My opinion on Snoke is that he's the reincarnated Darth Plageuis. He either had not completed his return during the heyday of the Empire or was still building strength up to the creation of the New Order. As he was purportedly killed by Darth Sideous, he'd be careful to return without having sufficient resources. I'm curious whether the form presented on the holo image is actually him. It's not true canon but I'm eventually going to read the Darth Plageuis novel this summer.
The canon novels do a good job of continuing that theme. She is a savvy politician but can't keep her hands out of the kitchen. She's more of a captain than a general - she'd rather lead a team than direct it from afar.
Are the cannon novels better than the movie novelizations? I read TFA and R1 and wasn't really a fan of them.
The movie novelizations are essentially just rehashing what you already know. I think TLA had one additional snippet with Poe on Jakku and some extra conversations along the way, but if you've seen the movie multiple times there's just not much to gleam. The canon novels bring unique storylines, new and existing characters and they often (but not always) tie together various snippets of history in the Star Wars Universe timeline. Because they all have different authors they take different slants and different writing styles, which keeps things fresh. My opinion is that they stay true to the personalities of the known characters. Catalyst dives into Star Wars science. Tarkin studies the psyche and origination of the third most powerful being in the Empire. Battlefront is a cover-to-cover war novel. I think they're great. I have (almost) all of them and would be happy to pass them along to anyone who wants them (I am not in CT).
I may give them a tumble. I'm reading a series of novels now and I half about a half dozen to go. Then I want to read Endurance based upon BY recommendations, so maybe by the summer.
Technically that is not canon, although parts of it are probably in line with canon. The books will be there if you want them. If you wait for football season, it will be much easier to hand them off unless you happen to be in the boston area.
All canon books are fairly new, they basically needed to be blessed by the Disney crew. I like this website canon list because you can hide everything except for film, television and novels. This includes young reader/junior novels as canon, but my understanding is that they really don't count. The true canon novels have a canon timeline page in them that includes the movies, adult novels and Clones/Rebels TV shows - that is it.
You're reading a star wars thread 8 months before the movie is released, so you're obviously a fan. If you like to read in general, it's worth your effort. The novels aren't hugely sequential, other than the Aftermath trilogy. I think it's better to read Tarkin before Catalyst, but by no means a requirement. If you wanted to cherry-pick, I'd choose among Bloodlines, Twilight Company, Dark Disciple or A New Dawn. If you want to go through them all, start from the beginning (Dark Disciple).
I just finished reading the Aftermath trilogy.
The directors were fired weeks into shooting
Idk. They have to basically reshoot everything. It could be fine but who knows
Yep, I believe it was originally "too dark" for Disney's taste. There were also reports that Jyn Erso was originally less rah rah and more rebellious.