#i do not think that the og thrawn trilogy should be turned into a show whatsoever

[klazje]

ascendency era political intrigue show. you agree.

[loopy777]

whats your thoughts on Mara Jade and her relationship to Luke Skywalker and their subsequent family? was it an element you wished had been carried over to the new universe post the force awakens?

Mara Jade is one of my favorite Star Wars characters, but she is written poorly in the vast majority of the works that feature her. I like her when Zahn and Stackpole wrote her (so the OG Thrawn Trilogy, the ‘Hand of Thrawn’ duology, and ‘I, Jedi’), but everyone else got her wrong and just portrayed her as Tough Cranky Lady. (Except for Kevin J Anderson, I guess, who portrayed her as Generic Snarky Lady. And Barbara Hambly, who portrayed her as Lando’s Latest Conquest.) But in the works where Mara is married to Luke, she is supposed to have worked through her issues to the point where she can once again connect to other people, dramatized by her accepting Luke’s love and marrying him. Having her married to Luke and a jerk in most of her scenes just doesn’t feel like it fits.

That portrayal also doesn’t fit with the idea that, as of the New Jedi Order, she’s supposed to be a recognized Jedi Master. Of course, in all those books, the Jedi are pretty much portrayed as generic magic warriors, and even the attempts at spiritualism/mysticism in the New Jedi Order are trite (outside of Traitor) and confused. She is a master of kicking butt, I guess, so that fits with this watered-down concept of the Jedi. And Troy Denning’s books went on to turn the Jedi into a Sith order in all but name, so the constant crankiness is appropriate as well. At least everything is consistent in those horrible, horrible books.

Anyway...

Ben Skywalker is only featured in ‘the ‘Legacy of the Force’ and ‘Fate of the Jedi’ series, where he suffers from confused development due to the incompatible multi-author teams, so I don’t have an opinion on him as a character. I couldn’t even describe him as a character. I don’t have many thoughts about Ben at all.

So, focusing back on Mara, while I do like her and the idea of her marrying Luke, I’m fine leaving her back in the old Expanded Universe. She could be brought back in a similar manner to Thrawn, where it’s the same basic character in their same original role, but a whole new story is created.However,  I think that works better for a villain than a hero, because villains like Thrawn don’t undergo character arcs. Mara would still have to go through the same growth of getting over her brainwashing of serving the Empire, just this time in a different context and without Luke. It would be a rehash of what came before, and I can’t imagine that it would be as good or better than what Zahn already did. We saw the same thing fail with Quinlan Vos, who had a flawed but good story in the EU and got a worse version of the same thing in a terrible tie-in to the CGI Clone Wars cartoon.

Now, could Mara have been snuck into the sequel movies as a nod to the old novels and fans, giving her a Schrodinger’s Backstory that adheres to the broad strokes of her EU tales but avoids details that might conflict with the new stuff?

No. I don’t see an opening for Mara -- or any wife for Luke -- in the story of the sequel movies.

I seem to be fairly unique amongst Expanded Universe fans in that I have no real interest in a full continuation of the saga exploring a successful New Republic and/or Jedi Order. I don’t think the sequels had to go back to the full Rebel/Imperial Xwings/TIEs thing, but the only worthwhile conflict that could elevate the sequels to the same importance of first six movies is addressing the idea of a happy ending that can be undone. The real conflict of the sequels isn’t Good Guys versus Bad Guys, but Happy Endings versus Cash Cow Franchises.

(And I maintain that I saw this theme in my first viewing of The Force Awakens, having gone in cold with no spoilers or speculation. Where everyone saw Han or Leia or Luke giving a weird look to Rey as recognizing a long-lost daughter, I saw former heroes looking at a new hero showing all the same tropes that they themselves once had- and feeling ambivalence about a never-ending cycle of conflict. Maybe I’m just weird.)

And once we have Luke as failing to restart the Jedi and preserve the New Republic, a successful marriage becomes an oddity. And if we give him an unsuccessful marriage or a dead wife, that’s just empty calories on top of the failed Jedi Order and fallen heir.

Essentially, I can’t see a way to bring Mara into the sequels without either undermining their story, or making her meaningless fan-service. And I actively hate the scene in Rogue One where the protagonists literally bump into the Cantina bullies, so that goes to show what I think of meaningless fan-service.

We should live our lives as fans by the message of ‘The Last Jedi,’ and find a balance between taking what was good from the previous generation and leaving behind what didn’t work. Mara worked in the hands of certain authors, and didn’t work at all in the hands of most other authors, so we should focus on letting our new storytellers create stories and characters that match their sensibilities, and not saddle them with a cast of legacy characters whose arcs are already complete. The New Jedi Order books, and their sequels, were fanfic of fanfic of fanfic, and it showed. At least the Sequel Movies are back on the level of just-plain-fanfic.

May the Force be with us all.