You forgot WEG RPG (since 1987) among a couple of other things as official canon (at the time and the base for the old - now legends - canon according to Pablo Hidalgo in an interview). It was ignored whenever it contradicted stuff that came out in later novels but it was Lucasfilm (and Lucas himself) bible for several years. You can see one WEG sourcebook (I think it is at least) in the table discussion in that youtube video I mentioned in the Mandalorian topic where they talk about Clone Wars.
for a moment of utter heresy, The West End Games Star Wars was a fundamentally BETTER game than the D20 thing that came after. as for story material...
eh, whatever. I'm with the guy who says if you have to look up an outside source for the movie you're watching to make any sense, it's the movie-maker's fault, and the movie is bad and not worth the money.
One of the things the OLD Extended Universe did very well, was keeping things so that the original trilogy
didn't need the exposition-from-an-outside-source to work-the old EU material added, but it wasn't
required reading for the characters to make sense or for the plot to be exciting and immersive.
I kind of look at it as "I don't want to need wikipedia and my kindle open to comprehend the movie, or for character x, y, or z to make sense and be engaging on screen."
Your mileage may vary.
Standing Alone, TFA felt like they were just rewriting ANH, only with less story and more explosions. TLJ felt like I'd missed three or four chapters of the book that fell out while waiting for the bus at the start, and was missing huge chunks that would make me care about the B plot, and again, it felt to me like they replaced story writing with expensive special effects. The BEST part of TLJ were the Luke scenes and the pit of mirrors scene, but it was like a teaser trailer for a much better story...that we did not get with Episode 9.
Though again, really nice special effects shots and costume work.
contrast this with Rogue 1. Rogue 1 built a good story and stood on it's own, the characters were engaging and interesting, the plot didn't stumble around like a drunken fratboy with ADHD, acting was on point, when you got to the big finale, you CARED what happened.
contrast also with Solo, which was a fun little Heist movie, and (as a reader of the old novels) fit right to point. Sure, we had different actors, and YES, there was pandering with some of the lesser characters...but Solo was right down to the core a movie about a heist with some character development that didn't change or invalidate anything that was supposed to come after.
