| Expanded Universe (star Wars) |
Article Index for Expanded |
Website Links For Universe |
Information AboutExpanded Universe (star Wars) |
|
The Expanded Universe (also known as the '''EU''') encompasses all of the officially licensed, fictional background of the '', Toy s, and other media. This material expands and continues the stories told in the films, taking place anywhere from 4,968 Years before ''The Phantom Menace'' to about 130 years after ''Return of the Jedi''. HISTORY Development The early development of the Expanded Universe was sporadic and unrefined, particularly because there was so little official material for the creators to build on. For example, the "Expanded Universe" is generally considered to have begun with Alan Dean Foster's February 1978 ''Star Wars'' spin-off novel, '' Splinter Of The Mind's Eye '' (although technically it began with Marvel Comics ' "''Star Wars'' #7" in January 1978). This novel drew inspiration primarily from an early draft of the ''Star Wars'' script. (It should be noted that although George Lucas 's name is on the cover of the original ''Star Wars'' novelization, Alan Dean Foster Ghost-wrote it. He was given a copy of the working script and a tour of the production. Most of the actual description was from the mind of Foster. It could be said that this was the unofficial start of the Expanded Universe.) Much of the early EU material from the early '80s contained analogies to the real world, rather than embracing the wholistic fiction of the ''Star Wars'' films. Much of this material now seems rather detached from the rest of the EU. A turning point was reached when West End Games began publishing the ''Star Wars Roleplaying Game'' in 1987 . In order for players of the Roleplaying Game to create new adventures, West End Games needed to provide supplemental material describing the ''Star Wars'' universe in previously unknown detail. For example, the Aurebesh alphabet was originally a random piece of set dressing in ''Return of the Jedi''. Stephen Crane copied those symbols and turned them into a complete and coherent alphabet (which would later be used in the feature films). Developing details like this in a consistent fashion turned West End Games' Star Wars products into a de facto reference library for other EU developers. Around this same time, Dark Horse Comics acquired the ''Star Wars'' license and used it to launch a number of ambitious sequels to the original trilogy, including the very popular Dark Empire stories. Shortly thereafter, in the early '90s , Bantam published Timothy Zahn's '' Thrawn Trilogy ''. Widely publicized as the "sequels which were never made", Zahn's novels reignited ''Star Wars'' fandom and sparked a revolution in ''Star Wars'' literature. All this development began to feedback on itself: West End Games was producing roleplaying supplements detailing the material from Dark Horse's comics and Zahn's novels. Novelists and comic creators were using West End Games' supplements as reference material. Sequels to the novels were being published as comics and vice versa. And the scope of the Expanded Universe grew at a prodigious rate. To date, the bulk of the Expanded Universe has detailed the ''Star Wars'' universe after the end of ''Return of the Jedi'', as numerous topics, including the rise of the Galactic Empire, the personal histories of Anakin Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine , and The Clone Wars had been declared off-limits by George Lucas prior to the development of the Prequel Trilogy . It was decided in the late '90s that using the Empire as the Villain s had become repetitive and monotonous. Hence a new threat, the Yuuzhan Vong , was introduced in the '' New Jedi Order '', more specifically, in the first book of the series '' Vector Prime ''. The EU and the prequels Prior to the release of '''', Lucasfilm specifically prohibited development of the time period prior to ''A New Hope'' in the Expanded Universe. With the release of Episode I, however, that changed a broad range of new possibilities opened. Since ''The Phantom Menace'' was set in a time of peace, it was hard to invent any kind of threat for the Hero es to fight against. Thus most material that built on ''The Phantom Menace'' was either set before or during the film, rather than after. ''''. In this series, many battles throughout the galaxy are shown, with the Force shown to seemingly its full extent in fantastic fights, such as Mace Windu destroying a whole droid army. The first ( 2004 ) season of the series concludes by introducing the newest villain, General Grievous , an important character in Episode III. Grievous was also a main player on episodes 21-25, released in 2005 and leading directly to Episode III. Following the release of ''Episode III'', events between the two trilogies are now being elaborated, like the Great Jedi Purge . In addition to adding new possibilities, the prequel trilogy contradicted a number of statements involving the Clone Wars in existing novels. In Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, for example, the dates given for the war were inaccurate. This was since retconned by explaining that the dates were given using the Noghri calendar. WORKS Film and television - 2005 )]]
Radio and audio drama See Also: Star Wars (radio) A radio adaptation of ''A New Hope'' was first broadcast on National Public Radio in 1981 . The adaptation was written by Science Fiction author Brian Daley and directed by John Madden . It was followed by adaptations of the next two films in the original trilogy: ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and ''Return of the Jedi''. The radio adaptations were notable for including background material probably created by Lucas but not used for the films. Mark Hamill , Anthony Daniels , and Billy Dee Williams reprised their roles as Luke Skywalker , C-3PO , and Lando Calrissian , respectively; John Williams composed an original score; and Ben Burtt , who designed the sound for all of the ''Star Wars'' movies, did the same for the radio adaptations. In 1983 , NPR broadcast an entirely original ''Star Wars'' radio drama, '' Rebel Mission To Ord Mantell ''. Like the radio adaptations of the films, ''Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell'' was written by Brian Daley. For more than a decade, ''Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell'' was the only ''Star Wars'' drama not adapted from a feature film. Then, between 1995 and 1998 more than a half dozen audio dramas were released as audio tapes and CDs. These audio dramas were adapted from Dark Horse comic books, and include: ''Tales of the Jedi'' (1995), ''Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina'' (1995), ''Dark Empire'' (1996), ''Dark Empire II'' (1996), ''Empire's End'' (1997), ''Dark Forces'' (1998), and ''Crimson Empire'' (1998). Adaptations of the prequel films have not been made at this point. Books See Also: List of Star Wars books ''Star Wars''-based fiction predates the release of the first movie, with the 1976 novelization of "A New Hope" (ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster and credited to George Lucas). However, Foster's 1978 novel, '' Splinter Of The Mind's Eye '', was the first Expanded Universe work to be released. In addition to filling in the time between the movies, this additional content greatly expanded the Star Wars timeline before and after the film series. ''Star Wars'' fiction flourished during the time of the original series (1977-1983), but slowed to a trickle afterwards. In 1991 , however, Timothy Zahn 's celebrated Thrawn Trilogy debuted, sparking a new interest in the ''Star Wars'' universe. Since then, several hundred tie-in novels have been published by Bantam and Del Rey . Notable books in the series include ''The X-Wing Series'' by Michael A. Stackpole , '' The Jedi Academy Trilogy '' and ''Tales From...'' series by Kevin J Anderson , and the '' New Jedi Order '' series, by various authors. Another notable series of books is the ''Young Jedi Knights'', also by Kevin J Anderson , which follow the adventures of Jacen and Jaina Solo and their friends. Comic books and strips See Also: List of Star Wars comic books Marvel Comics published ''Star Wars'' comic book series and adaptations from 1977 to 1986 . A wide variety of creators worked on this series, including Archie Goodwin , Howard Chaykin , Al Williamson , Carmine Infantino , Gene Day , Walt Simonson , Michael Golden , Chris Claremont , Whilce Portacio , Jo Duffy , and Ron Frenz . In the '', based on the two Saturday morning cartoons of the same name. ''Star Wars'' was also a daily Newspaper Comic Strip from 1979 to 1984 . Among the creators were Goodwin, Williamson, and Russ Manning . In the late 1980s, Marvel announced it would publish a new ''Star Wars'' comic by '' by Shin-ichi Hiromoto . Computer and video games See Also: Star Wars computer and video games List of LucasArts Star Wars games Since 1983, over 120 by Parker Brothers . Other early titles include the '' Star Wars '' Nintendo Entertainment System game (published by JVC ) and three other titles for the Atari 2600. Atari produced Arcade Game s based on the original trilogy, beginning with ''Star Wars'' and ''The Empire Strikes Back'', which were both 'flight sim' style games that utilized Vector Graphics . The third, ''Return of the Jedi'', used more traditional Raster Graphics . ''Star Wars'' has also, and not surprisingly, opened the way to a myriad of Space-flight simulations that take the space wars of the saga in a more serious manner, teaching the player to fly various ''Star Wars'' Universe starfighters along the lines of more traditional "Modern Aircraft" flight simulators. The first among these were "X-Wing" and its two expansions, "B-Wing" and "Imperial Pursuit", dealing with the Rebellion's side of the war, taking place in the period right before, and up to, the destruction of the first Death Star. The second was "TIE Fighter", dealing with the Empire's starfighters at the time prior to Episode VI. Both games were released for DOS and Macintosh. "TIE Fighter" also had an expansion disk, "Defender of the Empire". In addition, both the original "X-Wing" and "TIE Fighter" games saw two collector's edition releases (one for DOS and another for Windows 9x) which featured enhanced graphics quality and added missions. Newer simulators are also available, with "X-Wing Alliance" in the lead. The first ''Star Wars'' first person shooter, ", was notable for having a few cut scenes which were made up of live action footage of certain Expanded Universe characters, such as Kyle Katarn . Rogue Squadron was a cross-platform title on Nintendo 64 and PC which allowed the player to experience a more arcade-action version of the same gameplay in "X-Wing" and "TIE Fighter". The game consisted of piloting several different ''Star Wars'' vehicles through missions on planet surfaces and in space. "Rogue Squadron" saw two sequels, both on the Nintendo Gamecube system. allowed players to compete in the ''Star Wars'' universe on a larger scale, focusing more on the strategic aspect of handling (or defeating) a rebellion, with resource management and agent-allocation, as well as large-scale conflicts between entire fleets of starships. '''' by Obsidian Entertainment are recent additions to the EU, but take place long before any other Star Wars material. The games are of the Action RPG genre, a type of RPG that is still turn based like most RPG's, but instead of waiting for the other player to take a turn the turns are based on a rate of fire. This style of RPG is somewhat new and made big waves for its inovative style. Other games are: ''''. Board and roleplaying games In a 1996 game from '' came back to shoot these scenes. Several editions of the ''Star Wars'' Role Playing Game s have been published. The 1st edition (a d6 version) was published by West End Games in 1987. The 2nd edition was published by West End Games in 1992. The 2.5 edition was published by West End Games in 1996. In late 2000, Wizards Of The Coast released the 3rd edition (a d20 version). In 2002, Wizards of the Coast released the 3.5 edition. Bill Slavicsek worked on all the editions. He included a conversion table (from the previous d6 versions to the new d20 version) at the end of the 3rd edition that helped Star Wars RPG players adapt to the new d20 version. In 2005, Hasbro developed and released a DVD TV Game based on ''Star Wars'' and utilizing the Trivial Pursuit game-play format. Multimedia projects
Mockumentaries
Star Tours See Also: Star Tours In 1987 , Lucasfilm and Disney , utilizing the power of ILM , teamed up to produce Star Tours , an amusement park simulator ride through the Star Wars Galaxy . The ride is advertised as an opportunity to take a tour to the Forest Moon Of Endor via the Starship 3000. The ship is controlled by a robot named Rex (voiced by Paul Reubens of Pee Wee Herman fame), who happens to be new at giving the tours, and your riding experience happens to be his first time at the controls. Along the way, the rider encounters many mishaps, including run-ins with Imperial Star Destroyers , and near collisions with asteroid fields, until their ship finally makes it safely back into the port. A Star Tours II has been announced by George Lucas, to be based on prequel situations. Although exactly when it will begin production or its opening date are as of yet to be confirmed. Toys In addition, many other toys have been made. The ''Star Wars'' toy phenomenon began in 1978 with the original action figures, toy lightsabers and blasters, twelve-inch figures, toy vehicles, and much more products. These toys are known as the vintage ''Star Wars'' toys. Today many of these "vintage" figures are quite rare and hard to find. Many are also worth a lot of money. Recently, a toy line called ''Star Wars: The Original Trilogy Collection'', brought back elements of the original vintage toy line, such as vintage packaging. With the coming of '''', Lego began creating little (and quite large) buildable ''Star Wars'' characters and scenes. Recently, the Lego creators have invented light-up lightsabers for their figures. Lego even made a video game (mentioned above). Many types of toys have been made. Darth Vader helmets and voice changers now inhabit the shelves, usually right next to the Ultimate Lightsaber Kit, which contains parts to design and assemble your own functional lightsaber toy. The term "Expanded Universe" was first used with Kenner 's assortments of action figures based on the various ''Star Wars'' novels, comic books, and video games. Previous toys based on novels were sold by Galoob as "Epic Collections." STORY ERAS See Also: Dates in Star Wars
The Old Republic was the government that united the ''Star Wars'' galaxy under the rule of the Galactic Senate . In this era, the Jedi are numerous, and serve as guardians of peace and justice. The Tales of the Jedi comics series takes place in this era, chronicling the immense wars fought by the Jedi of old, and the ancient Sith.
After the seemingly final defeat of the Sith, the Republic enters a state of complacency. In the waning years of the Republic, the senate was rife with corruption and scandal, and saddled with a bureaucracy so immense that effective governing was nearly impossible. The ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected Supreme Chancellor, and promised to reunite the galaxy under a New Order. The Prequel Trilogy takes place during this era.
An outcry of resistance begins to spread across the galaxy in protest to the new Empire's tyranny. Cells of Rebellion fight back, and the Galactic Civil War begins. This era begins with the Rebel victory that secured the Death Star plans, and ends a year after the death of the Emperor high over the forest moon of Endor. The Rebellion starts to reform itself into a body of government, first as the Alliance of Free Planets, and later the New Republic. The Original Trilogy takes place during this era.
Having defeated the Empire at the Battle Of Endor , the Rebel Alliance must now transform itself from a militant resistance force into a functioning galactic government. As Imperial territory is reclaimed, the New Republic suffers growing pains, having to fend off insurrections, Imperial loyalists, and wayward warlords. Also, Luke Skywalker, the last of the Jedi, begins training apprentices, rebuilding the Jedi order.
The Jedi Knights are now a hundred strong. The New Republic has signed a peace treaty with what little remains of the Empire. The galaxy is finally enjoying a peaceful respite from decades of war. It's at this time that a horrible alien menace invades the Republic from beyond known space. The Yuuzhan Vong lay waste to entire worlds in their scourge, as depicted in the novels of '' The New Jedi Order ''.
Having reached peace with the Yuuzhan Vong, the newly formed Galactic Federation of Free Alliance struggles to keep itself working as a single government. But many threats from inside are joined by a danger that comes from the remains of the Dark Side. The new Jedi order created by Luke Skywalker faces a new era as the heirs of the Skywalker legacy grow up. Jacen Solo, perhaps the wisest of that new order, is now Ben Skywalker's master, and together they will have to confront the new powers willing to destroy the Jedi, the Galactic Federation and, maybe, the galaxy. The Legacy era will continue in a series of novels debuting in May 2006 entitled "Star Wars: Legacy". CONTINUITY AND CANONICITY See Also: Star Wars canon The Expanded Universe is intended to be a continuation, and an expansion, on the six ''Star Wars'' theatrical films produced by George Lucas from 1977-2005. All EU material, combined with that presented in the films is meant to function as a complete story. However, in order to allow this story to function as a whole, it must be kept under in an order of continuity. Lucasfilm holds this of such high importance that a team's sole job at Lucasfilm is maintaining continuity between Lucas's films, and the EU, which is written by many other authors and artists, many times out of order, and with many different ideas. Lucas, however, is free to go in any direction he wishes in his films to tell the story he intends. He acknowledges and supports the works of the EU, however, he still tells the stories he wants to tell in his films. When asked in an interview his general opinion on the EU, he replied: I don't read that stuff. I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said people could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions. George Lucas retains ultimate creative control over the ''Star Wars'' universe. For example, the death of central characters and similar changes in the status quo must first pass his screening before authors are given the go-ahead. In addition, Lucasfilm Licensing devotes considerable effort to ensure continuity between the works of various authors across multiple companies. Nothing in the Expanded Universe is supposed to contradict the films or any other part of the Expanded Universe. Upon occasion, Lucas's new films, reedited Original Trilogy films, or statements have contradicted existing EU material, and several Retcon s have been used to fix these inconsistencies. Some purists reject the Expanded Universe as Apocrypha , believing that only the events in the film series are part of the "real" ''Star Wars'' universe. This line of thought is supported to the extent that some Expanded Universe material released before Lucas's prequel films drew erroneous conclusions that Lucas later corrected. However, elements of the Expanded Universe have been adopted by Lucas for use in the films. For example, the name of planet Coruscant first appeared in Timothy Zahn 's novel '' Heir To The Empire '' before being used later in the prequel trilogy (although its pronunciation changed). This has ended up confusing the issue, as it has blurred the lines between the Expanded Universe and "his world." There are also minor disputes about what is, and what is not, part of the Expanded Universe. For example, the two Star Wars spin-off films: '''' were written by George Lucas and are films, but they are not one of the six main films in the series, so they are usually considered to be a part of the Expanded Universe. Official levels of canon The Holocron is an internal database maintained by Lucas Licensing for the express purpose of trying to maintain continuity within all licensed products. The Holocron is sorted into four levels of canon, reflecting LFL's canon and continuity policies: G, C, S, and N.
Lucas's use of the EU C-canon elements from licensed creators have been known to appear in Lucas' films. Most of these are brief, cameo appearances, almost taking the form of Easter Eggs (which may have been added by animators or others under Lucas, rather than specifically dictated), but others are more substantial:
Lucas has often worked very closely with EU creators:
On the other hand, Lucas has been known to ignore C-canon material when creating his films, even when this material is well-established and central to the EU continuity. This has led some to believe that the C-canon material is not, in fact, closely aligned with Lucas' vision. Examples of these inconsistencies include:
SEE ALSO ''Star Wars'' lists Other ''Star Wars'' articles EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|