I can't say I'm one of the fans who are 'up in arms' in the way you're suggesting. I was aware of 'Star Wars Weekends' and 'Star Tours' and all the crossover merchandise that exists, and I'm also cognizant of the fact that large media conglomerates don't automatically feel some compulsion to put their properties in a blender and hit 'frappe' whenever they get a chance. For what it's worth, Lucas got in bed with Rovio for a lame, pre-Holiday merchandise blitz without any help from the House of Mouse.

My concerns have to do with the points where business intersects with creativity in a more subtle manner.

Anytime a corporation like Disney gobbles up yet another media company, it's simply not good for the state of entertainment/news/information/creativity as a whole. All art is derivative. Star Wars itself owes deep debts to Flash Gordon. But the next budding filmmaker who tries to use Star Wars as a launchpad for their own grand space opera, might find themselves on the receiving end of a big ol' cease and desist order. Not to say that Lucasfilm didn't have its own lawyers, but Disney is far more notorious for using the law like a cudgel against copyright infringers, both real and imagined.

And then there's the Chekhov's Gun aspect of the sale. If you buy Lucasfilm, there's no way you're NOT creating more movies. I feel that Disney will do a good job (a better job that George Lucas, even) on aspects of story, and plot, and characters, and all the other things that so many fans are worried about, but I also feel that it needs to come together in an organic, unforced way, or it's going to feel very... tedious?

Regardless of all the noises that Lucas ever made about a future sequel, I actually groaned when I heard that Episode VII was going forward, that it would take place after the original Trilogy, and that we'd revisit some of our (very) old friends. Even if they don't hew to established Expanded Universe continuity, it still has a very strong, "been there, done that, picked up the action figures and comic book spin-offs" aspect to it.

To be fair, I'd have groaned if I heard that Lucasfilm was doing Episode VII. But then, at least, it might've felt marginally less like a calculated business decision, and more like a situation where all the artistic aspects happened to gel at the right time.

I'll also admit that it could just be me. A five-year-old who loves Star Wars, but hasn't been exposed to the same broad range of literature and film that my thirty-seven years have brought me, isn't going to harbor the same, "there's nothing new under the sun" cynicism that I'm bringing to the table. And that's great for Disney: he'll buy all the toys and sleeping bags and breakfast cereals that they sell. I'm sort of past that.