A few days ago I posted a video about the “canon” in various important franchises and how the current owners seem to be screwing them up. It got me thinking: Disney may own the copyright to “Star Wars.” In every legal sense, they own “Star Wars.” But from a cultural standpoint, do they really own the canon of Star Wars?
What gave Disney the right to claim “Star Wars” as their own? Well… they bought it. That’s undeniable, and conveys certain undeniable rights. But consider a hypothetical alternate timeline. One where George Lucas did not sell to the Disney corporation, but instead to some exceedingly wealthy and vain individual. The dictator of some oil-rich backwater. A Russian oligarch. A tech billionaire. Someone with billions of dollars to throw around not only buying the property, but the funds to make more movies. And this time, rather than cranking out insipid movies filled with SJW tropes, here the bagrillionaire orders not only sequels, but “special editions” that make it plain that, rather than being set long long ago in a galaxy far far away, these flick are actually somehow related not only to Earth, but to said billionaire. Either the billionaire was the founder of the Republic, or is the Chosen One, or… some damn thing, doesn’t matter exactly, but it’s transparent self-serving crap. (*see Note below) It not only busts the established canon by retconning the history and “facts” of the universe, it’s also just really, really terrible in plot, acting, execution. In that case, I suspect that most people, even people who aren’t fans of “Star Wars”would recognize these new movies as being “non-canonical,” even though they were made by the legal owner.
On the other hand, unofficial fan films have often been met with great acclaim by the wider fan community. There are a few well-done series of “episodes” of the original series of “Star Trek” that were made by fans without the funding or permission of Paramount of CBS or Viacom or whoever owns the Star Trek license that day. In a slightly altered timeline, the fan film “Axanar” could ahve been finished and stood in direct opposition to Discovery; both were set in the same approximate time in the Star Trek universe, but had fundamentally different histories, looks, technologies. In this alternate timeline, “Axanar” might have been seen as a triumph by the fans, and Discovery seen as a wretched, hollow cash grab that shat all over the existing Trek canon. In that case… what would *really* be the canon there?
In some cases, canon can be easily determined. If the creator of the property created an episode, the it should be canon. But then, Gene Roddenberry, creator of “Star Trek,” also created the Animated Series, which is considered non-canonical. He created Next Generation, and the first two seasons of that, made under his control, are nearly unwatchable. He was responsible – at least legally – for “Spocks Brain.” He wrote “Star Trek V” and invented Spocks brother… who had never been mentioned before, nor ever since. So if not only the *owner* but the *creator* can be occasionally discounted as the producer of canon… can someone who is neither creator nor owner produce something that is accepted as canon?
In my opinion, yes. If the unofficial fan fiction does not bust canon *AND* it is beloved by the community and is accepted, then I say that something created by outsiders *could* be canon. And at the same time, anything created by someone who simply bought the property is not necessarily canon. For example: Disney has, so far, created one Star Wars film, “Rogue One,” and three terribly expensive fan films.
*Note: here’s a disturbing thought. Instead of Disney, imagine Lucas sold out to a religious organization. The result being a movie starring John Travolta and Tom Cruise as new Jedi, the ghost of Darth Vader voiced by Isaac Hayes. Turns out that, yes, the Force is produced by midichlorians, but rather than being microscopic organisms, midichlorians are actually the souls of long dead aliens blown up in a volcano…