George Lucas made two of the best movie franchises of all time: Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Then he let thousands of authors and artists into his Star Wars world to develop it further. Soon races, characters, and plots were coming out that covered thousands of years before and after anything in the movies and spanned totally new planets and systems. The people writing the stories did a pretty good job of keeping it all in sync, with some writers doing more research than others. Keeping it all together was made easier by the release of encyclopedias and guides, as well as roleplaying games which similarly collected many sources.
Then George showed his true colors (or fell and hit his head on a rock, yeah) and released Episode One. It was like a bomb hit. The whole thing was ludicrous to any Star Wars fan. It was chock-full of inconsistencies, some of which were merely head-scratchers (why people had such nice ships in the past but use crappy things like TIEs and X-Wings in the future) and some outright fallacies (Anakin built 3PO). Why? Would would the man destroy his own vision? The answer is, of course, money.
He made a fortune on the ridiculous marketing following the movie, and of course on the second one too. Darth Maul became a huge hit, despite have an even smaller role than the supposedly similar Boba Fett. Little kids were soon sporting images of the most annoying figures in the movie, Jar Jar and the unmentionable spawn of Beelzebub who would later grow up to become not quite as evil as he was as a child.
Fortunately, some people are trying to patch up Lucas's mistakes and reconcile the first batch of movies with the "Expanded Universe" of books, comics, and video games. There are many things that will never go away, but maybe there's hope for Star Wars yet. Star Wars: Galaxies is a place where Star Wars nuts can go to participate in their favorite world. It focuses heavily on the Expanded Universe and can put it into the public eye to help preserve the hard work of the people who created a world before George took a dump on it all. Hopefully.