I think a lot of these points are right, but I think a lot of the fans aren't necessarily just upset about increasing inclusion, since a lot of the fans who have become disappointed in the Star Wars trilogy enjoy other works that are plenty inclusive (I consider myself to be in that category, to an extent: the Expanse is to me what Star Wars used to be, a sci-fi universe I can count on enjoying fresh content from).
I think that part of the thing that's having issues is that Star Wars is having something of an identity crisis. It's not sure if it wants to be a kid's movie or not, which wasn't a problem with the Original Trilogy (which generally didn't try to be a kid's movie), wasn't a problem with the Prequels (which generally did, though Episode III was more mature: Episode III aged with its target audience), and now the New Trilogy alternates back and forth.
One of the things that made the first Star Wars hold up so well (and it doesn't actually hold up as well as fans say: I teach it so I'm pretty familiar with it) is that the story is very much traditional in format. You have a hero who faces real loss and accomplishes a real triumph by the end.
The Force Awakens pulled that off better than The Last Jedi, which is why you didn't see quite as much of a backlash against it as you saw with TLJ.
The thing that TLJ got in trouble with is that it presented a problem but not a solution to that problem, and it's unclear who the hero is in a plethora of characters and action that really reflects an approach more similar to the MCU.
I think that there are a lot of people who do use the focus on diversity in casting as a point to attack the newer films because they fail to see that The Last Jedi is really nothing more than a blunder. It's no worse than the Prequels, but they don't see that because they're looking for a reason.
While the more logical reason is that the Star Wars universe isn't a magic formula that guarantees a good movie (anyone familiar with the EU should be aware of the fact that not all Star Wars content over the years has been good by a long shot), and TLJ's team was drawn off in different directions for marketing concerns and in an attempt to swell the cast. I don't think the motive for this is necessarily solely because of diversity; I think they wanted to hit on the same success the MCU has had with its broad array of characters and open paths for more content down the road.
There are also real missteps, things that should've been caught. They literally had a plot point in TLJ centered on a traffic violation. That's a crappy Monday, not a Hero's Journey. Solo got a lot of things right and kept stakes high, and it worked really well with the new formula.
I think that a lot of the fandom had absolute trust in Star Wars, a belief that it could do no (significant) wrong. When they were left disappointed, they sought a scapegoat without considering the real reason to avoid accepting the fact that there could just be a mistake in how the franchise has been handled that doesn't revolve around some larger worldview.
It's a good point bringing up the MCU, considering that both the MCU and the SWU are both under the Disney umbrella so both are going to be nudged into a "house style". Also, I think Forbes did an article about how Ep 9's issue won't be screeching fanboys, but competition. Star Wars usually didn't have to worry about sharing opening weekend with any other AAA blockbusters, but that's changed in recent years. All you have to do is look at what's opening in December 2019 to see what it'll be up against.
Solo was... a heist movie that just happened to be in the SWU, and I think it worked because it's a flavor of Marvel's "common movie genre, only with superheroes! :D" house style.
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.
Shades really is an excellent character, especially in the new season, and Bushmaster... I agree with the AV Club that he commands the camera with every scene he's in, but they needed to figure out how much exposition he really needed. As always, the weak link in Luke Cage is, well, Luke Cage. Mike Colter is a fantastic Luke Cage, but there are so many scenes of "Luke's closing himself off again". I mean, if you can point out the likely emotional arc of the season in the first 90 seconds of the opener, and the protagonist doesn't figure it out until the penultimate episode... It's like how the DCTVU are working on moving off from that tired trope of "the hero's keeping secrets because he doesn't want anyone to get hurt", but they still stumble. Is it required that EVERY hero has to have that moment of hand-wringing?
Yeah, all of the Marvel Netflix stuff tends to feel like people miss the obvious solutions.
It's like whoever ordered the series said "And the incredibly obvious solution of the protagonist getting over X needs to wait until the end of the season."