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Solo (A Star Wars Spoiler Thread)


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No need for spoiler tags because this, as indicated, contains spoilers. What did everyone think about the movie?

I absolutely loved it! I thought it did a great job balancing the nastalgia for previous films with a lot of new characters and situations. Lots of sly references to previous films as well. I loved the reference to "Han shot first" at the end of the movie. Lots of great scenes that include the train heist, "the maw", the slave revolt,  meeting Chewbaca, and "girl time" with Qi'ra and the android. I also loved how Qi'ra took power upon herself instead of going with Han; a surprisingly dark twist. This movie was easily the best of the "newer" Star Wars (meaning besides the original three).

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It's hard to go wrong with Han Solo. I was worried how the change in actor would alter the character, but they did a good job of keeping him the same old lovable Han. 

The whole movie flowed really well (much better than any of the other recent ones). It made me nostalgic, I think I'm going to re-watch the original movies now that I've been reminded how good SW can be. 

My favourite part of the film was Qira. I'm a sucker for characters who fight people and make it look good. Either that or the first scenes with Chewbaca. Those were good too.

Great movie. I'd rate it 4 lightsabers out of 5. 

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I loved it. It had a little bit of everything nostalgia-wise. Han shot first. The Kessel run. The dice. Reference to Hutt’s crew on Tatooine. The cinematic appearance of Darth Maul got me all excited lol. 

As a movie in general I thought it had pretty good pacing. Not many slow moments without action in them. Qi’ra was a great new character, and I’m glad they gave her a more open-ended finish instead of the more predictable ending of her dying for Han. 

Not sure if anyone here keeps up with the cartoons, but if they decide to show what happens to Darth Maul in cinema...sign me up for that finale lol. 

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I loved it too - especially that the line "Punch it, Chewy!" is now at last actually spoken in a Star Wars movie.

I really hope we'll see more Wookies. IIRC, it was canon that Chewy was the last of his kind - it would be nice if that could turn out not to have been true. (Guess I'm just a softie for hopeing there wasn't a Wookie genocide.)

I liked how we learned that Han's father had worked in a factory that built Corellian freighters, & maybe even the Falcon itself. That would be so cool if his dad helped build his ship.

One thing in "Solo" that took me a bit out of the flow was the actress who played Qi'ra - she was just too old IMO. Someone told me she's 31 in real life, and she looked it in the movie. The story at the start seemed to say that she and Han were the same age, then when they meet up later she's way older? I know - relativity/physics & all, but they've never gone that route for anyone else in these movies so why start now? She will be an effective and complex villian character though.

I really hope they make sequels. So far it has underperformed at the box office, but maybe the holiday weekend was just a bad release date? Hope ticket sales pick up!

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Copying what I typed on Malazan forums baring the changes this forum makes on certain words lol:

dispite a very groan/eye rolling worthy opening 30 mins or so this show turned out quite good. The Vito Corleon comes to Ellis Island was painful to me but definitely a nod to Mob Films. I was very happy to see EU stuff making its way in: the Imperial Academy on Caridia, the Maw around Kessel(would have wet my pants if we had seen 4 Star Destroyers and a skeletal DS frame...). Was happy and yet saddened with the Aura Sing info we got. Kinda a waste of a cool character imo that needed some screen time other then a second in TPM and an episode or 2 of CW. Darth Maul 100% surprised me! Was that Christie voicing droid? Speaking of Christie this is how you do a cool looking toy selling character. Just up to the train alone Enius was 100% better then Phasma and then we got even more later on. Cool character that should sell quite a few toys. I loved Emilia myself and the part where she kicks the jail bosses chull is great even though it hardly shows a thing through the window. Lando was Billie Dee Lando imo only for the 1st few lines. I didn’t really care about him after that point.

Edited by Briar King
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16 hours ago, Lump-wing said:

I really hope they make sequels. So far it has underperformed at the box office, but maybe the holiday weekend was just a bad release date? Hope ticket sales pick up!

What an odd thing to say! ;)

The consensus seems to be fatigue of the Star Wars variety. It has not even been a year since Last Jedi and a movie on Han Solo does not open up the universe enough to generate sufficient interest. 

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I thought Solo was pretty meh. I didn't see much that inspired awe in me, unlike Rogue One and all the new Star Wars movies, which had plenty of legit awesome stuff. What was the coolest thing, the Maw? I felt like they didn't explain the Kessel Run nearly enough for it to feel impressive as it actually was. There were a few parts where Beckett says, "Impressive!" about something Han does and it really wasn't that special...

It was... fine. But I don't think I'd ever need to see it again. 

Surely there must be a way to have a better han Solo movie. I wish they would have made a more standard heist movie and owned into that. 

Honestly, a lot of it just felt pretty boring. Like, the Cloud Riders had this super awesome musical score and were really not that impressive. The movie clearly thought it was way cooler than it actually was, or didn't earn it.

I think it's easily the worst of the Disney Star Wars movie. No one not seeing it missed much, whereas I would say with Rogue One they would have missed a lot. The coolest part of the movie was the Maw and the knife fight in Voss's chamber at the end. That's not that much awesome. 

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1 hour ago, Chaos said:

Surely there must be a way to have a better han Solo movie. I wish they would have made a more standard heist movie and owned into that. 

I actually liked that the theme they seem to be going for was a series of science fiction pulpy adventures rather than previous films with galaxy wide consequences. It's a film that doesn't take itself seriously and I am fine with that. Regardless, thanks for your feedback; it doesn't seem to be doing well at the box office so evidently a lot of people feel as you do.

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1 hour ago, Ammanas said:

I actually liked that the theme they seem to be going for was a series of science fiction pulpy adventures rather than previous films with galaxy wide consequences. It's a film that doesn't take itself seriously and I am fine with that. Regardless, thanks for your feedback; it doesn't seem to be doing well at the box office so evidently a lot of people feel as you do.

want there to be science fiction pulpy adventures. I totally agree with that, and I think a narrower scope can work well. I don't think it needs to take itself too seriously either.

But seriously, remember that scene where Han is in the infantry and meets Chewie? That entire setting has no stakes. I had no fear for anyone or anything. They didn't do any blocking for that scene. I get that it doesn't essentially matter where they are, but it was just that the filmmakers didn't even seem to care about trying to make that location feel grander. All I remember is mud and fog. Come on, it was just lame. That could have occurred anywhere. It was quite weaksauce.

This lack of blocking infects the entire movie. Oh no, the Cloud Riders! Who are they! Marauders! So scary! Actually besides their mask of the leader I never really felt "oh crap here they come this is where crap gets real!" Everything feels so low stakes that it feels boring. 

You know what sounds like a better movie? A straightforward heist movie. Han is George Clooney like in Ocean's Eleven. They are competing for, sure, coaxium against Crimson Dawn and Qi'ra and Han are adversarial. Two thirds of the way through the movie when things start to go wrong, Imperial troops come in and make things go really badly. It doesn't have to be galaxy-wide to make me care, but I feel like a standard heist movie would be way stronger. Doesn't that sound way better than what we got? It felt so low stakes and casual. This movie had to do much better to make it feel like there were stakes, because it is a prequel and we already know Han and Lando live. 

I wanted to like this movie. I definitely think a Han story can work but this was pretty mediocre at best. I kept thinking during this, man, Rogue One was way more interesting at nearly every step. I cared about those characters much more and Rogue One's weakest aspect was the character development, but when people died, you felt sad. I didn't feel any emotion in the deaths in this movie. 

I know a Star Wars story with smugglers can be cool. I don't think you need Force powers or lightsabers to make a compelling story. But this had very little that was cool and awesome. It was... just fine, you know? 

This last statement might get me some flack, but at least the prequels tried to dazzle and impress constantly. This was purely ordinary to the point of boredom. I compare it to one of the Hobbit movies: purely fine, and never something you need to watch again.

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I forgot to include something that made viewing the movie more enjoyable, at least for me and my friend (who is also a Sander-fan - it's so easy to proselytize for the Cosmere!).

Sitting next to us was a group of young boys who were in that "Girls are yukky!" phase of life, and every time Han and Qi'ra got romantic, those boys would make the best comments: "Oh no!" "Not that again!" "Come on - cut it out!"

It was just adorable, and it gave us a good chuckle.

I'm so glad they were free to express themselves and who they are at this time of their life, and no one shushed them or ridiculed them.

Really added an extra dimension to my movie-going exxperience. :D

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I absolutely loved the EU and Original Trilogy references. One in particular that I enjoyed was Han saying he made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, but later telling Chewie that he rounded down, because IIRC in A New Hope he says he did it in less than 12. Total Han move right there. I thought The Maw was well-done, as was Han's time in the army. In the train sequence the marauders seemed a bit underpowered, but that work that their leader did with the vibro-axe (or at least it looked like a vibro-axe) made up for it.

What I didn't really like was that the end was a bit predictable. The whole fake-coaxium-is-the-real-coaxium thing got me, but I called both Beckett's and Qira's betrayals from a mile away. Beckett dropped the cliche "don't trust anybody" line early on, so I immediately called it that he was going to backstab Han in a climactic moment, and Qira had backstabbed too many people to not backstab Han in the end. I also called that Han was going to shoot Beckett first, because it was the next step in his character development, but it was satisfying enough that I didn't care that I had called it.

There's one big plot hole that bugs me: Lando's droid attempted to free all of the slaves on Kessel, but they had no way off-planet. With no escape from inevitable reinforcements, even if they had killed every single guard, they would have just been slaughtered in the end. Where's the freedom in that?

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On 2018-06-02 at 8:25 PM, Elenion said:

 

There's one big plot hole that bugs me: Lando's droid attempted to free all of the slaves on Kessel, but they had no way off-planet. With no escape from inevitable reinforcements, even if they had killed every single guard, they would have just been slaughtered in the end. Where's the freedom in that?

Two things: in my experience, a lot of extreme revolutionaries have a way of thinking in the moment, and not about the big picture. L3 strikes me as someone like that.

And then, considering that it was a mining colony, they most likely had ships stashed somewhere. Guard ships, freighters, etc. It would be wierd if they didn’t.

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4 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

Two things: in my experience, a lot of extreme revolutionaries have a way of thinking in the moment, and not about the big picture.

Case in Point: Elend's new government in The Well of Ascension. Their lack of big-picture skills and forethought got to the point of "at least TLR kept us from freezing" and (IIRC) several settlements reinstating the nobility b/c it was a system that actually worked.

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On 6/4/2018 at 3:53 AM, Toaster Retribution said:

Two things: in my experience, a lot of extreme revolutionaries have a way of thinking in the moment, and not about the big picture. L3 strikes me as someone like that.

 

 

On 6/4/2018 at 8:38 AM, The One Who Connects said:

Case in Point: Elend's new government in The Well of Ascension. Their lack of big-picture skills and forethought got to the point of "at least TLR kept us from freezing" and (IIRC) several settlements reinstating the nobility b/c it was a system that actually worked.

Another of these is (spoilers for the last Jedi) 

Spoiler

Albeit on a smaller scale is when Rose and Finn free all those space horses at space Monaco, but don’t free the slave children. Freeing the children would have a way bigger benefit, but instead they free the horses.

 

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@Ammanas

Those horses are obviously domesticated, and so therefore can’t survive in the wild naturally. Plus Space Monaco obviously has a semi competent police force that would be able recapture both. It’s more the emotional value the movie places in freeing the horses, likes it’s the best thing that they could possibly do. Wouldn’t have been mortally better for them to free the slaves?

Edited by Snipexe
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5 hours ago, Snipexe said:

 

Another of these is (spoilers for the last Jedi) 

  Hide contents

Albeit on a smaller scale is when Rose and Finn free all those space horses at space Monaco, but don’t free the slave children. Freeing the children would have a way bigger benefit, but instead they free the horses.

 

I think that might have to do with that they are on the run, and needed help to escape, something the children couldn’t give.

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Their goal was never to free anyone, and they were under a strict time limit. They needed help escaping, and freeing the animals was nice and symbolic. Two people aren’t going to liberate a kingdom on a strict time limit when that isn’t even their primary goal in the first place. 

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I do kinda feel like it ruined some of his mystique.  But for me, overall, it wasn't terrible.

Though I do wish we got to see his time in the academy.

It was no where near as much of a train wreck as the reviews made it out to be.  IMO ofc.

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It was a fun movie but I still stand firm that it’s not a movie that should have been made at this time. They will hear the same complaints if indeed Boba Fett is the 3rd movie. This stuff wouldn’t be an issue if Solo was number 5 or even 6. There is so much more they should be telling in these early Anthology movies. They need to take advantage before James Earl Jones or Frank Oz dies. That may not make sense to read to some right now but it will afterwards I bet. At the least I really hope Disney has been recording not just them but others saying words in various tones for future use they can edit and string.

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18 hours ago, Briar King said:

It was a fun movie but I still stand firm that it’s not a movie that should have been made at this time. They will hear the same complaints if indeed Boba Fett is the 3rd movie. This stuff wouldn’t be an issue if Solo was number 5 or even 6. There is so much more they should be telling in these early Anthology movies. They need to take advantage before James Earl Jones or Frank Oz dies. That may not make sense to read to some right now but it will afterwards I bet. At the least I really hope Disney has been recording not just them but others saying words in various tones for future use they can edit and string.

I tend to agree with this. They could be telling a lot of cool stories revolving around ancient Jedi/Sith wars that give some background into the origins of Force users. They’re trying to play it safe by making spinoff movies with familiar characters, and I just don’t think they’re ambitious enough. 

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On the subject of exploring other stories, one thing I've noticed is that while the current trilogy actively denies the existence of anything that isn't titled IV, V, or VI, they've been trying to bring characters/places from the Expanded Universe back into play elsewhere(Delta Squad in Clone Wars, Thrawn in Rebels, to name a few)

Bringing back/reworking a story we've already read would still be playing it safe, but it's definitely more ambitious that staying mired in a six year period for each trilogy, and more liberating. There's only so many stories you can tell when you only have twelve-ish relevant characters. Compare the TV shows: Clone Wars & Rebels.

Rebels followed the path of the Ghost Crew(about 6-9 characters), Agent Kallus, and (later on) Thrawn. Their ability to tell a story was limited by needing to find a way to get at least one member of the Ghost Crew into the situation every episode. Once they introduced the Rebel Alliance plotline, they couldn't just go gallivanting to who knows what planet, and that story limit got even harsher. This is also the territory that the trilogies play into(following Anakin/Obi-Wan, Luke/Han&Leia, and Rey/Finn, and not much else). We get a cohesive story out of it, but it feels... small-scale, despite spanning a galaxy.

Contrast that with Clone Wars, where not only was the primary cast larger for both factions, they'd elevate people to main character status(Hondo, Cad Bane, Pre Visla, etc..) or even invent main characters if they couldn't fit the existing ones into a story(something they would later repeat with Rogue One). All they had to do was make the story matter/have a moral lesson, and they'd be good. While it led to a couple more duds than Rebels, it also gave us much more story variety and numerous gems of characters/story arcs. This is the territory they should be playing into with the side projects, because it gives them the most freedom. (Talking about both Clone Wars and Doctor Who now) If they wanted a war scenario, they made one. They want to write a murder mystery or a heist story, they wrote it. If they felt like exploring high society, or the criminal underworld, or the anything, they could do so. That freedom is part of the reason Doctor Who doesn't feel stale despite being around for 50 years.

One of the things that so many people liked about The Old Republic MMO was the storytelling, and the way the different stories weaved around each other, without directly connecting, even tying together some story details across factions. I know Star Wars isn't the franchise in direct competition with the MCU, but if they were to do something similar within the Old Republic Era, I wouldn't be complaining. Being that far in the past gives them a clean slate to build upon, and they can experiment further with real consequences and/or failure like they did with Rogue One and Marvel's Infinity War. I love John Wick as much as the next guy, but it's refreshing to feel worried for the characters every now and then, rather than us going "he has to survive," or "the good guys win" every time we hit the theaters.


Sorry for getting side-tracked. As for Solo, it was alright. I'm hearing more people going against the negative reviews this time around than with TLJ, so that's something.

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