Boba Fett’s survival speaks to the different goals of old Star Wars and new Star Wars
The Book Of Boba Fett has revealed how the bounty hunter survived his apparent death, but how and why does it differ from the old version?
TV Features Star Wars
The Book Of Boba Fett has just premiered on Disney+, and with it we finally have an explanation for how Boba Fett survived his fall into the mouth of the sarlacc in Return Of The Jedi: He just… kind of punched his way out, then blew some holes in the monster with a wrist-mounted flamethrower. It clearly took a toll on Fett, who must now sleep in a bacta tank to heal, but the key point is that he’s out, he’s got his armor back (as seen in The Mandalorian), and he’s ready to take over Jabba The Hutt’s old criminal empire.
But things didn’t always happen that way. When Disney bought Lucasfilm and took over the Star Wars series, it declared that everything in the old “Expanded Universe” (as in, all Star Wars stories that aren’t part of the movies, like books and comics and games) were no longer canonical and therefore did not happen in the franchise’s continuity. One of the books jettisoned into the realm of what is now referred to as Star Wars Legends was Tales From Jabba’s Palace, an anthology which included a story called “A Barve Like That: The Tale Of Boba Fett.” In “A Barve Like That,” Boba Fett survives his fall into the mouth of the sarlacc—but that’s just about where the similarities between it and the Disney+ version stop.
How did Boba Fett escape the sarlacc in the Expanded Universe?
In “A Barve Like That,” Fett spends a long time stuck in the sarlacc as its digestive system breaks down his armor. While there, Fett learns that the sarlacc is sort of an intelligent beast that forms a psychic bond with the beings it digests, most notably a man named Susejo who was the first person eaten by the sarlacc and whose consciousness merged with the sarlacc’s to allow it to communicate.
Fett and the sarlacc, through Susejo, have conversations about their lives, and after figuring out a way to manipulate Susejo, Fett tricks the sarlacc into blowing up his jetpack and giving him a way out. Boba Fett returns later, promising the sarlacc and Susejo that he’ll kill them someday. It makes the pit itself a bigger part of the story and adds to the mystery and wonder implied by Return Of The Jedi’s claim that the sarlacc takes a thousand years to digest its prey.
How does Disney’s approach to Star Wars differ from the Expanded Universe’s?
Rather than just different approaches to the same subject matter, though, these two variations of the story illustrate the different approaches that Disney and the old EU brought to Star Wars. The old EU, in this story and others, was at least partially about taking things from the Star Wars movies and expanding on them, giving names and backstories to characters who only ever pass by in the background and shedding light on what they do before and after Luke Skywalker and his friends enter their lives.
Disney, in its streaming series in particular, is focusing more on recapturing what people liked about Star Wars in the first place. It’s not trying to expand on Star Wars and offer new insights on characters you may not have known or cared about before, it’s trying to make more Star Wars that faithfully emulates what’s good about the original movies. So far, that has resulted in stories that feel consistent with the best parts of Star Wars and don’t drastically alter what we think we know about this universe.
In the book (not The Book), the sarlacc’s relative sentience is a surprise that changes how we might feel about the big sand pit with teeth seen in the movies. In the show, it’s just a big sand pit with teeth that Boba Fett fights his way out of. Both approaches have their merits, since the old EU had more freedom to get weird and fantastical (but also had a tendency to get dark and edgy in a way that, in retrospect, doesn’t work for Star Wars) while the current crop of Disney-branded expansions are arguably better and more competently assembled.
One could argue that Disney’s reluctance to get weird and fantastical is hurting the franchise, since the company seems intent on making sure that Star Wars is safe and familiar more than anything (see: The Rise Of Skywalker’s unrepentant dismantling of the interesting questions about who Star Wars is for that were raised by The Last Jedi), but also nothing in the old EU got the love or attention on a big scale that The Mandalorian and The Book Of Boba Fett have.
Those stories were always supplemental, a thing you could take alongside the movies but were by no means expected to. The Disney+ shows, on the other hand, aren’t explicitly labeled as some separate thing, they’re just part of Star Wars as it is now. That opens the door for more a specialized story like The Book Of Boba Fett that doesn’t necessarily have to involve the Skywalkers, but with Disney currently so focused on maintaining Star Wars consistency in the wake of the divisive sequel trilogy, it might be a while before things get weird and fantastical again.
221 Comments
Why does it differ from the old one? Probably because the old one sounds stupid.
The Sarlac for the past, what, 40 years, was shown to be this awe inspiring creature that devoured you over 1,000 years and was the ultimate way to kill someone.Boba punched his way out. Not sure how that is less a stupid idea. But hey, you probably know best.
He just… kind of punched his way out, then blew some holes in the
monster with a wrist-mounted flamethrower. It clearly took a toll on
Fett, who must now sleep in a bacta tank to heal,
Again with the word “just”. Nick used the same word in his review.
There’s no “just” about it. You’re being eaten alive by a monster. You want out as quick as possible. You have… a flame thrower. Badassness ensues.
And yeah, you admit it took a toll on Fett. It wasn’t easy for him.
Was it better than Boba having a psychic conversation to escape? Probably. Or having Dengar save him? That requires prior knowledge about Dengar. I’d argue we know those stories, so it’s nice to see something new. I’ll take that over more nostalgia-bait anyday.
His article mentions the entire show is nostalgia-bait? You played yourself
Fett also clearly killed it, which I imagine took a considerable amount of time and effort leaving him will little or no resources at the end. Hence why he punched his way out.
I don’t know about “clearly.” Probably killed it, since an interior roasting can’t be healthy, but it’s not like they showed the sarlacc in death throes, if it can even have them.
The tentacles and mouth from Return of the Jedi Special Edition are visible when he gets out, but they are no longer moving. It looks super dead.
It could just be napping.
I assure you, its total lack of movement is due to it bein’ tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk
Well, he’s…he’s, ah…probably pining for the Fioer Desert.(…from Wookiepedia. I thought maybe the Sarlacc was just visiting relatives in the Great Pit of Carkoon)
I figured it was killed by the barge explosion. All the way back in 1983, that was where my imagination went.
Yeah, it looks like his armor protected him enough that he was able to regain consciousness until he found a slightly dissolved storm trooper he was able to use for oxygen. That was enough for him to probe for weakness, punch a hole in the sarlacc’s gut wall, and flamethrow the cavity. Looks like the digestive juices still did a number on him, hence the bacta tank.
It’s hard to see how that EU explanation could work in a visual medium, with a disembodied voice talking to Boba from inside the Sarlaac Pit. I can see how that would be an interesting idea in book form, but it would just be silly on film.I liked how what we saw in The Book of Fett left some ambiguity in regards to that haunting line about the Sarlaac taking a thousand years to digest its victims. The monster does indeed appear to have some kind of life support system that keeps people alive and conscious while they’re being digested. It’s also not clear how long Boba Fett was in there, it could have been a year or so. Luke was long gone when he got out!Overall I found this to be a satisfying depiction of his survival, one with appropriate bio-horror and lengthy severe consequences after a blind Han accidentally hit Boba’s jet pack. I didn’t need Boba to trick a disembodied Sarlaac consciousness.
I can see how that would be an interesting idea in book form, but it would just be silly on film.As a counterpoint, Legion (and it isn’t the first by a long shot) proved that that kind of storytelling can work perfectly well on film (as long as you’re as talented as Noah Hawley and have the support of production executives who will let you do bizarre shit).Not that they should have gone for that here; I don’t think Star Wars is really the right place for that kind of thing. But it’s definitely possible to pull off in a way that isn’t silly.
I agree, they didn’t have to make it weird but they could have at least used the situation for some character development. Maybe he tries escapting and it doesn’t work instantly. Basically it’s just another obstacle for him so they can move on to show him learning *a lot of stuff* from the sandpeople.
When your only tool is a flamethrower, you approach every problem like it’s a… hot dog?
Is that metaphor melting like an overdone smores over a firepit? 😁
If you like, sure!
A creme brulee.
waow so epic!!!1! the action figure used a flamethrower!!!!! so badass!!!!!! waow!!!
I agree that it was cool to see something more concise but the psychic connection/toiling to get out of the sarlacc was kind of fun IMO. It’s probably just pure nostalgia, as you said, but I feel like half the fan base runs on nostalgia these days, so I don’t think it would have been a miss if they adapted Montgomery’s/Moran’s story to the screen.
Fett surviving AT ALL and getting his own goddam show is the most basic-ass nostalgia-bait ever. The guy was a suit of armor and a jetpack. He was a cool looking toy that had the good luck of getting stuck in the brain of a bunch of people who are now in control of pop culture.Fuck Boba Fett.
You know, I was gonna try a somewhat rude reply but I don’t know if it’ll translate. Anyway, it’s new year’s eve and you’ve got a point. Happy new year!
You know what? I probably would’ve deserved a rude reply. I’ve always had kind of a bug up my butt about Fett. I do think he’s unduly popular but I should let it go.
I have the same problem with Fett, but I’ll watch the show. Just b/c RotJ chose to dispose of him in a comically stupid way doesn’t mean they can’t bring him back. It’s the fan obsession with him that’s weird. I always thought Jango Fett was Lucas’ apology to the Boba Fett stans for wasting the character’s potential.
I think it’s a “just” because one presumes the Sarlaac has been out here getting fed all kind of badasses for decades? Centuries? And no one in that time had some ordinance to blow their way out. I think it’s fine to say “Fett is just that awesome/the armor is just that protective”, but it does kind of seem like the simplest possible solution, thus “just”.
Fair point. I thought the Sarlaac was only for Jabba’s worst enemies, and that he’d strip them of any weapons before throwing them in. But yeah, brute forcing your way out is a bit simple. Have a star. 🙂
He literally punched his way out of a monster that was canonically meant to be inescapable. He escaped from destiny by punching it. 40 years of people wondering how he could escape culminates in some dopes saying ‘ah he’ll just punch his way out, people want to see him learn how to fight from the tusken raiders’
This is more a difference between what’s done in writing, and what’s done on the screen. In the Disney era anthology _From a Certain Point of View_ , the dianoga in the trash compactor was actually Force sensitive and wasn’t trying to eat Luke, just baptize him. Anthology stories make fleshing out minor things into weird stuff easier.
I feel like this is really downplaying what a big deal Joe Johnston actually is. He’s an Academy-Award-winning VFX artist who has had a solid directorial career. We’re talking Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, Jurassic Park III (which is the best of the Jurassic Park sequels), October Sky, the very underrated Not Safe for Work. The guy designed the Iron Giant, for Christ’s sake. And I know not every article can be a biography about its subjects, but come on. Joe Johnston is a legend.
Joe Johnson directed The Rocketeer too.
Dont forget Captain America 1, the film that made Hayley Atwell a star!
Still top tier Marvel! One of their best films.
Im guessing this comment was intended for another article?
I’m all for Star Wars getting weirder, but if it did the fanboys would probably rebel again. Disney is just trying for broad appeal now.
You can lament about the loss of “art,” but Disney is an entertainment corporation. Broad appeal makes the most money, so that’s what they’ll do.
And yet the broad being appealed to don’t like half this nonsense any more than anyone else does.
And yet the broad being appealed to don’t like half this nonsense any more than anyone else does. What are you talking about? The Mandalorian is probably the best-received Star Wars property since Disney bought it. That spun off into this.
And your point is?
Broad appeal? For STAR WARS?? Now I’ve heard everything.
Gee, why would fans of the Star Wars series rebel against nonsensical weirdness for the sake of weirdness? lol
The old one is everything that I hated about the expanded universe. It’s stupid and I am glad they didn’t do it. Fuck a psychic Sarlacc and fuck the person who wrote that bad fan fiction nonsense. I piss on the old Expanded Universe.
Gastric/digestive juices, and lack of oxygen seriously affected him. I’m guessing no living creature would survive having their stomach burned like that. The visual effects artists should have added smoke coming out of the pit.
I think it would have come off a little better if the episode had started with a slow pan over the landscape, coming to rest on the quiescent ruins of Jabba’s sail barge. Stillness for a moment. Then a big-ass explosion from the mouth and Fett comes rocketing out haphazardly, crashes to the ground, and passes out.Kudos to the production team for actually creating the meat-stomach interior of the sarlacc, but it wasn’t really necessary.
Oh, that was a meat-something, but it wasn’t a meat-stomach.
That works too, assuming the Sarlacc creature survived having his guts incinerated. But yes, I’m sure most fans picture it the way you described it.
Because the EU doesn’t matter anymore so why are you even bothering to write this?
boo
Honestly you can cherrypick the old sarlacc story and make it sound good, or you can lay it out on the EU tapestry as it was and realize that EVERYTHING you saw on the screen ever was redefined as a brilliant immortal or secret jedi or psychic collection of mutant bugs or something. By the end of the EU you were at critical mass, with that R5 unit that breaks during the Uncle Owen Jawa shopping scene being a force sensitive droid killing itself to ensure that R2 achieved his destiny. Cleaning that up was primarily a very good thing.
And every single creature in the Cantina was there that day because of a secret allegiance to the Empire and/or the Rebellion, except for the guy with the hookah, who had hidden cheek tubes with which he intended to suck out Han Solo’s “soup.”
In fairness, Skippy the Jedi Droid was non-canonical from the start, appearing in the apochryphal comics series “Star Wars Tales.”
Sure fair. Then it was canon that Greedo’s foot was ground up by a sommelier robot for the bartender at the cantina to make a perfect wine to sell to Jabba. And also it was canon that the werewolf in the bar came unstuck in time and got to go walking into Jedi heaven with Anakin because he crashed an X-Wing on Endor while still in love with the time-displaced force sensitive dryer hose eel worm that was also in the bar.
Han had an identical cousin named Thrackan Sal-Solo who hired Boba Fett’s daughter Ailyn to kill Han. Luke’s second girlfiend was a ghost, and Han briefly dated a stage magician named Xaverri who hated the empire but also a huge drippy beach ball made of meat and scales who was from another dimension.
Dont forget the Luke Skywalker clone that was made from his lost hand named Luuke. That was actually real.
Were you supposed to pronounce the clone names differently?
People like to poke fun at the silly “Luuke” clone, but it wasn’t even really a character. I haven’t read those books since Bill Clinton’s first term, but wasn’t that more of a mini-boss character than anything else? Like it shows up, we get the explanation that it was cloned from Luke’s hand, then Luke and Mara kill it and then fight the real villain (who was also a crazy clone of a Jedi).
wasn’t that more of a mini-boss character than anything else?
Yes, that’s exactly what it was. People seem to forget that Luuke and Thrawn came from one author in the same story. “The Thrawn trilogy was great!” “Luuke Skywalker was stupid!” Well which one is it? I’ll be the first to admit that there was a lot of crap in the EU, but there was also a lot of great stuff. It doesn’t help that a lot of the early stuff was badly written, even though the overall plot may have been decent. And also, like all of Star Wars, the EU was meant for kids/teens, most of whom wouldn’t care about some of the really out there stuff.
It’s both. The Thrawn trilogy does some brilliant world building, but Luuke is stupid. And also, personally, so is Mara; movie Luke clearly doesn’t fuck lol
Yeah, lots of both good and bad in those books. Same story that introduced Jedi Kryptonite, the salamanders that somehow repel the Force that is, by definition, in all living things.
Yeah, Luuke never says a word. Mara kills him, which frees her from an Emperor-assigned mental compulsion to “Kill (a) Luke Skywalker.” It’s definitely the hackiest part of an okay book. Well maybe. You also have to contend with Thrawn’s whole “Look at how they draw triangles. They will never be able to understand our battle plan if we fly upside down” stuff.
Sorry but the EU novels Sam is referring to are adult novels that were on adult book lists and often achieving best seller status. There were other books published for kids and teens, but these are those. With that said, it doesn’t mean that some of the content wasn’t stupid beyond belief.
I didn’t mention anything from any of the Star Wars YA series from that era. My references were, in order: Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Ambush at Corellia, Children of the Jedi (really, not YA), and the Crystal Star.
If you want the YA series then yeah, you gotta deal with like Ken the Jedi Prince, Zack and Tash, the force sensitive 12 year olds who love skateboarding and animals and live with their shapeshifting uncle (and have to investigate a haunted space amusement park) or Chewbacca’s nephew Lowbacca who communicates by way of a protocol droid head on his belt.Heck and dang but even the best regarded books from that era have dumb stuff. Luuke, Han shooting Leia with a mind control gun to convince her to marry him, etc.
I guess you missed the part where I said some of the stuff in the adult books was stupid beyond belief.Also Crystal Star has never existed in my canon.And speaking of canon, The old EU novels and comics were always conditional canon in that they could be over-written by Lucas at any point. All the authors knew this and accepted, except for one. Karen Traviss threw a hissy fit when her stuff was over-written by Lucas and left LFL. Since she’d turned into a giant pain in the ass nobody at Lucasfilm was sorry to see her go.
“The mental compulsion was verbal! Luke and Luuke sound alike! How was I supposed to know which was meant?”
There’s only one way to be sure: you have to kill us both!
Correct but it sticks out as a real strange mini boss. Its at least on par with the Hut who built a death star.
It’s a book from 1991, when you could count the number of Star Wars novels on maybe two hands and before anyone thought there would be more movies. I’m not losing any sleep over it.
Neither am I. I used to care about all that lore ten years back. Now I just kinda roll with it.
That’s remarkably mature for a Star Wars fan.
Why thank you. After all that TLJ madness I didn’t feel like it was worth the emotional effort to argue with everyone. I didn’t love the film but I respect Johnson for what he was trying to do.
I often wondered how did they retrieve the hand? It fell down a void.
Same way they found the Glove of Darth Vader? Which, by the way, was said to be indestructible, despite it being the one that was on Vader’s right hand when Luke chopped that off. According to Wookieepedia, the glove was inside a piece of Death Star debris that somehow made its way to Mon Calamari.And lest we forget, “The Force Awakens” originally began with Luke’s hand—still gripping his lightsaber—floating through space before plummeting to the surface of Jakku.
Actually, I did forget that.
Yes, but the mad Jedi clone was named Joruus C’Baoth, clone of Jorus C’Baoth, so the stupid “uu” name is still there even in the real big bad.
God, I’d forgotten that!
What if you don’t have any U’s in your name? What’s your clone named? What would my clone be named?
Thee Kiinja Caaffeine Spiider.
Kiinja Thee Spiider?
That’s the one. We can only assume the real Megan The Stallion is tied up in a closet somewhere.
We van only hope.
All we know is all clones are produced in a Finnish cloning facility so just double any vowel you choose.
It’s true. But it was still called “Luuke,” and is therefore deserving of mockery.
I knew about Thracken Sal-Solo, but the rest…wow. And I thought the “soup”-loving hookah smoker was bad!Allow me to reintroduce into this discussion Ken the Jedi Prince; Triclops, the three-eyed son of Emperor Palpatine; and Trioculus, the other three-eyed guy who pretended to be Triclops.And fanboys thought a six-foot green rabbit wasn’t Star Wars enough…
It was a long time ago, but I remember when Star Wars Tales was coming out and that story got a little attention at the time. Fans taking a story called “Skippy the Jedi Droid” seriously should’ve been more of a warning.
I don’t have my Tales TPBs handy, but didn’t they clearly denote which stories within them were “Infinities” (aka non-canon)?Besides, anyone who listened to Brian Daley’s radio adaptation knows that the real reason R5-D4 blew up is that Artoo saw which way the wind was blowing and sabotaged his metal ass.
I can’t remember if the original issues had that or not, but that sort of thing never keeps an angry Star Wars nerd from getting upset.
Am I the only person that just doesn’t like the whole overexplain thing Disney is now doing on its Star Wars shows? I mean, the EU could just be ignored if you liked the movies and it didn’t matter, but all this stuff now is canon and these TV shows are Star Wars now. Whats nice about OG Star Wars is the sense of mystery that we don’t know the whole universe. With these new stories treading on old ground, everything past is somehow special or has some weird narrative attached to it. That droid story is silly but 90% of it is almost as silly. I tried watching the new shows but I can’t. The fun and whimsy and mystery are gone and replaced with just bog standard sci-fi writing and largely uninspired backstories that didn’t need to be there.I get what’s happening, capitalism demands return on investment and that $2bn or so paid for Star Wars has to come from somewhere, but its a bit sad that EU-like silliness is where its all going and nothing from the original trilogy is immune from that. I would feel better about this if they didn’t mess with the lore and classic characters and went purely “next generation” with everything.
By the end of the EU you were at critical mass, with that R5 unit that breaks during the Uncle Owen Jawa shopping scene being a force sensitive droid killing itself to ensure that R2 achieved his destiny. I’ve read enough of the EU to know this (probably) is something that was actually written.
Jesus Christ, a force-sensitive droid? That alone should justify Disney ditching the old EU.
I think it’s pretty clear that The Book of Boba Fett was simply trying to bring to pass the enlightened predictions of Patton Oswalt in Parks and Recreation.
I’m receiving a transmission from some sort of…man clad in iron.*End season 1 Book of Fett
Baffles me how people see that as a prediction, and not a super-obvious thing. Like, if you were to come up with the most cliche possible way to bring back a character that was dead in the ground, wouldn’t you always include a shot of that character’s hand suddenly bursting forth from the ground? It’s not new, and it’s not clever. It’s literally how that sort of thing is pretty much always done.
…because Patton not only mentioned the gloved fist, he mentioned the entire establishing shot that leads to it – which Favreau and co. faithfully recreated in the show.
You mean, the establishing shot of the only possible place that such a shot could be?
Sure the old EU was weird but the thing about it is that fans reminiscing about it now tend to forget the whole issue that 99 times out of 100 the weirdness was… well it was utter shit.For every Thrawn you’d get a Luuke Skywalker (not a misspelling, literally an evil clone made from Luke’s severed hand), regardless of species every Sith would get Maul’s red skin and tattoos, force possession of children by the spirit of the Emperor, any of the endless “basically the Death Star” threats, oh and the time they killed Chewie by literally dropping a fucking moon on him.Quite frankly Disney’s run at the moment has been just as hit and miss as the old EU, it’s just that a trilogy of films is a far costlier miss than writing a trilogy of books or comics.
That’s it. Even Timothy Zahn, whose initial book trilogy is largely considered the gold standard for EU stories, gave us Luuke.
And honestly, Thrawn himself wasn’t all that. IIRC, he never even met a single one of Our Heroes over the course of three books, and while he could look at a sculpture and intuit the perfect strategy for dealing with an enemy world, he was shit at anticipating his own bodyguard’s sudden but inevitable betrayal.
Oh, and who can forget Cade Skywalker, the character from “Star Wars: Legacy” who was so badass that he wore Neo’s coat, Mandalorian chest armor, and DARTH VADER’S PANTS.
Yeah people love Thrawn Trilogy and KOTOR. Those were good. Everything else? Ehhhhhhhh ran the gambit from decent to embarrassing.
I liked the Jacen and Jaina stuff way more than Ben and Rey personally. They developed Jacen’s descent to the dark side well – hell of a lot better than Luke just trying to murder a student in his sleep and losing him in the process.Also thought the Han Solo origin series was better than the Solo movie.
Yeah, remember Crystal Star? Literally had centaurs and werewolves running around in that. (Excuse me, wyrwolves.)
That’s my example of Star Wars getting too weird for its own good. I can’t remember how it came out except for thinking “Somebody wrote themselves into a corner and didn’t know how to get out of there”.
“Somebody wrote themselves into a corner and didn’t know how to get out of there”
Have they not heard about this thing in Star Wars lore called the ‘force’?That was like 50% of how The Rise of Skywalker manages reach its conclusion….cuz the ‘force’.
mmm-hmm. It didn’t make for a good book and it didn’t make for a good movie.
Everyone says that one is the worst, and it is very bad, but for my money nothing is worse than Children of the Jedi. Luke gets kidnapped by a sentient starship full of random mobs, gets his ass handed to him by a bunch of Gamorreons with blunt objects more than once, has sex with a ghost, and then the ghost possesses the dead body of a Jedi Academy student who had never existed prior to the book, which, like, if she was dead, how could the ghost bring her back to life? Oh, and the dead body begins to slowly take the appearance of the ghost lady.Man, just fuck Children of the Jedi.
“any of the endless ‘basically the Death Star’ threats”
Good thing Disney didn’t bring that dumb concept back, huh!
Like I said in the last line:Quite frankly Disney’s run at the moment has been just as hit and miss as the old EU, it’s just that a trilogy of films is a far costlier miss than writing a trilogy of books or comics.What Disney trilogy do you think I’m referring to?
George did it, the EU writers did it, Disney did it. Even KOTOR 1 has a giant doomsday station. We just can’t get beyond this concept.
Off the top of my head there were the Tarkin (from the old Marvel comics); the Galaxy Gun (“Dark Empire II”); Centerpoint Station (Han Solo trilogy); the Death Star prototype and the Sun Crusher (both from the Jedi Academy trilogy). And, of course, Death Star III from the original “Star Tours.”
I would also add the Eclipse since it had a death star laser. Side note but that’s totally where JJ Abrams got the death fleet idea from for Rise of Skywalker.
Yep, the Eclipse as well! (As I suggested elsewhere in this thread, “Dark Empire” appears to inform rather a lot of the sequel trilogy.)
Yeah. Rise of Skywalker takes a lot from Dark Empire. Not very well
Don’t forget the Darksaber, the Death Star superlaser built by a bunch of hutts in the awful book of the same name!
I’d stopped reading the books by then, but yes! So many superweapons!
I actually loved Darksaber as a kid because the whole point of it was how dumb and cheap the hutts were, essentially how a cut rate capitalist mafia organization if they had to build a nuclear bomb-scale threat would be awful at it.
What I liked (“liked”) about Darksaber was how you could see this tug of war between EU authors. Kevin J. Anderson was like “That ghost that Luke fucked is dumb. I need to write her out,” and wrote Darksaber. Then Barbra Hambly was like “Dammit, he wrote my awesome fuck ghost out! I need to write her back in!” and wrote Planet of Twilight.
Wow! Barbara Hambly wrote Star Wars EU novels? I only knew her from her 1980s vampire novels (way less competent than Anne Rice but teenage me didn’t know that).
You’re so much more invested than I ever was….did you read them later or just absorb in a different way? I read them from about 10-16 or so, maybe a little later and read about 10-20 of them, mostly picking the ‘best’ as were suggested by the late-90s internet. I feel like the people who rage against them either are older than I am and read them largely as adults or just consumed them in a wholly different way. Then again, I stopped reading fiction in my late teens and focused on political science and history books so I’ve basically not read anything in the general ‘pulp fantasy’ that SWEU would be considered in years.
At least the Tarkin predated the Death Star II in RotJ. I bet the writers never anticipated that Lucas would repeat himself and thought they were in the clear when they came up with it. That was a great Star Wars story.
Because in a battle between planets only destroying planets means anything. The death star is a nuclear bomb stand-in. It’s ALWAYS been that, it will always REMAIN that. You can’t keep the scale and not do a death star ripoff because scaling requires the threat to be massive but also stoppable by a small number of people.
Look at any war movie which is essentially what Star Wars are (they have it in the fucking title….). If you want to tell a commando story like what they are you need to keep the threat large and singular. Luke Skywalker or Rey or Anakin aren’t going to stop a vast army of ne’er-do-wells, they need small individual threat that they can actually oppose. It’s Death Stars, mock Death Stars, and the Emperor respectively. You just can’t keep the scale without keeping ‘planet destroying weapon’ as you go along.
And what else is Starkiller Base but the Galaxy Gun from “Dark Empire II?” (One of the earliest post-ROTJ stories, which starts with Palpatine being cloned into a new body on a secret, Dark-Side shrouded planet, and ends with him attempting to transfer his soul into another Force-sensitive.)
Has anyone actually defended Starkiller Base, though? I really liked Force Awakens and I thought that was goofy as a concept too. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. But a lot of people are trying to act like the worst dreck the EU produced was Hugo-worthy in no small part just because it isn’t “Disney Star Wars”, or ‘badfiction’ as they seem to refer to it lately.
And it was super complicated. In the EU, the story of how the rebels stole the plans and got them to the Tantive IV was just a mess. Now, we have Rogue One.
The ending of Rogue One is the best adaptation of a 2000s FPS ever committed to film. There are switches, elevators, catwalks, more switches, the whole deal!
Rogue One isn’t tremendously uncomplicated, either. I like the movie, but the first two thirds of the film are pretty messy.
I thought Kyle Katarn stealing the plans was canon in the EU. Did they change that?
For every Thrawn you’d get a Luuke Skywalker
They were created by the same author in the same trilogy.
regardless of species every Sith would get Maul’s red skin and tattoos
Which books were you reading? Because that’s just not true.
the time they killed Chewie by literally dropping a fucking moon on him.
Because that’s what it takes to kill Chewbacca.
force possession of children by the spirit of the Emperor*Cough* Snoke *Cough*
As I said, read the last time and think which Disney trilogy of Star Wars films I’m referring to as a “costly miss”.
Tbf Thrawn and Luuke are from the same story and George didn’t consider EU canon, but he loved Dark Empire, which just reinforces TLJ Luke was George’s ideal
Luuke skywalker was from the Thrawn trilogy and while not perfect worked well enough with the whole Joruus C’baoth character (who was interesting as an unstable force wielder rather than a standard sith). There were some other interesting ideas, and also some admittedly stupid ones…and a lot that kind of fell somewhere in between. Some of the books weren’t universal but at least there was also some attempt at something original. I liked the Emperor Reborn stuff from Darkhorse, I liked at least some of the stuff from Jedi Academy trilogy. Hell I even enjoyed the courtship of princess Leia with the weirdness (and vague creepiness) of the mind control guns and planet of femdom force witches that ride rancors.
There were some things that were genuinely weird that weren’t as good, see also the planet sized hyperspace tractor beam in the Corellian trilogy. But at least there were attempts at least there were other stories. What I am worried about is how curated all of it is and how lifeless that can start to make it. It’s possible to make something technically brilliant but also lose a lot of the charm that first drew you to it and I’m worried Star Wars is going to lose a lot of its own flavor if they aren’t willing to let it be a bit weird once in a while.
I think the more important question is whether the pre-EU spinoffs are canon. Like 1978’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. I think it is and Luke and Leia got it on before they (or Lucas) knew they were siblings.
Yeah, there are a disturbing amount of people who stick up for waaaaay more of the EU than they actually should. Sun Crusher, anyone? Euuugh.
This. Almost all of the EU was astonishingly awful. It’s best left in the garbage heap, with the new canon cherry picking only the few good things about it (like Thrawn, who was a decent character, even if the Thrawn trilogy was crap.)
Look, there were many problems woth the Yuuzhan Vong arc, but Chewie’s death wasnt actually one of them.It was a good thematic surprise that worked well with the larger plot line about a new set of villains with utter contempt for human lives committing a genocidal atrocity. Keep in mind, Chewie wasn’t the only one killed in that attack. And at least it was more original than “another Death Star, but bigger somehow.”
It was interesting to me to see how the movies entirely inverted the situations: instead of Chewie dying saving Han’s kid from a new threat, Han is killed by his kid in the midst of an old threat.
And of course, Chewbacca is a much easier character to keep around in movies than Harrison Ford is as an actor.
What really irritates me is that the Yuuzhan Vong stuff managed to do “A Solo kid turns evil” way, way better than the crap Rian Johnson shat out in The Last Jedi.I say Johnson because at least Abrams had the courtesy to keep Ben Solo’s heel turn suitably mysterious in Force Awakens.
Me, occasionally: man I wonder if I should dive into the SWEU, I hear that there are so many good stories that—Me, reading this: For every Thrawn you’d get a Luuke Skywalker (not a misspelling, literally an evil clone made from Luke’s severed hand)naw I’m good
Never read any of the EU stuff, but it was all essentially fan fiction, but sold by publishers. Honestly what really surprised me is how popular the EU stuff got, most of it, I think, was released pre internet so you had to know what to look for in a bookstore to find it, I don’t know how many of the authors were known outside of the EU world.
I always enjoyed the Han Solo trilogy, though I read them as a young teen.The first of of books in the 90’s were decent, Thrawn Trilogy, Truce at Bakura, Shadows of the Empire. Didn’t mind the Corellia stuff and a few of the Rogue Squadron books. But it fell away quickly in quality.1 release in 1991 (Heir to the Empire) to around 20 releases per year by 97 / 98.
It was wildly uneven, for sure. But so is nearly every Star Wars product since Return of the Jedi (including Return of the Jedi, according to many).
The Sith all looking like Maul, of course, only came after Lucas made both the Jedi and the Sith into far more uniform, basically monotone groups. Prior to Phantom Menace, the Jedi only wore robes when it made sense, i.e. on a hot desert planet. Otherwise they’d dress however they wanted or however was appropriate to what they were doing. Like people normally do.
Similarly, before Phantom Menace, the Sith were a separate thing from merely Jedi who had fallen to the Dark Side, though there were many characters who were both. The Sith were a cult devoted to the Dark Side and used the Force to basically do magic, like the Emperor’s ability to shoot lightning. They also didn’t all have the title of Darth.
There was a messiness to all of that, and the many other competing visions among various EU writers. But it still made the galaxy seem a lot more vibrant than its post-Phantom Menace incarnation, which has been largely distilled down to “good guy with lightsaber fight The Empire In Some Form and their boss, Darth _______.”
Do an article on the larger Marvel/Star Wars corporate philosophy that makes this happen: lawyers. Old properties have to be disavowed as a hedge against future lawsuits. They wreck the EU so they can scavenge the best parts, and change it enough so they won’t get sued. They can add Mara Jade back into canon, but they’ll have to change her story (by 31% or 55% – or whatever the dingbat percentage is) – for example.
Mara Jade is on Dantooine running a small “clinic” offering psychiatric help for .05 credits.
Disney *does* hate the idea of paying out all those author contracts.
Eh, yes and no. I mean, obviously any giant company will have lawyers whose job is to protect them from any and all potential liabilities. But the “disavowal” or whatever is not really legally significant, so I’m inclined to believe that’s just a genuine statement of creative intent, i.e. we know about them, we’re acknowledging them, but we will choose how to tell those stories, if we do at all, our own way.I wouldn’t put it past them to try to lift some ideas from an EU author and then avoid paying them, but the fact that they literally hired Zahn to help write and develop their new Thrawn canon suggests to me that if they want to use something from the EU, even if they want to radically change it, they would rather involve the original creator than start a fight. Probably cheaper for them anyway.
Also, if they wanted to make movies based around *any* original trilogy character, their only other option would have been to adapt an EU novel into a movie
Do you have a source on that? I vaguely remember the reactionary YouTube channel Midnights Edge saying that. I don’t trust them.
There’s no legal bright line rule on how much is the point Disney needs to change to avoid royalties.
You might be misunderstanding how the rights work when it comes to SW properties. Nearly all franchise writing is work-for-hire, with an upfront sum paid to the author. The contract may grant royalties to the author for that specific work, but the author retains no rights to the characters or story. And this is an arrangement that the author agrees to and is fully aware of at the time. Now there are modifications on this, like how Marvel creators have negotiated an agreement whereby they receive royalties when a character that the work-for-hire author originated is used in non-comics media, but the principle is largely the same.Mara Jade, and all the other characters and plots of the EU, already belong to Disney. There’s no legal challenge that could be brought. They can mine the source material freely.
the day they bring mara jade back to star wars is the last day i will ever give a shit about this fucked franchise. the most generic feisty redhead stereotype character who literally only exists so that the people who idolize luke don’t have to worry that he’s a virgin or gay. name a single personality trait she has. it’s impossible
Sad but true. Did you read the article about all the authors Disney owed royalties to but never paid? So infuriating when ultra wealthy corporations do things like that. There’s no excuse other than greed.
Some legal maneuvering may be part of it, but I think the real issue is that Disney has approached Star Wars from an incredibly reactive posture. Anything that goes even slightly wrong is immediately thrown out – of the five movies they’ve made, three of them saw their directors get fired mid-stream; even though Last Jedi was still a big hit they felt the need to revert many of its story elements to appease a particularly active portion of the fan base; and the disappointment of Solo basically derailed their plans for regular “Star Wars Story” films, at least for now. Meanwhile, anything being successful results in them trying to immediately replicate that exact same success – such as the initial plan to release a Star Wars film every year after Rogue One made enough money; and the huge number of new Star Wars TV shows they greenlit after the success of The Mandalorian, including at least four spin-offs (two of which have seemingly been nixed, but the point stands).Some of this is to be expected just in the nature of movies being a business – there’s a reason Batman has been rebooted about half-a-dozen times on film and the Halloween movies now have multiple different continuities. But Star Wars is arguably the most widely popular fiction franchise in America right now, give or take a Marvel, and it’s big enough that it can accept some projects on the *slightly* risky side, even if some of them fail. That’s how you generate new work that actually keeps people interested. If Disney just keeps running it from this risk-averse, chasing-past-successes mindset, they may have fewer individual failures but the greater Star Wars project is going to have a shorter shelf life.
Your take is the prime take, true enough.
Yeah, I’m going to have to disagree with this assessment. Would it have been better for Boba Fett to find a guy who has a psychic bond with the Sarlacc and trick his way out? I actually don’t think it would be. It’s a weird addition to the Sarlacc that is barely plausible based on what you see in the movie. More befitting of a creature like Bor Gullet, really. Aside from that, it puts a great deal of attention on something that has already happened. We know Fett gets caught in the Sarlacc, that’s part of the movies, to try and then radically expand on that very specific situation just to keep the status quo of the movies relevant for longer is doing a disserve to the story and the pace of it. To me, it feels more like a survival situation this way. You’re trapped in a dangerous place, you want to get out quick, this is a do or die situation, get that oxygen and use whatever means available to get out as quick as possible. This escape put the attention on Boba Fett, the main character of the show, rather than the Sarlacc. It didn’t need a consciousness or a characterization. It’s a force to overcome. Not a fully fledged antagonist. I find the interactions with the Tusken (who were already established as having a culture of sorts, and enough brainpower to be self aware) to be a much stronger reflection of Boba as a character and Tatooine as a place.Tl;dr: would be a bit of a waste to have him spend the entire episode in the belly of a beast for the sake of being ‘weird’ when the plot moving forward works much better.
If Boba Fett escaping the Sarlacc Pit was in Return of the Jedi.
https://streamable.com/66bz6f
This would have made Boba Fett’s character more relevant at the time. They show Boba’s escape because he appears again near the end of the movie during the battle of Endor or the space battle in his Slave I.
Those wrist-mounted flamethrowers really do come in handy.
I use mine for s’mores.
Seems to be a popular answer around here.
Great minds think alike! Or are all scarred by dripping chocolate and marshmellow gooeyness.
They ought to put Filoni in charge of the whole franchise. Everything on Disney+ has, thus far, been good to great; the movies, not so much. Outside of Rogue One (which is the best Star Wars movie this century), the movies have been average to bad.Even the bad ones make a crap-ton of money, though, so whatever.
They shouldn’t continue making movies, it’s just a cash grab at this point.
All movies of this type are ‘cash grabs’. More movies are absolutely going to happen (you don’t pay $4 billion dollars for an IP and just stop making movies).
I think the distinction is between a naked cash-grab and one in which they actually let artists attempt to make art, even if the whole enterprise is still profit-oriented.
it’s not Starwars.org, is it?
Filoni’s stuff is all great, but has he ever actually produced, written, or directed a feature film?
Yes, Rogue One and the D+ shows are considered the best SW has made so far.
But how the heck did that stormtrooper get in there? Not even a sandtrooper, but a regular grunt stormtrooper.
Must’ve gotten lost, been part of a convoy or something…?
We see plenty of regular grunt stormtroopers all over Tatoinee in A New Hope, no way to know when Jabba or someone else tossed one to the Sarlaac.
I mean, it doesn’t seem impossible that a Stormtrooper racked up a massive gambling debt or something…
When they release the 40th anniversary collection for Return of the Jedi, “From A Certain Point of View”, someone should do a story from that trooper’s point of view, leading up to his fate in the pit. I’d be down to read that! Oh man, I’m such a nerd…
or got too loaded on Sullustan gin or lum or . . . that’s all the in-universe drinks I know off the head.
It was probably the idiot who thought R2D2 and C3PO weren’t the droids they were looking for.
There’s no difference except one is covered with sand.
Stormtroopers hate sand. It get’s into everything.You know it had to be said so I took the bullet this time.
And how does that sand make you feel?
salty
Probably went AWOL or stumbled out of a cantina and took a wrong turn.
He read the 96 comic, A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett.
Sure, what a prediction.
The Sarlacc forming a psychic bond with its food was utterly ridiculous. The less said about this story the better.Disney did the wise thing and made the escape sequence short and sweet: no need for prolonging the digestive sequence with nonsense that does little to further the character or the grand narrative.The only issue I have with the scene in Book was the appearance of a stormtrooper. Why and where did that dude come from?! Why not show one of Jabba’s coterie? (e.g. a weequay)Odd choice.
99% of the old EU was complete and utter shit.With Disney, it’s more like 70%. So, progress…?
Do you hate Star Wars or something? No one thinks 99% of the EU sucks unless they hate Star Wars. Or they’re Gen Z, in which case your opinion doesn’t matter. That’s fine if you hate Star Wars but just admit it’s a troll comment. At LEAST half of the stuff I’ve read in the EU is good to great, including but not limited to any of the “Tales Of…” collections, the Thrawn Trilogy (or any of the others by Zahn), KoTOR comics, Legacy, the “From A Certain Point of View”Anthologies, any of the Old Republic books, etc etc. I haven’t read the New Jedi Order series but I’ve heard many of those are great. While that’s not even close to half the EU, it’s still case in point that there’s tons of great stuff if you know where to look.
No, you don’t have to hate SW to not like the EU, you just have to hate crap. The EU is shit. It’s good Disney torched it.
Counterpoint: Rogue/Wraith Squadron series was gold. And there were, like, twenty of those fuckers in the mix with the other books, so at the end of the day that’s gotta account for more than 1%. Probably. The EU was an ocean of shit with some fantastic islands (games, books, I assume some comics that were passable). As long as you spent time on the right islands there was a lot to like.
It’s not trying to expand on Star Wars and offer new insights on characters you may not have known or cared about before, it’s trying to make more Star Wars that faithfully emulates what’s good about the original movies.
Look, both versions of his escape were stupid. Let’s not try and retroactively make the EU books more profound than they were. No one needs more discussion of Luuke and characters being killed when moons fall on them.
There were also like at LEAST two other escapes (Dark Empire, The Bounty Hunter Trilogy), plus the non-escape in Marvel comics (he escapes, but ends up on a Jawa sandcrawler that falls back in again in the same issue, Gilligan’s Island-style) IIRC…I absolutely have no issues with changing any of them…
More profound than they were? Man! As far as pulpy, waste-of-time goodness goes, you’d be hard pressed to find better reading than the best of the EU. Let’s not retroactively misrepresent what the EU was trying to achieve, should be more like it; it simply wanted to have fun with peoples’ imaginations, and it excelled therein. No one is looking back at 1950s McDonald’s cheeseburgers and bitching about how burgers aren’t what they used to be; they just miss a thing from their past, that’s all. Of course today’s gourmet burgers kill in comparison, but that’s not the point. Boba Fett was an enigma in that he should never have been popular but he was. Keeping him alive only adds to the cultural mystique surrounding him. So long as Disney doesn’t milk the shit out of his story with five seasons of kitsch, then most people will probably be stoked that he’s back.
Why does everyone forget the third version of the escape as detailed during a filibuster by Patton Oswalt?
both stories are bad. it is good that the eu has been jettisoned and it is bad that it has been replaced by this soulless dreck
I’m waiting for a reference to time, because I believe The Mandalorian is supposed to be around five years after ROTJ. So is he going to spend years in the desert with the Tuskens? Or when he meets up with someone in civilization, are they going to say “Jabba and Boba Fett died in a battle five years ago!” and reveal that he was being digested for years before he blasted out?
It’s not trying to expand on Star Wars and offer new insights on characters you may not have known or cared about before, it’s trying to make more Star Wars that faithfully emulates what’s good about the original movies.
It’s an odd point to make. The Book of Boba Fett is a show that is specifically about an OT character we may have known or cared about before, and Disney has already given us Solo and Rogue One, and will give us an Obi-Wan series next.Frankly, trying to emulate what was good about the original movies is a much more herculean task than people are willing to admit. Trying to make your own personal take on one aspect of that universe, like what The Mandalorian does, feels like the smartest idea to me.
As many silly things as there were in the EU, there were just as many or more amazing things. It was a real dick move on Disney’s part to axe EVERYTHING; they should have taken the best stuff—the stuff vetted by the fans as being nearly unanimously awesome—and carried it forward. They didn’t have to make up a new garbage story after RoTJ. That was just pure arrogance thinking they could do it better. They should have formed their “Story Group” from the best EU authors, and then we wouldn’t be in this mess. Thank the stars that John and Dave have talked some sense into Kathy; without them, I feel that would be the end of Star Wars as we knew it… I know this sounds overly dramatic but if it’s not already obvious, I really, really hate what Disney did to the franchise. With the kind of money they have to back projects, it could have been an awesome proposition if they had only hired the right people to begin with.
In “old” Star Wars, George Lucas had a story he wanted to tell. Often times the story was really weird and not terribly exciting, and he was frequently inept in the way he went about telling it. But he still had a fairly clear idea of what the story was.
“New” Star Wars is just about Disney selling you as much Star Wars as you can handle. Do you like Bobba Fett? We’ll give you some more of that. Obi-Wan? We gotcha covered. Hey – did you like that Cassian Andor guy in Rogue One a few years back? Well, maybe there’s something we can do with him too.
The obvious difference is that in the former, the existence of the characters was driven primarily by the role they played in the story. Now, the story is driven purely by demand for content involving the characters.
Yeah, god knows George Lucas never wanted to sell anything with star wars.
I’d argue that by the time of ROTJ, the existence of 80% of the characters was driven by the demand for Kenner action figures
I would say that one of the downsides of the Disney Trilogy is that it didn’t lean in heavier on the toy side of things. I think of the cool playsets from the 80’s like Cloud City carbon freezing room or even the Ewok village. Just think about how boring some of the sets in TFA are, Solo’s boring barge, or the bland bridge for the confrontation of Solo and Kylo Ren.
Weren’t the porgs pretty heavily merchandised? For beings that were on screen only a couple of minutes, they got numerous toys.
Ewoks aside, that ended up working out pretty well
Other side of the argument. Lucas was centered on the Skywalker story and a rotating cast of some of the same with a few thrown in. I have enjoyed a different writing style and voice Favreau brings to The Mandalorian, etc. I enjoy the off side Star Wars films–really I want a whole different set of characters instead of this one focus we are always being shown.
He may have had a story to tell in the first movie, but there was no way he had the trilogy mapped out. Not with Luke’s unrequited crush on Leia.
While it is true that Disney is going to sell you as much as you can handle, they know that the better their product is, the more you want. That’s why Dave Filoni is still leading it. He’s giving people more of what they want. The Mandalorian was literally what I wanted out of the newer Star Wars movies. Different kinds of stories set in the universe.
The galaxy’s whitest dentures.Boba Fett is the only one who came out of the Sarlacc heavier than he went in.
He gets his ass beat by jawas.Tubby Fett running from sand people in his jammies.Parkour.Strangle the Kraken from the 80’s Clash of the Titans.
I wish the theme song was Tom Jones’ “You Can Leave Your Hat On”.Still, I’ll take all the Matt Berry, David Pasquesi and Jennifer Beals I can get.
As much as I liked the first episode, has anyone addressed the robotic dog-shaped elephant in the room? I’m talking about the anachronistic Boston Dynamics robots walking about in the background. What’s next? Fucking iPhones?
THANK YOU! I noticed it too! Those things are cool and very creepy. Next episode: Fett calls the Mayor on his….get this….ROTARY PHONE!
see: The Rise Of Skywalker’s unrepentant dismantling of the interesting questions about who Star Wars is for that were raised by The Last Jedi) Sigh, which in and of itself was really only the result of Disney not plotting the trilogy as tightly as it should have from the start.
Thoughtful premise here, thank you. I was shook by once playing the Star Wars RPG with some friends as a teenager. It was a GD BORING afternoon of them counting credits and then, I don’t know, trying to outfit themselves in some town. I realized: ‘Star Wars’ is a kinetic, cinematic, swashbuckling story, and not every mode can convey that.The lack of a Han “Swashbuckling” Solo type in the Prequels is also, I think, a big chunk of why they fail.
Never been a fan of expanded Star universes either in Wars or Trek form. I am actually very happy with Disney’s stewardship of Star Wars so far, even if the last two of the trilogy movies had their issues. I think Daisy Ridley saved the whole thing by managing to turn Rey into a really compelling character. It was a bit of a shaky start but she doesn’t get enough credit. I think her performance is what holds the final trilogy together at all. But it’s entirely possible those movies were doomed to disappoint from the start. The originals have proven a tough act to follow.The new Disney content has been pretty reliably good IMO. And The Mandalorian itself is enough to justify Disney’s approach. There hasn’t been better “appointment” tv in a while.
When I think of the EU, a couple of things in the Timothy Zahn Thrawn books come to mind that annoyed me. I remember seeing “hot chocolate” and “corvettes” being referenced, and feeling like those terms were a little too familiar and shouldn’t have been in there.
The word corvette originally refers to a smallish warship, usually used for things like escorting convoys of other naval ships, which I’m guessing was what Zahn was referencing.
I just figured the hot chocolate was because he didn’t want to have Luke drinking alcohol.
Star Wars referred to frigates before the Zahn books, did that bother you? Not being snitty, just wondering.
Yeah, but “chocolate” is so specifically Earthian. It’s like the joke in the XKCD comic with why the “Millenium Falcon” is named after an Earth bird none of the characters have seen. Why not have Luke drink “hot glurgimesh” made of sweetened “blargish” beans?
Puts me in mind of a gag from the novelization of A New Hope by Alan Dean Foster. When Luke agrees to follow Obi-wan and become a Jedi they have an exchange along the lines of:“I foresee you will take to your training like a duck to water.”“What’s a duck?”“Never mind.”
Both just seemed too “earthy” for my taste.I just felt like he could have maybe come up with a Star Wars version of hot chocolate somehow, instead of just outright making a direct reference.
Same with Corvette. I’m aware of the general history of the term, but still I couldn’t help but think of the sports car. And I thought those ships were already tagged as blockade runners, but I guess it was just a generalized label and not specific to any one ship.
The hot chocolate thing was a joke.The Tantive IV was referred to as a Corelian Corvette frequently in supplemental materials back then, and as others have posted “corvette” is another term for a warship.
“A Barve like that.”- Salacious Crumb Campbell, of the Mos Eisley Campbell’s. Probably.
Disney will pick what it wants from the EU and make it canon. While not a box office failure, the Disney trilogy largely sucked.
I’d like to see some semblance of a Thrawn Trilogy since that read like a movie anyway.
Give us a Shadows Of The Empire. That should be easy since you get 2 main new characters, Xizor and Dash Rendar, mostly “covered” main characters like Darth Vader, Han Solo (frozen in the book), Chewie, and Boba Fett. The only obstacle would be casting or de-aging Mark Hamill and Billy D, and most likely leaving out Leia. ALL of that can be changed around but the main people you need are Boba Fett and Darth Vader.
Disney wanted overall, to move on because the classic actors are old.
I’d want them to do a Yuuzhan Vong New Jedi Order. That enemy is just fantastic with their living weapons.
The sarlacc taking 1000 years to digest its prey has always been ridiculous and what would it matter if it did because unless you’re an immortal who doesn’t require food or water you’re not going to experience 1000 years of being digested. That stormtrooper appeared to be dead so it seems like the showrunners realized that too.
As others have pointed out, the EU concocted wild stories like that for what seems like everything we saw in the original trilogy. Everyone and everything was narrowly deciding the galaxy’s fate in some way or another. Every cantina patron, every bounty hunter, every stormtrooper and Rebel pilot, every background extra holding an ice cream maker became intergalactic Forrest Gumps. It all became ridiculous and hard to take seriously, and even harder to keep track of. It was all wildly different and competing visions from way, way too many cooks, very few of which actually… felt like Star Wars.
Disney, in its streaming series in particular, is focusing more on recapturing what people liked about Star Wars in the first place. It’s not trying to expand on Star Wars and offer new insights on characters you may not have known or cared about before, it’s trying to make more Star Wars that faithfully emulates what’s good about the original movies. Except, I feel like Disney has done a pretty good job of expanding on the core material. Just using The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett as an example, both shows have elaborated on Tusken Raider culture, something I didn’t even know I wanted until I saw it.
And that’s ignoring what Clone Wars and Rebels have done to expand on the lore of the Force itself. And Mandalorians. And Clones. And Darth Maul.
The EU explanation sounds pretty hokey. The current explanation is less-so, but it still suffers from the same problem. The dude is dead. He always was and always will be.