Solo: A Star Wars Story (5/25/2018)

[stip]

that was a fun movie. guy i saw it with said it felt more like indiana jones than star wars, which is on point

[dimejinky99]

Just out of my third spin.

One of Indy’s crystal skulls in Drydens office!!

Something I called a while back. The circular tunnel thing? Like on the falcon? It is part of correllian design language.
The lanes when they’re being chased are all padded and rounded.

The imperial recruiting video when he’s trying to escape Corellia is the imperial march/Vader’s theme but played in the major key.


This film is so much fuckin fun. I love it. It’s not perfect. Theres moments that could be shaved off but they’re insignificant

It captures pure Star Wars lightning in a bottle.


That last shot Chewie and han in the falcon, I want to go with them. I want more of this.
It’s fun and it’s winderful.

[tragabigzanda]

Star Wars sucks now

[VinylGuy]

Just out of my third spin.

One of Indy’s crystal skulls in Drydens office

it's actually a reference to a SW novelization tie-in from the 80s (seriously, i saw this, and the book cover its referencing, in an article yesterday)

are you correcting dime? Its SW.

[tragabigzanda]

Star Wars sucks now

[VinylGuy]

OMG DIME IS A LIAR HE DOESNT KNOW SHIT ABOUT SW

[tragabigzanda]

Star Wars sucks now

[stip]

Some thoughts:

1. Glover was great as Lando
2. I thought Aldon was quite good at capturing what a young solo would have been like without just doing a Ford impression (same with Glover) and I was completely convinced once the movie got going
3. I loved seeing Chewie kick some ass, and enjoyed the origin of their meeting
4. I just don't like Emilia Clarke as an actress (don't like her much on GoT, either)
5. Paul Bettany was fairly intimidating, albeit a bit generic
6. The Darth Maul bit felt like fan service unless they go somewhere with this in subsequent movies
7. Not a fan of Han helping to fund the rebellion.
8. Liked the origin of Han shooting first
9. I generally enjoy sassy droids, and this one was fine. I like how her death helps make the falcon what it is. Having said that, given her 'droid liberation' arc, having her forcibly integrated into the Falcon was a little chilling (if you think about it)
10. Overall while perfectly fun this was all a bit disposable. Still I'd be happy to get a new star was story each year even if some of them are not to the operatic scale oft he saga stories. this was not a movie that needed to happen, but it was perfectly fine.


I'd give it a B to the B+ of Rogue 1. Solo was more enjoyable start to finish but again that third act...

[VinylGuy]

I thought Glover was fine as Lando but he wasnt great.

[stip]

I enjoyed some of the performances more than this author, and probably enjoyed the film more overall, but this feels fairly broadly on point.

https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2018/05/25 ... an-fiction

We're three years into Disney/Lucasfilm's re-launched Star Wars programming, having received a new tale – be it a chapter in the latest "trilogy" (JJ Abrams' The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi) or the stand-alone "stories" (Rogue One, Solo) – every calendar cycle since '15. This inundation of IP is so thorough – building on Marvel’s expanded universe model – that it’s somewhat easy to forget there was a sixteen-year gap when we didn’t receive any sort of Star Wars on the big screen before The Phantom Menace arrived in ‘99. Sure, there was a smattering of small screen installments – two Ewok TV movies (Caravan of Courage and The Battle For Endor) being the most prominent examples – but for the most part, George Lucas' adventures in a galaxy far, far away were left up to our imaginations to continue.

Nevertheless, that didn't stop scores of authors from penning their own Jedi texts; tomes to be separated into canon and non-canon alike. Role-playing games were established in expensive, hardback rulebooks that would make the average Dungeonmaster swoon. Short story compilations were edited by authors like Kevin J. Anderson (The Jedi Academy trilogy), and comic book series like X-Wing Rogue Squadron were inked. Outside of these professional publications, the inception of the Internet allowed amateur authors to start digitally scribbling their own takes on this intergalactic mythology (peruse the archives here). Though this author doesn't have any sort of quantifiable data in front of him, it still feels like a safe assumption to say that – out of all the franchises in pop culture history – none have been expanded upon in the absence its creator quite like Star Wars (except for maybe Star Trek?). It's a credit to Lucas and the rest of the series' visionaries that these sorts of digressions – both authorized and unauthorized – were voluminous in number, as these characters and intergalactic environments set fans' brains on fire.

Unfortunately, with this sort of fervent admiration, creation and consumption comes the price tag of presumed fan ownership. While most of these novels were providing further stories for the devoted to explore while desperately hoping Lucas would eventually announce a new movie, they mostly filled in back stories, added shades and new character elements to the canon, and provided the blueprints for a galaxy that stretched far beyond where its initial inventor intended for it to go. An attachment to these place-holders was created, as the tone and focus they provided became just as ingrained in admirers' heads as the original slices of cinema. Thus, their essential place in the hearts of the hardcore also cemented a certain resistance to change. Stories in the Star Wars universe were expected to fall in line and adhere to what came before, not buck against expectations in any grand fashion. To be fair, this attitude isn't an anomaly in fandom – just look to continuity-obsessed horror nerds for a great companion collection – yet the texts heightened this entrenched outlook.

Cut to '17 and the rather violent reaction certain circles of Star Wars fans had to The Last Jedi. BMD has explored this phenomenon in depth via James Emanuel Shapiro's examination of the manipulation of that movie’s Rotten Tomatoes audience scores, while Andrew Todd succinctly summed up what some SW junkies took issue with in his rather superlative piece, "Unlearning What We Have Learned":

"The Last Jedi is the first film in an age to meaningfully expand this fictional universe, and the first to truly follow through on The Empire Strikes Back’s ethereal ideas around the Force. Far from retreading empty nostalgia, it opens up new horizons, twisting familiar situations to communicate something fresh and exciting. It’s the most mystical movie in the series so far, yet also absolutely about demystification - serving almost as a rebuttal to (in particular) The Force Awakens’ ideas about legends and storytelling."

For those interested in Star Wars continuing to expand its mythos and perhaps even re-write them in the name of pushing the franchise into more progressive-minded territory, The Last Jedi was a breath of fresh air. For others looking for another nostalgic retread of the past with some new character trivia thrown in for good measure (essentially the filmic equivalent of those old '90s pieces of expanded universe pulp), Rian Johnson's picture was an enraging 2.5 hours. Here was a movie where a character verbalizes the themes ("Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to") before Luke burns down the ancient Jedi texts (while Yoda simultaneously disses them: "page turners, they were not"). It was Johnson signaling that the franchise was going to be untethered to its roots, willing to grow and venture into uncharted territory (especially once he started developing the next trilogy).

Solo: A Star Wars Story seems tailor-made for the latter group mentioned in the last 'graph. Instead of re-mapping the cosmos, it's operating purely as ”gap filler", letting us know how Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) obtained his last name, met Wookiee wing man Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), first laid eyes upon the Millennium Falcon, and met gambling smuggler extraordinaire, Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). Hell, it even contains a line of dialogue where Han decides that Chewbacca "needs a nickname", and references an upcoming job "for a big time gangster on Tatooine". Unlike The Last Jedi, it’s a series of cute winks to fans, as if letting them know that Disney/Lucasfilm are still here to satiate their burning hunger for Star Wars minutiae, allowing them to assemble the very best bar trivia teams of all time.

Even at a performance level, Ehrenreich and Glover are doing approximations of how we remember Han and Lando. Ehrenreich's especially dire; a sort of wooden, pretty boy Harrison Ford impersonation, saying the lines with minimal conviction and hoping that his charming, outlaw get up will compensate for the fact that he's doing little with the character beyond hitting his marks and tossing out a few come hither eyebrow raises. Unlike Chris Pine's take on Captain James T. Kirk in Abrams' Star Trek revival – which feels like the closest point for a 1:1 comparison of young actors rebooting iconography (though, in fairness, those movies take place in an alternate timeline from the OST) – Ehrenreich does nothing to truly make the character his own. Glover's turn is mildly better (though those clamoring for a Lando picture might be overreaching), but even his "pansexual"* iteration becomes a human cape rack, all smooth Billy Dee Williams line delivery as he teasingly butchers the pronunciation of Han's name.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is how Solo treats its women, who are either offed to add “depth” to their male counterparts, or simply inserted into the narrative to act as motivation for these same central men of action. Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay applies a “boys club” approach to storytelling that flies in the face of Johnson’s strong female character building. When Han joins up with a band of thieves – led by lovers Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and Val (Thandie Newton) – to pull an icy Conveyex train heist, Val is quickly dispatched in a moment of self-sacrifice, while Beckett survives to mourn her loss. A similar fate is handed down to Lando's spunky droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who’s destroyed during a daring escape set piece, only to be uploaded into the Falcon as a navigational port, never to be heard from again (the implications of which require a whole new essay to explore). Even Han's criminal love Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) is merely offered up as a beacon for Han to return to, after the two are separated on their home sewer planet Corellia, only to betray him in Solo's climactic moments.

One of the main fan criticisms lobbed at The Last Jedi was that it contained some sort of "SJW Agenda" that threatened a portion of its developmentally stunted male base (to the point that these doofuses are making hilarious "Boycott Solo" videos). This ire was drawn because Johnson's movie featured exceedingly rounded female characters – from Rey (Daisy Ridley) to Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern). Qi'ra is the closest Solo gets to duplicating these mighty women, but even her final act of betrayal feels like a wrongheaded illustration of how our male hero can never trust anyone but himself. We're a far cry away from "I love you"/"I know", with the Kasdans’ script sending our rascally rogue off into space with the woman’s memory to float him through further adventures, until eventually ending up with General (not “Princess”) Leia all those years later (presumably after eventually showing down with Qi’ra over her illicit alliances).

Major Spoiler Alert: Qi'ra's betrayal also occurs during one of the most egregious moments of fan service, as she communicates with the secret leader of the "Crimson Dawn" (hurr hurr) criminal organization: Darth Maul (once again played by stuntman/actor Ray Park). In a true instance of "you gotta read the books" multimedia universe connection, we learn that The Phantom Menace villain – who has been a major canon player in animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels – will now (again presumably) be the big bad in these continued Solo cinematic shenanigans, waiting in the wings to wield his double-ended lightsaber. A quick search explains how he survived being cut in half during the prequel’s famous duel:

"After his run in with Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) on Naboo, Maul clung onto life before being dumped on Lotho Minor, feeding on vermin and constructing sweet mechanical spider legs. Eventually teaming up with his brother Savage Opress, and handed a more practical pair of cybernetic legs, Maul went on to form the Shadow Collective – an alliance of criminal syndicates (including the Pyke Syndicate, Black Sun and Hutt Clan, which may or may not be three of the five syndicates mentioned in Solo) and take over Mandalore. This attracted the attention of Darth Sidious, who killed Savage Oppress and took Maul captive, only for the Sith Lord’s former apprentice to escape and flee into the night."

Solo takes place years after all this occurs, and now Maul is again head of the mafia. But the character's appearance is another cutesy nod to the devoted, itching to revisit material they were already familiar with. It's a very strange bit of universe shrinking, as Ron Howard's movie – much like Rogue One did with A New Hope during its finale – feels this need to connect back to other pieces of the franchise, despite being labeled as a stand-alone. It’s fiction made only for fans, obsessed with the past instead of adhering to The Last Jedi's ethos of looking toward the future.

In fairness, we probably should've expected this following the rather noisy outcry from a niche part of the Star Wars population. Disney and Lucasfilm are here to build a universe, and one of the key components to that construction is undoubtedly going to be keeping the overzealous placated. Yet this seems to come at the cost of actually making an interesting movie. Nothing about Solo feels fresh. Nothing about Solo feels exciting. Instead, it's an IV drip into the nostalgia receptors of our consciousness, transporting us back to the era where we never knew if there was going to be another movie. Back then, it was a "beggars can't be choosers" market, and fans would take what they could get. Nowadays, Solo feels like a step back from the radical province The Last Jedi explored. In short, why should we settle for flimsy reminiscences when we've already glimpsed the revolution?

*The definition of which is (very) loosely interpreted in the text, via his possible intimate relationship with droid L3-37.

[blueviper]

Saw it this morning with my brother. It was ok. Do I like it better than the Last Jedi? I guess so.

It does feel like the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; basically a check-list of how Han gets all the crap he’s famous for in the ST. I guess the ultimate fans will sleep easy knowing they finally have a film that explains it all.

I did notice it was too dark at some points. Plus someone mentioned earlier it follows the quick cuts of action that modern blockbusters are now known for. Sometimes it’s hard to follow stuff, since it’s moving on screen so fast.

Spoiler: show

Alden as Han was ok. I think any person taking the role of Han is going to get criticized and he didn the best he could. I don’t know if I ever felt comfortable with him in the role the entire movie. Maybe a few scenes.

Lando was good, but more of a backseat role in this film, which is fine. Everyone can’t be main characters. His droid is annoying and weird. I refuse to believe her “soul” is why the Millennium Falcon acts up in the OT and ST.

Chewie is Chewie. Weird seeing other Wookiees. Beckett was pretty cool. Rio was alright. Val was actually kinda interesting, but didn’t last long.

Qi’ra was ok, but sucks in the comedy parts.

Along with being a checklist for Han, it also just felt like a collection of sub adventures that would seem to have more impact if they were themselves the focus of actual movie storylines, instead of 15 minutes of escape the Empire, 15 minutes of bank heist, 15 minutes of Kessel, etc. Feels like it cheapens the adventure.

Maul is dumb. I don’t care care if Clone Wars and Rebels are canon or not. If that’s how they want to take SW with their expanding the universe and tying all their properties together, I wish them well.

I said this for TLJ: It’s disappointing but it feels like SW is dropping in quality. If a Han Solo movie can’t be great, what hope is there for other standalones? Obi-Wan isn’t an adventurer like Solo, no matter what this new revised canon BS Disney trots out.

Solo. 7/10

[blueviper]

So that Birth.Movies.Death article is stating they didn’t treat women well enough in Solo?

[stip]

among other things - it's not the thrust of the piece

[blueviper]

Just out of my third spin.

One of Indy’s crystal skulls in Drydens office

it's actually a reference to a SW novelization tie-in from the 80s (seriously, i saw this, and the book cover its referencing, in an article yesterday)

are you correcting dime? Its SW.

Found it. Suck it, dime.

What: Crystal skull
Where: Dryden’s office
Origin: Han Solo and the Lost Legacy
Another prominent fixture in Dryden’s office is this crystal skull. This is not a reference to that other Harrison Ford franchise, but rather to the cover of an old Legends novel. In Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, Han and Chewie are looking for the treasure of the ancient Xim the Despot. The book ends on a sour note for the pair though, as the treasure consists of outdated technological revelations rather than untold riches. It seems the treasure was very much real in canon though, as evidenced by the expensive looking skull.

What’s funny is this is the page Dime linked to several pages ago.

[BurtReynolds]

Stip discovering birthmoviesdeath is the worst thing that has ever happened.

[LoathedVermin72]

Stip discovering birthmoviesdeath is the worst thing that has ever happened.

[blueviper]

Stip discovering birthmoviesdeath is the worst thing that has ever happened.

Haha

[E.H. Ruddock]

Is that thing trag referenced Canon?

[dimejinky99]

Fuck nugget. That is all.

This film has no right to be as good and as fun as it is. And it is.

You’re all arseholes.

[dimejinky99]

Just out of my third spin.

One of Indy’s crystal skulls in Drydens office

it's actually a reference to a SW novelization tie-in from the 80s (seriously, i saw this, and the book cover its referencing, in an article yesterday)

are you correcting dime? Its SW.

Found it. Suck it, dime.

What: Crystal skull
Where: Dryden’s office
Origin: Han Solo and the Lost Legacy
Another prominent fixture in Dryden’s office is this crystal skull. This is not a reference to that other Harrison Ford franchise, but rather to the cover of an old Legends novel. In Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, Han and Chewie are looking for the treasure of the ancient Xim the Despot. The book ends on a sour note for the pair though, as the treasure consists of outdated technological revelations rather than untold riches. It seems the treasure was very much real in canon though, as evidenced by the expensive looking skull.

Hey. I’m a Star Wars fan. Not a 50 year old guy playing d&d in his basement.
You wanna throw that stuff you do me and talk to me.
Besides.
Those books arent canon. They’re madey uppy bullshit.

But thanks for that. I didn’t know that.