This is the positive topic. You’re supposed to like it!
It’s also a very heavy CGI setting, but if you don’t mind the CGI…
I grew up before CGI. I watched the work of Harryhausen and O’Brien and loved it. When CGI came around, I thought it sucked. But then in comparison it got better because it wasn’t so choppy. I still love King Kong and the fighting skeletons. But CGI is cool, even crappy CGI.
Well I suspect that run of movies is a lot easier to love if you don’t mind CGI over the entire spectrum. CGI is not my issue with these movies, but since they gave me one of my favorite musical tracks, qui gon jinn and the success no doubt led to the current run… even the prequels get a spot in this heart.
All these people saying “Solo: haven’t seen it” make me sad. It’s pure SW, top fun and has suffered far too much from internet shitposting. It’s one of my favourites.
Me too! Solo felt like the most true to the originals of any of the new films. The proper levels of humor and action. It’s only fault was that they felt like explaining everything about his past that had been mentioned in the earlier films and apparently all these things happened within a few months of each other. Otherwise, super fun flick.
Well, I definitely don’t agree, but won’t elaborate to honour the threads title.
Yes, it’s disappointing they condensed every background detail into a two week span basically. But it had some good scenes, and Donald Glover inhabited Lando perfectly.
Inessential, but entertaining.
I enjoyed it a lot more on this second time through. The beginning of the movie still feels a little off to me, but overall I had a really great time this second time through. I especially loved the bad guys’ ship this time. I just thought it was weird the first time, but now I love this concept of a nightclub/bar/spaceship that’s roaming the galaxy making sure their minions do their biding.
I watched most of Star Wars last night, and it’s amazing how Harrison Ford has so many of the same mannerisms and ticks that the actor from Solo who plays Han. I also didn’t realize that until I started watching the original Star Wars again.
God, Solo is so ludicrously dumb-great. Which is exactly what I want from movies, so I’ll very much take dumb-great with a side of unnecessary-backstory-box-ticking. It’s just fun. Sorry if I’ve just triggered Tom :)
Three other things I loved about Solo:
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casting-wise, it looked like they really tried to hire actors with physical appearances stretching through most of the Earth-based homo sapiens continuum. Especially with the gang that Han faces off at the end of the movie. There were actors with facial characteristics that didn’t necessarily “match” their skin color. There were tall people and Warwick Davis people. There were beautiful people like Emilia Clarke and there was also Clint Howard. And of course there was Woody Harrelson, but he’s in everything. I dunno, it didn’t make a grand statement on diversity or representation (especially with Emilia and Hobie in the starring roles), but there was a contrast between a vast genetic panoply in the outlaw culture and the mean-white-bread types in the Empire.
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the ugliness and ineffectiveness of the Corellian starport said a lot about what the Empire was like to people living under its boot. Long lines, scary security, corruption, harsh lighting. Just oppressive enough for regular folks to keep their heads down and quiet, just enough social mobility by joining the military to get people to join the military, just enough bribery at the ticket counter to show that zealotry wasn’t a factor.
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by the end of the movie, it was becoming clear that the Galactic Civil War from the original trilogy was ramping up and sprawling out, not unlike the weird creatures and singularities found in the Kessel Run. Not even the scum and villains living on the edges of law and civilization could remain independent and untouched. Anyone thinking they could simply hustle and make money were deceiving themselves; they had to pick a side and/or die.
I was a big Solo fan too, for the reasons you guys have listed. If they had just skipped the Kessel-run BS, it would’ve been about perfect.
Until two young Kids In Love and their Droid smash through it on a giant bird. . . thing.
Yeah. In retrospect the whole sequence is one of my favorite bits of TLJ, despite it being almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the film (and an interesting philosophical tangent that I will bet $5 moneydollars that JJ will utterly ignore in his final film).
Correct! I should have said the nice edits during that scene, and that he should have just removed the goofy critter bad cgi scene.
I suck at quoting posts in my reply, via mobile. Sorry.
I watched Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi this weekend. Man, oh man, this viewing was so different. Seeing these movies as a Star Wars fan really changes them, doesn’t it? I noticed so many little details this time that I’d never bothered with before, when I was just watching what I thought were average science fantasy movies.
For example, I never understood before that the lines in Solo and Rogue One and the new Star Wars trilogy where a character goes “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” was not only a line from the original Trilogy, it’s a line that’s said over and over and over again in the original Trilogy. There’s a little monster chess game in Star Wars (1977) that Chewbacca plays, that is shown in Solo and again in A Force Awakens.
I can also see why fans kind of get obsessed with little details from the original Trilogy that I didn’t give much of a thought to before. Like the character of Boba Fett. Even as I was watching this weekend, I kept getting caught on little details and laughing over them. Like after Luke defeats the giant monster in Jabba’s palace, there’s a really fat guy that comes in, presumably the monster’s caretaker and possibly trainer. Just when I was thinking “aawww, that’s a nice touch”, they then flash back to him a few seconds later and he’s crying with tears flowing down his cheeks. Beautiful! And when the Ewoks are fighting Stormtroopers in the battle on Endor’s moon, they use these rocks connected with string to swing over their heads, and then throw them at the troopers. And this one particularly adorable Ewok mistimes his throw and hits himself in the head. Comedy gold! I love that what was initially a distraction for General Solo’s team turns into the thing that lets them overcome the Empire’s trap.
Also, can I just say that the second Death Star is nowhere near as dangerous sounding as the first Death Star from Star Wars (1977)? In the first movie, this thing is the size of a small moon, but it’s also zipping around the galaxy wreaking havoc. They have their first test at Jedda, wiping out the town, as seen in Rogue One. Then the Death Star hyperspaces somewhere else. Then they hyperspace to Alderaan and destroy that whole planet. Then our heroes come on board and rescue Leia, but then the Death Star jumps to the system with Yavin, to destroy the rebel base.
So what was the Empire’s solution? This time they are building a bigger Death Star, but it’s shield generator is on the moon that it’s orbiting? So it’s invulnerable as long as the shield generator on that moon is safe. Once that shield goes down, ships can fly inside and destroy the power core. At least with the first Death Star, the vulnerability was there but you had to hit a really small target. And you didn’t have to orbit some place which would put a shield over you. I wonder if the new Death Star was even meant to be as mobile, whisking around the Galaxy destroying planets?
Anyway, as you can tell, since The Last Jedi made me a Star Wars fan, I’ve been having a blast watching these movies as a fan this time around. I even got halfway through Force Awakens last night, and I’m really enjoying that one too. I’ve been really appreciating it so much more this time with its callbacks and references to the older movies. I’m also enjoying a lot because now that I know what’s to come in The Last Jedi, all of it’s pseudo-mysteriousness isn’t annoying anymore.
I love this about RotJ. They presented a “realistic” situation (an in-progress rebuild of a really cool/threatening idea, meaning the events of IV still had an effect), a new defense (Endor), a new threat (Rebel capital ships in range instead of Yavin in range, so massive life was being lost before the climax), and best of all, the construction being a trap set by the Emperor for the Rebel ground forces (extent of forces on Endor), Rebel fleet (secretly fully armed and operational!) and for Luke (to lure him to the throne room of a Death Star, the perfect setting for his descent to the Dark Side), and then those traps necessitating weaknesses (immobility, the holes in the sides, the shaft to the core) that doomed the Empire/the Emperor. So good.
Oh yes! Great points. The apparent weaknesses sweeten the honey pot that the trap is centered around. Very nice.
Your post confuses me, what’s changed about these movies from the first time you saw them and weren’t into them? I get that The Last Jedi made you a fan, I’m just having a hard time that this flipped you so hard around the older movies that you disliked before?
Like I said, I’m watching with a different mind-set. When I wasn’t a fan, I was watching to be entertained. The entertainment part is now a given. (The only exception was going to be Attack of the Clones, but the Anti-Cheese edit of that movie made even that one pretty entertaining). Now I’m watching to catch all the little details to connect to the overall web that is “Star Wars”. I’m even contemplating reading Star Wars books now, god help me.