Star Wars has always been political, Lucas is about as left wing San Fransisco artist as it gets, lol, American Zoetrope was basically nothing but an artists conclave in San Fran for experimental filmmakers. The Emperor was originally conceived to a knock at Republican president Richard Nixon, the "Rebels" are basically the hippie/revolution counter-culture movement against the right wing military establishment. The Ewoks are also an analogy for the Vietcog fighting the American war machine. Lucas has said all this stuff himself. Revenge of the Sith also took clear shots at George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

As for toys ... no one plays with toys anymore, kids want iPads not action figures, the toy industry is basically just going to be 1 aisle in a Wal-Mart or Target, there's no market for plastic junk. The action figure/toy/doll market is dying and has been for a while, The Force Awakens just gave it a solid push because it was an event picture, spurred on by a decade long wait. 

Marvel has thousands of pre-existing character properties from 70+ years and thousands upon thousands of comic books, you can't really compare anything to Marvel other than DC. Marvel is not really meant to be some kind of singular universe, Marvel's philosophy was basically to make a comic book for anything kids of the time might want to read. So you have horror (Blade), sci-fi (Guardians of the Galaxy), mideval fantasy (Thor), mystical/magical (Dr. Strange) modern urban heroes (Spider-Man), etc. etc. in one universe, Marvel gave no fucks about if things really made sense or tied together when making up these characters, they needed to go home on a Friday and would just come up with some goofy thing they thought maybe 50 kids would like to see and that was the extent of the thought process behind it.

The result is franchise fatigue is not going to hit Marvel as hard because they have multiple genres they can tap into. Star Wars is basically only sci-fi/fantasy anyway you want to spin it.

I don't think the problem was TFA, as it still did respectable numbers in China.  The problem was trying to expand the audience with TLJ.  Even though TFA wasn't perfect, it still has the same positive spirit as the OG trilogy, which Disney has been running on TVs in China.  TLJ was a more nihilistic take on the franchise, and it didn't sit well with many fans. 

Being a sequel doesn't necessarily mean it will do worse than the original.  Marvel has been building off each standalone installment, with the sequels doing better than the one before.  Of course, there was a lot of build up for TFA, so no one really expected TLJ to match it.  But, no one saw a drop as big as it had.  Again, you're putting too much emphasis on TFA.  You could say that those who disliked TFA caused a lower opening.  But, it was only 14.8% (-$78.1M) down opening weekend.  It's continued drop to being ~35.5% (-$733.2M) down rests completely on the shoulders of it being a good film or not.

ROTS got a boost due to it being a little bit better/darker film and also because it was the lead up to the creation of Darth Vader and the beginning of ANH.  Episode IX has a lot working against it.  Not only does it not have the most iconic villain in it, but it also follows an installment that turned a lot of fans away from future installments.  TLJ didn't really leave anything at the end to look forward to.  And even if it tries to retcon some things that happened in TLJ and/or address loose ends TFA left to be tied up in a sequel that TLJ ignored, it will just become a muddy mess of a film.  I won't be surprised if IX opens below $200M.  A first for the new SW trilogy.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.  And poor ones at that.

I suspect those are meanings he added later in his life, as the original was a homage to old Sci-Fi serials, just like Indiana Jones was a homage to action adventure serials.  Even if that is what he intended, they were written with such broad strokes that it wasn't slapping you over the head with its message and could be enjoyed by all.  The new one was incredibly amateurish.

No one plays with toys?  Lol, boy that's quite the excuse.  I guess the toy market has changed SO much from TFA and RO, which only came out 1-2 years before TLJ.  Come on, man.  And 1 aisle?  There's still like 6-8 aisles in every Walmart dedicated to toys.  Oh, and toy sales were actually up last year slightly, even with the poor performance of SW toys.

Marvel has so many genres?  Again, come on.  Marvel has a formula they follow for pretty much all of their films.  They also take great pains to make sure that most of them feel and look very similar.  The difference is they are making movies that don't piss off about half of their fans. 

Pretty telling that Black Panther, a standalone Marvel film, is going to easily pass TLJ at the DBO, and is going to either come incredibly close to it or even pass it WW.  Again, the movie where the safe bet was for it to enter the Top 3 (most likely #2) with $750M-$830M, and stay there for years/decades to come.  And make $1.7B-$1.8B WW, entering the Top 5 at #4, to stay there for years/decades to come.  Instead it won't enter the Top 5 DBO, and will be pushed to #7 by BP, with 2-3 years before it is pushed out of the Top 10.  And it is going to most likely top out at #9 WW, and could get pushed out of the Top 10 this year.

Toys R' Us is going out of business, lol, go put some action figures in front of kids versus an iPad and see which one wins. Today's kids don't give a shit about toys. What's the newest action figure craze? They still sell the same shit I had when growing up (Transformers, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Batman, Ninja Turtles) .... why? Because there hasn't been a "new action figure toy craze" in like 20+ years. At least we had He-Man and Thundercats too. 

Black Panther is a legit phenomenon, Star Wars nerds don't hold some precedent over that. 5 straight weeks at no.1 for Black Panther, there's only 5 films in the last 25 years that have managed that (Titanic, Avatar, The Sixth Sense, The Fugitive, and now Black Panther). 

Marvel's had a few missteps, Thor 2 was ass, Avengers: Age of Ultron dissapointed some people, Thor 3 is too funny for some, Iron Man 2 and 3 were both kinda shit. The difference is Marvel fans don't cry if they movies do something they don't want them to. 

James Cameron has beaten the crap out of Star Wars several times over with a chick flick on a boat and a left wing-tree-hugger eco-action film. E.T. wrecked both Empire and Jedi in the 80s, not even close. Titanic ran over the mega-hyped Star Wars Episode I. In the 2000s, Spider-Man 1/2 kicked the shit out of Star Wars Episode II or III. Avatar is way above Star Wars VII or VIII and Marvel as a whole is probably more popular in the 2010s. So that's the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s where Star Wars hasn't ruled the roost.  

Star Wars arguably hasn't been king of anything since the original one in 1977, sorry Star Wars fanboys. Sit down and shut up for a while. It's an overrated franchise relative to the amount of attention it gets, all the films have been flawed in some major ways since 1980 onwards and some (Attack of the Clones) are just downright awful. 

Star Wars is overrated. Has been for decades, it just has portion of fanatical fans that are a small minority of the general movie going public that make a big stink about.

Truth is there hasn't been a "great" Star Wars movie since 1980, and every decade since the 70s has been defined by a different film property that's topped Star Wars. E.T. (1980s), Titanic (1990s), Spider-Man and LOTR (2000s), Avatar and Marvel (2010s).

Stop making Star Wars into something it isn't.

You must have missed The Force Awakens...