Eh, that ship sailed for me long ago. I also read a lot of the novels as a kid (the X-Wing novel series in particular were some of the most beloved science fiction of my childhood). Hell, I could quote specs of the starfighters and capital ships. :sweat: But long before Disney came along, I got turned off by the Yuuzhan Vong storyline that to me just felt like they were trying to turn the franchise into something completely different. And since then I've gone through the Star Trek reboot, seen oh so many classic sci-fi flicks given (usually terrible) reboots, discovered Doctor Who (now there's a fictional universe that doesn't care one bit about contradicting itself), and I've gotten into toku shows that have an annual soft-reboot. So I can't be outraged about the expanded universe any more. I've still got the books on my shelf.
Besides, the success of the MCU lies in how it ignores the books and their fans whenever it feels like making a change will allow it to appeal more to the general audience. And that works - I know lots of people who saw the Avengers movies, yet I've never even seen the book on sale in this country. JJ Abrams did the exact same thing to Star Trek to give it a mass appeal.
All I really care about is whether the new film can give me that same sense of excitement that the original trilogy did when I was little.
It's not like I want to break anyone's hype about episode VII, but quality of Clone Wars and Rebels, pretty much shows which direction Disney wants Star Wars to go. It won't be near as good as TNJO or Thrawn Trilogy.
The Clone Wars was (to my knowledge) only broadcast on satellite TV here in the UK, and after watching the prequel trilogy I wasn't willing to pay the subscription fee just to see what the cartoon was like. I
think the same was true of Rebels, but tbh I haven't seen a single commercial or TV listing for it.