I need someone who follows Star Wars enough to fill me in, because I'm a bit peeved by this. Some of original cast from Episodes 4-6 is returning for 7 and I presume 8 and 9 as well. J.J. and Kasden are writing the script.

How is the script going to accommodate a period of time? I figured the movie would feature new actors and continue where Episode 6 ended, but since Harrison Ford is Han Solo, VII has to be about 35 years in the future. Will we get the long abandoned Episodes 10, 11 & 12 to fill in those 30 years? It just feels like a huge continuity error. If I have to of followed the animated Clone Wars TV show and other avenues of Star Wars media then the series is basically ruined for me.

Episodes 1 through 6, fine. 7 through 9. Weird. I'm not going to marathon seasons of Animated Clone Wars to understand this new trilogy. It's like the Marvel movies. Agent Colson died in Avengers but he's apparently alive in the TV Show? I swear, if he's in the next Marvel movie I watch and no one explains why, I'm flipping my lid. I haven't watched Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and I don't want to - in the future - watch these Marvel movies then the first 15 episodes of SHIELD before the next movie in order to understand the plot and then to continue this pattern? No way.

I get the die-hards will follow everything in the Star Wars universe but for a casual viewer like myself, whose interested in the movies, will the 30 year jump be easy to follow? Can we petition to remove the original cast members and replace them with younger actors so there's continuity to the story and not the actors? Please!

I understand that this info may be hard to come by, but there's got to be some leaked info somewhere that the niche communities are feeding off of.

Can anyone fill me in? I'm completely lost and about to abandon all hope I had for the third trilogy.

*Kasdan.

The script is going to say something along the lines of "look, we're all old now, and we have kids, but you used to love us, so here we are to transition you into a new story." In the last 2 weeks they've formally announced that they're ditching all previously established continuity for that 30ish year span precisely to appeal to mass markets (i.e. you), at the expense of people who actually care about the franchise. No I'm not bitter. Why do you ask?

Also, Clone Wars (and the new Rebels) are filling in gaps in the opposite direction, and almost certainly are irrelevant to the new films.

Seriously? That's vastly disappointing then. I took some time to search explicitly for that and, it's true

What elfprince said pretty much covers it. To prepare yourself, just watch the six movies and reasonably understand what happens. Don't obsess over minuscule details like what types of dresses the princesses wear. Understand what goes on like the process of Anakin redeeming himself and Luke's training.
tl:dr: Just take a general overlook of what happened in all six movies to prepare for episode VII.

Wait. I'm getting 2 different responses, or I read elfprinces' reply wrong.

So, as someone who doesn't follow anything Star Wars outside of the movies, Ep7 - 9 will or will not follow Ep 1-6?

7-9 WILL follow 1-6 but will use major ideas from those movies. No minor details will be considered like Han shooting first.
This is my own synthesis of what Disney has said so far.

Oh, good. That's fine. I'd rather them not go back and clarify things in previous movies. I'm slowly regaining confidence in these new episodes now.

It sucks that the original "canon" stuff is getting thrown out the door during the interim but I feel it'll provide a much better experience as I, as a general person, shouldn't have to watch/read the canon material in order to follow along between episodes.

Honestly it's the dumbest dumb to ever be dumb. They're still going to have to establish and telegraph some sort of back story without requiring you to know all of the intricate details, just like JJ's work on nu-Trek, or any of the Marvel movies so far. There's no reason they needed to piss all over the existing canon: pick up somewhere near the beginning of the Legacy era (which is almost exactly the time-gap needed to match the real world), make vague hints* at New Republic/New Jedi Order era stuff as needed , and tell a good story.

*reads as follows: "we spent 20 years rebuilding a New Republic out of the ashes of the Empire, and another 10 staving off an extra-galactic invasion. Chewbacca died during the invasion. Luke's married, head of a reformed Jedi order, has a young son. Han and Leia got married, had three kids - one's recently dead, two are Jedi."

It could all fit into the scrolling text at the beginning. Star Wars has a beloved tradition of info dumps in a way that no other franchise does.

Begin with rumblings of war with an insectoid species, and one of the Jedi having a vision that one of Han and Leia's kids will turn to the dark side as a means of defending the Republic against the invasion (the novelization can explain the latter away with time traveling Force ghosts, but this doesn't need to be explained in the film). The former provides the military conflict for the new trilogy, while Jacen (and his family's) struggle with the latter can provide the human-interest dramatic arc.

Bam. Problem solved. Everyone's happy:

• we have an appropriately aged timeline with the freedom to move forward telling new stories,
  
• we've explicitly forked the timeline without erasing the existing canon, or blatantly copying the plot from nu-Trek '09.
  

J.J. doesn't even like Trek, and he had the good manners to do this for their fans. He should afford us the same courtesy.

I blame Disney.

Star Wars is dumb. Next question.

Why is it dumb? Next question.

Star Wars died with Jedi: Special Edition.

Im not so sure that J.J. did well by trekkers, I seem to recall BrandonW being severely disappointed with the way in which the 'reboot' destroyed the original timeline+events.

There were a few things that he did that just didn't work well. A glass bridge? Flare lights -everywhere-? Tiny little missile like torpedoes? (TOS era used a plasma torpedo, bled from warp engines)

I like futzing with realities, because you can see how things go differently. But the death of Kirk's dad would not have caused the Enterprise to be designed so radically different, me thinks.

In regards to Star Wars.. I'm very very sad they didn't go with the Thrawn trilogy. Those were probably the best books of the series, and loved reading them. I guess we're just going to have to hold our breath and see if we get a train wreck or not.

The movies will most likely fall flat on their faces. But I'll probably see them anyway to see for myself.

I wonder if there will be singing?

I read that as 'signing'.

The fact that Avengers and those related movies are also made by Disney tells me there won't be any singing.

There were absolutely a lot of problems (Bob Orci doesn't understand interstellar scale AT ALL). But...the time-traveling reboot was a nice way to leave the original timeline intact while going back and telling new stories with well-loved characters.

Don't think this means I'm forgiving the death of the EU, but practical FX make me happy.