I didn’t really follow all the original Star Wars books (now the “Legends” books), but how did the Star Wars story of Luke, Han, Leia, etc. end in those books?
sharewith thunderous applause
shareDepends on what you mean by "end". A lot of stuff happened in the books, but I'll do my best to summarize the major events that happened after the OT as far as the "Skywalker Saga" is concerned:
- Imperial Remnant arc: Luke and friends deal with the remnants of the Empire after the death of Palpatine and Vader. During this time, Luke starts rebuilding the Jedi Order while Han and Leia have three kids: Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin Solo. Luke also meets Mara Jade, Palatine's former assassin, and marries her. Later on, Luke and Mara have a son, Ben Skywalker.
- New Jedi Order arc: outer-galactic bad guys called the Yuuzhan Vong (essentially space orcs) terrorize the galaxy, and it's up to Luke and friends to defeat them. Chewbacca dies in the conflict. Jacen Solo is captured and tortured, which along with the death of his younger brother Anakin, traumatized him.
- Legacy of the Force arc: Jacen Solo becomes Darth Caedus (the original Kylo Ren) and causes a second Galactic Civil War. Luke's wife, Mara, dies in a fight against Caedus. Luke and Jaina Solo fight and kill Darth Caedus.
- Fate of the Jedi arc: Luke is exiled in the aftermath of the second Galactic Civil War after being blamed for Jacen's fall to the dark side, but a lost Sith tribe shows up as well as an ancient entity called Abeloth. Once Luke is welcomed back, he and friends fight against the combined threat and win. Jaina Solo marries ace pilot Jagged Fel and is made a Jedi Master.
Off page, Luke eventually dies of old age with his dignity intact after everything that's happened. Han and Leia remain together for the rest of their lives.
That's pretty much the gist of what happened after the OT in terms of the "Skywalker Saga" as we know it. There's a lot I left out, of course. As you can see, the sequel trilogy took some inspiration from the old EU, which makes one wonder why Disney de-canonized it in the first place. It would've made Kathleen Kennedy's job much easier since there IS in fact a lot of books, comics, and games to draw from for movies and TV shows.
There's also the Star Wars: Legacy comics that take place a hundred-or-so years after these books, featuring the fan-favorite sexy twi'lek Sith, Darth Talon, and a Skywalker descendant named Cade, in case you wanna see how how many years the old EU continues after Luke's story.
The fate of Luke and everyone else sounds pretty generic, but I’m sure the books have their fans.
shareAgreed, but it was the execution, and more importantly the passion put into the books, that has fans defending them over the sequel trilogy.
Even the issues that fans had with the books were accepted/forgiven over time, because the fans acknowledged the effort put into the books when compared to the Disney products. Plus it helped that the writers didn't disrespect the fans either.
Do those comics where Palpatine came back not count? Dark Empire or whatever? They were awful.
shareThe Dark Empire comics were part of the “Imperial Remnant” arc, and I agree, they weren’t all that good, writing or art-wise. There were some panels where Luke looked pretty cool though.
shareThey counted and were referenced during the Jedi Academy trilogy books. But yeah, they were really very overrated comics. It's just that everyone was thirsty for sequels to the movies in those days.
shareThey are sooo bad. I remember being so disappointed in them I gave my hardcover away the second I finished it. Didn't Palptine die and come back more than once in the same series?!
I remember laughing at that floating meatball droid Jedi.
I have the digital edition of the comic but couldn't bring myself to finish it. The Timothy Zahn book trilogy was better, but props to all involved for making the two different stories exist together.
shareI finished it because I bought it. I have bailed on digital comics much easier and quicker, but this was years before I started reading comics digitally. I had this giant hardback graphic novel. I was gonna finish it.
I'm not a huge reader outside of comics, but I did read the Zahn trilogy a loooong time ago. I thought it was pretty good. I remember thinking it was a little odd, if not funny, the two Force-sensitive villains were just copies of Jedi with more letters in their name. Same fucking name with an extra letter, HA! Luke's clone couldn't have just been nameless? And what was the point of making C'boath a clone? Why not just use the original C'Baoth? Other than that, I remember enjoying it.
I believe it was because C'Baoth died on some expedition with a bunch of other Jedi years earlier or something. Zahn wrote another book about that in itself.
shareWhy make him a clone though? Why not just make him a normal person? Why does he have to be an "insane clone" of a dead Jedi as opposed to a Jedi who simply went bad?
shareKK de-canonized them so she could steal ideas from them without having to pay royalties to the writers. If you take a look at a lot of the crap she had put together, it steals a lot of its material from the EU, despite her claiming they are now just "legends."
shareSurely that cannot be true.
Authors writing for Lucasfilm within the old EU would surely have been contracted on a fixed fee basis (maybe with some further royalties percent based on sales) to produce further tales. But they would have had no intellectual claim on these stories once they were turned in.
Yeah sure ideas would have been taken from the EU material but given it was owned by Lucasfilm, and subsequently by Disney, it's not really stealing...
In addition to what FootOfDavros said by de-canonizing them she could use ideas from them without having to use all of the ideas. In other words she would not have to make film versions of the books where people that read those books knows what will happen and/or complain that the adaptions were not faithful to the books.
shareWell, there's always gonna be someone that complains about something not being 100% faithful, but since when has that stopped Hollywood? As I've said in other threads, as long as the adaptations are given as much passion as The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and many of the Stephen King movies, most people will be satisfied.
The casual fans would've been able to see what really happened after the OT, while the more hard-core fans would finally see their favorite EU characters brought to life on the big screen.
Jesus Christ, you Lucas zealots are so weird.
Disney just bought the biggest franchise in the world, what did you think they were gonna do, make movies based on books, LOL?! Come! On!
So basically, Disney greatly improved the Star Wars universe after the events in episode 6
shareNot according to the fans 😄
Since the validity of the user scores is in debate after the movie-rating websites were caught doing shady practices; and the merchandise for the Sequel Trilogy selling poorly when compared to the Original Trilogy, Prequel Trilogy, Mandolorian, and Legends, I'd say that tells us the quality of Disney's Star Wars outside of the first 6 movies and Mando.
Even a previously unreleased Legends-era book "The Heart of the Jedi" outsold Disney's The High Republic series. If that doesn't raise any red flags then I don't know what will.
There is a lot more movie blockbuster competition nowadays than when the OT was made. Hence the lower ratings
shareReviews and ratings - almost all of which have the sequels having a better reputation than the prequels - don't count, but merch sales do.... LOL, do you hear yourself? You people are out of your mind. Fucking tinfoil hat-wearing whackjobs. Why can't you simply say you don't like the sequels? You have to make shit up to push this goofball agenda you have.
Speaking of sales, each movie in the sequel trilogy made a billion. I guess that doesn't count either? Nothing does when it proves you wrong. You people are clowns.