Expanded Universe-ing

Star Wars Expanded Universe is one of the better expanded universes out there. Eh wait, what’s an expanded universe? Ok, you know Star Wars right? The 6 Star Wars Movies? You know Star Wars Episode 2? Huge battle at the end, clone troopers versus a droid (or robots) army, epic lightsaber duel between Yoda and Count Dooku.. Ok, what about Star Wars Episode 3? Huge space battle at the start, Anakin (Hayden Christensen) being a cocky little dickhead, etc. Noticed that Anakin has a scar on his face? He didn’t get that scar from the duel on Episode 2, he got it in between the two episodes. What happened between the two episodes are covered in a series of novels, comic books, videogames and tv shows called The Clone Wars Era. The Clone Wars is a multimedia project run by LucasFilms to make shitloads of money and satisfy Star Wars geeks worldwide. It’s a fancy little era, but guess what? It’s not canon. Meaning, George Lucas can deny its existence anytime he feels like it. He’s been known to do this from time to time. For one, the Star Wars Holiday Special was so bad (and so, so good.. in a bad way), George Lucas disowned it. In his mind, the Holiday Special didn’t exist.

The best thing about Star Wars Expanded Universe is that George Lucas still has the ultimate creative control over everything published that is any bit related to Star Wars. Of course, he doesn’t do this by himself, he actually has a guy in charge of ensuring that the Star Wars EU canon follows some basic guidelines. I’m pretty sure explaining the origin of English-speaking humans in Star Wars universe is one of the things George doesn’t want anyone to discuss. Ever. Some parts of the EU are also off-limits to writers, such as Emperor Palpatine’s childhood.

By having the supreme-decision making power in ensuring the EU doesn’t go anywhere dodgy, George Lucas has prevented some major continuity fuck-ups to happen. Except for that part in the Thrawn trilogy with the origin of the clone army and the clone wars. But that was written like 10 years before Attack of the Clones came out. It’s a good thing that is the biggest continuity error in Star Wars EU. I had a look at Star Trek and Battletech EU, and it’s pretty fucked up. There’s so many continuity errors, that the only way to retcon it is by putting ‘space-time continuum error’ or time travel somewhere.

The Star Wars EU is awesome, and I wish more people have known of it *cough * More action figures from EU, please *cough *. I wish someone makes an animated movie based on one of the novels or comic books, because that would be supremely awesome. And I’m pretty sure the story is way, way better than that Clone Wars movie.

May the Force be with you.