Kathleen Kennedy on New Canon

While her phrasings remind me of the iffy use of the term "canon" that Sue Rostoni was rocking circa the 90's, we do have one of the first statements on canon from Kathleen Kennedy.   And to me, it seems to run contrary to what we've been hearing lately insofar as the Story Group creating a 'united universe'.

http://screenrant.com/star-wars-spinoffs-episodes-connection/

“George [Lucas] was so clear as to how that works. The canon that he created was the Star Wars saga. Right now, episode seven falls within that canon. The spin-off movies, or we may come up with some other way to call those films, they exist within that vast universe that he created.
“There is no attempt being made to carry characters (from the standalone films) in and out of the saga episodes. Consequently, from the creative standpoint, it’s a roadmap that George made pretty clear.”

The way I take that, she's saying that the standalone Star Wars films that have been reported are basically going to be EU material or otherwise outside the primary canon, which implies that there is still going to be a distinction of canons.

However, the quote above -- however clear George made it -- is rather sloppily put, or sloppily quoted by the journalist.   There seems a confounding of the term canon with the notion of the six film saga, and a confounding of what isn't canon as existing in "that vast universe", by which she presumably actually means something more like "sandbox".

Of course, I can hear the old EU Completist crowd just having kittens over my parsing of the quote, but then I do have a rather good track record with that sort of thing, much to their consternation.

And We're Back

Been a little while.  Anything going on lately?

Just kidding, of course.  There's been a great deal of movement on the Star Wars canon front of late, and I have a lot of updating to do.

For starters, there's been the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney and the installation of Kathleen Kennedy at the helm.   And, just recently, there's news that Kennedy has created a Star Wars Story Group with rumors that the whole system of dual canons is going away in the future.  I'll be holding forth on these and other topics soon.

As for CanonWars, it's been continuing in the form of Twitter, @canonwars, but without a whole lot going on.   I've done some other writings elsewhere and will be bringing them over as opportunity permits.

As for the long absence . . . well, put simply, the Star Trek canon changes haven't been interesting enough for me to break down and write about until just recently.   As for Star Wars, the canon questions surrounding it had been long since answered and there really wasn't much for me to do except reiterate the same things over and over.

Indeed, much of my research had found its way to Wikipedia, occasionally even with attribution, so the sea change in attitudes was quite noticeable.

Amazingly, even the hardcases were admitting to the reality of the Star Wars dual canons.   Back in the day, for instance, certain EU-philic forums would have made holy war upon you for daring to suggest dual canons or even mentioning a distinction of rank (e.g. comments of Lucas versus comments from Licensing personnel), but just recently I spied the below, posted without retort, and in plain sight.  I was amazed and amused that it brought out nary a whisper . . .

"WORDS MOTHER****ER! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THEM?
Lucas specifically state that there were two distinct continuities, his own and the EU's. His consisted of the movies and I'm assuming the TV movies and anything else he had a direct hand in. The EU was it's own that contained the movies and anything else. This means that if the EU decided that Palpatine comes back in a year after ROTJ then fine. What you are failing to understand the difference between is Lucas and Lucas Licensing. If Lucas did something in the movies, then Lucas Licensing and all the other companies made sure everything fell in line with that, not because of some grand command from Lucas, but because every Star Wars fan in existence, except you apparently, wants to take the creators word as to what happened over some second rate hack writer like Kevin J. Anderson or Karren Travis. Holding to the idea that Lucas has to read and know every piece of EU so that his movies don't step on Kevin J Anderson's toes or ruffle Dark Horse's feathers if ****ing asinine."

 That was definitely worth a smile, seeing the same rude holy-war attitude rained down upon someone who wasn't recognizing the (old) dual canon reality.

But now, with comments from some members of the Story Group and some recent comments from Kathleen Kennedy that seemingly run contrary to them, the Star Wars canon is back in play.

Stay tuned!