star_wars_logoI know I’ve recounted this story before for people who are far too young to have seen Star Wars in its original theatrical release, but there’s some news today that makes it bear repeating: there was a time, not too long after Return of The Jedi left theaters, when Star Wars didn’t mean shit.

I know, it’s hard to believe, but by around 1989 or 1990, nobody was thinking about Star Wars. After Jedi came and went in 1983, we had moved on. There had been two Indiana Jones movies, Ghostbusters had come out, people who had been scared by Darth Vader as little kids were cackling at Freddy Krueger flicks, and Batman was ushering in the first real age of comic book movies. Star Wars was over. Nobody cared. Hell, even Marvel Comics had stopped publishing Star Wars comics in 1986, and that was the title that kept the company afloat in the late 70s.

Sure, we still loved Star Wars, but by then we had moved on. George Lucas wasn’t talking about making any more movies – sometime around the release of The Empire Strikes Back he was making bold claims about producing a nine-movie epic – and by 1986, he was busier executive producing Howard The Duck, possibly from behind a giant mound of cocaine (Editor’s Note: There is no evidence or allegation whatsoever that George Lucas was using cocaine during this period. Other than the fact that he was in the movie business, and it was the 1980s. Which, as someone who lived through that period, is pretty damning evidence all by itself. But I digress.)

But then, all of a sudden in 1991, there was Timothy Zahn’s Heir to The Empire. A novel set after Return of The Jedi featuring Luke, Han and Leia. And a story that, in those pre-Internet days, was strongly rumored to be the actual stores that Lucas planned to tell in the final three movies.

And once that novel hit, Star Wars interest exploded all over again. There were two sequels to Heir to The Empire. There was the Dark Horse comics sequel to that sequel called Dark Empire. And a metric shit-ton of other novels and comics, which piqued interest enough to get the Star Wars special editions released in theaters (including that victory fireworks display on Coruscant – a city introduced in Zahn’s novels!), and then the prequels, and then years of fandom rage, and now the new Episode VII being directed by J. J. Abrams…

…but without that first novel that really established the Star Wars Expanded Universe and kickstarted a new wave of interest in Star Wars? It’s the 70s and 80s version of The Matrix: One great movie, a couple of sorta okay ones, and ultimately a thing we liked when we were younger, until we moved on to bigger and better things, so we don’t really even think about it anymore.

So Star Wars owes a lot to its Expanded Universe. Which you would think would be recognized by J. J. Abrams, who, when he rebooted Star Trek, went to great story lengths to find a way to reboot the property without invalidating all the other stories that came before.

Yeah, but you’d be wrong. Because as of today, all of those stories? Not even remotely canon anymore.