I thought this was okay. It was competent and amusing. It was also completely nonessential. Alden Ehrenreich was decent. He’s no Harrison Ford, but he did a serviceable job. Emilia Clarke did not suck. Bettany and Harrelson were fine. Again, nothing spectacular. Just good enough to tell the story.
I hated the surprise reveal. Truly lame fanservice.
It could have used much more Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But then again, so could everything.
I didn’t even know Maul survived past Phantom Menace in the animated series. I just thought they messed with the timeline to bring Solo’s timeline around the time of Phantom Menace
Just got back from the theatre, I thought it was one of the better new Star Wars movies, probably right up there with Rogue One. Of course it’s not like the bar has been set incredibly high, so there’s that.
It worked for me as a fun Star Wars-y romp but curiously I didn’t buy it as a Han Solo movie. Young Han is just so much whinier and wimpier than I expected him to be. Even in this budding version there’s pretty little of the rogue we knew… and the attempts to make him look more rugged and smug at the end don’t feel earned, IMHO.
The rest worked quite well, I think. Even the L3 robot, whose interests/obsessions I saw not so much as supporting of any contemporary agendas but actually as a device to have mischievous fun with them. The visuals were stunning (well, they were) and at last we got a solid, meaning actually threatening and non-angsty, villain. Acting-wise, there’s Harrelson and then there’s everyone else. Loved the many winks at the other movies (which included many musical cues!), but didn’t care at all for the “reveal”. In all, I was pleasantly surprised that the movie exceeded my admittedly low expectations.
When does this story take place? 10…15 years before New Hope MAX.
Darth Maul has to die before New Hope are this is just too fucking silly having a dead sith lord from Episode 1 still hanging out somewhere. So in Solo 2: A Star Wars Story they have to kill him a second time lulz…
Officially it’s supposed to be 10 years before A New Hope, but I’m not sure if that’s counting from the very beginning on Correllia or the three years later point.
He dies in Rebels season 3. It’s the culmination of his arc with Obi Wan, and he died seeking him out for revenge, but also because he is interested in the child Obi Wan is protecting. So he does about 3BBY. His relationship to Obi Wan, to Ezra, the Jedi, Vader, and the Emperor is interesting and complicated. He actually winds up becoming something of a grey Sith, abandonig the Sith as they abandoned him, but not becoming ‘good’ either. He does, however, for his own reasons wind up working with the Rebels, if only so they help lead him to Obi Wan.
Apparently solo is kind of a box office bomb, considering its budget?
Few years of Kennedy in charge and we are at a box office bomb territory. With Star Wars.
I am not surprised though. Last Jedi soured what seems like half the fanbase (me included) so badly that there is zero enthusiasm for disney Star Wars.
I’m not hugely interested in this movie. It has nothing to do with the current trilogy though. I don’t care about the story they’re telling here. The good reviews on Glover though might get me to the theater eventually.
I don’t understand people who could get soured on the franchise by The Last Jedi—it was the most interesting thing that’s happened to the series yet and showed it’s actually possible for the saga to grow and surprise us instead of slavishly memorializing what we already have—but I do understand people like you exist, and I can’t deny that’s probably a factor in Solo’s weak box office.
I think yearly Star Wars movies is probably at least as big a factor; they haven’t found a way to make them feel as fresh each year as the Marvel films, and people are just getting tired of them all. And less than a year apart for Solo? Rough.
And to top it all off, it doesn’t have great reviews.
It still blows my mind that we are 4 movies into the new Star Wars movies and only one (The Last Jedi) meaningfully pushed the story forward since RoTJ
We went through all that in the TLJ thread, probably more than once. The most interesting thing that happened in SW yet was KOTOR 2, TLJ was just…terrible. But retreading that argument here is probably not usefuly spent time :)
Definitely the saturation is part of it, SW simply ain’t special anymore. Kinda like when Ubi started annualizing AC, lot of the enthusiasm went away over time, only recently reinvigorated with Origins which had more time in the oven.
Two of them take place before A New Hope and have nothing to do with the story of the Skywalker family.
Sure - but I suspect the first hour of KOTOR does more world building than both of those films combined.
Counter point, The Last Jedi does no such thing. Saying that it shows it’s possible for the saga to “grow” is deeply ironic since no character in the entire movie shows anything like character growth. Or in fact any sort of meaningful arc, except maybe Luke (making the idea that they are trying to move beyond memorializing anything ironic as well). And that includes Kylo Ren, who just spends the movie basically repeating his struggles of the first movie (don’t kill mom! Well, slaughter the Maguffin Villain and then threaten Rey to join the new world order, I mean the new new world order or TOTALLY ELSE YA’LL). It ignores everything that was set up in the first movie (in terms of characters) and doesn’t offer up anything meaningful in the way of new direction. It meanders through what is essentially a trilogy starter story except it’s the second movie in a trilogy. It’s just formula, but not even as well executed as TFA or most Marvel movies in that respect. It gave us Star Wars: Fleet Logistics, force flight, and a bunch of side stories that amounted to nothing.
I mean, opinions and such. What’s not to understand? I understand why people like it.
Well except Rey who actually realizes she can be from nothing and still be something, but yeah… no character growth.
Hate for TLJ is not the only reason this movie is not attracting the crowds. This movie looks like it’s set-up to show us nothing interesting. What is the selling point again… something about Han meeting up with a crew we know he doesn’t stick with to… steal stuff?
Just got back, and I really enjoyed the film. Of course, I also enjoyed The Last Jedi despite its faults, so reader beware.
LOL.
As a kid who saw SW in Times Square in 1977 I would be thrilled if they cast aside the old and created something, anything, interesting w the meagerly appointed Star Wars ‘mythology’. TLJ was cliched, meandering, contrived nonsense purely on its own lack of merits. No need to further devalue it with comparison to what came before it.
The Star Wars well appears to be empty. The talk of a Boba Fett movie just about says it all.
I feel like I want to ask you questions, but at the same time, that might just spoil it if I do go see it. Let’s say the only Star Wars movies I don’t like are the prequels, but I enjoy most the rest of it, including all the new ones. Is it still worthwhile?
Saw it with zero expectations or knowledge of what/who was in it. Enjoyed it, though it gets my usual disclaimer of, “But I’m not really a Star Wars fan, so YMMV.” So far as caper movies about young thieves being taught life lessons go, it was solid but not exceptional.
Khaleesi was too posh to be a street rat at the start, and Bettany was given nothing to work with; other than that, everybody did well. Tom’s nemesis was able to evoke his predecessor without aping him, so after twenty minutes or so I was comfortable with him. (Glover, by contrast, was plenty amusing, but he always felt like he was a doing a bit. Not that I minded.)