I just find it sad that people are so quick to dismiss the person who created the entire SW universe. If that's how the fans feel we're going to be getting a wildly screwy universe if Disney figures out fans feel like that. It's going to be another superhero universe with Jedi throwing buildings at each other, etc.
You're assuming that Lucas actually had the answers for everything Star Wars, from the sounds of it, he doesn't half as much as some fans do and what he does know seems to change all the time. I'm with Solo in thinking that a lot of the answers to questions that Lucas throws out there are just things he makes up on the spot because he never thought about it until some fan or blogger/reporter/writer asked him about it. If the Prequels are any indicator I don't think that Lucas had a detailed bible of the Star Wars universe where he had everything worked out and written in detail, there are too many contradictions and inconsistencies from the PT to the OT to suggest that.
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That's basically what I'm getting at. Lucas has said a lot of stuff in offhand interviews over the last almost 40 years. Some of it has apparently contradicted himself, even. For example, at one point he said anyone could train to use the Force, but later introduced that numerical midichlorian count = better ability to use the Force. So....which is it? Or are they not contradictory? Does training build midichlorians and some folks are just naturally stronger? It's not really made clear ever, and I think a lot of that is down to two factors: (1) he's inconsistent in his conception of the Star Wars universe over the span of 40 years, and (2) he hasn't thought of an answer to literally every question, so he'll make stuff up on the spot.
I think Lucas engaged in some degree of world-building in his mind, but it wasn't on the level of someone like, say, Tolkien or George RR Martin who know what's been going on in some detail for multiple hundreds of years throughout their respective universes, in some cases going back to the very creation of said universes (e.g. the Silmarillion). What was scratched down on a yellow legal pad in 1974 doesn't necessarily equate to a grand plan that constrains or ought to constrain storytelling in 2015 and beyond. And as we've seen, he's flat-out changed his mind over time. Han shot first. No, wait. He didn't. No, wait, he shot simultaneously. No wait, they both shot, but Greedo was like a fraction of a second early.
Don't get me wrong. As a creator, it's his world to play with as he likes. But in terms of the stuff that gets produced and is treated as canon, at this point, I don't think you can take what he's said offhand as "canon." I mean, The Force Unleashed was explicitly stated to be canon at one point, and now it isn't. If that's not a pretty clear statement of "The story group determines canon," I don't know what is. They DE-canonized material, rather than simply making it clear officially that EU stuff doesn't count (when it was always kind of sketchy whether it did or didn't).
I'm also not saying that all ideas should be thrown out because Lucas thought of them. Far from it. George Lucas is a creative genius. But he's also not always 100% consistent with himself, and not literally everything he dreams up is a good idea merely because he dreamed it up. There is, as far as I know, no "Star Wars bible." Or at least, not during the Lucas era there wasn't. He himself made it clear that literally
nothing was beyond him contradicting it, if he wanted to, except insofar as he couldn't literally go back in time and re-do the scenes on film. If he could have, I can almost guarantee that he'd have changed more than he did with the Special Editions, for example. And when it was his work, fine and dandy. He made the rules. But he gave up control, and quite simply, that means he doesn't make the rules anymore, and yeah, his rules can be rewritten where they get in the way of good storytelling.
I'll put it this way. Part of world-building is establishing the "rules" of the universe. For example, Jedi can't, as far as we know, fly using the Force a la Superman. The films have established that pretty clearly. But if some interview George gave years ago -- or gives in the future -- should include some offhand statement about his universe, in a way that has never been established by the "rules" of what appears on screen....I'm not inclined to let it derail future story development or require massive workarounds. If it can be respected easily, sure, include it or at least don't contradict it.
But quite simply, it's not George's sandbox anymore. He doesn't get to make the rules anymore. That doesn't mean you knock down the castle he built altogether (which, let's be clear, nobody intends to do), but it does mean that you don't have to follow his blueprint, including the elaborate-but-never-built crenelations he was going to put on at one point.
