Having their cake...

I just went to starwars.com for the first time in a while, and I admit to being equal parts excited, disgruntled and confused.

I'll deal with the excitement part first. I just noticed that they've updated the front page of their website, which for some reason, gave me a little thrill of excitement when I saw it. I've been following Star Wars long enough to have been through home page redesigns, so I don't know why this one is any different. Maybe it's because I've been doing it long enough that "new look" is somehow associated with "new Star Wars movies." I only know that it was the first flair-up of the old excitement for the Saga that I've felt in a long time.

The confused bit came from two stories on that saidsame website. The first was the official announcement that the massive Expanded Universe of novels, comics and games that take place after Return of the Jedi officially, once and for all, is not canon. J.J. Abrams & Co. will not be forced into trying to incorporate Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade into whatever story they're making if they don't want to. They can do so if they wish, but the filmmakers, wisely, have been given a clean slate to create a new, and hopefully, exciting story.

So far, this is exactly what I've been hoping for. My official position on the EU can be found here, but in short, I follow the same take that Lucasfilm claims to be taking; namely, that the six Star Wars films are, once and for all, IT when it comes to the story of the Skywalker family. That is the only part of the massive fictional output of massive narrative factories of Lucasfilm from the past 37 years that cannot be ignored. Sorry, Jar-Jar haters — that means the Prequels, too.

Except that they left themselves a rather large loophole. The filmmakers are free to use whatever part of the EU they wish. If they want to use elements from the EU, they can — the same way that Lucas himself took the name of Coruscant for the capital planet of the Republic/Empire from the Zahn trilogy.

The confusing bit comes from the fact that they have, in one stroke, thrown out the entire EU for the filmmakers, but allowed them to keep the parts they wanted to use, while creating a NEW EU that will be overseen by a new story department to keep it in harmony with the films, but they're still going to keep publishing stuff from the OLD EU because they can still make money on it.

Did I miss anything?

So now we have two EUs, not one. One is a "real" EU, and the other is basically professionally produced fan-fiction. It is not the canonical Saga that the people who have loved it for so many years have maintained that it was. That is now the job of the new EU, which will produce officially sanctioned back story for the characters.

Forgive me for being cynical, but Lucasfilm has tried this before. When Star Wars fiction came out, they took a hard look at the morass of unconnected stories that made up the Star Trek novels, and decided they were going to have all the EU novels be part of one, big story. My main problem with the EU stemmed from this decision, because what was laid down by these authors as canon was, in my humble opinion, unworthy of so great an object. So even if you hated one of the books, you were stuck with it, because it became canon for the other writers. This was especially true for the granddaddy of the EU, the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which created characters and situations (Luke's wife, Han and Leia's kids, etc.) that dominated all the other books, good or bad.

So now, all that is gone, and we're going to try again with a new set of books. Only it's going to count this time. I understand that this is probably being done to give the books an added sense of weight; of importance. With fan fiction easily and cheaply available, both really, really good, and really, really bad, the stuff that you pay for has to be worth it; you have to get something extra from it. So the first book will be an official backstory for two primary characters in the new Rebels series. We'll see how it goes, but the whole thing smacks of having your cake, and eating it, too.

The disgruntled part comes from the great, gaping void of news about the new Star Wars movie. It has, according to most reliable sources, has not only been cast, is set to begin shooting in May. The official site has next to nothing on this fact. The only information on Episode VII was this press release, which promised a "trio of new young leads along with some very familiar faces."

I really, really like following selected things about the filming of any new Star Wars film. It helps feed my interest over the long haul, and even helps get me excited about it, in moderation. I try to stay away from spoiler-ridden sites like theforce.net, especially as the release date nears and entire shooting scripts find their way onto the site, and instead confine myself to the Official Site. Usually, about a month before release, I decide even the Official Site is too dangerous, and adopt a strategy of plugging my ears, putting my hands over my eyes, and saying "La-La-La-La-La" as loud as I can. Which makes driving kind of tricky, as you might guess.

I have the exact opposite problem right now. There is absolutely NOTHING out there to whet my appetite for a film that will supposedly be released at the end of next year. Rather than turn to dubious "news" sites, or even the semi-official Force.net, I am, for the moment, opting to wait. I'd really like to start thinking about the "what ifs" of this film; to pleasantly mull the future from a few tantalizing clues about what is to come. Apparently, Mr. Abrams and Ms. Kennedy have decreed that we must still be patient. Unfortunately, for the moment, I have no choice but to do otherwise.

Maybe I should read an old Star Wars novel while I wait.