The Mandalorian has restored the faith in the future of the franchise in millions of fans. Most of us thought Star Wars was over considering how mediocre the last six movies have been but along comes this well-written, fun adventure that manages to tie together the previous movies, animated series and books. Imagine a new trilogy made by Filoni and Favreau - they would absolutely kill it.

Rogue 1 was also pretty good. It seems like the Star Wars jinx is that nobody can pull off extensions of the Skywalker story without getting hokey and weird. But the stories that explore other parts of the universe tend to be at least interesting and sometimes excellent.

I was watching The Mandalorian last night and thinking about what it would have been like to have a new Star Wars movie on broadcast TV each week as a kid back in the 80s.

I think most of my actual exposure was through toys and advertising. The movies were only on TV every couple of years. I remember listening to Star Wars on the radio

> I've also heard good things about the FF7 remake, but haven't played it.

Playing it at the moment, and I'm nearly done with it. I think it's a great game. Its' beautiful, and has a nice mix of carrying forward old storylines and settings and mixing in new things. It also made a lot of characters more authentic to me than the original one - e.g. the turks felt more like real bad guys. Aerith character is great too.

What I'm not too sure about is whether it was the right decision to stretch the Midgar part of the story that much (I'm already at 45 hours in chapter 17). The original FF7 had a lot more places to offer, and climbing up a buildling or moving through sewers or tunnels for 2 hours isn't that exciting compared to that.