Oh there was not chance of Retconning. Right so Mandalorians feature a big part in Republic Commandos, the story takes you to the home world Mandalore. We have seen it in Old republic and it hast changed much. Open green prairies and overall a farming world, were it is a clan mentality. There is only one true city on the planet and mostly its jsut farms. Karen Traviss wasn't the first person to write about Mandalorians and Mandalore in such a way.
Lucas with Attack of the Clones CGI, has Obi Wan and such visit Mandalore to negotiate them coming to the republics side. While Separatists tries to persuade for their side.
However Mandalore is has been at peace for 200 years after the great nuclear war that has turned most of the planet into a desert and the Mandalorians survive in domed cities. Through the Separatists trying to get the Death Watch the controlling force of mandalore, causes them to break there 200 years of peace and go to war. With Fenn Shysa becoming the new Mandalore as they need war minded leader.
Fenn Shysa was a character Karen Traviss wrote in Republic Commandos as he too becomes Mandalore.
Meaning EVERYTHING about Mandalorians history Karen wrote about is utterly destroyed. There is no way to retconn it from this point on. Come Imperial Commando we are on Mandalore in a house on a nice lush green world!
Also Jaster Mereel the adoptive father of Jango Fett who was Mandalore before Jango took the mantle. His war with the Jedi and Death Watch before hand is either ignored or retconned to "Oh that crazy bastard and his mini war."
To a fan of Mandalorians Lucas has obliterated them. I wasnt onboard with "Take Star Wars away from Lucas like an abused child!" untill this happened.
Karen Traviss herself had this to say.
This year it was announced that George Lucas's disregard for canon has gone to a new atrocious level. First elaborated by renowned Star Wars novel author Karen Traviss (Legacy of the Force, Republic Commando) , a massive retcon has taken place regarding the warrior culture of Mandalorians. Traviss has revealed the following: "When I was finishing 501st in January this year, I was told about a significant continuity change coming up in the Clone Wars cartoon. (As was mentioned and shown in a couple of books that came out in the summer - this is not confidential information of any kind now.) I was told that the Mandalorians were being revamped as long-standing pacifists who'd given up fighting centuries ago and that Mandalore was now a post-apocalyptic wasteland devastated by war. I was told not to refer to (recent) Mandalorian history because of that, as it was obviously at odds with the old continuity in my novels. That's fairly common procedure for any franchise - but unfortunately it wasn't that simple in practice. The two Commando series - and quite a few older books and comics, come to that -were based entirely on that original history, and basic logic meant that the fundamental plot of the series could never have existed if this had been a pacifist society. Neither could any of the characters or their motives have existed, because they were wholly based on a global warrior culture living on a non-nuked Mandalore. I had some discussion in January with the editor about possible ways around the problem, but after that, I heard nothing to indicate that the position would change, so the plan went ahead to wind up my existing storyline in the two books that were already in the pipeline. It was too late for me to rewrite 501st even if the changes hadn't made that pretty well impossible.
She could not finish Imperial Commandos due to it and her own disgust over the situation had her break her contract and just leave the Star Wars EU.
She is a big fan of star wars and of course Mandalorians so much so she and a linguist were working to make Mandalorian a fleshed out language like Klingon. I know its stupidly geeky, however I liked it.
So we will never get Imperial Commandos 2. Its gets me so angry, as Lucas had even went on record saying along the lines ofI dont care about the EU it is its own thing. I care about the video media, that means the movies and TV shows.
Also I was reading through the novel version of A new hope as the book is like the unedited script. The first 10 pages is dominated by an interview with Lucas in the 80s for a newspaper. He was asked about special effects said along the lines of ,There is a point were effects takes away from the story, the immersion. Id rather not rely on SFX. As its the story that matters and if you dont have a good story to begin with and instead rely on SFX then its not going to be a good film. Which instantly made me think back to the prequels and scream "YOU HYPOCRITE!" this was just as my dislike for Lucas's direction of Star Wars was coming to as boiling point. And killed my love for Star Wars at the peak were I loved it it the most and was consuming so much 2 years ago.
So I open my arms to Disney.
Log in to comment