5 Reasons Disney's Star Wars Story Group Is A Good Thing (And 4 Reasons It's Not)

4. Goodbye Continuity Snarls

To say there are a number of continuity errors in the Star Wars universe is something of an understatement. The Prequel Trilogy showed us that the Clone Wars consisted of the Jedi fighting alongside a Clone army against a force of droids, but prior to that, several works, like 1995's Children Of The Jedi, reference the Jedi fighting against clones. Early EU works assumed that Obi-wan trained Anakin as an adult, an idea supported by Anakin and Obi-wan's original Force ghosts at the end of Return Of The Jedi both being played by actors around their 60s, but obviously the prequels messed with that. And the Cartoon Network Clone Wars microseries and the James Luceno novel Labyrinth of Evil both establish contradictory accounts of what Obi-wan and Anakin were doing immediately prior to the opening moments of Revenge Of The Sith. Different arms of the Lucas empire can provide headaches of their own, especially when third-party comic publisher Dark Horse is brought into the equation. LucasArts-produced video game Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight and Dark Horse product Dark Forces: Jedi Knight have several inconsistencies, despite recounting the same story. LucasBooks and Dark Horse have, in the past, argued over exactly who's idea the extra-galactic invasion seen in the New Jedi Order book series originally was. Many of the largest tangles are the fault of just the movies themselves. Did Yoda train Obi-wan, as he says in Empire Strikes Back, or did Qui-gon, as shown in Phantom Menace? Why does Vader not seem to recognize C-3PO on Cloud City, despite having built him? Leia says she remembers her mother in Return of the Jedi, but Padme dies in childbirth in Revenge of the Sith. Obi-wan's "from a certain point of view" line from Empire Strikes Back is often offered up as the best explanation. While there have been editors and others, like Leeland Chee, the 'Keeper of the Holocron' at LucasArts, whose job it has been to try and sort all of this out, these measures are relatively recent, and the EU has already grown past a point where it is feasible to control without stronger structure. The Story Group will be able to rectify the EU inconsistencies, and while they certainly cannot do anything about the movie snarls, they can prevent them in the future.