Being a long-running franchise with some drastic changes over the decades, fans are bound to disagree over what is and isn't canon.
Mainline Movies
The Star Wars movies have one of the most divided fandoms when it comes to determining which works are canon (or ought to be canon). Discussion on the subject unfortunately leads to some of the fiercest Flame Wars on the Internet, rife with Complaining About Shows You Don't Like.- The most extreme fans accept only a single film as canon: the original 1977 A New Hope (not that they'll call it that; its original title was just Star Wars, and only got changed because more films were made). They don't like The Empire Strikes Back, usually because of its Darker and Edgier tone. The most common complaints are that Empire doesn't fit tonally with the first movie, that the Empire's counterattack is a kind of Happy Ending Override of the victory against the Death Star, and that Darth Vader being Luke's father is a Retcon which retroactively turns Obi-Wan into a liar and Luke's heroic father into a traitorous villain.
- Most fans accept both A New Hope and Empire, but a few disregard Return of the Jedi, citing several reasons:
- They don't like the Ewoks. They especially don't like how they so easily made the Empire look like chumps. They also point out that in early versions of the script, the Ewoks were actually Wookiees, and they cynically note that the change was almost entirely to introduce a Kid-Appeal Character. Even some of the executive producers hated the Ewoks, and C-3PO's actor Anthony Daniels also expressed his antipathy (although given his loyalty to his role, he probably doesn't consider the film Discontinuity).
- They don't like The Reveal that Luke and Leia are siblings. First, it's a Retcon, as earlier drafts didn't say this at all (nor did Splinter of the Mind's Eye, published between the releases of A New Hope and Empire and likely to bring it up if it were true). It hit especially hard with fans who shipped Luke and Leia and aren't into Twincest.
- They feel that Boba Fett, an Ensemble Dark Horse, ended up wasted as a character with his quick and embarrassing death in the Sarlacc's digestive tract. (It may be mitigated by the proverbial manual noting that he escaped.)
- They don't like the plot of having to blow up the Death Star again, going as far as to call it a Recycled Script. Harrison Ford tried to make things interesting by suggesting to George Lucas that his character Han die in the process in a Heroic Sacrifice, but Lucas said no.
- Some fans accept all three films in the original trilogy, but prefer to disregard any movie made after them. Over the years, this has grown to include (or rather exclude) the prequels, the sequels, and the spin-off movies like Rogue One and Solo.
- Some fans disregard the prequel trilogy, even if they're fine with other movies like the sequel trilogy. The objections are many and have been rehashed on the Internet for decades now, but they boil down to complaining that (a) the characters who were referenced in the original trilogy are given arcs that contradict what the original trilogy establishes; (b) the new characters were largely forgettable or unlikeable; (c) the introduction of midichlorians amounts to Doing In the Wizard; and (d) the idea that Jedi are banned from having relationships made it more difficult to make plausible Slash Fic.
- A few fans specifically disregard The Phantom Menace, but are fine with the other prequels. They recommend watching the films in the "Machete Order
": A New Hope, then Empire, then Attack of the Clones, then Revenge of the Sith, then Return of the Jedi. The idea is that it's the best way to see Anakin's character arc; first, you build up to The Reveal of "Luke, I Am Your Father," then you jump back and see how he fell to The Dark Side, and finally you jump forward again and see his redemption. The argument is that The Phantom Menace doesn't add anything to that arc that makes it worthwhile. - Some fans disregard all or parts of the sequel trilogy for various reasons. Among the most common objections are that the new conflict is a Happy Ending Override for the original trilogy, the tone is too different and unfitting, the new characters (or even the old ones) don't have good characterization, the films are too fond of internal Deconstruction, and the plots are stupid and rehashed. Interestingly, fans who disregard the sequels tend to clash with fans who disregard the prequels, as they clash with the original trilogy for fairly different reasons; and both sets of fans are criticized for only hating what was new to them and seizing an opportunity to be a self-righteous meta-level Knight Templar. Also interestingly, each of the sequel trilogy's films can be individually excluded for different reasons:
- Some fans reject The Force Awakens for being a Soft Reboot that resets the status quo, undoes the victory over the Empire in the original trilogy, writes out both the New Republic and the New Jedi Order (the latter as early as the opening crawl), and rehashes the original trilogy's conflicts under new names. The old characters have gone practically nowhere relative to before (Han returns to smuggling, Leia returns to being Rebel leader, and Luke takes Obi-Wan's place as the mysterious hermit), while the new characters aren't given a sufficiently developed world in which to work. These fans found the film's universe too bleak to care about; many also stopped caring about what happened next, so most fans who reject The Force Awakens reject the entire sequel trilogy.
- Some fans accept The Force Awakens but disregard The Last Jedi. That film has an incredibly Broken Base; you rarely find anything between total acclaim and total contempt for it. The ones who disregard it cite difficulty reconciling with The Force Awakens. A few were receptive to the twists and deconstructions but found them poorly executed; others were opposed on principle, feeling that they were unfitting for the series. Some people hated The Last Jedi so much that they immediately started a (now closed) change.org petition calling for Disney to declare it Canon Discontinuity.
- Some fans accept only The Force Awakens and not The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker. The tone shifts back and forth going from one movie to the next, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker overlap minimally and are particularly difficult to reconcile, and none of the three mesh well together as a whole. There's also the specter of Ship-to-Ship Combat between the three films. Given the choice of only one "definitive" sequel film, most fans choose The Force Awakens.
- Some fans accept both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but not The Rise of Skywalker. One main objections here is that they don't like the plot; compared to the other two, it's much more conservative and Strictly Formula. The other is that the film brought Palpatine Back from the Dead as the villain, which (a) is a big Happy Ending Override for Return of the Jedi, given that Vader/Anakin supposedly killed him in a Heroic Sacrifice to resolve what became a six-film-long character arc, and (b) they already tried that in the Star Wars Expanded Universe in the 90s, to such criticism that later EU content had to downplay it significantly.
- Many fans only accept certain versions of the films. Some consider the Special Editions to supersede the theatrical releases; others only accept the theatrical versions. Perhaps the biggest point of contention is whether "Han shot first", of which there are three variants: the original where Han just shoots Greedo, the modified version where Greedo shoots first and misses and Han shoots him back, and the third version where Han and Greedo shoot nearly simultaneously. Many traditional fans suggest that the only "true" version has Han shoot first, a view so widespread that George Lucas even once wore a T-shirt on set reading "Han shot first". But given that Lucas was responsible for all three variants, this could go either way. The official Disney+ release uses the third version with the twist of Greedo saying "Maclunkey!"note before firing.
Star Wars Legends and Expanded Universe
There was always a Broken Base over the canonicity of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, which heated up after Disney bought the franchise and made the original Star Wars Legends an Alternate Continuity, meaning one cannot accept anything made after 2014 and the original EU as the same canon. Some fans continue to prefer Legends over the sequels, and factions within that often only accept certain material like Star Wars: Legacy. Others will reject the post-Disney canon on principle. There's even a certain subset of fans who, seeing that both universes accept the original six films and The Clone Wars as canon, treat them as the only works to be definitively canon, regardless of the quality of anything beyond that.- Some fans accept The Clone Wars as canon, but not the prequel films, while others consider the entire EU canon except The Clone Wars because it was the only original EU media source to not become Canon Discontinuity under Disney. The series contradicts the pre-existing and similarly named Star Wars: Clone Wars, which it was meant to supersede. Some fans like to mix them for reasons like preferring the older portrayal of General Grievous's fearsome Jedi-killer reputation and Mace Windu crushing his lungs to cause his less than intimidating appearance, plus its buildup to Anakin and Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith and Anakin's use of his skeletal golden arm for Fan Wank, while preferring the new series' Ahsoka Tano and character interaction. Alternatively, some Legends fans ignore the 2008 Clone Wars series for a few reasons, including the series having many contradictions with previous Legends canon, not feeling the series fits well enough in its place in the timeline, feeling Anakin wouldn’t be considered mentor material due to his emotional control issues, or disliking Order 66 being boiled down to Mind Control. Also there’s a preference with these fans for the 2003 micro series rather than the 2008 one.
- Some fans mix certain Disney-era works with Legends, which is most common with The Mandalorian, Rogue One, Star Wars Rebels, and Andor as they occur before the sequels (and even the originals for the latter three) and thus fit more easily into the Broad Strokes. Fans of Knights of the Old Republic may accept Disney canon over EU canon except when it involves the games, as do some fans of Star Wars: Republic, or Dark Forces Saga, who favor it over Rogue One concerning how the rebels stole the Death Star plans. Indeed, it was almost encouraged in some circles to mix Legends into the Disney-era works; Disney even started making a habit of cherry-picking bits of Legends continuity they liked (such as force-healing), only to end up confusing people who weren't familiar with Legends to begin with. The trend nowadays is to specify, in Legends' case, that it remains canon after the Disney acquisition unless and until Disney writes something to contradict it. This is so hard to keep track of that the Star Wars wiki created the Holocron continuity database, a list of works categorized by canonicity based on multiple factors — which Disney will happily ignore and throw into disarray every so often.
- Even before the Continuity Reboot, fans accepted certain bits of Legends continuity more than others. Before New Jedi Order, individual opinions over what was considered Fanon Discontinuity or not were vastly varied between individual fans, ranging in extremes from only discounting obvious pieces (such as the Jedi Academy Trilogy and The Courtship of Princess Leia which were full of Continuity Snarls) to ignoring absolutely everything set after the Thrawn Trilogy. Even afterward, some fans wanted the New Jedi Order series to be the end of the Legends franchise and disregard almost everything afterward, while the people that dislike New Jedi Order want either the Hand of Thrawn duology or Young Jedi Knights to be the end.
- It all began with Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the first Legends novel ever written. The book was meant to be the plot for a low-budget sequel to Episode IV in the event that it wasn't the commercial success it ended up being, but remained canon within the Legends continuity with elements from it appearing elsewhere in the timeline. Many fans disagreed with this choice due to Luke's faceoff against Vader within the novel diminishing the gravity of their climactic showdown in Empire Strikes Back, as well as the unwanted additional Ship Tease with him and Leia.
- The novel The Crystal Star is generally considered the worst Star Wars book written, thanks to its slow plot, out-of-character actions, and general weird crap, and the writers seem to agree.
- The Jedi Prince young adult novels (also known as The Glove of Darth Vader after the first book) as refused as ever occurring by fans, helped by only two points from the entire series ever being brought up again, ever: the concept of Human Replica Droids and Duro being a wasteland, polluted to the point of being uninhabitable by industrial waste, neither of which requires the stories' specific events to work. Ironically, Disney's reboot would ultimately bring up, whether it were intentional or not, the idea of Emperor Palpatine having a grandchild who ends up on the side of good instead.
- The Dark Empire comics series, which brought Palpatine back, is often disregarded in favor of the roughly concurrent Thrawn Trilogy of novels and the rest of Legends that followed its lead. Or else the comics are imagined to be in its own continuity as a sequel to Return of the Jedi. This is encouraged by the inevitable thematic Continuity Snarl between the comics and the prequel movies made later, which retroactively established the whole prophecy that Vader would "bring balance to the Force" and that he fulfilled it by killing Palpatine in Return of the Jedi. Thus, some fans disregard The Rise of Skywalker, and by extension the entire sequel trilogy (for having darksiders in general), for the same reason.
- The New Jedi Order series had an enormous number of fans rejecting it outright, mostly revolving around claims of making Star Wars needlessly Darker and Edgier. This opinion was pushed well into the majority after the Bloodier and Gorier Dark Nest Trilogy and the Legacy of the Force series, each considered Fanon Discontinuity for their own reasons, with only a small minority still holding out after events such as Mara Jade and Anakin Solo's deaths. Fate of the Jedi initially looked to regain some of the lost fans, but then served only to further diminish their numbers.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic tie-in novel Revan is hated by fans of Knights of the Old Republic and Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords — alongside putting Revan and The Exile through The Worf Effect, the KOTOR squadmates are incredibly shafted, outside of Canderous, T3 and Bastila. Even more so for the KOTOR 2 squadmates, where outside of Kreia (only a short reference as "Darth Traya") none of them are even mentioned by their names. Add this in with Exile having Forgot About His Powers, her connection to the Force magically re-appearing, the Sith Emperor being an Invincible Villain, and all of Kreia's teachings about the Force and the Jedi being dismissed as Dark Side corruption. And on top of that, quite a few people hate the name Meetra Surik. Adding even more fuel to the fire, the novel is implied to be one of the few things that survived the reboot as Star Wars: The High Republic refers to Surik by name.
- Some Star Wars: Republic fans disregard the All There in the Manual deaths of Ki-Adi Mundi's family.
- The Last Jedi (not to be confused with the sequel film of the same name) is quite controversial due to fitting closer with The Clone Wars and Disney canon than with the Legends EU and getting Laranth killed.
- Some fans like to think Thall Joben, one of R2-D2 and C-3PO's many owners in Droids, is a survivor of Order 66 and don't like Word of God saying he merely found the lightsaber he carries somewhere.
- Dawn of the Jedi fans can be tempted to disregard the third and final story arc, Force War, or at least parts of it, due to how the story feels a bit rushed and abruptly ends due to the approaching Disney buyout. It probably would have turned out differently if not for the Continuity Reboot.
- Fans of the Dark Times comic series have two notable points of contention with the storyline that they sometimes try to disregard: the Dropped a Bridge on Him death of Crys Taanzer halfway through the comic, and fan favorite One-Man Army Order 66 survivor Beyghor Sachet turning out to have killed another Jedi and pledged allegiance to Palpatine, leading to his death and that of two other supporting characters in the final arc.
- The Star Wars Holiday Special was near-universal Fanon Discontinuity; George Lucas himself disowned it and allegedly said he would destroy every copy of it he could find himself. However, it was always officially Broad Strokes canon and only became Canon Discontinuity when Disney jettisoned the entire EU.
- The Mandalorian has some fans who want to reject the first spin-off, a generally common choice for Disney+'s worst Star Wars-based show, and Season 3, which continues from the Required Spinoff Crossover. These fans argue that even if Mandalorian Season 2 doesn't have a totally happy ending, it still feels like appropriate and resonant closure for the clan's story; when Din Djarin reveals his true face to Grogu, then the two permit Luke Skywalker to resume Grogu's training. They also argue that the aforementioned continuations reverse too much of Din's character development (such as when he accepts a trial of atonement from the Armorer for revealing his face, and doesn't let Grogu see it again afterwards), delivered disappointing payoffs to earlier plot threads, and aren't as enjoyable to viewers who don't know the complete canon timeline of the cartoons (including the unaired episodes). Disney's Blu-ray department didn't help when they announced, four months after Season 3 finished, that the inaugural wave of Mandalorian sets would stop at Season 2.
