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grim-on-the-darkside · 5 years ago

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Dave Filoni Quote about how Lucas felt about the Expanded Universe on video.

There is a quote that has been going around for a bit now, that I found the original source of. He said during an interview on “The Star Wars show”. There is a part of the quote that isn’t in it how it has been written, I can see why they left it out because you can’t quite understand it’s significance unless you actually see Filoni say it, his facial expression and his body language. The quote as written now is -

When I saw the video I noticed this small part of the quote that wasn’t included, it doesn’t change the message of it, it actually makes it more meaningful. The entire quote with the previously left out part is -

"So everything else was a world of fun ideas, exciting characters, great possibilities, the EU was created to explore all those things. And I know and I fully respect peoples opinions about it that some of the material said 'the next canon part of it' <wink,wink>.... But from the filmmaking world I was brought into, the films and TV shows were it". ~ Dave Filoni speaking about working with George Lucas

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Explanation -

[The 'wink, wink' part of it, you can't fully understand it unless you see the video and see Filoni's face and his body language, what he’s indicating here was essentially saying, yeah, Lucas Licensing did try and fool people and they outright lied at times, they were concerned that if people knew that the EU was literally a separate universe and not canon, that they would be less likely to spend money on it, because 'it didn't count'. ]

This is the actual video of when Dave Filoni said the above quotes during an interview on 'The Star Wars show' [41.40 mark] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcNXPNXOv2A&t=16s

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Leland Chee and Howard Roffman,they both acknowledge that wasn't true, and have made public quoted statements in that regard. After the fact tho. Leland Chee didn’t get caught lieing to 2012. And most of his ‘atonement’ statements they came years later.

Roffman didn't keep his part of the deal with Lucas, who insisted that the only way he would allow the EU to exist at all was in a completely separate parallel universe to his, which ironically enough was Roffman's suggestion because at first Lucas said "Stop right there, there is no way I am letting anyone else say what is and isn't Star Wars', so that was how Roffman made the deal. Roffman tried to convince in subsequent talks to make it all one universe, but Lucas was adamantly against it and he adamantly refused. He gave them a seperate sandbox to play in and this is exactly why you see the things Lucas was saying and the things Leland Chee were saying were incompatible. - That's also the reason they stopped using the term 'canon' and only used 'continuity' trying to make it out like they meant the same thing, when they didn't. This was their duplicity, not George Lucas, Lucas was always honest about whenever he was asked in interviews. Separate universes.

Roffman comes totally clean about it in an 2017 interview about the whole thing. Which I have mentioned in two of my previous posts and promosed to share. Now is a good time to do that as it will help make sense of this part of what Filoni said.

Why did Lucas allow to go on than? Fair question. 3 reasons.

One, he told them from the get go he didn’t want to have to get involved all the time, he had his own projects and stories to work on, and he didn’t want to have to keep looking over their shoulders.

Two - He knew he couldn’t keep up with the fans hunger for new Star Wars and he thought this would keep them occupied in between his movies, bare in mind, he didn’t have any clue how big it would actually get. No one was expecting how good it would end up doing in terms of making money.

Which segways very nicely into the Third and final reason.

Money.

Lucas wasn’t about to deal with their duplicity by hurting himself on the process. He was making so much money off it, and he didn’t write a word of it, you can expect anyone to be that ‘upstanding’ so to speak. So he decided he’d handle it the same way they were, by making public statements, and than let them have to deal with the fallout because Lucas was being honest anyways, it was them who were doing wrong.

"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..."

~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, 2008

https://ibb.co/dtnYHbx

[Quotes like this were problematic, because if as they were saying “It was one universe” “One canon”, than how the hell could Lucas say The Emperor doesn’t get cloned and doesn’t get married??” heh]

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”The novels and comic books are other authors' interpretations of my creation. Sometimes, I tell them what they can and cant do, but I just don't have the time to read them all. They're not my vision of what Star Wars is.”

- George Lucas 2004

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"I like to refer to the Interview with Lucas in the Special Editions.When asked about the novels and what not, he simply says:

”Those are another author's interpretation of what I've created, and not to be taken seriously, as far as what is really going on in the Star Wars world.”

~ George Lucas

[These are statements being made in response to live interviewers questions, so as you can see, this is how he dealt with it and let them deal with the fall out.]

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Back to the Filoni quote discussion -

Roffman admits later on that it was separate universes, Lucas did not consider the EU canon ever. Lucas just wasn't interested in it, he was only interested in his Star Wars. That's why there was so many retcons. It was all Lucas.

[I’ll be sharing the quotes from Roffman’s 2017 interview following this. This just helps set it up and bring it all together]

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Not suggesting Lucas did anything wrong, he didn’t, he made it clear from the get go that was the only way he would allow it. It also makes some of the other Quotes from Lucas even more understandable than they already were.

Just for context and reminders -

STARLOG: "The Star Wars Universe is so large and diverse. Do you ever find yourself confused by the subsidiary material that's in the novels, comics, and other offshoots?"

"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.... When I said [other 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.

“There are two worlds here,” explained Lucas. “There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comics.”

[The things that happened in the Expanded Universe happened in the Expanded Universe universe, but they didn't happen in George Lucas' universe.The things that happened in George Lucas universe, They all happened in the Expanded Universe' universe. That was part of the deal, they had to have all of his stuff happen there exactly the same. If that conflicted with things they did before or after, didn't matter, they had to change anything that contradicted anything he did. [Retcons].]

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"Q: What do you think of the Expanded Universe of books?

A: "The books are in a different universe. I've not read any of them, and I told them when they started writing I wouldn't read any of them and I blocked out certain periods [they couldn't touch where the real story happens]."

- George Lucas 2003

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"The question selected from The Furry Conflict poll was: How much does the Expanded Universe influence the movies?

As I asked him, Lucas leaned back a moment and said to me “Very little.” When he first had agreed to let people write Expanded Universe books, he had said “I’m not gonna read ‘em” and it was a “different universe” and that he wanted to keep away from the time period of his saga. He jokingly complained, however, that now when he writes a script he has to look through an encyclopedia to make sure that a name he comes up with doesn’t come too close to something in the EU.He later commented that the future of Star Wars may lie in other venues outside of feature film."

- "Marc Xavier", November 2003, "The Furry Conflict and the Great ‘Beard‘ of the Galaxy"

(report based on a Q&A session with George Lucas which occurred at USC on 11-19-03)

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"Howard Roffman [President of Lucas Licensing], 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."

- George Lucas 2008

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When Lucas use the term “We decided”, “we would have two universes”, he was referring to himself and Roffman and the deal with Roffman mentioned here in this above quote.

The Expanded Universe was Howard Roffman’s idea, he brought the idea to Lucas. He was in charge of it the entire time Lucas owned Star Wars.

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Now it makes why Lucas hated Mara Jade so much understandable. Lucas wasn’t involved in their stories. He didn’t approve concepts, he didn’t read the books, he didn’t deal with the book people personally, he had a liaison group.

“Well in George, George couldn’t stand Mara Jade, well he just couldn’t stand, couldn’t deal and they went out and got some sort of person who looked like she’d stepped out of a Cosmopolitan to be the model Mara and he just thought the whole thing was so not Star Wars and not his vision of Star Wars and once, I forget, I think Sue Rostoni between the novels told me or anyway told me they were killing off Mara Jade and I said ‘Do I get to tell George?'”

– J.W. Rinzler, Lucas Licensing and Author

http://starwarshub.net/2019/02/01/according-to-author-j-w-rinzler-george-lucas-couldnt-stand-the-character-of-mara-jade/

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As far as I know, George Lucas himself is not involved. He has a liaison group that deals with the book people, the game people, etc. They do the day-to-day work. Occasionally, he will be asked a question and will give an answer."

~ Timothy Zahn

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"George knows more about Star Wars than we do. He doesn't see the Expanded Universe as ”his” Star Wars, but as ”ours.” I think this has been mentioned previously, maybe in other places, but it's not new info, as far as I remember."

~ Sue Rostoni, Lucas Licensing (LLP Managing Editor),2004

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[This was when Leland Chee got caught lieing during a live interview from an Audience member question in 2012 ]

But just to give the context of how widespread this deceit and outright lieing had gotten to let’s look at the kinds of things Leland Chee had been saying for years first, and this is just the tip of the iceberg -

"The thing about Star Wars is that there's One universe..." ~ Leland Chee 2008

"Holocronkeeper does not support the notion of SW parallel universes."

~ Leland Chee 2009

"Everything outside the films was collectively known as the Expanded Universe, serving as an extension of the same universe in the films."

~ Leland Chee 2012

[Even though Lucas had said in 2011, that he makes no distinction between the movies and the Clone Wars series.]

"This is Star Wars, and I don't make a distinction between [The Clone Wars] series and the films."~ George Lucas, SciFiNow, October 2011

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"Unlike other franchises that reboot with almost every incarnation, Star Wars has proven itself to be a singular universe."

~ Leland Chee 2012

[Bare in mind that Lucas ruled by decree and anything he said was instantly canonical anything that might contradict it, was nulled and voided on the spot, also, note the year on these last two quotes, 2012]

Now watch this...

Q “Hi Mr Chee! I’ve got a question about continuity – are all the various different media of Star Wars (the films, TCW, the video games, the EU) intended to form a single universe, or is the EU intended as a parallel, alternate universe (like, for example, the different continuities between the various Batman comics and films)? I realise that fans tend to each have their own personal preferences, but I was wondering what the official Lucasfilm company policy regarding this was? Many thanks!”

"The dual universe question comes up often. I know George Lucas has mentioned it being two universes , but that’s not how I see it. His vision is definitely not beholden to ours, but ours is definitely beholden to his."

~ Leland Chee 2012

Same year, 2012. The last quote above he made one month before getting caught and admitting that Lucas said it was two universes.

It gets worse.

Knowing full well that Lucas had said it was two universes, Leland Chee had said this -

"And then there's the very top level of canon, the inviolable, infallible level of Truth, marked GWL—George Walton Lucas. It's the divine word of the Creator who stands outside his universe and is not subject to the rules that govern it."

~ Leland Chee, 2008

[Actually, Leland was standing outside of his Universe.]

and this

"George's view of the universe is his view," Chee says with a slightly grudging tone. "He's not beholden to what's gone before."

~ Leland Chee 2008

grudging means he was pissed and he resented it.

[Lucas said in 2005 it was two universes in a magazine interview. Wasn’t the only time he said it either]

You wanna see this get even worse?

*"The G/C/S-level canon stuff is a construct specifically for the Holocron. Non-Holocron users would have no idea what this stuff even means* and I would say most of the people who use the Holocron don't use the field, instead looking specifically to the source of the material. Individual entries are not broken down by canon level."

~ Leland Chee 2005

"...applies only to the Holocron, but is not the same as their standing in LFL's canon hierarchy.“

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“Understand, that the Holocron's primary purpose is to keep track of Star Wars continuity for Lucas Licensing, and to some degree Lucas Online. To my knowledge, it is only rarely used for production purposes.“

~ Leland Chee

[What this means is that whole 'canon tier' he made up, that wasn't policy that was a filing system protocol for the Holocron like the Dewy Decimal system. It had no baring on actual canon or anything outside of his office.]

~ Leland Chee

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Wanna see it get even worse?

"Star Wars continuity, even EU continuity, does not rest on my shoulders. Our licensees submit product directly to either our editors or our product development managers. The Holocron serves as a tool for them to check any issues regarding continuity, and after that, if the editors or developers have any questions, they pass it along to me to check for continuity. At the same time, I am constantly on the lookout to make sure that any new continuity being created gets entered in the Holocron. With regard to the the films and The Clone Wars, I am not involved in continuity approvals* though I have often been asked to provide reference material."

~ Leland Chee

[And they would have us believe that George Lucas let them do all of this on their own, and he had no say in any of it. He’s letting them say what is canon carte’ blanche’ They did say that, wanna see what Leland also said about declaring things canon?

Lucas is quoted as saying they don’t follow his guidelines.

This one’s the dozy.

As far as LucasBooks and Lucas Licensing are concerned, of course it is. LucasBooks and Lucas Licensing hold sway over the content and storylines of the Expanded Universe, and thus have every right to declare a canon of those materials. Whether this internal declaration is subscribed to by parent company LFL or Lucas himself is another matter, one which, though interesting, is outside the scope of this Holocron-oriented thread.

~ Leland Chee 2004

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This is exactly what Dave Filoni is referring to. Them declaring certain things canon and writting on some [it wasn’t all, just to be fair, just some] EU products that their story is a canon continuation, and they were doing so without permission from parent company and George Lucas.

It get’s worse. heh

Turns out, Mr. Leland Chee, he never met George Lucas, he never spoke to George Lucas, not even on the telephone, not even by mail. Complete and total strangers.

"I didn't have any direct contact with George about Star Wars. - I would see some notes based on the interviews or the meetings. But I did not have direct contact with George about Star Wars continuity."

~ Leland Chee 2018

“I did not have direct contact with George about Star Wars continuity. Dave Filoni, who worked on Clone Wars, definitely did. So for me, the spirit of George’s work is what’s in the films, and it doesn’t go too far beyond that.” ~ Leland Chee 2018

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Only took him about 4 or 5 years to fully come clean

"What George did with the films and The Clone Wars was pretty much *his universe ,” Chee said. “He didn’t really have that much concern for what we were doing in the books and games. So the Expanded Universe was very much separate."

~ Leland Chee, 2017 - SYFY WIRE

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“Lucas’ canon – and when I say ‘his canon’, I’m talking about what he was doing in the films and what he was doing inThe Clone Wars* – was hugely important. But what we were doing in *the books really wasn’t on his radar.”

~ Leland Chee, 2018

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And to top it all off, he said

"Dave Filoni is better equipped to relay Lucas’ true feelings about the EU." ~ Leland Chee

So every single on of those things he said about it being ‘One Universe’, One Continuity’, ‘A singular universe’, ‘same universe as the films’, ‘what is canon’, what’s continuity’, all of it, he did so without having a clue with how George Lucas felt.

But wait....there’s even a problem with that.....when he said Dave Filoni is the one to relay about Lucas’ true feelings, which is is in part true, it doesn’t take into account the fact that he did know Lucas said it was two universes.

He says G-Canon -

G-canon was George Lucas Canon; the six Episodes and any statements by George Lucas (including unpublished production notes from him or his production department that are never seen by the public).

Given the fact that he is the only who made that Tier thingy for the Holocron, I’m kinda guessing he knew that statements from Lucas were canonical.

He heard Lucas say it was two universes, should we really assume all the other quotes from Lucas he never heard them?

Not only did Leland Chee lie, he knew full well what George Lucas was saying and it’s significance and it’s canonicity.

He’s not only a liar, he’s literally a canon breaker.

Leland Chee said Dave Filoni could tell us Lucas true feelings on the EU.

Which brings us right back to where this post started.

"There's this notion that everything changed when everything became Legends. And I can see why people think that. But, you know, having worked with George I can tell you that it was always very clear -- and he made it very clear -- that the films and the TV shows were the only things that he considered Canon. That was it.*"So everything else was a world of fun ideas, exciting characters, great possibilities, the EU was created to explore all those things.And I know and I fully respect peoples opinions about it that some of the material said 'the next canon part of it' <wink,wink>.... But from the filmmaking world I was brought into, *the films and TV shows were it".* ~ Dave Filoni speaking about working with George Lucas

He was talking about Leland Chee and Howard Roffman, They both knew the truth of it. They had co-workers who wouldn’t agree with them on what they were saying because they refused to lie about George Lucas.

"Within the issue of Starlog magazine with the War of the Worlds cover is an interview article with George Lucas. He stated something which he had said before, which is that he doesn't follow the SW EU, he doesn't read the books or comics. He also said that when they started doing all this (which is allowing other storytellers to tell their own SW tales), he had decreed that the Star Wars Universe would be split into two just like Star Trek (I don't know nuts about Star Trek, so don't ask me about that), one would be his own universe (the six episode movie saga), the other would be a whole other universe (the Expanded Universe). He continued to say that the EU tries as much as possible to tie in to his own universe, but sometimes they move into a whole other line of their own."

~ Confirmed by Sue Rostoni, Lucas Licensing Publishing, 2005

"Does the main storyline for books and comics go through Lucas to make sure it isn't going to conflict with future movies?

No. George doesn't give us much information about his future movies until he's making them. In general, George does not take the EU into account when he's making his movies.”

~ Sue Rostoni, LucasBooks/LL Managing Editor, 2003

"I know that GL doens't create the storys and concepts for the SW novels, but does anyone know if he approves overall story ideas?

"George doesn't see the overall story ideas or concepts. If there is a sensitive area, or if we are developing backstory for a character he's created or mentioned in an interview, we can query him to get more information, his approval, or whatever. And yes, we always query him if we're doing something drastic to a film character. I believe he does read the concepts for the games though."

- Sue Rostoni, Lucas Licensing (LLP Managing Editor), Jun 2004

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"The books have to follow the same continuity the films do, as they are an integral part of the overall story of Star Wars that Lucasfilm LTD. recognizes as a legitimate continuation of the films, right?

Yes, the books follow the continuity of the films as best we can taking into account that George follows his own continuity, and rightly so. He's the filmmaker.

As far as ”legitimate continuation of the films” -- If George had continued making SW films past Return of the Jedi, I don't think they would have reflected what the SW authors have written.

[This proved to be true. Lucas wrote his own Sequel Trilogy in 2011. The EU did not exist in his sequel trilogy. He was already in pre-production for the movies himself before he sold to Disney.

"Fast forward to 2012, when we hear George is looking to make SW movies again, I thought 'I wonder what next Mon Calamari's gonna be.' And it turns out, the Mon Calamari this time was huge swaths of the EU. There was no Jacen, no Jaina. No new Jedi Order. Chewie lived. Not suprising, but there it was.

~ Pablo Hidalgo, 2016, speaking on Lucas' ST treatments he wrote in 2011 https://ibb.co/nmjWcBM

He said it was not suprising because he had know forever already that it was two seperate universes and Lucas did not consider the EU canon ever.

"In the old days, George Lucas saw his universe as separate from publishing [EU]. He wasn't at all interested in connecting."

~ Pablo Hidalgo [Lucasfilm Story Group] 2016 http://i.imgur.com/6ZOkAau.png

"He [Lucas] only considers his movies and TV projects as his universe, and told the Clone Wars writers to only worry about those."

-Pablo Hidalgo [Lucasfilm Story Group]

https://i.redd.it/3fpbkocr43q01.png

[We know a lot about Lucas Sequel Trilogynow. Links to that at bottom.]

Sue R Quote continued...

The books, comics, etc., are a ”legitimate continuation” of the Star Wars saga as we [Lucas Licensing] define it. I'm not certain of the context of your question -- somehow I feel like I'm walking into something here...."

- Sue Rostoni, Lucas Licensing (LLP Managing Editor), Jan 2005

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[At first Sue Rostoni was lead to believe what Chee and Roffman were saying was the case, but she found out that that wasn’t true, and she had met Lucas and she had been working at Lucas Licensing longer than anyone, and she refused to take part in any duplicity especially when it came to Lucas himself. She was a real class act and I have a ton of respect her. That couldn’t have been easy for her. She retired in 2011]

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So there we have it. So many things going on behind the scenes, so much misinformation on the internet, so many people lieing as it suits their personal wants and narratives.

This is about one thing for me and one thing only. Honoring the gift George Lucas gave us all, Star Wars.

I want his legend and legacy remembered truthfully and for what it really was.

His words matter. When it comes to Star Wars Lucas is God.

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George Lucas’ Episode VII - https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/george-lucas-episode-vii-c272563cc3ba

George Lucas' Ideas for His Own Star Wars Sequel Trilogy - https://io9.gizmodo.com/george-lucas-ideas-for-his-own-star-wars-sequel-trilogy-1826798496

STAR WARS: The Original Plans for the Sequel Trilogy - YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1dM9qFe4p0

https://ibb.co/jvph85c

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