Movies: Solo: A Star Wars Story | Part II

[RandV]

It bombed because of TLJ. Not on its own merits. I definitely agree that it's a bit meh, but it's not offensive like TLJ was.

Which isn't entirely TLJ's fault, while unpopular with many it had nothing to do with the business decision to launch Solo I think a mere 4 months after it? With that proximity TLJ probably would have hurt Solo even if it was good.

 

[Hit the post]

I will not have this discussion again, but I think TLJ is a better movie than Solo.

It does try to do too much, but Solo is vanilla as hell.

Seemed like more money/resources was put into TLJ. Forget the final production costs of Solo (I mean, wasn't it almost remade from scratch) but the movie just seemed "cheap". Sure didn't look like xxx million was spent on it (again, I realize movie was pretty much reshot when Ron Howard took over). While I loathed TLJ, I can't deny it at least *looked* great (you can see the money spent onscreen).

While I don't dislike Ron Howard films, as Mork from Ork would say....pretty humdrum as far as directors go like like Ritchie Cunningham. It didn't surprise me that Solo was kind of a bland/meh film. Not awful but not great either.

But that's just my opinion (heh, worth far less than many here....)

 

[Jussi]

Seemed like more money/resources was put into TLJ. Forget the final production costs of Solo (I mean, wasn't it almost remade from scratch) but the movie just seemed "cheap". Sure didn't look like xxx million was spent on it (again, I realize movie was pretty much reshot when Ron Howard took over). While I loathed TLJ, I can't deny it at least *looked* great (you can see the money spent onscreen).

While I don't dislike Ron Howard films, as Mork from Ork would say....pretty humdrum as far as directors go like like Ritchie Cunningham. It didn't surprise me that Solo was kind of a bland/meh film. Not awful but not great either.

But that's just my opinion (heh, worth far less than many here....)

I think Ron Howard "gets" Star Wars, his work on Solo wasn't fully his but I think it was a better effort in a directorial sense than Rogue One.

 

[MadDevil]

Which isn't entirely TLJ's fault, while unpopular with many it had nothing to do with the business decision to launch Solo I think a mere 4 months after it? With that proximity TLJ probably would have hurt Solo even if it was good.

Bob Iger came right out and said they tried to do too much too fast by releasing it just a few months after TLJ. Hopefully they learn from this and space it out more going forward. I don't think we really need more than one movie a year, especially if they're going to be doing stuff on the Disney streaming service as well.

 

[Cole Caulifield]

The notion that it's too much too fast is silly. There's no reason for marvel to be able to release content at 4 times the pace and for Star Wars to release content too fast at 1/4th of the pace. It's nonsense. Some say that Marvel has thousands of pages of comics to draw from, but SW has just as much to draw from with the EU and even canon cartoon content. And we can't say that disney has rejected the EU since Thrawn was used in the cartoons and the cartoons are canon. And in solo, Disney pulled a card from the cartoons with Darth Maul revived. But regardless if they have rejected the EU or not, they can still find much inspiration from it if they have none themselves. But new good ideas would be welcome as well. I would be very excited about RJ's new trilogy if he wasn't such a hack.

People want to look for all the excuses in the world when it's all very very simple - make better movies. Not just better movies in and of themselves, but movies that fit within the IP and stuff people want to see. TLJ was an abomination which was NOT Star Wars, and Solo was an extremely average movie no one asked for which followed the most reviled TLJ. It's no wonder they bombed.

People have an appetite for SW content, but not for awful crap like TLJ and very average movies like Solo which no one asked for. Solo's biggest flaw is that no one wanted to see that movie. No one wanted to know how he got the falcon, his gun and his dumb dices no one knew existed. Those are basically props and not what makes Star Wars good. Enough with origin stories, and prequels. Rogue One, Solo, Obi Wan... please stop. Disney does not understand what makes Star Wars tick, and they're simply banking on Han Solo, Obi Wan, Darth Vader, Lando IPs to carry movies. If that's Disney's idea of star wars content then yes, 1 movie a year is too much, hell one movie every 10 year is too much if that's what it is going to be.

 

[RandV]

The notion that it's too much too fast is silly. There's no reason for marvel to be able to release content at 4 times the pace and for Star Wars to release content too fast at 1/4th of the pace. It's nonsense. Some say that Marvel has thousands of pages of comics to draw from, but SW has just as much to draw from with the EU and even canon cartoon content. And we can't say that disney has rejected the EU since Thrawn was used in the cartoons and the cartoons are canon. And in solo, Disney pulled a card from the cartoons with Darth Maul revived. But regardless if they have rejected the EU or not, they can still find much inspiration from it if they have none themselves. But new good ideas would be welcome as well. I would be very excited about RJ's new trilogy if he wasn't such a hack.

Normally I would agree with this sentiment, as someone who loves binging on content I'll never understand the concept that anything more than a 2+ hour movie every year is 'too much'. But regardless of that I still think it hurts them financially here.

First off with the Marvel comparison, Marvel earned there spot. The started from scratch and built up consumer confidence, so people trust when a Marvel movie comes out they're getting something good. Star Wars on the other hand is pure hype built off the original trilogy followed by a pure starvation diet. Make a new Star Wars trilogy after 15+ years and everyone's going to go see it, regardless of whether it's good or not, because it's being fuelled by nostalgia. But if you suddenly start feeding people a lot of Star Wars and it's not that good, that's maybe great for the hardcore Star Wars nerd but you're going to lose that hype factor among the general audience and are going to see a hit at the box office.

You could kind of see this play out. The Force Awaken comes out and everyone's going to see it, there's a few detractors as always but mostly people love it and many see it multiple times. Rogue One comes out a year later and everyone still goes to see it... but it's just kind of mediocre. Then TLJ comes out a year later, everyone goes to see it thinking 'okay back to the real stuff'... and so many people hate it. Then they follow that cold reception with Solo just 4 months later, a movie that had a lot of negative rumours about production problems, and you finally see Star Wars hit the wall. Even if the people that did go see it generally liked it that zeitgeist momentum Star Wars had was lost.

 

[Hit the post]

I think Ron Howard "gets" Star Wars, his work on Solo wasn't fully his but I think it was a better effort in a directorial sense than Rogue One.

Wasn't what happened to Solo similiar to what happened with Rogue One? Original director removed from film well into production/filming & replaced?

 

[Jussi]

Wasn't what happened to Solo similiar to what happened with Rogue One? Original director removed from film well into production/filming & replaced?

Yes. The original ending for Rogue One had some of the main characters surviving. That was probably why the movie felt like the first half was directed by some one else than the latter half. Although the changes included changing Saw Gerrera's appearance. Solo felt more cohesive and well paced than Rogue One to me.

 

[MadDevil]

Wasn't what happened to Solo similiar to what happened with Rogue One? Original director removed from film well into production/filming & replaced?

More or less. The main difference was Gareth Edwards played ball and wasn't fired from Rogue One. Lord and Miller didn't play ball and were fired from Solo.

I think in both cases the higher ups either didn't know exactly who they were hiring, or changed their minds on what they wanted. If there's one thing I will complain about with Disney it's that I don't think they planned anything out. The saga trilogy seems to be a game of hot potato, both in terms of story and directors. And the standalones have both had production issues. They've really gotten lucky that Rogue One and Solo weren't both complete disasters. I'm hoping with this supposed "slowdown" they'll take their time and figure some shit out before pressing ahead with everything that's in one stage of development or another (Johnson's trilogy, Benioff and Weiss's project, the Obi-Wan movie, and who knows what else). Honestly, they remind me a bit of DC in that regard.

 

[Osprey]

I finally watched this a few days ago and haven't felt much motivation to comment on it because it's neither bad enough to complain much about or good enough to say much complimentary about. It's just a rather forgettable film. It's the first of these new movies that felt to me like it was just churned out. You could argue that Rogue One was, too, but, whether because the craze was still fresh or because its story is about something that fans have been very curious about for 40 years, it felt like it had some purpose. Solo just felt misguided because it was trying to copy Guardians of the Galaxy (even that monkey pilot seemed like a rip-off of the raccoon in GotG) and telling a story that most fans haven't ever been all that curious about.

It didn't help that a number of things didn't make sense to me. Why would Han already know the Wookiee language before meeting Chewbacca and why didn't he speak to him in it sooner? Also, Wikipedia says that 3 years passed while Han and Qi'ra were separated, but I certainly didn't get that sense from the movie. It seemed more like 3 months, which made Qi'ra's indifference toward him and sudden mastery of advanced martial arts seem rather implausible. Finally, Lando was made out as retired and someone who would never give up his ship; then, a few minutes later, he not only wagered it (not really, since he was cheating, but that should've been a red flag) but eagerly came out of retirement to pilot it for a bunch of strangers. Maybe the point is to show that he's not who he's reputed to be, but it makes the false character build-up and card game seem sort of pointless.

It also puzzles me how these new movies so aggressively push social justice (strong, heroic females and themes on animal, child and droid exploitation) while simultaneously employing unflattering stereotypes of black males as cowards, comic relief and habitual cheaters. You would think that the same people who are so careful to depict every female character as a strong, positive role model with nary a flaw would show a bit more care for the "role models" that they're leaving other demographics with.

Anyways, I was kind of surprised and amused that the movie left threads hanging (especially with Qi'ra) for a sequel. I know that it was originally meant to be a trilogy, but you would think that they would've sort of scrapped that idea when they had so many production troubles and confidence in the film tanked. It seems awfully silly now for the film to end almost on a cliffhanger when a sequel is unlikely to happen.

 

[tacogeoff]

Finally watched it at home. Have to say I am in the minority and really enjoyed it. It was what I thought it was going to be.....a fun, action movie / popcorn flick with Han, Lando and Chewy. I personally wasn't looking for anything deeper than an entertaining movie, as the Star Wars franchise has never produced a film with a lot of depth imo.

@Phillip The Third I asked for the movie... Im sorry.

 

[Cole Caulifield]

Finally watched it at home. Have to say I am in the minority and really enjoyed it. It was what I thought it was going to be.....a fun, action movie / popcorn flick with Han, Lando and Chewy. I personally wasn't looking for anything deeper than an entertaining movie, as the Star Wars franchise has never produced a film with a lot of depth imo.

@Phillip The Third I asked for the movie... Im sorry.

At large, I'm fairly sure people didn't wanna see this.

And you asked for it yet you didn't even bother going to the theaters to see it ? Even waited until today to see it when it was available even earlier out of theaters ?

I would not target you as my audience if I were Disney.

 

[RandV]

Anyways, I was kind of surprised and amused that the movie left threads hanging (especially with Kira) for a sequel. I know that it was originally meant to be a trilogy, but you would think that they would've sort of scrapped that idea when they had so many production troubles and confidence in the film tanked. It seems awfully silly now for the film to end almost on a cliffhanger when a sequel is unlikely to happen.

The impression I get with that is it's not necessarily a "Han Solo" trilogy but rather they can fit the other origin movies into a connected storyline that probably ends with Obi Wan facing down Maul.

 

[Cole Caulifield]

Normally I would agree with this sentiment, as someone who loves binging on content I'll never understand the concept that anything more than a 2+ hour movie every year is 'too much'. But regardless of that I still think it hurts them financially here.

First off with the Marvel comparison, Marvel earned there spot. The started from scratch and built up consumer confidence, so people trust when a Marvel movie comes out they're getting something good. Star Wars on the other hand is pure hype built off the original trilogy followed by a pure starvation diet. Make a new Star Wars trilogy after 15+ years and everyone's going to go see it, regardless of whether it's good or not, because it's being fuelled by nostalgia. But if you suddenly start feeding people a lot of Star Wars and it's not that good, that's maybe great for the hardcore Star Wars nerd but you're going to lose that hype factor among the general audience and are going to see a hit at the box office.

You could kind of see this play out. The Force Awaken comes out and everyone's going to see it, there's a few detractors as always but mostly people love it and many see it multiple times. Rogue One comes out a year later and everyone still goes to see it... but it's just kind of mediocre. Then TLJ comes out a year later, everyone goes to see it thinking 'okay back to the real stuff'... and so many people hate it. Then they follow that cold reception with Solo just 4 months later, a movie that had a lot of negative rumours about production problems, and you finally see Star Wars hit the wall. Even if the people that did go see it generally liked it that zeitgeist momentum Star Wars had was lost.

Well, it goes back to the quality that disney can put out. If they can't put out quality... then of course they should simply slow their roll. But how is that possible ? It should not be hard to release quality. It really goes back to the top with Kennedy who's not handling this properly. Two movies had to go through extensive reshoots. The one movie which did not, was their worst offense (TLJ). Something's rotten in Danemark.

 

[Cole Caulifield]

The impression I get with that is it's not necessarily a "Han Solo" trilogy but rather they can fit the other origin movies into a connected storyline that probably ends with Obi Wan facing down Maul.

We've all seen that story before in the cartoons. They need to do better.

 

[RandV]

We've all seen that story before in the cartoons. They need to do better.

I've never seen any of the cartoons, and while there's nothing wrong with them you can probably say the same thing for most people I don't know... 35+? I have no idea what they'd want to do here and if this would be up for 'retconning' but there's slightly different markets for all the EU stuff, the animation TV shows, and the broader movie audience.

So here's a question in that regards, we saw very little of him in Solo but the pieces that are there do they line up with Darth Maul in the animation (Rebels?). Because for all the noise people made when Disney invalidated the EU, I was under the impression that unofficially already happened when Lucas made the prequel trilogies and there were significant conflicts to the Thrawn trilogy.

 

[tacogeoff]

At large, I'm fairly sure people didn't wanna see this.

And you asked for it yet you didn't even bother going to the theaters to see it ? Even waited until today to see it when it was available even earlier out of theaters ?

I would not target you as my audience if I were Disney.

Sorry I guess I should of clarified that it was my most recent run through of it. I did watch it in theatres.

Heck ya Disney should target me. I don't mind blowing a few hours a month on my downtime, I even went and saw Ant-Man 1 and Ant-Man and the Wasp.

 

[Osprey]

The impression I get with that is it's not necessarily a "Han Solo" trilogy but rather they can fit the other origin movies into a connected storyline that probably ends with Obi Wan facing down Maul.

That's the first that I've heard that, but it makes sense. It would explain why they brought Maul back, since he'd be a perfect villain in an Obi Wan film (since he killed Obi Wan's mentor). That said, it'll be a bit odd if they wrap up the Qi'ra-Han relationship in a film in which Han isn't the main character anymore (and, on top of that, might have a reduced role now). I guess that it works, though, and could mean that this film's failure won't hinder plans for the planned follow-up films.

 

[MadDevil]

I've never seen any of the cartoons, and while there's nothing wrong with them you can probably say the same thing for most people I don't know... 35+? I have no idea what they'd want to do here and if this would be up for 'retconning' but there's slightly different markets for all the EU stuff, the animation TV shows, and the broader movie audience.

So here's a question in that regards, we saw very little of him in Solo but the pieces that are there do they line up with Darth Maul in the animation (Rebels?). Because for all the noise people made when Disney invalidated the EU, I was under the impression that unofficially already happened when Lucas made the prequel trilogies and there were significant conflicts to the Thrawn trilogy.

The Maul stuff all lines up chronologically. There's roughly about 9-10 years between Maul's appearance in Clone Wars (and the comic series that came after it) and his appearance in Solo, and at least 5 years between Solo and the beginning of Rebels. So there's still space in there to tell more stories with him if they want. I'd like to see how he goes from where he is in Solo to where he is in Rebels. Although that would probably be better suited to animation or comics.

 

[Jussi]

The Maul stuff all lines up chronologically. There's roughly about 9-10 years between Maul's appearance in Clone Wars (and the comic series that came after it) and his appearance in Solo, and at least 5 years between Solo and the beginning of Rebels. So there's still space in there to tell more stories with him if they want. I'd like to see how he goes from where he is in Solo to where he is in Rebels. Although that would probably be better suited to animation or comics.

I finished all seasons of Clone Wars yesterday and the last time Maul was seen was at the end of season 5 when Sidious defeated him and and his brother/apprentice Savage Opress and Sidious dragged him away. I'm on season one of Rebels but if Solo takes place before that, what happened to Maul after that Clone Wars scene?

 

[MadDevil]

I finished all seasons of Clone Wars yesterday and the last time Maul was seen was at the end of season 5 when Sidious defeated him and and his brother/apprentice Savage Opress and Sidious dragged him away. I'm on season one of Rebels but if Solo takes place before that, what happened to Maul after that Clone Wars scene?

Spoiler

There was a comic series (that's still canon as far as I know) based on an arc that was written for season 7 of TCW in which Maul is tortured by Dooku for information about the Shadow Collective, escapes, then alongside Deathwatch fights Grievous and loses. Then he finds Mother Talzin, who is revealed to be his biological mother. She's killed by Grievous at one point, the rest of the Shadow Collective pretty much abandons Maul and he flees into exile.

This could get a little tricky with the new episodes of TCW next year because it looks like they're doing a Mandalore arc. I wonder if they'll bring Maul into it at all? If they don't and the comics remain canon, him creating Crimson Dawn would make sense based on him creating the Shadow Syndicate in TCW.

 

[Deen]

The impression I get with that is it's not necessarily a "Han Solo" trilogy but rather they can fit the other origin movies into a connected storyline that probably ends with Obi Wan facing down Maul.

I would watch the hell out of that honestly.

 

[Garo]

I watched it a few weeks ago and probably have nothing interesting to say but that ain't stopping me

- It was fine, as in a giant easter egg fine kind of thing. It never really had a serious purpose or interesting storyline beyond that and that was already obvious from the beginning. It expanded a bit on the character but couldn't really do much more beyond altering his main arc which was why it was a bit pointless. Some of the new ideas shown were ok, but nothing really groundbreaking since the movie wasn't about them and had little interest in treating them seriously

- Compare that to Rogue One, who was probably a lesser movie in terms of cohesion and characters interactions, but at least you could find a purpose, or something interesting that was novel and didn't really compromise what they couldn't touch. Sure that had some fan service - I still think the Vader scene was far more than that but you know, it kinda was - but fan service wasn't really the draw of the film, despite them being both quite for the fans and obviously less good at anything than the episodic films.

- The cameo was stupid, hated that part. But that's the thing about Star Wars that has irked me since I was a child and the EU's stupid insistence on bringing back villains. Maul had a good story in the some of the extended universe I suppose but blah I really didn't want it in films, but thankfully I don't see how they could expand on it... Which in turn makes the cameo even more pointless.

- On it "bombing", I generally agreed with moviebob's points on it, idk. I definitely remember the skepticism when it was announced, where not a whole of people were convinced it was ever a smashing idea, and I was one of them. Rogue One had its issues but it generally had a much, much more favourable campaign for it, on top of its production issues being less publicly discussed and zero controversy over the casting because no one fricking knew these guys. Add to that a really badly picked release date, underwhelming trailers, controversy over the previous film for whatever reasons, and what happened isn't very surprising. I do think that blaming TLJ on it is largely revisionist, but I thought that movie was great so meh

 

[discostu]

To the point that people are making that Marvel has demonstrated that there is demand for more than a film a year out of singular franchise, it's important to note that financially, Star Wars has done better than Marvel films coming out of the gate. Outside of Iron Man, the first few films in the MCU were modest hits. But, the expectations (and budgets) were vastly different, so it wasn't a big deal when movies like Thor or Captain American were only modest hits.

The situation for Star Wars has been very different, and all film franchises need to stop looking to duplicate Marvel's success. That really was lightning in a bottle that won't be easily duplicated.

Star Wars may get there, but, their path will need to be very different where people are okay with Star Wars being just a normal franchise that produces hits of various sizes.

And if it doesn't connect that way, producing films every couple of years is also a viable strategy until they do find a way to milk the IP a little more. It also wouldn't kill them to invest something of those profits into more original IP to give themselves some other options.

Star Wars also will struggle as it appears that Chinese audiences aren't enthused by the franchise at all. That's probably the toughest hurdle for them to overcome.

 

[chicagoskycam]

Watched it last night and it was okay, Rogue was better IMO. I have one question though, when Qi'ra kills Dryden, she is talking to Solo after. There is a guard in the background doing nothing - just standing there at attention. Why? I actually thought Clarke was decent in this movie vs. others she has been in.