For those who follow such things, the great Leland Chee has given us insight regarding Lucasfilm's Expanded Universe archive's levels of official-ness over the years.  But now The Hollywood Reporter is telling us that Disney is going to change it up a bit, making one official level of canon and another that, for all intents and purposes, you can ignore.  Or enjoy.  It's up to you.  Click here to read it.  It doesn't tell us everything.

A rather incendiary Ars Technica editorial says "good riddance" to most of the Expanded Universe, and a few other articles I've stumbled across indicate that their authors/commenters aren't really familiar with the massive trove of stories that have nothing to do with the core cast of the original trilogy.  Thousands of pages are devoted to the pre-history of the movie saga with characters you no doubt do not care a lick about unless you read those comics or books, and of course there are far too many stories about the characters we do know, too.

The existing Star Wars canon has been rejiggered and tweaked over the years, and it's been pretty inclusive.  Stories which are "factually" inaccurate remain included and in many respects, that's kind of cool.  It helps keep the whole mythology intact, and gives an impression of a vast cultural net which has ensnared many local, apocryphal variations on the tales of these characters.  I've always given more weight to things from the toy line or things from television myself, but for all I know the Disney/Lucas camp will toss it out because they need a galaxy where Boba Fett is alive and well, or where Chewbacca wasn't crushed by a planet, or where we don't already know the entire lives of Han and Leia's kids.

We've already gone through some of this before as numerous Clone Wars-era Jedi have been killed in one medium and return active in another story later, and who could forget the changing of who and how the Clone Troopers were trained?

I've long since given up on the current crop of non-movie materials, with the advent of The Clone Wars on TV helping to finally cure me of my monthly addiction to expensive comic books which I've had since Dark Empire in 1991.  I assume others will not be quite so happy to be liberated of the weight of far too many stories, but at least it's nice to see someone make note that there's too much to keep track of that's more trouble than it's worth.  I'll still enjoy reading my old Marvel stories, though.