I have legit never understood this. Aside from not having any fucking nostalgia at all for being a child (zero agency, things decided for you, school is worse than most jobs) I grew up with George Lucas’ dumb fuckin scifi property. I still have the DVDs we got to replace the old videotapes, the Silver ones with the laserdisc rips. I played a bunch of the games, had a few of the Dark Horse comics, and the end result is… The original trilogy are fun 70s scifi with some cool themes and reallly impressive effects work. I’ll never not keep rips of 4K77, 4K80 and 4K83 or the Despecialised versions around, but that’s about it. No harsh to classic EU stuff, I’m sure the Thrawn trilogy and stuff are cool, but I do not understand the relentless brand loyalty combined with “everything was better when I was ten years old” that these people experience.
I think the experience of reading the old EU content was really in keeping with the Star Wars spirit. Star Wars was all about capturing the feeling of old sci fi serials like Flash Gordon, with a splash of westerns and samurai films, and the golden era of Star Wars novels and games were pulpy and schlocky and fun in all the same ways as Star Wars’ inspirations were - but without the annoying self awareness of many modern takes on the genre (including most of Disney’s films and shows, which can’t have a single camp moment without someone looking straight at the camera and mugging like an idiot). I don’t particularly feel that relentless brand loyalty either, but its undeniably something I’ve spent a lot of my life doing and that I have a lot to say about.
I have legit never understood this. Aside from not having any fucking nostalgia at all for being a child (zero agency, things decided for you, school is worse than most jobs) I grew up with George Lucas’ dumb fuckin scifi property. I still have the DVDs we got to replace the old videotapes, the Silver ones with the laserdisc rips. I played a bunch of the games, had a few of the Dark Horse comics, and the end result is… The original trilogy are fun 70s scifi with some cool themes and reallly impressive effects work. I’ll never not keep rips of 4K77, 4K80 and 4K83 or the Despecialised versions around, but that’s about it. No harsh to classic EU stuff, I’m sure the Thrawn trilogy and stuff are cool, but I do not understand the relentless brand loyalty combined with “everything was better when I was ten years old” that these people experience.
I think the experience of reading the old EU content was really in keeping with the Star Wars spirit. Star Wars was all about capturing the feeling of old sci fi serials like Flash Gordon, with a splash of westerns and samurai films, and the golden era of Star Wars novels and games were pulpy and schlocky and fun in all the same ways as Star Wars’ inspirations were - but without the annoying self awareness of many modern takes on the genre (including most of Disney’s films and shows, which can’t have a single camp moment without someone looking straight at the camera and mugging like an idiot). I don’t particularly feel that relentless brand loyalty either, but its undeniably something I’ve spent a lot of my life doing and that I have a lot to say about.