>>1646
Who cares what Lucas intended? That has nothing to do with canocity, and it never should have. There's stuff in Star Trek: Enterprise (and probably DS9 and Voyager) explaining stuff from Star Trek TOS that Gene Roddenberry probably never thought about and/or intended, and he was dead by the time Enterprise aired. No one argues that shit isn't canon based on that premise.
Face it Lucas should be criticized for not respecting and catering to the EU in his movies in the same vein he should be criticized for altering the original movies, he's a fucking insular neurotic fuck with cognitive dissonance. It's just people tend to be ignorant about how much he gave guidelines and treated the EU as if he gave a fuck but then turned right around and disrespected it. In any other situation this behavior would be condemned, it's just people are ignorant to the specifics of it.
It was officially licensed and the only reason people called it non-canon is because people perceive books relative to a popular movie franchise a different tier as well as spergy and strawman based on some wookiepedia articles, and most of said articles are fan shit anyway even within the context of the EU. That and people thought enemies added to old NES/SNES games clearly as lazy game mechanics were somehow in the same league as a line of officially licensed and well thought out novels.
I don't even particularly think most of the EU is bad, though admittedly when I think of "The EU" I think of the New Republic era novels primarily + some of the pre-prequel pre-A New Hope stuff like those Han Solo and Lando Calrissian Adventure books. And if we're talking NJO era and onwards, at the very fucking least the Vong, Swarm War, etc. aren't autistic childish baby garbage like the stuff in the prequels and the stuff George Lucas has been peddling for over a decade now. At least the original movies kept it mostly out sans the Ewoks.
If given a binary choice, I'd gladly keep ALL the classic EU canonized, with all its flaws notwithstanding, than the desolate mostly empty Galaxy we have now. I mean honestly all the prequels and that embarrassing clone wars movie being canon now and not Rogue Squadron's post-Endor escapades is by itself incredibly infuriating. I never liked 1999 onwards George Lucas Star Wars in and of itself anyway. Even if you ignore the baby garbage and the fact the movies objectively fail as movies, it never felt like what I loved. Even the art design felt wrong, it felt like a different franchise.