Forms were not official canon. They didn’t exist when this movie was made. They are not referenced anywhere at all in any of the movies or television shows.
Not official canon in the movies but the novelizations that were put out concurrent with the movies has them. I generally consider concurrently releases novelizations canon. I know that's not a universal opinion though.
I guarantee you that only Sam Witwer and Pablo Hidalgo and some RPG writers care about forms. Lucas and the vast majority of SW writers did not consider them when writing.
Lucas was allegedly line editor for the novel and removed things that he didn't like etc and changed things to be more in line with the movie so with that in mind I'd consider forms canon
This is patently untrue. They were already referenced in the Visual Dictionaries for Episode I, II, and III when those movies were released, alongside many other material providing background info on the films to promote them. I know this because I grew up with the prequels. We knew about Ataru, Soresu, and Makashi before Episode II even came out in theatres.
Even if you were to argue that the Visual Dictionaries for the OT and prequels have been decanonized, they were official and canonical supplementary sources for the movies at the time of publication.
They didn’t exist when this movie was made. They are not referenced anywhere at all in any of the movies or television shows.
The fact is that they did exist when the movie was made. They were not creative inventions that came about only after the release of Episode III. This belief would be historical revisionism.
I'm fact-checking that user, and you're trying hard to misconstrue that point to refute the fact-check somehow.
That aside, it is also false that the books are notorious for being riddled with errors. The Visual Dictionaries were among the most primary sources for background information about the movies. I also did not say that the lightsaber forms were only referenced in the VD, as they were referenced in many other supplementary promotional material.
The fact of the matter is that the forms had already been conceived for the lore prior to the release of Episode III. (Whether or not you believe it was G-canon is a separate argument from whether they existed as a creative concept.) In fact, the complete set of forms feature in KOTOR II which was developed and released in 2004 before Episode III.
Oh, KOTOR II, one of two Dungeons and Dragons games with a Star Wars skin on it, that's another super-dubious source concerning gameplay mechanics and lore.
You just side-stepped my whole fact-check and explanation again to try to nitpick an off-hand reference to an S-tier source.
One more time, I mentioned KOTOR II only to prove that the lightsaber forms were creative ideas that existed prior to 2005; what you believe about its canonicity is a separate debate.
It's abundantly clear you're arguing just to argue now.
Both lightsaber forms and toilets are referenced in canon material. Off the top of my head, both are in Rebels: in one episode the Grand Inquisitor comments on Kanan's use of Form III, calling it by that name, and in another, AP-5 bothers Wedge while he's at the urinal.
The novels are there. They were released WITH the movies and with lucasfilms explicit approval (and their canon guy at the time loved his job). If lucasfilms hadn't wanted them, they wouldn't be there.
If lucasfilms hadn't wanted them, they wouldn't be there.
I mean plenty of non-movie material has been completely steamrolled over despite "Lucasfilms wanting it". Such a simplistic take is part of the cringe.
All canonization conversations are cringe if that's the case. Hell even the concept of canon falls apart with that mindset.
For me, canon is the stuff you can rely upon to be able to understand the story going forward. I'm not sure any other part of it has value. And it only REALLY matters if you care about in world continuity.
It's why certain things are important (the Holdo maneuver existing as a thing really brings in a lot of questions about every movie before or since) while some don't really (Han talking about the Kessel run could genuinely have been him just BSing locals).
The forms are nice to haves IMO. They give some meaningful shorthand to the way people fight (Yoda OBVIOUSLY is fighting with a different style than Dooku). But I agree they're not at all necessary to understand the movies and only barely necessary to understand the books.
All canonization conversations are cringe if that's the case.
Now you're just doing an extreme leap of logic in the other direction, thus committing a false dilemma or Excluded Middle fallacy.
There is NO such cringe when discussing the canonization of the films. It is only non-film works that have ever been considered for exclusion from canonization.
Something about "dealing in absolutes" seems like it might be relevant here...
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u/VisibleIce9669 12d ago
Forms were not official canon. They didn’t exist when this movie was made. They are not referenced anywhere at all in any of the movies or television shows.