14 DAY TRIAL // Nothing in the Star Wars Expanded Universe ever happened. While we gamers know that to be true, we also like to indulge in a little play-pretend from time to time and conquer the universe or save the planet, which means that we also tend to feel possessive of the various fictional material we consume.
Unfortunately, as George Lucas has shown it time and time again, investing in Star Wars is not a safe bet. The latest news from the official Star Wars blog reveals that Lucasfilm is now invalidating all of the Expanded Universe. That’s what you get for not choosing a better fantasy universe to believe in.
"[George] Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU [Expanded Universe]. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align," Lucasfilm stated in a recent blog post.
Lucasfilm intends to churn out more movies with which to disappoint their strangely loyal fans, and chronicling the sheer insane amount of spin-offs would prove to be an insurmountable ordeal.
Well, at least for someone who cared enough about the universe in order to maintain its congruence. Instead, it’s much easier to just brush it all aside and start over new.
"In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe," the blog continues.
While it is stated that the current Expanded Universe is not discarded, merely changed, this means that all of it becomes irrelevant fan-fiction and has the same weight in the Star Wars history as the story of Pinocchio has in the history of mankind.
“We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon," Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy added. "We're set to bring Star Wars back to the big screen, and continue the adventure through games, books, comics, and new formats that are just emerging. This future of interconnected storytelling will allow fans to explore this galaxy in deeper ways than ever before."
When all is said and done, the gaming world is surely taking solace in the fact that although the events in Knights of the Old Republic never took place, nothing bad happened to Jar Jar Binks.
