Solo release thread (spoilers)

[Patroklos]

I would also note there is a difference between a modern audience watching a stand alone entry that still has a tangential contribution to a still unfolding main franchise arc that you are vested in following.

With these SW entries they are all settled stories that are essentially just providing inconsequential backstory, tiptoeing around to not directly subvert the main franchise entries which are treated as national treasures, and failing to do this to the audiences wrath. Consistency is not so much an issue with Marvel because none of their movies enjoy canon status in the minds of most viewers (wrongly or rightly). People are more pissed off when they violate the backstories of the originating comics than they are with conflicts between movies inside the last decade.

It would be interesting if some currently seemingly inconsequential throwaway line or events in these stand alones cleverly and non-hamfistedly impacts the later main plot entries in a major way. People might look back and thing "Oh SHIT!" That would require a level of coordination and discipline Disney is definitely not encouraging, and the talent they hire is in now way capable of cleverness or subtly.

[MKSheppard]

Rogue One sucked, so why would another fanservice standalone be good?

Both Solo and Rogue One have their problems -- Rogue One a bit more than Solo.

I recently rewatched Solo at NASM IMAX Open Captioned screening -- on my first view through I missed about maybe 30% of lines, and kept looking from screen to captioning device. This time around I was able to sit back and concentrate on the film.

I found that even though I'd watched SOLO before, it really did not "drag" until the final act following delivery of the unrefined Coaxium to the refinery, which is where the double, triple, and quadruple crossings happened.

By contrast, Rogue One has scenes in between that drag; and several scenes are pointless or need some connective tissue -- for example, Tarkin's motive in firing the big gun on Scarif should have been made clearer; and they should have deleted the pointless "krennic kills whole design team lol" sequence.

But all in all, both R1 and Solo felt like....motherfucking Star Wars, man.

Krennic looking up on the platform and seeing SUPER FUN HAPPY BALL floating on the horizon and realizing that Tarkin's gonna blast him (he never says "Fuck you tarkin" out loud but you can read it in between the lines) is one of the top scenes in SW, along with "Oh, it's beautiful."

By contrast, what do we have in the "new mainline trilogy"? Idiots like Hux.

[Crazedwraith]

Random thought: Corellia makes ISDs, so what's the status of Kuat in the new Canon? (I mean in ANH Han does reference the big Corellian ships)

Maybe Kuat licenses out the design like in ECR's Hull 721 fanfic.

[Ace Pace]

So it looks like Solo is going down as the most unsuccessful SW film in history, the only one not to turn a profit despite being the most expensive one yet.

So what is the likely fallout? What are the lessons to learn from this? Does this prompt change creatively in the Disney SW assembly line or do they continue to stamp out iterations in direct contempt for their audience?

Why do you assume Disney didn't write this one off and is like "oh, break even in total, we'll deal"? Or that they used this movie as a sounding board and were willing to give it a try?

I think the only fallout would be even more control over the movie and messaging, and at most, a slowing of the pace while they build out the greater SW universe for more standalone movies.

[eMeM]

A thing to consider is that Solo wasn't supposed to be the most expensive Star Wars movie, the budged got overinflated because they basically shot it twice.

[Civil War Man]

L3-37 - A droid with female personality and an implied sexual interest in Lando that is fighting for droid rights and starts a droid/salve rebellion during a heist... she dies shortly after and is turned into the falcons nav-computer.
Some assume she's a parody of the more vocal extremist-feminists.

I haven't seen the movie yet, so I can't comment on the character, but the thought of a droid character whose name is Leet spelled in leet-speak makes me die a little inside.

I think the major problem at the box office isn't anything to do with the film but the timing. It came out in a very crowded slot, right after Infinity War and Deadpool 2, and only a couple of weeks before Fallen Kingdom, all of which are (or are expected to be) big films. Combine that with TLJ being released only six months ago and its no wonder that it hasn't done as well as hoped. Too many big popular films out at the same time, the recent other SW film that was big, but had somewhat mixed reviews...yeah.

They probably should have waited until late summer or December like they did with TFA, TLJ and Rogue One.

Noted, but I am unsympathetic to those excuses. Infinity Wars was released over a month before Solo, there is zero reason to think that is impacting the movie. The only actual competition is Dead Pool (even then not competing for opening weekends) which is a big competing draw but hardly one that would justify Solo losing money. Blunting its profitability yes, but to make it not even return production costs through the second weekend?

As far as timing, Marvel lays that reasoning to waste as well. There was less than a month between the stand alone Black Panther and the main franchise entry Infinity Wars. Both are record successes. within the same time window as Solo and TLJ, they also release Thor: Ragnorok which was also a commercial success. That's three (four with Dead Pool if we expand the window just another month) Marval movies inside the same window, all successes, and all following a franchise with far more recent entries.

The analysis I've heard is that the timing stuff probably did have a negative impact, but it's definitely not the sole reason for the poor performance. One of the other factors is that there was very little marketing leading up to the release, which suggests that Disney may have been expecting it to do poorly and were already writing it off as a loss.

And then, outside of the various marketing and timing factors, I've also heard a lot of people express the opinion that this wasn't really a story that needed to be told. I've heard the same said about Rogue One, but the feeling definitely seems more widespread with Solo. I mean, Han Solo is a complete known quantity. He's been one of the main characters for half of the main movies, and for the rest he's either a child (Wookieepedia says he was born in the same year as the events of The Phantom Menace) or dead. And the second part of that also factors into this whole argument, because finding out more stuff about Solo isn't really going to pay off any dividends in later movies, because the character died two episodes ago.

Lando might have been a better focus for one of these stories, since he's a less prominent OT character, so his character hasn't been explored as deeply as Solo has, and there's still a possibility that we could see him show up in future episodes.

[Knife]

Random thought: Corellia makes ISDs, so what's the status of Kuat in the new Canon? (I mean in ANH Han does reference the big Corellian ships)

Maybe Kuat licenses out the design like in ECR's Hull 721 fanfic.

Good point. Kuat ISD's is so ingrained in me I don't even question it. But now have to.

"Not the local bulk cruisers, the Big Corellian ships".

Has Kuat been mentioned in the new cannon? TFA, TLJ, R1, or Solo? Hell even Rebels? I feel like it's been referenced in Rebels but not sure.

[KraytKing]

In the old canon, at least, Kuat was simply the largest of many ISD manufacturers. Also, Kuat had been nationalized, so the Empire could license to any shipbuilder they damn well pleased. In the new canon, I have no idea.

[PhoenixKnig]

I read somewhere in the old legends that they did third-party ISDs

[The Romulan Republic]

Random thought: Corellia makes ISDs, so what's the status of Kuat in the new Canon? (I mean in ANH Han does reference the big Corellian ships)

Maybe Kuat licenses out the design like in ECR's Hull 721 fanfic.

Good point. Kuat ISD's is so ingrained in me I don't even question it. But now have to.

"Not the local bulk cruisers, the Big Corellian ships".

Has Kuat been mentioned in the new cannon? TFA, TLJ, R1, or Solo? Hell even Rebels? I feel like it's been referenced in Rebels but not sure.

IIRC, Kuat has appeared in some of the Disney-canon comics.

Seeing Kuat on the big screen is one of my long time Star Wars fan wishes though, even if have Corellia be the premier cap. ship producer fits better with that New Hope dialogue.

[LadyTevar]

I liked it. As someone else said, it took it back to what StarWars started out as -- a space Western.

Glover was Lando in all the ways that mattered. Ehrenreich took me a moment, but he grew into Han as I watched. Qi'ra was gonna double-cross him at the first opportunity, saw it a mile away, but all y'all saying Maul was gonna teach her missed the body language and context. That was clearly a "I don't believe you, so you're coming to me to explain this more fully, and if I don't like the answer... (lightsaber)."

Loved Han, Tobias, and Chewie coming up with a "steal unrefined fuel" plan so fast. I've been in D&D games where the party pulled a plan outta our asses the same way. Had no problem with the 12 parsec run ("Ok, I'm rounding down!"), it is a measure of how far you have to travel to get out of the Cluster, not the time it takes.

[MKSheppard]

Someone on another forum said this about Solo not being Solo:

Re: him not being very "Han Solo-ish" How could he be?

The older, cynical, scoundrel Han that we first meet in the Cantina is clearly not the one we see in this movie. That had to be calculated. He is still too optimistic and not jaded enough. He's getting there, but that "thing" that breaks him hasn't happened yet. He is the hero, despite not wanting to be. He shoots first here, because he is starting to learn from his mistakes. He's more "Han Solo-ish" by the end of the film, but still has a ways to go.

[Crazedwraith]

People thought he wasn't Solo enough? I thought he was basically the same from the scene one.

Maybe with too much emphasis on you're a good man but still basically accurate.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I can't believe how poorly this film is doing. It's Star Wars and it's fun! What a rare treat these days.

[The Romulan Republic]

I can't believe how poorly this film is doing. It's Star Wars and it's fun! What a rare treat these days.

Probably a combination of "they recast Han Solo, how dare they" and a backlash by The Last Jedi-bashers. And, more generally, a cumulative build-up of "Disney has ruined Star Wars" sentiment.

And the sad thing is, Disney might very well take from this the lesson "We better not do anything that might offend the loudest and most angry fans." Which is the first and last step on the road to creative sterility (in fact, I'd argue its probably one of TFA's main problems).

Of course, doing poorly is relative. Its doing badly for a Star Wars film, but that's not the same as being a complete flop.

Edit: Its also probably not realistic to expect an anthology film to do as well as a main trilogy film, which means the only film it can be measured against is Rogue One (and maybe the Clone Wars animated film). And I wonder if that's part of the problem for Solo. A film that's part of the main saga will probably drawn in more "casual" viewers, while an anthology film will be more reliant on the views of the dedicated (and difficulty-to-please) fanbase.

[Imperial528]

A problem I have with Han's character in Solo is that the film in part undermines the character development it was going for in the first place

In the OT Han's introduced as selfish rogue who looks out for himself and his first without much care for greater causes, but his good nature gets the best of him and he becomes a hero. By the end he's a person who does the right thing because it's right and who fights for good, instead of just doing what is right by him.

In Solo they seem to want to explore in the beginning how someone with such a good heart could become that hardened scoundrel. This starts out fairly well, but after landing at Savareen the plot gets steered into the familiar territory of good plucky rebels against the evil empire despite clashing thematically.

To me, this speaks to a lack of clear vision of what story they wanted to tell with Solo.

It's hard to put this in concrete words, but as I've reflected on Solo I feel like it's not really a story. It has a plot which is consistent and all, I just can't shake the feeling that the plot was designed to cover references than to build out a character arc. Han meets with Chewie because Han knows Chewie by the time of ANH. Han gets the Falcon because the Falcon is Han's ship, and he gets it from Lando because we know Lando had it first. A group of good guys show up and convince Han to fight against the bad guys he was working for because this is Star Wars and Star Wars is about good versus evil.

I'm probably going to see it again since a friend of mine wants to watch it so I'll be able to watch it more critically the second time.

For now though I think my opinion on it is that, while I enjoyed watching it, it suffers from trying to be like Star Wars instead of setting out to be part of Star Wars.

Probably a combination of "they recast Han Solo, how dare they" and a backlash by The Last Jedi-bashers. And, more generally, a cumulative build-up of "Disney has ruined Star Wars" sentiment.

I have seen a good number of people hating Solo for stupid or knee-jerk reasons. Mostly about L3, really.

But as I said in my closing statement above, Solo suffers from what all of the new movies have suffered from to some degree. They reference the OT so closely and so often that it feels like they aren't comfortable trying to actually build on what exists in Star Wars. Rogue One did this the least, really only doing it blatantly at the end with the Tantive IV and CGI Leia, but that at least was justified in the plot (though I found it to be shoddy writing the way it was executed).

I was hoping Solo would be a good movie. It wasn't bad, it was fun to watch, but a simply enjoyable action-adventure film isn't enough to keep me on. After Last Jedi I gave up on Episode 9. If they manage to make a great film for the next spin-off/non-trilogy film, I will see that. But I doubt they will make a great film, especially if they do another character-background film akin to Solo.

[Vympel]

Probably a combination of "they recast Han Solo, how dare they" and a backlash by The Last Jedi-bashers. And, more generally, a cumulative build-up of "Disney has ruined Star Wars" sentiment.

And the sad thing is, Disney might very well take from this the lesson "We better not do anything that might offend the loudest and most angry fans." Which is the first and last step on the road to creative sterility (in fact, I'd argue its probably one of TFA's main problems).

Of course, doing poorly is relative. Its doing badly for a Star Wars film, but that's not the same as being a complete flop.

Edit: Its also probably not realistic to expect an anthology film to do as well as a main trilogy film, which means the only film it can be measured against is Rogue One (and maybe the Clone Wars animated film). And I wonder if that's part of the problem for Solo. A film that's part of the main saga will probably drawn in more "casual" viewers, while an anthology film will be more reliant on the views of the dedicated (and difficulty-to-please) fanbase.

Any analysis of poor performance that rests on fan discontent is inherently flawed IMO. It's borne out of a sense that this great huge echo chamber on the internet in which we reside is actually hugely representative of the mainstream, and it just isn't.

The vocal (and often toxic - see the recent harassment of Kelly Marie Tran off instagram) contingent of the supposed fandom who still won't shut the fuck up about The Last Jedi being the latest in a long line of things that Ruined Star Wars Forever are a minority within a minority. Star Wars may be mainstream, but that doesn't mean extreme fandom and the mainstream reacts to or enjoys material the same way, or has the same concerns.

The vast majority of people who watch these films don't post on forums, reddit, or spend countless hours watching dudes in beards talk into a webcam on youtube.

And that right there is probably a big reason why Solo didn't do so well (along with others). It's only elevated above 'fun space movie!' to the degree you care about all of the deep dive Star Wars lore stuff it deals with. Sabaac, the Kessel Run, how Han met Chewie - this is niche interest stuff, and Solo performed like a niche interest film.

[The Romulan Republic]

That actually makes sense.

I still worry that it will be taken as validating the backlash against TLJ, and whatever your opinions of that film, I don't think it would be good for the franchise long-term if Disney (further) learned the lesson "never do anything that might piss off the rabid fan base." As long as they feel free to try new things with the Star Wars liscence, we may get some good films, and some bad films, but we won't get stagnation.

[Vympel]

That actually makes sense.

I still worry that it will be taken as validating the backlash against TLJ, and whatever your opinions of that film, I don't think it would be good for the franchise long-term if Disney (further) learned the lesson "never do anything that might piss off the rabid fan base." As long as they feel free to try new things with the Star Wars liscence, we may get some good films, and some bad films, but we won't get stagnation.

Yeah, an indication that they're doing this would be Rian Johnson having his trilogy (his current intent is to write and direct the first film and see what happens after that) 'taken away' for lack of a better term. Kathleen Kennedy would likely not countenance such a step, since it would reflect poorly on her decisions, but she also just turned 65 and isn't going to want to stay in that job forever.

[MKSheppard]

a backlash by The Last Jedi-bashers.

TLJ basically shit the bed. I almost didn't see Solo until I said "fuck it" one day and went anyway. It was good enough to make me want to see any future anthology films (BOBA FETTTTTTTTT), but I'm fucking not going to see Episode 9 until it's on Redbox because of TLJ being such shit.

[MKSheppard]

Well, opinions differ, but as I said, it would be a shame if the message Disney got is "God forbid that we ever do anything to offend the loudest and angriest parts of the fan base."

There were so many things wrong with TLJ that I don't even know where to begin.

Biggest one that jumps to mind easily is that Hux, Snoke, and Seriously-Not-Jacen/Darth Cadaceus just aren't as good as this guy:



In fact, everything about the First Order feels like a cheap knockoff of the OG Empire -- instead of something original and refreshing. Faced with that, I prefer the original OG Gangstas, Krennic and Tarkin.

[The Romulan Republic]

Eh, I don't want to get too far off-topic here, but I'll give you Hux (plus Phasma is underused). I actually like the deconstruction of the "bad ass Sith" with Kylo, but I do agree that it leaves the ST with a deficit of credibly threatening villains.

Back to Solo, how do you feel Solo compares on this score (I haven't seen it yet, but I've already been spoilered)? I know Maul is involved somehow, but other than that, does it have credible villains?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Eh, I don't want to get too far off-topic here, but I'll give you Hux (plus Phasma is underused). I actually like the deconstruction of the "bad ass Sith" with Kylo, but I do agree that it leaves the ST with a deficit of credibly threatening villains.

Back to Solo, how do you feel Solo compares on this score (I haven't seen it yet, but I've already been spoilered)? I know Maul is involved somehow, but other than that, does it have credible villains?

Yes. Without too many spoilers, I found all of the antagonists and villains to be credible, even threatening.

[The Romulan Republic]

That's good to hear. I'll try to see it soon.

[Vympel]

Split out the prequel discussion.