Star wars is an great setting and the aesthetics are incredible, to me star wars was the incredible art of Ralph McQuarrie, the original trilogy that unfortunatly took a nose dive with return of the jedi was still pretty good, the music alone makes those films great.

Then Lucas proceeds to destroy the universe by

-Destroying the mysticism and mystery of the force by introducing midiclorians

-In your face christian appeals making Anakin have a virgin birth (Don't mind christian elements in stories but when you do it intentionally for market appeal and destroy elements of your story in the process I have a problem)

-Jar-jar and again blatant market driven story telling specifically targeting children, ugh, funny enough the clone wars series is better than the prequels

-Take 2 great acotors who have no chemistry and put them into a really strange romance with horrible dialog

- Love = bad, attachments = bad, what? The light side espouses some pretty bad morality and things like passion and pride are not inherently evil things.

While the Love = bad never made any sense at all other than a story catalyst for a writer who couldn't figure out a better way to make the protagonist create conflict it has always offered space to setup a narrative where the good guys aren't really good and the bad guys really aren't all that bad which can always make for an interesting narrative. I really hope they will explore something interesting for ep 7 and maybe get a real team of writers and finally give the star wars universe some truly interesting stories.

Sinperium....you're clearly smoking some serious shit....

I've never seen Hayden Christensen described as a great actor before.

I quite enjoyed the Thrawn trilogy, even though it has a few flaws. But I could see that adapted into a movie trilogy.

Beyond those I haven't read much EU books, but judging from some wookieepedia articles I haven't missed much. There would seem to be a few interesting developments, but a lot of the books boil down to introducing a new enemy, who is an even bigger threat than the last one, but is ultimately defeated at a huge cost.

Can't wait for the remake of Empire strike's back...

"Luke, I AM YOUR FATHER" --M. Mouse

What would be more awesome than that is Whedon writing and directing and Nathan Fillion as Han Solo.  It isn't like that character is much different from Malcolm Reynolds.

Fortunately Lucas is only on as a "creative consultant" so nobody has to listen to him.  No more Jar-Jar, no more Space Jesus Anakin, and Han always shoots first and last.

I'm not a Christian, but making Darth Vader space Jesus, probably didn't have a lot of Christian appeal.  (it just came across as kind of hacky to me)   But, I can't speak for Christians, I just doubt that they would like their God being compared to an evil space movie villain.

Well, the first three movies used pretty basic mythological archetypes.  I loved it.  I really don't mind mythological or religious alegories, but this and so many things in the prequels just seem so hoky.

The dark side of the force is the pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.

We all better pray that Whiskey no longer reads these forums, or we'll get 10 pages "proving" that proton torpedoes are a lot more realistic and effective than photon torpedoes.

And if it ain't, they'll travel back in time, undo it, and make it again, scientifically correct.