I appreciate the write up, my perspective still doesn't quite feel alleviated however. For one it feels odd for George to go from one extreme to the other regarding creative control.
I think
@Homer J. Fong pretty much beat me to it, but it seems like Lucas was taking a larger backseat to projects after
Revenge of the Sith since, in his mind, the saga was over and there weren't any large revelatory stories left to tell in that universe. Anything produced at this point--be it TCW or
Underworld--would be second-tier off-shoots in place to keep the brand alive and rake in funds for the self-sustaining LucasFilm studio.
Star Wars was the face of the brand, and needed to stay in the public consciousness, hence why George signed off on one project to maintain popularity with children (TCW), one for adults that would piggy-back off the miniseries craze of shows like
Battlestar Galactica and
The Walking Dead (the
Underworld TV show), and even a parody series like
Detours. He was even making calculated decisions to have brand synergy, such as making the now-cancelled
1313 be about Boba Fett and having closer ties to the unproduced
Underworld TV series. (Which, on a side note, was shelved with the intention of being made later down the line when they could afford a "film-every-week" production cycle once technology had caught up with Lucas' ambitions for its quality. It was even still on the back-burner during the Disney Purchase in 2012).
By this point, Lucas was very much relaxed and laid-back as a creative influence, and as I've stated, was a lot more hands-off to allow new talent to creatively flex their muscles...which is why Ron D Moore was given free reign to write
Underworld however he wanted, even including insane plot points like there being a woman in Palpatine's life that broke his heart and left him only with ravenous ambition (an idea that Lucas never once entertained in the films, but allowed Moore to entertain in his lower-tier TV series).
The only time Lucas would ever really be committed to contribute in a prominent creative position in the 2010's was when the Disney Purchase happened, and a new string of films were commissioned to heighten the value of the brand by assuring skeptical Disney shareholders that there was some major state of production. In light of this, Lucas, having retired plans for a sequel trilogy back during the PT's development, produced new treatments for a sequel trilogy. Disney was going to move on with new films with or without him, and with this ultimatum, Lucas tried to use these treatments to leverage one last major grab at creative control before he retired from the film business entirely.
And given the revelations by Bob Iger in his memoirs about "how upset" Lucas was when it became apparent they weren't going to use his sequel treatments, I would wager that he was no longer in that "aloof, creatively-distant" phase he had been in recent years. This was the last and final time he wanted to be in the trenches, creatively contributing on a regular basis, rather than the walk-by meetings of TCW and
Underworld's conceptual phase.
Any appearance or invite Lucas has made to the sets of all productions since are not indicators of any massive creative involvement. And despite the fact that Filoni claims that he has "regular discussions" with Lucas whenever he's brainstorming ideas for
Rebels and
Blando, we only have
his word to trust that these conversations even happened.
And given this is the guy who reversed Lucas' mandate for Ahsoka to die the literal moment he had sole creative autonomy under Disney, and has publicly admitted to lying to Lucas during TCW's production to enable his own creative urges...I'm not exactly inclined to take him at his word.
Secondly if his involvement with EU story tellers is similar in nature why was TCW the outlier with canonization? Was it because it was so recent or lucasfilm having close involvement? I'm just not informed.
The outlier for canonization by Disney? Simple. Because in the aftermath of buying the brand, and cancelling TCW running on the channel of a competitor (Warner Bros.), they wanted to follow through on with a new animated series, and wanted to follow up
fast. So they brought in both Filoni and newcomer Greg Weisman to develop a new series for them...and the involvement of the former was almost a guarantee that it would some kind of sequel to TCW, essentially allowing him to fold that series into the new continuity and realize all of his new creative trajectories.
Disney still kept TCW on ice, and made far more drastic and cost-cutting maneuvers to ensure that
Rebels wouldn't be as astronimically costly as TCW had been to produce, hence the choppier, budgeted animation and
radically smaller scale of the show with a Scooby-Doo gang thwarting the Empire every week. Mind you, Disney had zero interest at this stage renewing or doing anything with TCW at this stage, because of self-proclaimed concerns about how violent it was, as well as a general aversion to producing any PT-era content at this early stage...which anyone following Star Wars between 2015 and 2018 can attest for, given the majority of cartoons, spin-offs like
Rogue One and
Solo, comics, novels and games revolved around banking on OT nostalgia, and shaking off all traces of the film trilogy they believed would tarnish the brand by association. They weren't even the ones who pressed forward with that revived "Final Season" of TCW themselves--that was a response to fan demands, and even then, they squashed the never-produced 7th and 8th Season into one season, and drastically altered the planned storylines into a cluster of episodes that, largely, were backdoor pilots to future ventures like
Bad Batch and
Ahsoka.
In other words: TCW wasn't given special treatment during the Disney Canon Purge because it was "Lucas' baby" or any nonsense like that....the original Sequel Treatments were also Lucas' baby, and Disney had no qualms flinging those into the trash, and even lying to his face about it. TCW's survival largely has to do with production conveniences permitting the new continuity's ground zero, day one projects like
Rebels, not because TCW itself was on some kind of pedestal due to Lucas being involved.
Because if Lucas' involvement in that show was something Disney truly prized above all else as the stamp of canonicity, they would've also preserved the cancelled two seasons of TCW as well (the animatics and voice recordings for which were already finished), the
finished story treatments for
Underworld, as well as the entirety of Detours, which were outright finished when they acquired the brand.
Lucas was involved as much, or more, on those projects than TCW, and they never saw the light of day. So it's a waste of time pretending that Filoni's Fisher Price cartoon was perceived as "genuine Lucas material" by the execs at Disney. It and its creatives were simply an easy basis for a fast, cheap, easily-made cartoon for their shitty cartoon block.
End of story.
The Kotor mmo is still ongoing why didn't it get addressed, was that a licensing/copyright issue because it was tied to EA?
It yanks in continuous money thanks to downloadable content and expansions, and is part of a pre-existing contract between LucasFilm and EA.
Of course Disney is going to allow that to continue existing. Regardless of canonicity, it's a venture that still yields them profit, and doesn't require anything costly like contracting a new dev studio or developing a new graphics engine. The talent and the assets are already in place to keep milking for more money.
Every other cancelled EU project from books, to comics, to full-fledged games like
1313 and
First Assault did not benefit from easy circumstance, and were thus shelved.
As far as the genndy stuff, I just wanted to be the dissenting opinion and throw out that I think it's good, not amazing wow. I read a ton of this thread catching up and there were points were it felt like a circlejerk (rightfully so if you enjoy it).
When it comes to animated media, Genndy Wars tends to receive the most praise because it accomplishes a lot of what it does without the contrived kiddy writing and
literal two-seasons worth of filler that TCW does, as well as better aligning with the films (something that TCW forgot entirely about as a creative goal the longer it went on, and disappeared into nonsensical fanfiction territory).
It had a far simpler goal (depict short set-pieces with an emphasis on visuals over dialogue) and succeeded, whereas TCW's narrative-driven aspirations were much higher, and it failed in almost every single one of them...a malady that would spread to its future CG follow-ups like
Rebels and
Bad Batch like herpes.
On top of that, and achieving greater cohesion with the films, the 2003 series also achieved excellent synergy with the Clone Wars Multimedia Project of novels, games and comics, which are
far superior to any Clone Wars content produced by the Wolfaboo and his circle of autists.
I feel I need to reiterate my defense of Kevin J. Anderson as well, regardless of writing quality I feel he was the EU author who understood Star Wars the best and was able to most perfectly emulate its pulpy, adventurous, style in his novels and other writing.
I don't even have to add "regardless of writing quality" as a caveat when discussing Anderson. His work on
Tales of the Jedi and more importantly
Young Jedi Knights is legit great, and more than make up for his efforts on stuff like
Jedi Academy or
Dark Saber.
He also wrote a ridiculous number of short stories for the
Tales Of anthologies back in the day, and they all single out his strengths as an author. He shines when handed simple characters and premise, as those stories showcase.
Whenever he was tasked to write something more complex and in demand of tighter characterization and nuanced plotting, the cracks began to show. In that sense, he's not too dissimilar to Troy Denning, whose simplistic prose and woefully simplistic characterizations often buckled under the demands of more complex stories, whenever he was asked to venture out of his wheelhouse of adrenaline-fueled fight scenes and alien girl fanservice.
One day I'll write up something larger about Karen Traviss too when I'm not busier with other stuff.
...Those
Republic Commando books are fast approaching on my reading list. Believe me...I'm curious to see how many good things I'll have left to say about Traviss once I'm done reading them.
I've thought about it, and despite all the bullshit attached to it, I STILL love Star Wars. I just save my affection for the old EU comics, novels, and video games. I have no use at all for the Sequel Trilogy, or the TV shows.
That's the way to do it. Avoiding the new show/movie releases and delving deeper into the EU single-handedly re-kindled and saved my love of Star Wars these last few years, and it will likely be my crutch in the coming years as the "Rey Jedi Order" and other such garbage comes out.
It's a great feeling to peruse old bookstores for EU Books and Comics, experiencing cozy SW goodness from the golden age, all while blocking out all of Disney's content releases from audio-visual consumption.
...all while everyone else online whines about the franchise's destruction, while paradoxically
continuing to fuel it by subscribing to Disney Plus and consooming all the latest material.
Self-inflicted suffering, I guess.
