What's Canon? Few Care

[Basaku]

Among a small portion of the overall audiences. And there's only been one popular interconnected cinematic universe - the MCU. The DCEU is a clustermuck.

I would argue that Star Wars counts as well, given how closely it adheres to the originals when most people would have accepted fudging the details.

Alright - there're (maybe) two, but how much of the overall audience for any of these properties ask themselves whether something is canon before they watch something?

Add entire world of comic books that get reboots consistiently when the audience feels the canon became too much of a clustereff. Video games too. Also, Godzilla/Kong, Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts are another examples of already succesful cinematic universes.

No really, canon and interconncted universes are so hot these days because the audience does care. If they didn't, MCU wouldn't be that succesful either.

[ABED]

Fantastic Beasts is a spinoff. And that universe is VERY linear. It's not the same as the MCU which has multiple franchises and a much more complex canon.

We are two movies into the Godzilla/King Kong universe, so I'd pump the breaks on that assessment. It's not nearly as hot as you claim.

What we do know is that people care about the MCU and their superheroes crossing over, not that they love canon. People love stories.

[ekrolo2]

I don't know if I'd use the MCU as an example of people caring for canon as they do about seeing a lot of easily likable characters interact with one another. That and the nebulous ether of a "grand plan" that's a big deal to the history of cinema unfolding that they want to be a part of. At most, I'd say the non-nerds care about it in the most superficial of ways.

[TheUltimateNinja]

Everyone should care about continuity at least, how can you get invested in a story if you don't even know what did or didn't happen?

[ekrolo2]

Everyone should care about continuity at least, how can you get invested in a story if you don't even know what did or didn't happen?

Nowadays if you've got superficially likable characters and are "fun" in that super vague, late 2010s meaning of the word, you've basically fit the criteria of what people need. Remembering past events or plot structure or consistency or tone or any of that other pesky story stuff doesn't matter.

[Desassina]

Nowadays if you've got superficially likable characters and are "fun" in that super vague, late 2010s meaning of the word, you've basically fit the criteria of what people need. Remembering past events or plot structure or consistency or tone or any of that other pesky story stuff doesn't matter.

Don't be so negative. That only happens to franchises which had their time to be well written and consistent. When the authors are past the point of pouring their effort, nostalgia pandering is their only means to stay alive, but there are always new ones attempting what they did in the past.

[ekrolo2]

Nowadays if you've got superficially likable characters and are "fun" in that super vague, late 2010s meaning of the word, you've basically fit the criteria of what people need. Remembering past events or plot structure or consistency or tone or any of that other pesky story stuff doesn't matter.

Don't be so negative. That only happens to franchises which had their time to be well written and consistent. When the authors are past the point of pouring their effort, nostalgia pandering is their only means to stay alive, but there are always new ones attempting what they did in the past.

I was referring to the MCU nowadays, it pretty much runs on having superficial but likable characters cross over with one another in the 2010 definition of fun (which is have your stories and characters constantly point out how stupid they are so you don't have to make dramatic or satisfying pay offs to any pesky stuff like characters arcs within the framework of the narrative) to get assess into seats and it works. That and the industry wide attempt at copying said style has indeed left me quite a bit bitter about the state of story telling of the now, if we bring in old franchises that should've fucked off and died epochs ago, then we're gonna be here all night.

[ABED]

Everyone should care about continuity at least, how can you get invested in a story if you don't even know what did or didn't happen?

It depends on context. Some franchises are a series of mostly one offs. Others are serialized. I don't think most people care one way or the other as long as it's good. Even in the case of a super serialized series (film or TV) I don't think it matters to the overall audiences if writers remember the minutia.

I was referring to the MCU nowadays, it pretty much runs on having superficial but likable characters cross over with one another in the 2010 definition of fun (which is have your stories and characters constantly point out how stupid they are so you don't have to make dramatic or satisfying pay offs to any pesky stuff like characters arcs within the framework of the narrative) to get assess into seats and it works. That and the industry wide attempt at copying said style has indeed left me quite a bit bitter about the state of story telling of the now, if we bring in old franchises that should've fucked off and died epochs ago, then we're gonna be here all night.

If you think this is a reflection of the state of storytelling these days, I don't think you are paying attention. Big budget films aside, storytelling is as good as its ever been, especially due to TV. Also, I don't know what this has to do with the issue of whether canon matters that much to people.

[nato25]

I'll tell you that canon matters very much to me. When I have to question a new plot point because it contradicts old material (Super especially, the Trunks hair thing probably offends me the most) I hate that. I want to sit there and enjoy your content not be like "wtf that's not how it was before".

Dragon Ball has such awesome lore, build on it, don't fight against it. I can enjoy things like the movies sure, but Super was touted as a continuation of the franchise so why is it fighting established aspects of the past franchises. I think people should care because if it gets worse the series will be harder to enjoy, we can already see a huge example with how much people are complaining about inconsistent power levels and time passing in the tournament of power.

You said 48 minutes, the tournament is clearly longer than 48 minutes due to all the talking and standing around, how are we meant to resolve that in our heads. I do have reasoning for this (I think this is one of Toriyamas dot points and while the 48 minutes thing will work just fine in a manga format obviously it doesn't work with the format of anime) but still it's annoying to try and consolidate that fact.

[ABED]

I'm not talking fundamentally about continuity. Yes, if you have a plot point, don't forget it. I mean people don't care if GT or Super or the movies are canon. If I was talking about continuity, I would use "continuity".

[nato25]

Maybe I'm being stupid here but wouldn't you say canon and continuity are intrinsically linked? People would probably call the movies canon if a few small details changed. It's the things that don't follow the continuity that establish something as non-canon, otherwise why wouldn't it be accepted unless an author explicitly states it isn't.

[KBABZ]

Maybe I'm being stupid here but wouldn't you say canon and continuity are intrinsically linked? People would probably call the movies canon if a few small details changed. It's the things that don't follow the continuity that establish something as non-canon, otherwise why wouldn't it be accepted unless an author explicitly states it isn't.

I consider them different. Continuity is a work's ability to reference previous events or at least keep them in mind, and for many fans they tend to be minor (remembering that Gohan beat Cell is too obvious to forget). Things like Goku re-enacting his fight with Grandpa Gohan at Baba's Palace would be an example of continuity, or in the GT dub when Goku points out that he tried dressing up as a bride once to fool somebody and it didn't work.

Canon on the other hand is the relationships each work has to other ones, and in particular which is "real" and takes priority over the others. What "really" happened vs stories that don't apply. The term derives from Christianity and dealing with the various writings of the Bible. To use Star Wars as an example, when Disney wanted to do episodes past Jedi, they made the entire Expanded Universe outside of Clone Wars and Rebels non-canon to make it easier for writing that era, so everything from KOTOR to the Thrawn Trilogy no longer "actually" happened.

Dragon Ball is difficult in this context because while several works go through due diligence to try and be consistent with previous ones, they often don't do that for each other and instead focus on telling the best story for that particular moment (especially in the Daizenshuu, which is afraid to commit on saying anything is non-canon and instead uses weasel words like "speculate" and "perhaps"). The movies don't even bother to do that!

Which is why it feels like Dragon Ball has no canon outside of the original manga, and trying to make sense of it involves a large amount of initiative and fanon on the part of the reader/viewer. How much of FighterZ's story is canon to Super, for example? Probably 0%, but that doesn't mean it can't be a compelling story in its own right.

[nato25]

That's a good point. I still believed they are linked pretty closely but yeah I'm not against stories such as Fighterz or Xenoverse for example.

[ABED]

Linked but not the same exact thing. KBABZ articulated it better than I could.

I'm reading the Thrawn trilogy and I'm enjoying it. It doesn't matter whether it's canon anymore. It's a good story, and frankly, that's all that really should matter.

[KBABZ]

Linked but not the same exact thing. KBABZ articulated it better than I could.

Thanks! Two manga examples of continuity I thought of are halos, the Nimbus, the Red Ribbon Army, Oozaru and Grandpa Gohan. Oozaru show up early on and it goes on a massive hiatus until Gohan's training where it's brought up again. Grandpa Gohan as a concept had really not been mentioned since the early Chapters, but appears in the Baba saga to add to the finale of Goku's fights. The Halo, introduced there, would not be seen again until Goku gets killed by Raditz much later on, Gohan uses the Flying Nimbus at the start of high school when it hadn't been seen for years. The RRA is probably the biggest; Toriyama takes events that happened a long time ago and draws from them as backstory for this new story arc. It's probably the best example of Dragon Ball continuity adding to the world of the story.

I'm reading the Thrawn trilogy and I'm enjoying it. It doesn't matter whether it's canon anymore. It's a good story, and frankly, that's all that really should matter.

And Dragon Ball is certainly a well of interesting stories that use the elements we're all familiar with. Some of the best comic book stories are The Dark Knight Returns, Whatever Happened to the Man Of Tomorrow? and Kingdom Come, all of which are totally non-canon and take full advantage of it to tell awesome stories using familiar elements.

[ekrolo2]

Linked but not the same exact thing. KBABZ articulated it better than I could.

I'm reading the Thrawn trilogy and I'm enjoying it. It doesn't matter whether it's canon anymore. It's a good story, and frankly, that's all that really should matter.

And yet, its puzzling how often you'll find that people somehow can't enjoy things that don't "matter" to whatever the big picture is or in the case of Star Wars, act like they're good, old Legends stuff is somehow gone because Disney said it doesn't "matter" for the new material.

[DragonBallKing]

In the end canon does not matter when it comes to the quality of a story, people don't just dislike GT because it's "not canon". But as others have said continuity within the universe is important for the the viewer. If Toei suddenly announced that all their movies are cannon to the DBS reality and gave no explanation for how movie event's fit into the timeline then it's understandable for people to be confused.

[ABED]

In the end canon does not matter when it comes to the quality of a story, people don't just dislike GT because it's "not canon". But as others have said continuity within the universe is important for the the viewer. If Toei suddenly announced that all their movies are cannon to the DBS reality and gave no explanation for how movie event's fit into the timeline then it's understandable for people to be confused.

Canonicity is the least of GT's problems.