Entertainment Weekly just posted a story about cute trading cards for the new “Star Wars” movie coming to theaters.  Why does this matter?  Because those trading cards feature the names of the new characters appearing on screen.  What’s notable about this list?  Not a single name on there is from the Expanded Star Wars Universe.  True, J.J. Abrams warned that he would be disregarding that portion of the franchise.  But after so much care and development, fans held out hope that at least they would see the characters themselves in the films without their sometimes cumbersome back story.

Sadly that is not the case.  However you can read the list of character names and see samples of the trading cards they will be appearing on in the Entertainment weekly article.

On a personal level, it seems a shame to throw the baby out with the bath water.  But we don’t know the internal mechanisms in the Star Wars productions–or in Disney studios for that matter.  However we are all in agreement that if the characters are all Expanded Universe characters in everything except for name, there will be much righteous retribution–and by that I mean we will still go to see the movie a dozen times but we will be posting passive aggressive geek rage articles nonstop.