Lucasfilm rebranding the old Star Wars EU as Legends, and rebooting the canon was not only necessary to make new films, but it was the best way they could have preserved the legacy of the old EU.

I was a huge fan of the Legends EU. I read virtually every book and comic. I grew up on that, and was a die-hard fan.It needed to go. There was no way they could make new movies without rebooting the canon. Fans who didn't get into the books/comics/etc would never have enjoyed a movie that required researching on the wiki to fully understand, and the fans who did know the canon would have been pissed off if there was even the slightest deviation. Also, it's just not that exciting for them to only make movies based on books that already exist. There's no tension or surprise when you already know how it's gonna end, and all the events along the way.Further, rebranding the old EU as Legends and letting it exist on its own, separate from the new canon, is the best thing they could have done to preserve its legacy. The only way to make new movies that took place after RotJ was for them to write new stories. Had they gone with the existing multi-tiered canon system of the old EU, we would have eventually seen all our favorite stories whittled away until nothing had any meaning anymore. Under the old EU system, the movies were the highest level of canon, followed by the TV shows, followed by novels and comics. If something in a higher level of canon contradicted something in a lower level, the higher level took precedence. This system worked OK in the 90s, but it started to break down when the Prequels were made. Suddenly, George Lucas started creating new content in the highest level of canon without even knowing, let alone showing deference to, the existing canon. Remember when Palpatine had a three-eyed son? Remember when the Clone Wars was an army of Jedi against an army of Clones? Remember when the Quarren were an unknown species first discovered and oppressed by the Empire? All of that and much more got wiped from the canon, along with the stores which mentioned them, and now they are almost all but forgotten.Had they NOT rebooted the canon before making new movies, the same thing would have happened, except with much more popular stories. What if George Lucas had written a movie with a passing mention of the New Republic taking control of Coruscant a year after RotJ? All the Rogue Squadron books would have been left in canon limbo by an off hand comment. What if George Lucas had Luke create a Jedi Academy on any planet other than Yavin IV? How much of the EU canon would have been wiped by that? What's worse is that a lot of the fandom, and even possibly Lucasfilm itself, would start to retcon explanations for the discrepancies in the canon. "Well, according to this new movie, the NR did take Coruscant 1 year after RotJ, but then they lost it again, so Rogue Squadron was really the second time the NR took the planet, and they somehow didn't find the Lusankya when they first had the planet." or "The Jedi Academy on Yavin IV was Luke's first Academy, but, as is seen in this movie, he started many, and the one in this movie is his main Academy." It would unalterably damage the meaning and impact of a lot of events in the Legends EU.By isolating Legends in its own continuity, the Lucasfilm Story Group did the best service to it they could. All those stories still exist. Go to any book store and you can still find the Thrawn Trilogy, or the New Jedi Order, or even older stuff like Splinter of the Mind's Eye and The Han Solo Adventures. Everyone can still read them and enjoy them, but there has been, and will not be, any attempt to retcon the stories to make them fit within a changing continuity that really doesn't care about them.Compare it to other loved movies/canons which have rebooted. The Dark Knight Trilogy isn't worse, or done any disservice because DC is making new movies featuring a different Batman with no connection to the Christian Bale Batman. The Marvel comic universe gets rebooted all the time, but that doesn't make the old stories any less impactful. Hell, we've had 3 different Spidermans in 8 movies over the past 2 decades, but I still love (some of) the Tobey Maguire movies and Andrew Garfield ones. They completely rebooted the X-Men movie franchise, and even kept some of the same actors after the reboot (Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman), but the new movies don't make me not care about the old ones. via /r/StarWars https://ift.tt/2JpGRmF