I'm going to give the nerds a pass for the outrage about the crossguard lightsaber. I'm all for changing things in order to make it look kickass, but as doc pointed out, the change is ridiculous (even counting the fact that that the lightsaber blades can lock and block each other, the handle actually has the emitters poking out, making it useless for blocking because it will be lopped off along with the user's fingers when used as a crossguard.)
Contrast this with Count Dooku's curved lightsaber handle. It looked cool and was obviously intended for aesthetics, but nobody complained because it's not a stupid design.
Or Mace Windu's purple "electron" (picture me doing the annoying air quotes thingie) lightsaber. That one came out of nowhere (and depictions in comic books months before the film already had his saber as blue.) and Samuel Jackson admitted that he just wanted to look pimpin' but nobody complained because it really does look cool and isn't counterproductive design-wise.
The real unnecessary fanboying here are people who come out with all sorts of explanations for the lightsaber crossguard (it's used offensively, the creator is an inexperienced dark side user who doesn't know how to create a lightsaber, etc. etc.)
It's perfectly fine to just chalk this up to designers failing and still enjoy the movie when it comes out. I, for one, plan to do so. I hated the midichlorian explanation in Phantom Menace but I enjoyed every other part of the movie. I loathed the poorly-scripted romance angle in Attack of the Clones but still enjoyed the film because the parts that aren't about romance kick ass. I'm a fan of Star Wars but that doesn't mean I have to love and defend everything about it.
(still, it's J.J. Abrams on the helm, not Uwe Boll. I'm prepared to be surprised with a logical reason for the crossguard lightsaber. And am also not ruling out the possibility of them giving in and changing it before the film's release)
