Yeah. My hope is that Star Wars can move on in a direction that learns from its mistakes, which are thinking that it has things it really doesn't have like it used to (for instance, they were able to have some of the Original Trilogy characters return, but not really enough to carry the plot forward).

If you had told me ten years ago that Star Wars was going to have to seriously compete, I wouldn't have believed you. Solo really showed us that it will have to, and people argue that that's because it was a side-plot, but I think it's really because Disney isn't approaching it with enough concern for the finished product.

Solo was amazing. It might be one of my top movies of 2018 (I would even say it's almost as good as Infinity Wars, which I thought dragged out a little much).

I think they could learn from Luke Cage and create a Star Wars that's got a little bit deeper villains. The First Order just isn't as compelling, and Kylo Ren manages to be aggressively shallow between moments of looking like he's developing.

The thing that surprised me in Luke Cage is that Shades, who I really wanted to go off and die during Season 1, actually wound up becoming one of my favorite villains, with actual moral conflict and development. The new Star Wars villains lack the mystique of the old ones, because they draw too much upon their past (ironic, given Kylo Ren's catchphrase from the most recent movie), and they aren't really shown to have a good reason why they fight.

We can buy the existence of an evil Empire, but the people who follow it need a reason to exist. If you had simply said "Oh wait, we didn't really finish them off!" that would make sense. However, nobody really seems to like the First Order in-universe. It's not successful enough for people to stick with it because of the potential benefits (I mean, at least from my observation: we've seen them lose a superweapon, barely hunt down a massively outgunned rebel fleet at the cost of their main flagship and their leader), and I just can't understand the organization's purpose.

I think they just need more talent involved. It feels like they're going for the opposite approach to Blade Runner. Instead of lingering and giving us time to fall asleep, they over-stimulate everyone and fail to deliver substance.