Solo: A Star Wars Story

Inside the theatre you're welcome to discuss your favorite television shows, musical artists, video games, books, movies, or anything popular culture!
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Catspaw
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Post by Catspaw »

Haha, I remember that video. Too funny. They should make a version with Donald Glover for the beginning. :lol:
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bookworm
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Post by bookworm »

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Post by Knight Fisher »

I had a ton of fun. I went in hoping for a decent movie and left being on-board with a sequel.

Third act spoilers.
I may have internally and not so internally freaked out when Maul showed up. That was just awesome.
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Post by Catspaw »

I'm going next weekend, so I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it so much, KF! I've seen mixed reviews (though I haven't looked too closely because I don't want too much info) so that's really good to hear.

EDIT/BUMP: I went to see Solo yesterday with my brother and my cousin, and we all really liked it! It was a lot of fun, and I liked it more than I thought I might. The trailer didn't totally sell me on this version of young Han, but the spirit and attitude won me over pretty quickly in the actual film. Donald Glover was awesome as Lando - I can't picture anyone else playing the role! Good times. I would see it again. :D
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Post by bookworm »

There are two separate things I want to give thoughts on: the movie itself, and the reception it got.


On the movie part of the movie, I really liked it a lot. A ton more than I thought I was going to which was a surprise, to be honest. A pleasant one certainly, I didn't want to not like it, but I really had doubts going in that I would because I truly expected it to be a garbage fire after all the stories of production issues. So my hope was never mind being good, even decent, just please don't be awful. Not only did it meet that extremely low bar I set, but well exceeded it. The word I would use to describe it is 'fun' and that's been echoed to me by others. It wasn't the greatest movie, it wasn't the best story, it wasn't groundbreaking in any way, but it was genuine fun. I really enjoyed watching it, a lot, even if there wasn't substantial substance to it.

Even after seeing it, and legitimately enjoying it, I still don't think it was needed, but I don't mind that it exists. It's unnecessary, but not pointless which is what I thought it was going to be when it was first announced and what made me so initially pessimistic.

I never bought the kid as Han for a second, I waited to see if it would grow on me eventually but he never did. No one is Harrison Ford, but I hoped I could see at least a little resemblance somewhere, but I didn't. I worried it would take me out of the movie, to keep having it in my mind that it's supposed to be Han but I'm not buying it and consciously having to ignore the disconnect, but it really didn't. I was able to just not think about it or be distracted. In other words there was never a point where I thought 'I see Han in this' but on the other hand I wasn't preoccupied with 'I don't see Han in this' which I was very glad about.

I was surprised to see opening text, I thought the stand alone movies weren't doing that, but I guess they decided they actually should which I agree with. But it's going to be strange if Rogue One is going to be the odd one out now as the only one without it. It was also kind of weird that they went back to text but didn't do the scrolling, it's like why would you go halfway just accept the opening crawl is part of Star Wars and if you need text do it that way, but whatever.

I chuckled at Lando's quip "mining colonies are the worst" as foreshadowing of becoming administrator of Bespin.

The one thing that bugged me was the Kessel Run. Not that we finally saw what it was, I've heard some people saying that should have been kept as a mysterious rumor in his backstory, I don't care, I wasn't excited we got to see it but I didn't mind that we did either. But what bothered me about it was the parsecs. As has been the subject of many snarky comments over the years, because parsecs measure distance not time Han's boast in New Hope that he made the run in so many parsecs makes no sense. The thing is, that's intentional. Now I don't know if this is definitely confirmed canon, but I had always heard that the line is wrong on purpose because it's just Han bragging, not knowing what he's talking about just trying to talk up his ship expecting Luke won't know the technicalities, which he doesn't, but Ben makes a little smirk when he hears that because he realizes Han is full of hot air but doesn't say anything. This makes perfect sense for the character. But whether that was or wasn't ever an official explanation it doesn't matter now because it turns out in this world parsec just means something different than it does in ours. Which is perfectly fine, I'm just slightly bummed that it removes a neat little layer to the story that I had always had in mind. In the long run this was probably the best way to go though, to set the record straight once and for all, because even if that story was previously canon it was an obscure detail not a lot of people apparently heard about and so like how Rogue One 'retconned' the Death Star hole they took this opportunity to say we're tired of people harping on this all the time, here's the alleged problem tied up finally.

I've heard several complaints about the scene where he gets the 'Solo' name, but I thought it was fine. It could have been done in a better way probably, but I didn't find it eye rolling awful like a lot of other people do.
Darth Maul caught be completely by surprise. That he was there, not that he's alive. Though I haven't gotten to watching that part of Clone Wars I was aware he survived Episode I, but I never expected him to show up in any of the movies again. And it was really gutsy of them to assume people are aware of the lore beyond the movies and just drop this bombshell with no context, for someone who doesn't know he was still alive that moment had to be just 'What the heck is going on?!'

Anyway I'm intrigued to see where they think they're going with this. Are other movies going to follow what happens with him now? They're no longer stand alone then are they. Or are the other ones still going to jump around and be their own thing, but we're starting a new miniseries here of Solo sequels to follow this story? But if we do see more in this timeline Han can't be involved because if he met Maul he would know about the Force and his disposition in New Hope wouldn't make sense. If this story goes on from here without Han and we follow what's up with Maul in some other way okay, but if Han isn't part of it it's not 'Solo 2' or whatever. I have no idea what the plan is but I'm interested to see.

One thing that was super dumb was why did Maul light up his saber for no reason there? That was incredibly stupid, in-world. In context of the movie as a movie it was most likely done to show the audience this is indeed Maul and not some new character of the same species, but there had to be a better way to achieve that than something that makes no sense and is just stupid if you don't break the fourth wall.
Now on to the business part of the movie.

It extremely under performed at the box office, and in audience reaction in general seems to be have had a very lukewarm reception and low interest. From people I know personally that saw it reactions were positive, but globally it was really neutral to negative. Which is a shame because I don't think it's warranted. This is not an amazing movie, but it's nowhere near as bad or boring or dumb or other things people said it was. I think people had preconceived negative opinions from the start because they thought it was unnecessary to make, or they heard about all the production issues, etc, and they never gave it a chance.

I heard about all that and was one of the people that was concerned, in fact I expected it to be bad, but I didn't let that make me not go see it, or go see it with my mind already made up that it would be a failure. I was open to the possibility it could unexpectedly be decent, and it was!

There are also people bragging that they boycotted this because Last Jedi upset them so much. That makes no sense to me. First of all it's dumb and petty, but whatever it's your choice if you want to react that way, but do it at the next movie of the trilogy then - this one has absolutely nothing to do with what you're upset about!

I really think if you took the Star Wars out of this and it was just a generic space heist adventure it would have been pretty well received as a fun time. It's just the franchise baggage it had to carry that brought about most of the negativity.

Ultimately I think it was a big mistake to have this out so soon after TLJ, they should have definitely kept it as a Christmas thing. The blow back from the last movie would have had time to die down and maybe not have worked against this one so strongly, and I think a lot of people didn't even realize this was happening because Star Wars has been established as a December thing.
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Post by The Top Crusader »

bookworm wrote:
Ultimately I think it was a big mistake to have this out so soon after TLJ, they should have definitely kept it as a Christmas thing. The blow back from the last movie would have had time to die down and maybe not have worked against this one so strongly, and I think a lot of people didn't even realize this was happening because Star Wars has been established as a December thing.
I think that's a huge part of the problem it had at the box office. Not everything is Marvel, you don't want to over saturate Star Wars that much when we used to only get one every 3 years then big gaps between trilogies.

But yeah I liked it a lot, definitely moreso than Episode VIII, even if it was basically pointless.
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Post by bookworm »

Not only did it cause over saturation on the front end by this being too close to the last movie, but it also messes up the other end by being too far from the next. We're not getting a movie until next December now so they actually caused an even longer wait between them than the new normal they had established. Why wasn't it kept a simple once a year Christmas time thing?

They had planned this for May from the start, so moving it back to December would have had its own issues. That would have just rekindled all the speculation that the production problems made it a disaster, 'see they need seven more months to fix this trainwreck!' so they were in a no win situation here. Keep the original way too close to TLJ date and fall onto the coals of that controversy that were still around, or delay it to a better time but risk stirring the coals back up with new unrelated bad mouthing. The problem was that they ever thought it was a good idea to move to May in the first place. :shrugs:
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