Once Again, Yet Another New Lucas Quote

George! Chill!

Seriously, this guy's on a roll. But boy, he scared me for a minute.

See, for hundreds of years, men have pondered the utter peculiarity of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. God is the father (er, uh, God? Oh wait, Yahweh, I suppose), the son (Jesus), and the wholly mysterious "holy ghost" (some celestial gaseous anomaly? I dunno). 1 = 3 = 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 = WTF.

Now I don't mean to offend anybody with that . . . I'm just sayin', the math is a bit foggy. Well, more than a bit foggy. It's like Gilgamesh being 2/3rds deity . . . your brain just sort of pauses as it stumbles, then it picks itself up and you carry on.

This is why I stopped reading this Lucas quote part of the way through, and only came back to the rest a few minutes later. To wit:

"The Star Wars universe has expanded far beyond the movies. How much leeway do the game makers and novel writers have?

They have their own kind of world. There's three pillars of Star Wars. I'll probably get in trouble for this but it's OK! There's three pillars: the father, the son and the holy ghost. I'm the father, Howard Roffman [president of Lucas Licensing] is the son and the holy ghost is the fans, this kind of ethereal world of people coming up with all kinds of different ideas and histories."

Now, those of you who've been keeping track of late will recognize the pillar thing, which is a bit foggy and not as concrete as the old "two universes", "parallel universe" sort of lingo, but when Lucas started talking about a Star Wars Trinity I felt like he was going into areas of Uber-Vague that could very well be impenetrable to mere mortals. It was gonna be like reading to the end of a perfectly good Stephen King novel where he writes himself into such a corner that he has to end it with a protagonist's nonsensical head-trip that somehow makes the bad things up and go away . . . and, like those absurd endings, it was gonna suck.

Laughing ruefully, I rose to go quench my thirst. But finally I returned, and read on:

"Now these three different pillars don't always match, but the movies and TV shows are all under my control and they are consistent within themselves. Howard tries to be consistent but sometimes he goes off on tangents and it's hard to hold him back. He once said to me that there are two Star Trek universes: there's the TV show and then there's all the spin-offs. He said that these were completely different and didn't have anything to do with each other. So I said, "OK, go ahead." In the early days I told them that they couldn't do anything about how Darth Vader was born, for obvious reasons, but otherwise I pretty much let them do whatever they wanted. They created this whole amazing universe that goes on for millions of years!"

. . . and at this point I realized that the man was back. No head-trip here . . . no leftovers of indistinct pillar ideas or holy ghost anomalies. This one he ended with a shotgun to the face of King's bad thing. Once again . . . what is this, the fifth time now? . . . he referenced the parallel universe concept (if even a tad bit indirectly), thereby lobbing yet another torpedo down the Death Star's gullet for good measure.

There are two universes with internal consistencies . . . the Licensing continuity has its OCP, and then there's Lucas. And, as he so generously notes, there's all the assorted fan stuff.

Dual (or triple) canons, in simpler terms.

Can the remnant hardcore deniers (militant EU Completists and any oddball Purists, if extant) please accept this and move on? Or are you going to try to hold out until the 2030's like some Hiroo Onoda wannabes?

Oooooooh, waitaminute . . . we're not even done yet! In my haste I didn't even read the rest!

First, let's start with the whole quote as given, without my earlier artificial split:

"The Star Wars universe has expanded far beyond the movies. How much leeway do the game makers and novel writers have?

They have their own kind of world. There's three pillars of Star Wars. I'll probably get in trouble for this but it's OK! There's three pillars: the father, the son and the holy ghost. I'm the father, Howard Roffman [president of Lucas Licensing] is the son and the holy ghost is the fans, this kind of ethereal world of people coming up with all kinds of different ideas and histories. Now these three different pillars don't always match, but the movies and TV shows are all under my control and they are consistent within themselves. Howard tries to be consistent but sometimes he goes off on tangents and it's hard to hold him back. He once said to me that there are two Star Trek universes: there's the TV show and then there's all the spin-offs. He said that these were completely different and didn't have anything to do with each other. So I said, "OK, go ahead." In the early days I told them that they couldn't do anything about how Darth Vader was born, for obvious reasons, but otherwise I pretty much let them do whatever they wanted. They created this whole amazing universe that goes on for millions of years!"

And now, the continuation:

"Are you happy for new Star Wars tales to be told after you're gone?

I've left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no Episodes VII-IX. That's because there isn't any story. I mean, I never thought of anything. And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn't at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn't come back to life, the Emperor doesn't get cloned and Luke doesn't get married..."

Oh snap! That's really gotta hurt the militant EU Completists. Of course he's said this sort of thing before, but considering how some people just refuse to listen to Lucas I just have to point out that he said it again.

But really, let's not pretend that I'm not having fun and maybe gloating a bit yet again. After all, not only am I getting more data, but given how much I've always 'enjoyed' being the favorite target of a group of rabid and venomous EU Completists, I hope you'll forgive me for wearing this smile.

Hat tips on this post to TheForce.Net (thanks for the RSS Feed!), "Zaius" and "darthpsychotic" at MillenniumFalcon.com, and, of course, Matthew Leyland and Total Film Magazine . . . feel free to purchase their May 2008 issue for yourself!