As many fans of Star Wars know the canon is pretty simple. Everything that happens in the movies counts, and everything that happened in any of the spinoff material or Expanded Universe (EU), games, comic books, novels or television shows doesn’t. Well not in the same way.
Leland Chee was hired by Lucas Publishing in 2000 to create The Holocron, the authoritative licensing and continuity database for all Star Wars products. Previously, the Holocron divided Star Wars materials into levels, with works created by George Lucas (e.g., the first six films) at the top, overriding the various categories of Expanded Universe materials.
The five levels (in order of precedence): G-canon, T-canon, C-canon, S-canon, and N-canon.
G-canon is absolute canon; the movies (their most recent release), the scripts, the novelizations of the movies, the radio plays, and any statements by George Lucas himself. G-canon overrides the lower levels of canon when there is a contradiction. Within G-canon, many fans follow an unofficial progression of canonicity where the movies are the highest canon, followed by the scripts, the novelizations, and then the radio plays.
T-canon refers to the canon level comprising only the two television shows:Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the Star Wars live action series we never got.
C-canon is primarily composed of elements from the Expanded Universe including books, comics, and games bearing the label of Star Wars. Games and RPG sourcebooks are a special case; the stories and general background information are themselves fully C-canon, but the other elements such as character/item statistics and gameplay are, with few exceptions, N-canon.
S-canon is secondary canon; the story itself is considered non-continuity, but the non-contradicting elements are still a canon part of the Star Wars universe. This includes things like the online roleplaying game Star Wars: Galaxies and certain elements of a few N-canon stories.
N-canon is non -canon. “What-if” stories (such as stories published under the Star Wars: Infinities label), crossovers (such as the Star Wars character appearances inSoulcalibur IV), game statistics, and anything else directly contradicted by higher canon ends up here. N-canon is the only level that is not considered official canon by Lucasfilm. A significant amount of material that was previously C-canon was rendered N-canon by the release of Episodes I–III.
See, simple right? (kidding)
Well from now on the continuity of the Star Wars universe will be handled centrally by the Lucasfilm Story Group run by Pablo Hidalgo and Leland Chee.
Chee has taken to Twitter, and said the Lucasfilm Story Group will streamline the definition of what constitutes official canon by taking a hand in every piece of Star Wars storytelling from here on out. So basically everything Star Wars be it games, TV shows, or books will be canon.
When asked if the Story Group’s goal was to ditch the hierarchy system in favor of a single, cohesive canon, Chee said, “That’s definitely a primary goal of the Story Group.”
Chee continued, saying that going forward the canon field in Holocron entries — previously used to denote a given work’s canonical weight – will be used only for internal classification purposes, rather than to dictate hierarchy. But he wouldn’t reveal when fans would find out what existing materials remain official canon, or how much the previously defined canon categories might change.
But with Episode VII hitting theaters in 2015, and Star Wars comics going back to Marvel in the same year. Odds are the new canon will start to take shape right around then.
Yeah I know, never tell you the odds.
Let’s hope this is mainly for 2015 and forward. “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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