Star Wars is many things to many people, and for many of us, it's just a few films from a few decades ago, and we love them dearly. The rest is not really Star Wars at all and can DIAF for all we care.

I totally get that, but what I can't understand is the people who hold that opinion and yet still feel the need to dump all over everything else (not accusing you of that in particular, you're usually very even-handed from what I've seen). I love the Beatles. I also think everything Paul McCartney's put out in the last 35 years or so is complete garbage. I have no interest in moaning about how awful Paul McCartney is now, though. Nobody's forcing me to listen to those albums he released through Starbucks, and there's nothing he can do now that can make the stuff he did in the 60's any less brilliant, so I'm happy to go about my business as if that stuff didn't exist. I think a lot of people feel this way about a lot of things, musicians especially. There's a subset of Star Wars fans, though, who seem to become violently angry at the idea that anyone would have the gall to try to continue the franchise past the arbitrary endpoint they privately drew before The Phantom Menace, or after the Thrawn trilogy, or after Empire, or Splinter of the Mind's Eye. If you're not considering it a part of your Star Wars anyway, no one needs to know how terrible you know TFA is going to be. I think everyone would be better off if these people would stop getting themselves upset over something they've already decided not to recognize and allow everyone else to enjoy a version of the franchise that isn't dead.