Watched it last night. My theater was full…and given the reaction from the crowd at the end, everyone loved it as much as I did.
I liked it. Not a great movie but a great Star Wars experience.
Weird thing my coworker made me realize this AM: first Star Wars anything ever to have zero references to The Force
Oops, of course. The way it was incorporated into the sentence I thought it was another character.
I watched it as well. There were about 6 other folks in my theater. I found the movie fun but forgettable. Solid performances from Ehrenreich, Thandie Newton, and especially Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Harrelson was Harrelson, Clarke was Clarke, Bettany was cringeworthy, and Glover was. . .not super great actually. The real problem with the film is that it’s just trope after cliche after trope: car chase, trench battle, train heist, etc. The Kessel section was pretty good, but the final segment lacked any of the dramatic weight it should have had because the film spent zero effort on audience buy-in. This is a modern soulless action movie by-the-numbers. Worth less of your time than almost all MCU films.
Oh, let’s see how this turns out!
That is interesting. I love reading how studios can forecast an entire weekend of grosses from a particular Thursday. That isn’t sarcasm, they must be able to gauge enthusiasm from how packed midnight screenings are and extrapolate from there.
Anecdotally, Solo’s numbers were definitely locally depressed last night. My wife and I drove to an AMC Theater. For some reason, their ticketing system was down. They couldn’t sell any tickets. They handed out free passes, too, so both the studio (who would have received the vast majority of earnings) and the theater chain were hurting from that. I pocketed the passes (should have claimed that my twelve children were still in the van but would be in for the movie shortly, so could I have a dozen more please?) and we drove to another theater. That theater was able to sell tickets… but there could have been six or more showings at the AMC that night, some with 3D surcharges, where no income was taken. And I wonder if that system error affected more than one theater?
Anyway, I understand that studios do account for things like local weather forecasts in their financial forecasts (can’t get to the theater if the roads have three feet of snow on 'em) but I wonder how prompt they are to note other oddities like this one.
BoxOfficeMojo is predicting $134 million for the 4 day weekend.
I thought they had a really good heist crew at first and then they killed em off and went to a different, more boring one.
Also having one of the marauders be Saw would’ve worked way better as the big callback/reveal thing rather than the pointless Maul.
I suspect solo is suffering the effects of TLJ being so dire. The attendence is lagging as a result. Its a far better film than TLJ, but I suspect it will have to wait for DVD rentals / streaming for it to really find its audience. Id watch solo again, I wouldnt watch TLJ again…
That $134mil estimate came before the Friday morning update.
Going digital might have played a role in this. Doing everything he did to the movies with just the film would have been a serious PITA with little payoff.
I’ve got an indifferent feeling about this.
If the movie is really OK I may go see it.
Dude! Spoilers bruh! WTF?!
I went in expecting two hours of torture, but it was actually pretty OK. There were multiple scenes that were memorable in a good way, and the characters were good except for the villain.
There’s certainly no comparison to the franchise-killing turd of The Last Jedi.
Overall, I liked it. I thought Danny Glover totally nailed Lando. By far my favorite cast member.
I thought Woody was fine, but probably would have liked a different actor in that role. Sometimes, Star Wars in general feels like it suffers when a big-name actor goes into a role. I had the same problem with Smits in the prequels.
On par, I would say that on balance, it’s as good as Roque One. While I think Roque One might be a movie I enjoyed more, Solo felt more fun.
some spoiler thoughts:
I did not like Darth Maul back, but I also was happy to see Ray Park get some work. Likewise, I thought the dice were a nice touch a first but were a little overdone at the end.
I loved the droid. She had some sass. I also liked Emily Clark. The 4 armed guy was a riot.
I like the two standalone movies are heist movies, because I love a good heist movie.
As for the returning villain, that’s a nod to the animated series where they are brought back, and done a tremendously good job with. Seriously that arc is exceptionally well done in those shows, and has a very poetic ending.
I don’t watch cartoons, but the secret character reveal is kinda dumb. Did people actually want this? I’m further out of touch with Star Wars nerdery than I thought.
That scene should have been after the credits, like how Marvel does it.
Do people want it? Some super hard core Star Wars fans do, for the same reason people love Boba Fett. His screen time was so short he mostly lives in peoples’ imagination, so he is awesome.
In a vacuum? No. I was against the idea in general.
However
It was actually really well done, and made an interesting character story with it. A cataract er who was largely wasted in the original source.
So I’m ok with it. A story is only as good as execution, and a good idea poorly executed upon is worse than a poor idea that is executed marvelously.