Entry posted by Sumiki
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Long-time Blogarithm viewers may remember a long rant I wrote about the link between Star Wars and BIONICLE with regards to their respective prequels. In it, I made the case that fans of a certain thing have higher expectations and preconceived notions regarding backstory.
I thought that it might be time to significantly expand on that train of thought by considering the monstrous job that now lays ahead of J. J. Abrams, a task that is both Herculean and nearly Sisyphean in its proportions.
The post-Return of the Jedi world saw the beginning of what would become known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Now, the EU is huge - not just with more licenses than you can shake a lightsaber at, but with games and books that delve into the mythology like never before. It's pretty insane how much canon Star Wars material is out there. The fans have been accustomed to the Expanded Universe and the stories that are from the EU are as - in some cases, more - revered than the movies that started it all.
Let's face facts: J. J. Abrams will not be able to make a Star Wars movie without contradicting the Expanded Universe. The EU also relies so much on its own internal canon that contradicting one thing would likely cause a domino effect and negate pretty much every EU story that fans have come to love.
The so-called "Thrawn Trilogy" is a good example. Set after Return of the Jedi, the Thrawn Trilogy were a series of books by author Timothy Zahn that chronicled the main characters fighting off what remained of the Galactic Empire and fighting an Imperial admiral named Thrawn. It's considered to be one of the definitive EU novels and were considered frontrunners to be turned into Episodes VII, VIII, and IX.
Well, as it turns out, they're not going to be made into movies, which means that they - along with quite a lot of the EU - is going down the drain, so to speak.
The only way that effigies of J. J. Abrams aren't burned by rabid Star Wars fans is if, hidden behind all of those lens flares, he's actually a genius beyond mortal comprehension. However, I hope no one takes it as an insult if I say that I sincerely doubt that, even when taking into account the existence of Fringe.
The common problem is that fandoms generally expect consistently high-quality material from content creators. Star Wars had such a following that the prequels were bound to disappoint, regardless of quality. The pre-A New Hope universe was not nearly as explored before A Phantom Menace as the post-Return of the Jedi universe is right now. (I hope that made sense.)
All of which brings us to Greg Farshtey. BZPower did not grow to have the most members of any LEGO fansite without reason. BIONICLE was big, and BZP's heyday saw a level of traffic and server-busy messages unheard of today, all because of BIONICLE. We appreciated Greg's dedication and his interaction with the community, which is unheard of amongst the content creators of such a large fan base.
Nevertheless, voices of dissent emerged, which only became more prevalent in the post-Great Downtime BZP, after Greg disappeared due to his personal life and LEGO's new interactivity policy. Opinions on Greg's writing skills are lukewarm at best, as fans have matured and looked back on Greg's methods of storytelling with more critical eyes. (Time Trap is a great book and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.)
Why? Well, we had become accustomed, as a community, to Greg's presence. Without it, I believe that criticism of his writing would have come about much sooner. We, as fandoms are wont to do, came to expect an inhuman level of quality from Greg, as the Star Wars fandom is expecting an inhuman level of quality from Abrams and his gang.
After all, Lucas got enough flak for the prequels.
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