Re: Kathleen Kennedy to step down from Lucasfilm?
The "canon" wasn't thrown out. The Expanded Universe was done away with. The Expanded Universe was never considered canon by George. Yes, he helped on some stuff. Yes, he borrowed stuff (most times at the behest of other people). But he's stated that the Expanded Universe was not his Star Wars. George contradicted the EU on many occasions. Like "grey" Jedi, Mandalorian history, Nightsisters, Kyber crystals. These things George changed from what they were in the EU. Lucasfilm also stated that George was allowed to contradict the EU. So when George gave the responsibility of making new films to Lucasfilm/Disney, they inherited the ability to contradict the EU.
The thing about all that is that the early EU -- before it was even the EU -- maintained little control over ensuring consistency between, say, the Russ Manning newspaper comics, the Marvel comics, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the Han Solo Adventures, the Lando Calrissian Adventures, the various kids' and read-along stories, and so forth. So by the time West End Games came along in the late '80s, there were already inconsistencies, to which they added (including a few that clashed with the films themselves). When the EU was formally established in the '90s, they introduced the "can't contradict earlier EU works" policy, which presented many headaches. Which version of Boba's backstory is the real one? How long is a Super Star Destroyer
really? Etc. But they did their best. Even with George always reserving the right to steamroll over any of it.
After the big canon announcement of 2014, the EU went from being "canon until it isn't" to "not canon until it is". A very minute shift. All of the EU material is a giant grab bag that the creators are free to pull from, and they have been, right and left, pretty much since George's retirement. Even the post-ROTJ EU -- which obviously was the only part that
truly got wiped, is still there "from a certain point of view". We have Ben, who is Leia's son, not Luke's. We have Jacen, who is Hera and Kanan's son, not Leia's. We have Rey, who we still don't know about. So long as we don't get the Yuuzhan Vong, I'm good with where they're taking things. Though, yes, I do have some gripes about how they've gone about getting there.
As for dying of a broken heart, that was always there, but it was part of the foreshortening of things. Luke asking Leia about her memories of their mother was to be between him and his sister before Leia got re-imagined into that role. "She was very beautiful... but sad, in a way. She died when I was very young." That was to have been when she was two or three, not minutes after being born. But Lucas had to tie everything up within the same day in ROTS to end where he wanted to, rather than having all those things happen at different points in time. The Clone Wars happen... Somewhere along the way, Palpatine elevates himself from President of the Senate to Emperor. The Jedi object and lose their standing... Some time after that Anakin turns... Some time after that the twins are born... Some time after that Leia's born and Padmé dies... Some time after that the Clone Wars end... Through this latter period the Jedi are quietly hunted down and exterminated, a time-consuming process Vader helps with... Etc. Fine if there were episodes filling in the intervening years. Not if we cut things off in the middle of things, as George did. A
lot happened in the galaxy between that period and ANH.
And the way he had it originally makes more sense in real-world terms. She
did survive the birth (and wasn't Force-choked by her husband, as henever saw her after he left and became Vader -- didn't know she was pregnant), she and her daughter were taken in by her sister, the Queen of Alderaan. Over the nxt couple years, seeing what her husband was doing directly and helping the Empire do galactically ate at her, and she just dwindled and died. You know I've got a lot of words, but I do not have enough to adequately convey how much I wish George had stuck with his original vision, there.