There are those STAR WARS uh, "fans" out there known as "movie purists" who maintain that the only "true" story of STAR WARS can be found in the movies only, and that any spinoff literature has no validity within that universe at all. Some of these fans are just folks who prefer not to read the novelizations, novels, comics, etc. Then there are a rabid minority who are militant in their online attempts to "debunk" the "Expanded Universe" of STAR WARS by any means necessary. This includes writing illogical diatribes that openly oppose Lucasfilm LTD's own policies, and by willfully misinterpreting out of context quotes by George Lucas himself. The agenda? Most of these "No EU Militants" stick their lower lip out and proclaim that the EU doesn't match THEIR take on STAR WARS. Others are disenfranchised Trekkies who feel inferior and left out due to Paramount's canon policy of "only the aired TV shows and movies are canon". So, to cure the pain in their genitals after discovering the Tech Manuals they've been rubbing themselves up against have no validity in the STAR TREK universe, they attempt to place Paramount's canon template on the STAR WARS Expanded Universe.
Then there are the little Troll-boys on forums LIKE THOSE that can be found on The Force Net who brown-nose and cajole any "VIP" from Star Wars licensing or publishing, to see things "their" way, which includes dismissing new and accurate information on Star Wars ships and weapons that they claim not to care about but can't stop discussing. These are sad, pathetic little bastards that lobby any powers-that-be to include their Star Wars Underoos into the continuity of the Star Wars universe, and beg that the wildly inaccurate RPG stats from past sourcebooks be used instead of the newer, accurate materials. The Force Net trolls also believe any "realism" in Star Wars is stupid...unless they like the source that reports it...
So, as time allows, I'll debunk several of these claims. I'll do this by actually presenting full quotes, and actually investigating said quotes. Something as alien as deodorant to the usual trollboys.
The "No EU Militants" like to point to quotes such as this one from the DARK EMPIRE SOURCEBOOK to further their aganda:
"This and all other products that take place after the events depicted in Return of the Jedi are the author's vision of what may have happened. The true fate of the heroes and villains of the Star Wars universe remains the exclusive province of George Lucas and Lucasfilm, Ltd."
Then they'll high-five one another and crack open a can of "Near Beer" as they role another d-20. I decided to actually ask the author of the DARK EMPIRE SOURCEBOOK, Mike Horne, what that quote meant:
"Love to comment on it. That was legal boilerplate LFL insisted on having in the EU books so they could yank the storylines if they didn't like what was going on. Of course I always figured that's why you have editors to begin with, but what the heck, it's his franchise. Bill Smith mentioned that to me in a phone conversation years ago. Also it allowed LFL to change its mind on things without having the fanboys get upset that things were as unstable continuity wise as the Trek franchise was."
Mike
—from a Mon, 21 Feb 2005 email exchange
An oldie but a goodie "No EU Militants" is the claim that the old STAR WARS Marvel comics have no valid EU standing whatsoever. Recent potato-headed diatribes point to a quote from a Ben Harper in Star Wars Gamer #3. (an out of print magazine) I'll present the full quote below:
"Good question! We have never disavowed the existence of Marvel comics. We have, whenever feasible, included important events and characters from the Marvel comics in our other products. Some of the Marvel storylines before anyone knew what would happen in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Obviously, in many places, those films contradicted what had happened in the comics. Which ones are more important? The films, of course. However, Lucasfilm recognizes the creativity and diversity within the Marvel comics, and feels that there is a place within the Star Wars universe for non-continuity events. You'll notice that books recognized as Star Wars canon are marked with Era symbols (so you'll know where they fall within the Star Wars timeline). The non-continuity books (at this point, the Dark Horse Star Wars Tales and Infinities: A New Hope comics) will soon be marked with a non-continuity symbol. Elements from Marvel which do not tread upon that which has been established in the films, novels, comics, et cetera, are being integrated into official Star Wars canon because we like them, they're cool, the aliens will be fun to use in the RPG, and, well, we were just feeling a bit nostalgic. After all, it's been over 20 years!"
However, more often than not, when you encounter a "No EU Militant" on the message boards, you'll just get this snippet:
"However, Lucasfilm recognizes the creativity and diversity within the Marvel comics, and feels that there is a place within the STAR WARS universe for non-continuity events."
So what is "non-continuity", anyway? Realistically, that would be anything that contradicts the canon, such as the movies, novelizations, radio plays, and the STAR WARS DK book series. "No EU Militants" however, take this to mean that the Marvel comics are "non-continuity period.
But when the FULL quote is examined and not taken out of context, one can easily see that Mr Harper states that those books which are officially considered to be STAR WARS canon are now being labelled with "Era symbols," and that "non-continuity" books are labelled with the "Infinities" symbol. Also, Harper states that elements from the Marvel STAR WARS comics which do not contradict the established "facts" of the Expanded Universe are being "integrated into official STAR WARS canon,"
Most "No EU Militants" question whether or not George Lucas had any say at all in the plotting of the STAR WARS Marvel comics series, content on simply speculating that those early "EU" forays were beneath his notice. Well, as proven elsewhere, "No EU Militants" are hardly sticklers for accuracy...
The following information comes from internet postings by Andy Mangels, author of many STAR WARS books, including the STAR WARS: The Essential Guide To Characters:
The issue of whether or not George was involved in the planning and conception of the Marvel Comics run, and whether or not he liked, hated, or was indifferent to the characters and storylines is dealt with in the following editorial. [Bracketted words are mine.]"Star Words", Dec 1977, Star Wars #6, from editor Archie Goodwin
"George Lucas himself, of course, has had plans for more than one "Star Wars" film ever since its inception several years ago. In fact, there exist several earlier screenplays under the name, "Star Wars," which bear almost no resemblance whatever to the film as it eventually emerged, and Roy [Thomas, the writer] was given these to scan to see if there was anything that could be turned into a comic-book STAR WARS #7 and beyond. While the screenplays are fascinating, they seem if anything to occur in the months and years before the movie itself, and we're pretty certain that it's really the likes of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca, the droids Artoo and Threepio, that everyone wants to see more of.
"Accordingly, Roy [Thomas] got together for lunch in Hollywood the other day with George Lucas (as well as amiable Mark Hamill, who plays Luke in the movie) to discuss the direction he and Howie [Chaykin, the artist] would take the strip. Messrs. Thomas and Chaykin had already plotted #7 and set the direction for an issue or two beyond, but they wanted to be sure that their own scheme of things did not conflict with future plans of George himself, who oversees the movies, books, and other priceless items which'll be emanating from the Star Wars Corporation in the months to come.
"Fortunately for us all (since we labor always in the shadow of the Dreaded Deadline Doom), George was enthusiastic about what Roy [Thomas] and Howie [Chaykin] have done, and the other directions he suggested for the strip were nearly identical to what our writer/artist team wanted to do anyway. . . "
The following issue introduced a series of Han and Chewie spotlight stories. Issue #7 (the plotted-before-talking-to-George-issue cited above) was hardly a detriment to the SW galaxy. It was the following issue, #8, plotted with George Lucas, that introduced a silly supporting cast including a giant green rabbit named Jaxxon (an almost identical precursor to Neal Adam's later Bucky O'Hare), crazy old Jedi Don-Wan Kihotay, and a young farmer named "The Starkiller Kid" (a name from earlier SW drafts). The story was a pastiche of a film (The Magnificent Seven, I believe).Also, in the "Star-Words" column for that issue, editor Goodwin writes:
"Far from simply batting out the STAR WARS comic as you suggest, Roy spent (as did Howie) long hours for no pay at the Lucasfilm offices on the Universal movie-lot, talking with writer/director Lucas and with media projects director Charles Lippincott about the way the series should be handled. He's spent more hours with them, as well as the movie's stars Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, since then, getting all the feedback he can on how things should go in future stories. Since both movie and paperback sequels are projected and George naturally wishes to keep them all consistent, this is a far more complicated project even than writing/editing books like CONAN or TARZAN, let alone other comic-mags."
Roy Thomas left as writer with issue #10, which concluded the Solo solo stories. Archie Goodwin then took over as writer for quite a string of stories. Lucas thought so much of his scripts that he later picked Goodwin to revitalize the daily STAR WARS comic strip.
As seen above, George not only had full control over the STAR WARS comics and their storylines and characters, but also INPUT. Thus, while it is possible that he may not have liked Jaxxon, it's much more likely he got a kick out of it, because he PERSONALLY approved it . .
. . Unless we want to believe that editor Archie Goodwin was lying about George's approval and somehow snuck that lie in the letters column past George's nose. Which I don't think is very likely.
—internet postings, "Lucas and Marvels", 12-1-95
STAR WARS INSIDER #45 Quote
A quote from a George Lucas press junket stirred many "No EU Militants" into staging a semantics war, showcasing just how pathetic most of these idiots are. In the quote in question, "No EU Militants" maintain that Lucas makes no distinction between "movies" and "whole Star Wars universe" in the quote. Then, they'll cite the quote incorrect quote using that bastion of journalistic integrity, "E!Online:"
"Do you have a map of this universe, every single creature, where they come from, what they eat, what their society back home is like? Or are you just making it up as you go?Well, I think somewhere in some of the dark recesses of my company's files there is something like that, but I've never seen it. And I don't really know. Even though I live this, and I know the worlds very well, and I know what everything in them is, half the time I'm in the fortunate position to just make it up. So, when somebody asks me a question, I just...I know what the consistencies are. I know what is consistent with a particular environment and what isn't. And really that's the job of the director, to keep everything in line. I can do that on the movie. But I can't do that in the Star Wars universe."
However, that SAME exchange, from the SAME press junket reads differently in the Lucasfilm-owned publication, Star Wars Insider:
Star Wars Insider #45, pg. 21:"Part of the job of the director is to sort of keep everything in line, and I can do that in the movies—but I can't do it on the whole Star Wars universe."
Now, some potato-headed "No EU Militants" claim I have outright lied about this quote, and instead want to believe the "E-Online" version which they believe give them wiggle room to invalidate the EU because of the inclusion of a period. (I'm not making this up, folks.) So, as proof, here's the entire page #21 from Star Wars Insider #45:
(Click icon above to view image)
Note the page number on the bottom right.
Here's a close-up of the paragraph in question:
The quote in question is a part of press conference at the Hyatt Regency hotel in New York City, begins on page 18, and is titled, "Lucas Takes Manhattan". The person responsibe for the transcript of the press conferece was Scott Chernoff and Kevin Fitzpatrick. Chernoff held the title, "Managing Editor" on SW1#45, and Fitzpatrick was listed as a Senior Writer, along with Stephen J. Sansweet.
But this doesn't deter the malodorous "No EU Militants" horde; even in the face of the evidence above, they'll cling to a MISQUOTE from E-Online, and ignore a DIRECT QUOTE from a Lucasfilm-owned magazine from the Managing Editor and Senior Writer
STAR WARS REALISM QUOTES
"..you have to be able to cut from shot to shot and maintain all these key scale relationships,even though the models themselves are often DIFFERENT scales. Our standard X-Wing for instance, is about 18" long; but we now have a 4' X-Wing for doing certain shots and getting closer to it. Regardless of the MODEL size, however, the X-Wing has to look in proper scale to a 2' Millenium Falcon, or an A-Wing which is actually half the size of an X-Wing but it is SUPPOSED to be bigger." --Richard Edlund, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILM, from Cinefex Magazine, 1983
pg. 72-73: "There has been a space battle of some kind in all six of the pictures; but, for the first time, we set a space battle in the upper regions of the atmosphere - in this case, Coruscant's atmosphere. So, it was almost in space, but not quite. We used that as an excuse to do smoke, fire, drag, flak bursts and a lot of other things you can't do in space." -- John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILM, from Cinefex Magazine, 2005
pg. 93: "Most expect that lava would move very slowly," remarked [Roger] Guyett, "but, in reality, lava flows at all different rates of speed. Magma actually flows like water sometimes, because it is so hot. So there was a real-world basis for making the lava move rapidly; and of course, it also made the shots more exciting." --Cinefex Magazine, 2005
"... it all has to show impeccable logic and unflawed realism, even if it deals with a different galaxy and an era 3,000 years in the past or the future. Everything has to be reinvented from start to finish, the clothes, the customs, the silver that they eat with, the culture of the Empire, of the Jedi Knights, etc. This can take years to do. And you have to pay attention to errors that can ruin the entire structure."
"Star Wars is a fiction film, but its key is taking hold of what's most realistic and possible inside the terms set by the fiction. Or more clearly, it must be as credible as possible. You have to be able to breathe the air on the author's planet- to be able to smell it. The film has to make us believe it really existed, that we've really gone to another galaxy to shoot [the film]. The success of the imaginary, it's to make something totally fabricated seem real. And that everything stays inside the invented system. That everything be credible and totally fantastic at the same time."
"What I mean to say is that it's easier to write science fiction than it is to film it. In literature, there are ways to leave shady areas and blurred outlines that you can't transpose in cinema because in a film everything is visible. Thus, a lot more difficult. You have to operate within specific limits, with characters working in a finite space, all within the bounds of realism. [The novels] Dune and Lord of the Rings are constructed using this model; they create an entirely new world. But when you try to transpose this world visualls, it's much more difficult [to make them seem real]. You have to find the material texture of the world: objects, fabrics, vehicles, tools. And if you make a mistake about an object or a fabric, it'll betray you." --All quotes above; George Lucas, from "Ecran", September 15, 1977
"We had to coordinate a lot of our model construction with what was being done in England and how their sets related to what we were going to do. Scale was very important. Based on what lens the cameraman was going to use, what the size of the set in England was, and the size of the human beings in relation to the set; we could figure out mathematically exactly what size the model should be."
"The beginning of many models is mathematics. I tell people who say they never use the math they learned in school -- we do! Sometimes we approach a project like a detective story. When we were making a model that had to match in scale something we couldn't go to measure ourselves, we would use a reference photo. That's a picture of the set, or whatever, which has in it somewhere a guide to size. The size guide could be a person exactly six feet tall, or it could be a long stick painted black and white at one-foot intervals. That would be the "constant." From this information we work out an algebraic formula that solves the problem of what size the model should be. There are just a few basic formulas from first year algebra or geometry that are essential to know, and of course how to apply them, and when. People who say they can eyeball something eventually make mistakes. It needs to be more precise than that. Were doing something now on Indy II (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) involving a miniature set and about 25,000 pounds of water. The safety factor involved in this kind of SPFX work demands mathematical exactness."--BANTHA TRACKS; Number 22, Copyright © November 1983
EXECUTOR LENGTH DEBATE QUOTES
Tasty Taste (Leland Chee): There's a size field for the Executor entry in the Holocron. That field now say s ~19 km long. It used to say 12 km and before that 8 km. In the Continuity Notes field of the Holocron, it lists some (though not all) sources where the different lengths were stated. There are some notes as to the entire discussion. The next time someone wishes to print a length for the ship, we look at the size field and say, the size is ~19 km long. Could this change yet again? It's unlikely, though never impossible. Taking a cue from the films, things in the EU can always change.
In a nut shell, I recall it going something like this:
A: The size is X
B: These sources say X, these other source say Y.
(group discusses)
A: We've agreed that Y seems to reflect more closely what we see in the film, so Y.
C: It's neither X, nor Y, it's actually Z. What's to be done?
A: Nothing, until someone writes about it.
(C finally gets in a position to write about it and submits draft)
A (to group): C is suggesting we use size Z.
(group discusses)
A: We've agreed that new size Z is more accurate to the film, so that's what we're going with.Really, I assure, you there's nothing diabolical going on here. Rationale discussions take place, sometimes there's even heated debate, and then a decision made. And then, if that decision needs to be revisited for whatever reason, then it is revisted. The Executor discussion is a prime example of this process.
Tasty Taste (Leland Chee): Yes, of course we support all of Curtis Saxton's contributions to Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy.Question from whiny message board trollboy: Why is the work of several authors who all agree on the numbers being disregarded?
Tasty Taste (Leland Chee): If you are talking about the length of the Executor, you can't really say they all agree. Lengths of 8000 meters and 12,800 meters have both appeared in official sources. For that one issue, we ultimately had to look at the evidence presented in the films.
"The Imperial Star Destroyer Executor, the flagship of Darth Vader, was conceived as eleven times the size of the Original Star Destroyer of Star Wars (For reference, the conning tower that rises from the Executor was supposed to be as big as the original Destroyer's conning tower.)" - The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives, page 44
Over one hundred times more massive than a common Star Destroyer and almost 12 times as long,--Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy, pg.47
Executor length: 11 miles.-- Scrye magazine, #68, page 54.
"Many things come in large sizes. Some things come in extra-large sizes. But the Super Star Destroyer Executor is so big, it is almost off the scale! It is the largest starship in the galaxy, at an incredible 19,000 metres (11.8 miles) long.--Star Wars: Star Pilot, pg.44-47
DEATH STARS SIZES DEBATE QUOTES
"The scale on the models ranged from 1:8 on the life pod and Lifepod Bay to 1:16 for most of the space vehicles to an incredible 1:180,000 for the Death Star (making the full size Death Star 102+ miles in diameter)" --Grant McCune, Chief Model Maker, Star Wars, from Bantha Tracks #6 [Autumn 1979]
The Empire's gigantic battle station code named Death Star is 160 kilometers in diameter, large enough to be mistaken for a small moon. --STAR WARS Incredible Cross-Sections, pg.9
"The Deathstar [2], I think, will be a lot more interesting than the one in the first Star Wars - mainly because it is under construction ... Plus, it will be MUCH bigger. In Star Wars, it was really difficult to establish the scale. It was supposed to be miles in diameter, but with a full sphere it was hard to tell. The NEW one is SUPPOSED TO BE MORE like FIVE HUNDRED MILES in diameter, but since we're not dealing with a sphere all the time, we'll be able to establish landmarks and get a better sense of scale."--Richard Edlund; Cinefex, July 1983
...the second Death Star is over 900 kilometers (550 miles) in diameter—nearly a tenth the size of the moon itself.--Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy, pg.43
DORLING KINDERSLEY BOOKS
Q: How did working on this book compare to working on the other Star Wars: Incredible Cross Sections book?
The vehicles books are much quicker to do than the Inside the Worlds books, but are still a heck of a lot of work to do in the time allowed. While illustrating a book, I don't get any days off and usually work about sixty to seventy hours a week. The books for the new movies were in many ways easier than the Classics because we were the first to do them. Our work is considered definitive and used for reference by Lucasfilm and ILM!!! We didn't have to reconcile our work with twenty years worth of previously published material which often conflicted with each other.--Interview with illustrator Hans Jenssen
Q: How did working on this book compare to working on the other Star Wars: Incredible Cross Sections book?
The vehicles take a lot less time to draw then painting the Inside the Worlds cutaways. A lovely moment for me was when I asked Doug Chiang, " Where are the weapons going to be placed on Slave I." He replied," You should know, you put them there." It turned out Lucasfilm used my Classic vehicle book as reference for the Slave I in Episode II..--Interview with illustrator Richard Chasemore
