As always, apologies for the recent delay in posting…real life takes priority from time to time. I try to post a decent variety of content—see the CATEGORIES menu over there >>>>> —and when it comes to ‘Artifact ID’ series, I’m afraid I’ve hit a bit of a bottleneck. You see, I have several identified artifacts queued up and ready to share, but there’s a problem – they’re all from Rogue One Colon A Star Wars Story…and as you may have noticed if you’ve been following along, I’m not really a consumer of post-Disney Star Wars content.
With that in mind, I’d like to take a break from our regularly scheduled content to share my thought process and try and get to the bottom of this recent quandary.
Background ethical underpinning:
When the news came down the line in early 2014 that all previously-published Star Wars material would be excised and labeled ‘Legends’, I didn’t take it kindly. At the time, I’d spent almost three-quarters of my life marinating in the stories and history of the Expanded Universe, and I wasn’t about to throw up my hands and say, “Okay, fine by me! Take it away!”
A little digging online shows that there are plenty of ‘EU defenders’ who were, like me, angered by the 2014 decision, but it seems that their consumption habits in regards to the Galaxy Far, Far Away still didn’t change much. They might not like the direction that the ‘Sequel Trilogy’ went, but they’re not willing to really do anything about it—they still bought tickets and went to see The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, SOLO…
Since we as fans find ourselves in conflict with the tyranny of a (media) Empire with pretty clear monocultural ambitions, now is the perfect time to demonstrate what real Star Wars fandom looks like: to show that real-world values and lessons have been learned from what has always been—from the beginning—a ‘political’ film series. While I have no problem advocating for guerilla warfare against corporations, I would happily settle for disgruntled fans adopting a simple and classic tactic used by grassroots resistance groups: the conscientious boycott. After the 2014 EU-rebranding, I decided that I simply would not be participating in the consumption of post-Disney Star Wars, and believe me, it’s a pretty righteous feeling, being able to say, ‘Sorry Mickey, you won’t be seeing any of This Guy’s money, thank you very much!’.
However, I was recently lamenting one of the EU’s definite downsides (at least as it pertains to our purposes here of creating fully fleshed-out, living-history-quality GFFA impressions) – its authors had a collective blindspot for the mundane details of galactic life.
Pondering Kenobi’s line and the importance of moderation in one’s life, I arrived at a unique hypothetical conundrum:
What if a post-Disney source doesn’t contradict the EU? What if it only fleshes out a previously blank space? Does pulling from these examples constitute a violation of my obstinate personal boycott?
Which brings us to Rouge One. 😉 and how Disney-abstaining folks like myself can have our cake and eat it too, without feeling like we’ve sacrificed our principles.
As a stubborn Expanded Universe diehard, it took a lot of personal peptalk (and about six months) before finally I took a friend’s advice and checked out my library’s copy, if only to see how they handled the Galactic Civil War aesthetic.
When the initial buzz started coming out, I was surprised to hear that RO seemed to follow the general skeleton of Operation Skyhook from the EU: a female Rebel agent infiltrates an Imperial installation to steal the Death Star Plans, transmits them to the Tantive IV, and her whole team dies in the process…Hmm, sounds familiar!
If Operation Skyhook is the version you’ve always known as an EU fan, then RO is a terrible Death Star Plans heist film: it’s correct in broad strokes but gets ALL the details wrong! (But remember: just because something plays fast-and-loose with history doesn’t mean it can’t still be damn entertaining!) View RO as an in-universe holodramatization (based on bits and pieces of garbled or classified history) however, and the film works perfectly!
In other words, RO is accurate to the narrative of Operation Skyhook (as depicted in Dark Forces, Rebel Dawn, the NPR Radio Drama, etc.) in much the same way that Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot is a historically-accurate depiction of the American Revolution! Yes, it’s true that South Carolina was home to a successful guerilla campaign against the British, but the events, places, and names of the people involved are nowhere close to correct and the plot is incredibly trope-y; however, the creators have done their homework enough that the historic setting and paraphernalia are recognizable and generally accurate).
If we understand Rogue One as an in-universe holodrama of actual events, then using it as a tertiary source for GFFA ‘living history’ research would be akin to an 18th century reenactor basing their kit on The Patriot: they would be ~80% accurate, and any errors would fly right under the radar of the public (being noticed by only the most serious historians).
All of which is a rambling way to say this: because their narrative contradicts the previously-existing Expanded Universe narrative, I must disagree that Galen, Lyra, and Jyn Erso were historical persons in the Galaxy… but I can be fairly confident that Rogue One Colon A Star Wars Story contains a generally accurate depiction of the average galactic kitchen! 😉
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(Alternately, you can support my work via ko-fi as well.)
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 
You’ll enjoy the Rogue One Visual Dictionary then. The Solo Visual Dictionary also has interesting tidbits on mundane civilian and military details that are unwritten subtext in the background scenery. The comics have taken these details and created stories with them which I find interesting.
On an EU note, I’m not sure how the Disney canon reset is much different than the Prequels, or the inconsistencies in the EU itself over the years. Ep II totally rewrote the identity of Boba Fett, but it’s supposedly okay because it was done by Lucas? And what of the Yuuzhan Vong? We’ve always had to either pick and choose what we like in the GFFA.
I think you’d really like the SOLO bonus feature “Kasdan on Kasdan,” which talks about the father/son writing team that made the script. The father is the legendary Lawrence Kasdan who worked on the classic trilogy scripts, and sees them as just another creative project like the many others that he has worked on in his career, subject to detail changes to tell a story. His son grew up with Star Wars and holds much of it sacrosanct, and is familiar with the EU and other elements. Seeing them talk about their creative process balancing these perspectives in creating a new chapter in the Star Wars saga is representative of much of the generational fan population.
Even Dave Filoni is brought back the best of the EU with new storytelling, masterfully done in Star Wars Rebels. Thrawn’s character was represented faithfully, while some details have been left ambiguous or changed. But how the series ended was incredible and was compatible with the previous canon. Even obscure EU references like Project Shantipole and the creation of the B-Wing made it into the show, in ways that I feel were more interesting than the original, though some details were changed. We’re seeing more of the same in The Mandalorian referencing the Holiday Special and the Ice Cream Maker guy for crying out loud.
We had such a long time where the Star Wars story was very stable, and the only changes were books and games which had their own inconsistencies, as well as a smaller audience. We also had less fan communication prior to the Internet. But now, we have Star Wars stories going to a large audience which can broadcast their thoughts far and wide easily. We can’t imagine the online commotion that could have happened if The Crystal Star, or the Courtship of Princess Leia, or Darksaber had been made into a movie.
And we also may be forgetting the upheaval of perspective when the original films were being made, especially the revelations of Luke’s father and sister, and the subversions they introduced. We’ve just come to terms with them over time.
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