like, 99% of their interaction was with their editors from the respective publishing houses (Scholastic, Del Rey, Dark Horse) and the folks at Lucas Licensing.

George was only really brought in to sign off on, like, some of the major plot points only once in a blue moon. Stuff like:

"Let's make a Maul novel". George would go "fine, just keep him mysterious."

"What species should Plagueis be?" George: "he could be a Muun, here's concept art."

Nothing more than that. Again: the Expanded Universe was other storyteller's interpretation of what Lucas had created.

Sometimes, it was spot on and it aligned with George's vision.

Other times, this additional lore was created by writers who didn't know what he was doing with the Prequels, so they were in the dark regarding certain plot points.

And then you have the authors who absolutely disagreed with George's vision of the Prequels, or of Star Wars, in general, but wanted to engage with the material nonetheless.

Which is why, whilst sometimes the EU fixed some plot-holes, sometimes the EU had inconsistencies.

Inconsistencies such as Ki-Adi Mundi being a Knight on the Council, who is married and has kids (when the Jedi being prohibited from marrying is a major plot point in the Prequels)...

… or the Jedi being essentially superhuman (when one of the narrative reasons Qui-Gon is killed is to show that the Jedi are mortals, not supermen)…

... or other stuff like Mace having a blue lightsaber for a period (because who the hell knew purple was an option?!) or some Jedi having red lightsabers, or Sith Lords being able to become ghosts after death, when that's a feat you can only achieve by being selfless.

It's also why you get conflicting definitions of what the Jedi call "attachment" or conflicting narratives trying to reframe midi-chlorians as a cold, intentionally-flawed way of seeing the Force (when they're meant to be a beautiful metaphor for symbiosis and how the Force works).

And it makes sense that some of this stuff wouldn't track, considering how Lucas stated multiple times that he didn't have anything to do with it, that it was a separate universe from his own...

Safe to say that if George had any involvement in the EU, it was so minimal that he, himself, didn't count it as "involvement".

Additional sources:

Later years of the EU...

After the Prequels were over and done with, Lucas created The Clone Wars with Dave Filoni. At first, he'd just suggest a few storylines, but he quickly got VERY involved in the whole process. Far more involved than he ever was with EU content.

And y'know... Dave Filoni is a massive Star Wars fan and an avid EU reader. So, from time to time, Filoni would bring up EU material for Lucas to consider during the story conferences, and they'd look at what was out there together.

But it's important to note that George's stance toward the EU didn't change and became a rule for everyone on the writing staff: the EU content was nothing more than a pool of "fun what-if ideas" that they could draw inspiration from.

If they could, they'd try to not mess with continuity... but if the story called for it, they could retcon anything without batting an eye. Because it wasn't canon to them.

It's why author Karen Traviss quit working with Lucasfilm after the Mandalorians were retconned into pacifists in The Clone Wars.

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The only things that were truly canon were:

George Lucas' own word.

The movies.

Previously established The Clone Wars lore.

And that's it.

Everything else was somebody's else's concern. Not George's.

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This way of seeing the EU continued all the way to the time shortly before George sold the company to Disney as his drafts for the Sequels featured:

no Jacen, Jaina or Anakin Solo (Han and Leia's kids from the EU),

a still-alive Chewbacca (who died, later in the EU),

no "New Jedi Order".

Every version of George's Sequels ignored the EU.

Which would explain why the EU reboot was planned in the summer of 2012 (when Lucas was in charge)!

I'll repeat: the EU reboot was planned months BEFORE George Lucas sold the company to Disney.

Because of course it was! It's a natural result of 30 years' worth of content that's so intermeshed that it would stop future artists - namely George himself - from creating anything else.

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Exceptions to the rule:

1. Comics (kinda)

He did read the comics. Or at least, he gave them a glance.

Aside from the fact that he grew up reading comics, understand that George Lucas is a visual artist, first and foremost.

That's what he's about and that's what he loves, that's what speaks to him. There's a reason his upcoming Museum of Narrative Art will feature comic panels and pages of all kind.

During pre-production on Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, Lucas had the art team draw concept art before a script had ever been written so he'd have ideas for set-pieces.

Later on, J.W. Rinzler pitched him the idea of adapting his early drafts for Star Wars into comic form. Lucas' initial reaction was going "hell no". Rinzler had concept art made…

… and George took one look and was on board.

So it's not a stretch to assume that a book telling a story through beautiful drawings would catch his attention more than a novel.

Case in point: He knew who Quinlan Vos was and was enamored with the character. He knew Aayla enough to put her in Attack of the Clones after seeing a cover of Republic by John Forster featuring her (below, left).

(although, it's worth pointing out that he doesn't call her out by name a single time, in the director's commentary of the Attack of the Clones, she's just the "Twi'Lek Jedi" and her inclusion was done mainly to add more diversity to the Jedi fighting in the arena)

Over a decade later, when the comic Star Wars #7 came out in 2015, Lucasfilm acquired artist Simone Bianchi's original 20 pages and cover art for George, so he could feature it in his the Museum of Narrative Art:

So at the very least, he looked at the comics and admired the visuals.

Whether he actually read the comics in detail or just skimmed through most of them because he liked the pretty pictures (likelier, imo) is an entirely different matter.

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2. Video-Games (kinda)

Lucas would periodically check in on the status of LucasArts games, lending creative input and advice.

Sometimes, his advice ranged from "weird" to "he's gotta be fucking with us, right?"

Apparently, he advised the team developing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed that they dub Starkiller "Darth Insanius" or "Darth Icky".

And you know what? I have no trouble believing it.

Firstly because if you're going by the idea that he gave no fucks about the EU, then of course he'll come up with "meh" names. But also, this is the same guy who created "Winkie" in 2012/2013, the character who'd go on to be named "Rey".

He also told the team creating Star Wars: 1313 that he wanted a fresh face as the main character, then only weeks before the game was announced he went "let's make it Boba Fett".

Finally... the cancelled Darth Maul game by Red Fly.

Codenamed “Damage”, then “Battle of the Sith Lords”. Think Batman: Arkham City meets Star Wars.

Red Fly pitched it as a coming of age story where we see Maul be kidnapped, tortured, eventually joining the Dark Side, and ending in TPM. Then they had interactions with LucasArts and found out Maul survived his fight with Obi-Wan.

The game went through several iterations, partly because the people at Red Fly were kept in the dark about the developments in The Clone Wars (Season 4 wasn't out yet), and even when some tidbits came out and they knew characters like Savage Oppress and Death Watch would be included, they didn't get more details.

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Whatever. They do their best to make something from what they're told. Then they have a meeting with George. As this GameInformer article explains:

“A friendly George Lucas entered the room and was eager to hear the pitch from Red Fly’s creatives. “Before they could finish their spiel, Lucas cut them off, stood up, walked over to [two Sideshow Collectibles statues of Darth Maul and Darth Talon], rotated them to be facing the same direction, pushed them together, and said ‘They’re friends!’” adds the source. “He wanted these characters to be friends, and to play off of each other. […] The problem with the idea of Maul and Talon teaming up for a buddy cop-like experience was that they were separated by over 170 years […] When this vast time divide was brought up to Lucas’ attention, he brushed off the notion of it not working, and said that it could instead be a descendant of Darth Maul or a clone of him.”

So now the game is about a descendant of Maul, guided by his ancestor and fighting a redesigned Darth Krayt, etc?

The game was eventually cancelled when George sold the company.

Worth pointing out that this was circa 2010/2011... around the time that George started working on his Sequels, according to Jett Lucas. And we know that the treatment for the Sequels that Lucas presented to Bob Iger featured old man Maul and Darth Talon as the villains of the trilogy... take from that what you will.

3. The Prequel novelizations (kinda)

They were all given a copy of Lucas' screenplay.

While most of their work was with Sue Rostoni, Lucy Autrey Wilson, and Howard Roffman on the Lucasfilm team (like some of the other authors), Terry Brooks, R.A. Salvatore and Matthew Stover all spent a bit of time with George before writing their respective novels.

George told Terry Brooks to write some additional material for Anakin Skywalker because there wasn't enough of that in the movie. He was shown rushes from the set, they "opened the safe" for him. When Terry had further questions re: midi-chlorians and the history of the Sith, George goes on a 30-minute monologue about all that.

R.A. Salvatore had a 45-minute interview with him that turned into a 3-hour chat. He was able to go back to the Ranch a few times during the writing process, and one of those times George chatted with him and his wife during lunch. He was shown various cuts of the film and concept art.

Matthew Stover and George talked for a whole afternoon (I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume he was also shown the other stuff like some cuts/deleted scenes, concept art, etc etc).

Was there a line-edit of the ROTS novel from Lucas? Regarding the Revenge of the Sith novelization, some people bring up the idea that George Lucas did a line-edit on the book because Stover wrote this statement on theforce.net:

That said...

Stover, also stated that Lucas told him to write whatever he wanted as long as it was good,

he also said he didn't actually see Lucas type the edits,

an anonymous Del Rey editor stated on theforce.net that the notion that George edited the novel himself is "extremely incorrect".

There's enough "reasonable doubt" for the argument to be made that the Revenge of the Sith novelization was edited the same way as any other Star Wars novel, rather than by George himself.

The fact remains, though, that it was a novel written by someone who understood the source material, as it was explained to him in detail by George Lucas himself (a luxury many SW authors never got).

Lucas' backstory for the Sith in the TPM novel: If Pablo Hidalgo is to be believed, the backstory of the Sith, as detailed in the Phantom Menace novelization, came from Lucas.

(Obviously, I'd allow for the very likely possibility that there was some embellishment by Terry Brooks)

20 years later, however, it seems George decided to stick to the idea that there was no war between the Jedi and the Sith.

Final thought:

A lot of people will insist that George was involved in spite of all the above-posted evidence. Saying stuff like:

"But [X person] said that it was canon..."

Sometimes, they’ll link you to this whole website collecting quotes of other people saying "the EU was canon" (never George Lucas except for, like, one/two quotes where he acknowledges the existence of Sequel books which MUST mean he saw them as canon, right?) and...

On the one hand... of course they'll all vaguely say he's "involved" and tip-toe around the subject; it's technically true and, again, they're trying to make money. It's a business, folks.

On the other... yeah? Duh. Of course it was canon to Lucas Licensing and the authors who wrote for the EU. But it wasn't canon to George. And I just gave you a whole bunch of quotes directly from him and/or the same people quoted on that website, all confirming that he didn't see them as canon and he wasn't involved (or barely was).

Other times, we're straight-up approaching "burying head in the sand/lalalala I'm not listening!" levels of justifications.

Like, we just talked about the Sith's origins, right?

I remember a while ago, this Star Wars YouTuber was reviewing this quote from Lucas, in The Star Wars Archives: 1999-1995:

The YouTuber's reaction the second after reading the quote is saying:

"And of course, what George is referring to, here, is the Battle of Ruusan and the Brotherhood of Darkness using the Thought Bomb created by Lord Khan to kill the Jedi Lord Hoth and…"

My guy! You read a whole excerpt that started with "there was never a war between the Jedi and the Sith" and the words "Ruusan" or "Thought Bomb" never being mentioned once in the passage (or in the TPM novelization)... and concluded that George was referring to the Jedi/Sith Battle of Ruusan? And all that other EU stuff?

See what I mean, folks?

Now, look, I grew up with these stories (heck, I grew up with these stories in three different languages). So I get it. I know they're awesome.

And, yes, there is a difference between the kind of content we used to get and the content we're getting now (for one, lightsabers used to be lightsabers, in video-games, not baseball bats).

But if you're trying to prop up the EU, the facts show that the "George Lucas signed off on them" authority argument isn't a valid one. Because he clearly wasn't very interested or involved in it.

And why would you want to use this authority argument, anyway?

You shouldn't need to say "this came from Lucas" to like those stories. They don't need to be George Lucas Approved™ to matter and to be validated as "worthy of appreciation". They're valid on their own, they're great stories. And if you like them better than the Sequels, go to town. I know I do.

The only thing you can't do (with a straight face, at least) is hold them up as "the True Lucas-Approved Canon™ as opposed to the Disney Trash" in a rant, because you'd be wrong and/or lying. Neither had Lucas' hand in them in any meaningful way.

Finally... I was devastated when the EU was officially made non-canon, in 2014. And for a few years, I saw the new Star Wars continuity through this lens:

"Any EU content is still canon unless it's directly retconned...!"

Trust me, when I say that only pain lies that way. Because that's not how a lot of Star Wars creators, including the Flanelled One himself, see it. The way they saw/see it is:

"Unless it's been shown in a movie or TCW... it's a legend, it might have happened."

This line of thought seems to be increasingly applied to the new Disney canon too, by the way. "If it's not shown on a screen, then it's probably canon yet also up for grabs to be retconned."

And the sooner you accept that this is how it's being treated, the sooner you accept that the EU was never canon to Lucas or Filoni...

... the less painful it'll be when, I dunno, you watch The Acolyte and it's nothing like the Darth Plagueis novel or Plagueis himself is absent, or he's there, but as an Ithorian instead of a Muun.