Who decides what's "canon"?

[PainInTheAssInternet]

I do. There's too much profit involved for the content creators to decide. They will always expand their IPs, even if their decisions don't make any sense. So I have to decide what's true and what's not using the information presented to me.

To build off this point using the Alien franchise, the source material can be very inconsistent. As a specific example, Ripley's rank from Aliens to Alien Resurrection. In Aliens, she joins the Sulaco's mission as a civilian advisor, someone the military takes along but only listens to at their discretion. She had no authority whatsoever, which makes sense as she was just a bureaucrat and manual labourer that may have some useful information to that particular mission. She even explicitly states she isn't a soldier. When Lieutenant Gorman is incapacitated along with Sergeant Apone, Ripley points out that it's a military operation and Corporal Hicks is next in the chain of command. He only listens to her of his own volition. As a Corporal, he was under no obligation to do so.

Come Alien 3, which has a lot of canonical issues such as how the egg got into the cryochambers, the computer from the escape vehicle lists her as Lieutenant Ripley. She apparently had the same official authority as Gorman who was in charge of the whole crew, but his experience would have him ranked as Second Lieutenant which Ripley could not have possibly exceeded. There is no reason the computer would state that and is only possible through the writers misunderstanding the events and military structure of Aliens. Then in Alien Resurrection, she's Lieutenant First Class Ripley, now outranking Gorman and therefore being solely in charge of the Sulaco's mission as there was no Captain present.

So there you have it. According to the people in charge of the story not understanding their own canon and terminology, Ripley was upgraded twice after the events occurred. If one accepts the entire Quadrilogy as canon, you accept the contradictory view that Ripley was both civilian advisor with no authority and the highest-ranking member present solely in charge of the mission.

 

[King Billi]

This, basically. Which is why Watchmen has always remained a 12-issue series and nothing else.

See now, I really loved Watchmen, the film. I was genuinely shocked at how close it adhered to the story (no, not everything, yes they cut out that comic within the comic and the squiddier parts)

I believe this comment was referring to the prequel comics DC released a while back and what they are currently doing to intergrate the Watchmen into the mainsteam comics moreso than to the film which was just an adaptation of the original book.

OT Whoever owns the characters or IP decides what is canon, like how Disney upon gaining ownership of Star Wars promptly throughout a lot if previously established canon in order to create their own, people may not always like it hut that's just the way it is.

That being said whether something is deemed "canon" or not really shouldn't matter that much especially with long running IPs that cover a lot of different forms of media (books, comics, film, television etc) such as Marvel, DC or Star Wars where what is deemed "official" is not always what is best and often what is most interesting is what is made when creators are allowed more freedom from the constraints that are often forced on works that must fit in with the "official canon".

 

[jademunky]

I believe this comment was referring to the prequel comics DC released a while back and what they are currently doing to intergrate the Watchmen into the mainsteam comics moreso than to the film which was just an adaptation of the original book.

They made Watchmen prequels? Awww and they even roped Straczynski into it.

Dammit DC. You sit in the corner and think about what you did!

 

[darkcalling]

I believe this comment was referring to the prequel comics DC released a while back and what they are currently doing to intergrate the Watchmen into the mainsteam comics moreso than to the film which was just an adaptation of the original book.

They made Watchmen prequels? Awww and they even roped Straczynski into it.

Dammit DC. You sit in the corner and think about what you did!

Never heard anything good or bad about the prequel comics really. Just that they existed. What they're doing to integrate the characters into current DC canon could be interesting but I haven't heard much and am too broke at the moment to try and follow comics atm.

 

[BrawlMan]

Official canon - IP owner/authors
Headcanon - you
In subjective, personal terms, headcanon > official. But objectively, official canon rules the roost. Sorry but there's no debate about that.
But in my world? Indiana Jones rode off into the sunset with Henry Sr. and Marcus Brody and that was the end of the canon. No, there were never aliens or crystal skulls... nope. didn't happen.

This, though I thought Crystal Skulls was just okay. Still can't beat the other three.

My own head canon goes like this:

* Dragonball Z ended after the Cell saga. If the Buu saga did happen, Gohan was the leading protagonist, not Goku.

* There are only two Alien and two Terminator movies. The 4th Terminator while fun, is in its own little pocket dimension.

* Only the first Taken exsists.

* There is no Transporter 4

* Jason Goes to Hell never happened.

* The Shaman King manga never ended and didnt' have a crap sequel to a crappy ending. No siree.

* There is only one Crow, The Land Before Time, & Highlander (the anime movie is great).

* And there is only the Bourne trilogy.

 

[hermes]

Creators do.

If that ends up ruining a perfectly good story because the creator couldn't resist writing another paycheck with it, it is a shame, but that doesn't change the fact he is the creator, as much as it doesn't change my initial enjoyment of the original work...

 

[WolfThomas]

They made Watchmen prequels? Awww and they even roped Straczynski into it.

Dammit DC. You sit in the corner and think about what you did!

There's a story where the Minutemen stop terrorist from detonating an A-Bomb in the Statue of Liberty. Yes they actually missed the point and had the minutemen do actual super-heroics.

 

[Kyrian007]

Well, unless the content creator has sold his copyright... the content creator. Otherwise it belongs to the person or company whom he sold the copyright to. And if its a company as opposed to an individual... then its the writing team employed by that company that creates the "canon."

Nothing wrong with the idea of headcanon... but that is for the individual, and that individual has no real right to complain when further content changes "their" characters or headcanon "storylines." I'm "that guy." The guy that when people said (for example) "Other M totally got Samus wrong," #notmysamus. I was the guy saying "nope, that's Samus. Nintendo says that's who Samus is always was... deal with it."

 

[SweetShark]

But as much fun as that can be, the original creator or the designated owner after the creator has left the work determines canon.

Sometimes this is a good thing, as when George Miller came back to his old Mad Max series and
it kicked my ass and made me ask for more from its original creator.

Do people believe all the Mad Max movies are connected? Does George Miller even? Fury Road looks so different that I assume it's a reboot of sorts or a different version, like the different Bonds.

I think the whole point of Mad Max stories are each movies are Legends told from different people perspective each time. So maybe the reason why the new Mad Max is different, is a different interpretation of him.

 

[SweetShark]

Us, the Companies and The Creators can decided that their own Canon is.
Because sometimes even the creators even if their character don't belong to them, they always can create their own Canon in their mind.
Example: Don Rosa. Specifically the Family Tree he created for Disney:

If I remember right, even if he created mostly the Family Tree of Donald Duck base of characters already existing Disney Universe, he asked his true fans to ignore Fethry Duck's existent entirely.A qoute from him:
"...All I know is that they would not allow LVD, but they insisted I include Fethry Duck, a character *I* didn't think exists since he was never used by Barks, and has appeared in America only a very few times nearly 50 years ago."

So, even if the publisher want something specific to be to its canon lore, we can change it easily ourself as well.
Btw, I LOVE Don Rossa.

 

[pookie101]

the owner of the IP does.

although the exception is star wars.. the wife of george lucas was responsible for all the good ideas so my head cannon is with her then disney

 

[Pseudonym]

Once the question of what precisely is 'cannon' comes up, you are most likely dealing with mediocre or bad fiction. So I don't care.

 

[Necrozius]

My first answer is "the canon in my head". I get to choose what media I like and what I don't like. Which alternate universes or authorial explanation of intent to accept.

Inevitably when people tell me that they don't give a shit what I think, then I default to whatever the original creators expressed. So, for me, Ridley Scott and H.R. Giger's explanation for the Aliens works for me. Since Prometheus, my opinion is that the Queen in Aliens was just another random mutation due to whatever domino chain-effect, making her a one-of-a-kind super awesome unique miracle (from hell). You know, instead of a more easy to relate concept for us humans like an ant colony (which isn't alien/weird enough for me).

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Original creator, current IP holder and anyone authorized to work within the universe who doesn't fuck it up horribly. That said, Canon is not as... static as many fans believe, since it's not uncommon for creators to retcon, tweak, change or update things even after the work has been published.

...With that said, however, there's a... limit to how much you can really start throwing onto the canon pile after a work is finished, especially if said tweaks and updates start adversely affecting the original story, or are simply lazy adaptions of random fanon. Looking at you, George Lucas and J.K. Rowling.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

To build off this point using the Alien franchise, the source material can be very inconsistent.*SNIP for space*

And in Alien she was a warrant officer, on a commercial i.e. civilian, ship. Everyone else had civilian ranks (thought I suppose you could make an argument for Captain). Being set in the future I just assumed that someone had made the incredibly confusing decision to add a few ranks usually used for the military to the ranks for civilian spacecraft.

OT: Matt Ward. Again. However, I have now made the official decision that Bruva Alfabusa decides 40K canon.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

The storyteller is always the source of what is and isn't canon. Having said that, when you design by committee or have corporations involved, "canon" is mostly meaningless since then it's just stories being told to sell products and those stories are company products.

Star Wars Extended Universe was canon. Lucas had a department specifically to keep track of all the ideas of the different writers who've added to the mythology over the years. For example, during the NJO saga, an author wanted to kill main character. They suggested Luke, Lucas said no. Han Solo, no. Chewbacca, he said yes. Anakin Solo also died in NJO, tho he wasn't even a sperm in Han Solo's trousers during the movie era. Disney bought the rights for 5bill, first thing they did, disown anything post Return of the Jedi. *shrug*

In the case where a property has a corporate owner, it's corporate interests that decide canon. It's that simple. Games with choices are somewhat different, but even then usually one world state will be considered canon by the devs. Authors are usually the ultimate authority on their own books; Editors may be involved but usually in an advisory way.

Therewas a great article here on the Escapist titled Who owns Stargate? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/moviesandtv/columns/highdefinition/11548-Who-Owns-Stargate]I thought it was absolutely fascinating because it's an utterly unique example of something that grew so much, and much further, outside the creative control of whoever originally conceived and created it. I never watched the TV show(s), just the movie, so I saw the original guys version. But I understand the TV shows and books greatly expanded the universe and told dozens of stories vs the movie's only one.