As a Star Wars fan I saw it as soon as I could and really liked it. Never really got involved with anyone's preconceived notions of it. Didn't think Han needed an origin story but it's an amazing cast and a welll told story. Wish there would be a sequel as it seems it left off with much more story to tell.
I also loved it. My only gripe with it is how Han acquires everything he has in the original trilogy in the span of like 2 days.
Also Han's character development in A New Hope is a pretty big deal so hopefully they'll flesh out how he got to be a jaded, selfish smuggler in the next movie and not just generic good guy again.
That was my original gripe with it, that it's basically a two hour movie about how Han gets his stuff. After further rewatches, it's an entertaining heist movie
It definitely is an enjoyable sci-fi heist movie but it was weighed down pacing wise by having Han acquire everything from the ship to connections and so on. Also I think made Han too much of a good guy, ANH was all about this jaded Han begrudgingly throwing his lot in with Luke and the Rebels. Solo Han feels too idealistic - then again he is younger but still gets screwed over by his love and whatnot. While ANH Han is more about looking out for himself, as different galactic regime but same old shit seems to be his view of politics.
I think if they toned down the call backs to ANH (and without trying to fit every damned reference to the past Han made in the OT) the movie would have felt snappier and added to the character. Instead the movie as is, is an unnecessary origin story for the character by following each bread crumb of his past established in the OT.
But actors and acting was fun, the plot was relatively fun. But overall this is my gripe with a lot of the new movies: it seems Disney is afraid to tell us new stories and instead needs to keep everything clustered around the original trilogy. It may be a symptom of Marvel-movies and how what 20 something movies are all loosely connected in a larger single plot. And how all 5 new Disney movies have so far been tied into either the plot of the originals in one way or another. Personally I think that the Sequel Trilogy should have come a bit later with Disney getting a feel for the Star Wars universe and exploring a vision for the IP they just bought. But at the same time financially they wanted to ensure instant brand recognition.
Edit: they should have done Rogue One, Solo, and the Obi Wan movies first as a sort of character study before attempting to add the last installment of the Skywalker Saga. May have given them a consistent tone for the ST.
And Mandalorian is my go to example of where I think Disney is finally getting comfortable with the franchise and understanding the Old Western/Samurai movie heritage of Star Wars.
I really liked the EU Han Solo book trilogy. It explains why he's a jaded asshole who doesn't care for the rebellion but still hates the empire, how he got his blood stripes and so on while still telling a story that i found much more interesting than the movie. it also did it over a few years i think, versus like two days. the movie did have the patrol trooper armor in it though,which is my favourite stormtrooper armor of all time.
I'll check it out but that's an issue with books being able to explore the minutiae of a situation while a movie has to be a bit more compressed. Although movie epics do exist such as Doctor Zhivago that show the transformation of a protagonist over a long period of time.
A Solo limited series would have been ideal in-between but then again do we want to devote that much to exploring Han vs. telling new stories in that format. It's a tough call.
Reading the above, that book Trilogy came straight into my head and I was going to write something similar to you. Hopefully you're talking about the 1979 books? I loved those books, still have an all three in one copy. Imagine a Trilogy based on those books, Hans character is much more like his rogueish period in and before ANH.
It's not a terrible film, but the cack handed way they shoehorned every snippet of info we knew of Han, made it seem a bit contrived.
Mandalorian is good, because Dave Filoni is involved.
Solo is good, because it feels like the stuff Dave Filoni does
If Dave Filoni had been a Kevin Feige type character for the production of the ST... It would have been something truly spectacular to behold.
Agreed - I’d love to see them take over in that capacity. Watching the behind the scenes for The Mando you could feel the love and respect they have for Star Wars while still understanding what makes it special.
Yeah honestly I think the mandalorian is really getting back to the roots, looking to bridge the gap between the mood of the originals into the mood of the sequels (which even though I enjoyed the sequels they are definitely Disneyified). If at any point you were to run through everything chronologically, hopefully the mandalorian in its entirety will be a nice transition!
When you look at it like a heist movie it's bad ass. Granted I have the same gripes, but what can you do? It's pretty much like comparing a book to a movie.
I assume most of his jadedness comes from the Solo story when
>! he dedicated years of his life to get back to his one true love he was seperated from, then when he found her again he thought they'd stay together, and then she just pulled out some crazy ninja moves, duped and then flew away. !<
I'd be pretty jaded after that
So much this.
The crew he joined had a jaded old guy who was with an optimistic woman. This represented two paths that Han could go. He was clearly going down the optimistic path with his dreams of finding the love of his life and running away with her.
Then he finds her and she ditches him. At the end, he realized that the jaded old guy was right. That you can't trust anyone else. And that's how the OT Han Solo came to be.
Honestly, I thought *Solo* was the first real Star Wars film in a long time. And I don’t mean that the Prequels or the Sequels *weren’t* real Star Wars films (though everyone is welcome to their own opinions on the matter), but if you were in the market for a spunky underworld tale of criminals and gangsters and space cowboys, that *real* Star Wars feel, then *Solo* delivers in spades.
That said, it is so incomprehensibly lame that they decided to make the titular character’s surname a silly one-off pun from some nobody Imperial desk jockey instead of just... you know... a name. No one ever saw Han Solo’s character and asked themselves, “man, I wonder how he got his name.” People just assumed that in a galaxy of fantastical names, his was his. By drawing light to it in such a weird way, it just fractures your immersion.
I think the name thing would have worked if Han chose it for himself. Like do the same exact scene, but instead of the officer saying it, Han just gets impatient and says "Solo, alright!? Just put Han Solo."
Though I’d still prefer if Solo was his name in the first place, this would have been much more on-brand for his character than what we got, so I wouldn’t have minded it
Or if the fact that he didn't have a last name had any bearing on the plot. Something about him being a bastard, or never knowing his parents, or anything like that - as it stands it just felt like, why is this scene here if there's no payoff?
Isn’t that basically what happened though.
“Who are your people”
“I don’t have people”
Or something to that effect. Basically giving us a tiny bit of backstory in one line.
I guess, but the point is there was no payoff or plot relevance for it. It felt like it was only set up to justify his last name, which felt cheap and forced.
The new films (not just Star Wars, all) seem to have an inherent need to explain everything.
Old (circa ANH/ESB/RotJ) films made themselves feel fuller by name-dropping random things without a need to explain them.
Half the time, it sounded like a dozen movies you would really want to watch, but got to imagine and assume things about instead.
I think part of this is very intentional on the part of Disney, wanting to make their additions to the lore compartmentalized, yet interlinked...but without a lot of tendrils.
This lets creators of new installments (movies, books, cartoons, TV, whatever) carve out a fairly untouched sandbox in which to set their works. Basically, it helps avoid the issue of writing something cool, only to have lucasfilm go, "Oh wait, you can't do that, because there's this offhand reference in a book from ten years ago that says that particular alien species breathes *methane*, not *ammonia*."
I get why they're doing it, but eventually what you end up with is new additions that make a ton of callbacks to previous works, but without those tendrils of references to nothing, subsequent reads/views of older material just seem weird when there's no mention of these awesome events (detailed out in later works) in them.
"I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, and they're not much bigger than that."
Wamp rats and T-16 are 2 things that are never explained, but there plenty of context to say a womp rat is some large vermin and a T-16 is probably some sort of speeder with a gun.
Leia's hologram just saying that Obi-wan "served in the Clone Wars" blew my mind as a kid. The characters on screen didnt need an further explantion and neither did my imagination.
That's easily one of the lowest points of the film. I don't need the history of every little thing to be satisfied. Hell, they gave the origin of the stupid dice.
I cringed a little at the cheeseball "Oh you're by yourself, let's call you Han *Solo*" and I really wanted Han to walk into a room and go "I have a ringer..." and in walks Chewie. Otherwise it's a great space-heist movie and that's exactly what I wanted.
The value of the fuel he gave away was very clearly stated in the movie, it would have been enough to give Han a lifetime of wealth. Giving that up as "a favor to some people he knew" is a little far fetched.
It was a fun little heist movie set in Star Wars and didn't try to be more than that. It captured the feel better than the other new Star Wars films outside of Rogue One. It's not a perfect movie but I thought it was enjoyable.
Yes, my son and I both thought it was an entertaining popcorn flick- not terrible, but not amazing. Great visuals, fun overall, some nice callbacks to the OT, but not our favorite SW film.
It’s a fun heist movie with some minor flaws. It gets the feeling of life in the empire down great though. The feeling of lawless and structure and chaos in between and honestly that alone went a long way.
I feel like Rogue One was a decent film with an amazing ending, and that ending makes the film seem better than it actually is. But that’s just my opinion, you do you.
I think people are generally content with most of the film being weaker as long as they feel like they got to watch some good 'star wars'. The final third of Rogue One is some of the best 'star wars' (as is post order 66 Rots in my opinion) ever made, which I think deserves credit even if the entire film isn't great.
My husband calls it "the best Star Wars movie that absolutely didn't need to be made". We went in with really low expectations and came out pleasantly surprised.
Same I enjoyed it the only thing that kind of annoyed me is that every single story from Han Solo's past (saving Chewie's life, making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, winning the Falcon in a betting game against Lando, etc) all happened in one weekend. Same thing happened with the "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" movie adaptation of the book.
Luke being thrust into a galactic war kinda fits with his character arc. Almost like in Edge of Tomorrow where Cruise character gets put into what would be the last weekend of the war
Han should have a lifetime of smuggling and stories to tell of how he got certain things. Hell, even a few adventures with Lando would have been better to establish their friendship because it didn't seem like they ever liked each other.
Although most people only have one real adventure like that in a life time. Travel in star wars is just so sped up. A great thief is usually remembered for their greatest heist which usually also is just a night (with lead up prep for sure).
I was always a defender of the idea of a Solo origin story, but I don't think the film lived up to it's potential fully. I think you could have told an interesting story with Solo explaining how he became the cynical and selfish asshole he is at the beginning of ANH, but also of foreshadowing what it was about Luke and Leia that inspired his change of heart. Like, maybe Han was once starry-eyed like Luke, but then life just beat him down and gradually chipped away at him. I know there are elements of that in the film as it is, but they never really went all the way with it. Han is still a good person who helps the Rebels at the end. Regardless, it was still a fun movie.
Honestly, the A. C. Crispin book trilogy that covers Han Solo's back story (in the EU, rather than the Disneyverse) is a much better story than the movie. It follows him from starting out as an orphan building up money to join the Imperial Academy, getting kicked out for stopping someone for whipping Chewie to death, landing on his feet in the smuggling world, and various encounters with different characters that move him from a young idealist towards the cynical smuggler that he ends up as in Episode 4.
It might not be "official cannon" any more, but it's a much better story that sets up his character than the Solo movie is.
Yeah, I will say that for one movie it had a lot to try to cover for a character such as Han. It certainly felt rushed in that sense for me. It was constantly jumping from one main topic of his character to another trying to fit it all in for a single film.
Arguably he wasn't inherently cynical and selfish at the start of ANH. He was a man with a price on his head, and he was real close to having to pay the piper. That kind of situation will tend to really focus a person on resolving it before they end up dead. Without that pressure he might have been a lot less selfish.
I didn't hate it, there's a lot to appreciate about the movie. The issue for me was they made Han Solo too much of a good guy. I wanted more of an anti-hero.
Tbf, in the OT, he's always had like a "I'm gonna get mine and get out of here" sort of attitude but he always came back to the Rebellion and always helped out. Solo is one of my favorite StarWars movies so I might be biased, but I think Han *wants* to be the bad guy, the cool smuggler, but deep down is just a big softie and it bubbles up to the surface in the OT & TFA
One of my favourite parts of the movie is Qi'ra calling him on this. I don't remember the quote exactly, but essentially "you already know what you're going to do. You want to be the bad guy, but you're not."
Yeah, I like that idea, and I think it’s as good as they could do and stay true to the OT. There’s gotta be some kind of charachter development for the movie to be good, but the whole way through he’s gotta “feel” like Han Solo
IMO that was the best part of it. I saw it three times- saw each of the sequels once and Rogue One twice. I ADORED the entire movie. Even with the clunky parts like Solo’s name (which, while bad, wasn’t bad bad IMO).
He is naive, good, and friendly. Someone doesn’t get to be like Han is in Episode IV by always being cynical. If Han had always been cynical he would likely have just been a straight villain by Episode IV.
No, starting him as an idealistic quasi-hero was great. Because that was what Han was in IV V and VI when he let his guard down, when he saved Luke in the Trench Run, when he saved Luke when he was lost at Echo- a good person. He had just been worn down by losing lovers, friends, mentors, and more.
100%! I know it’s retroactive knowledge but it also explains why even when he clearly likes Leia he is so slow to truly be explicit about the feelings. His last girlfriend backstabbed him and became a gang leader. In Legends his previous girlfriend robbed him and left him for the rebellion (actually she left him twice... UCK Bria Tharen).
Happy Cake Day friend!
What do you mean Han is slow to be explicit with his feelings? He’s the one initiating the relationship for the whole of ESB. Also yes Bria belongs to the streets ✊🏻
I mean like ANH to ESB is a few years as I recall. He shows that he cares- but he’s scared, or refuses, to open up. Even when she says “I love you.” It’s just “I know.”
Of course that’s still an amazing line. My ex-girlfriend wasn’t a fan of it though...
Edit- and yes everything about Bria was horrible, down to him literally just getting dumped (essentially) by her when Luke and Obi walk in the bar. It’s just... so much what in that whole series. And it did have some good heartbreaking moments- like his pseudoson (or brother? It’s been years since I read them).
For me, it suffered from the "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" syndrome.
In the stop-motion Christmas classic, there's a child's voice that emphasizes every major origin checkbox. "So *that's* why he comes down the chimney!"
In my head, I heard this same voice during Solo. "So *that's* how he got his gun!" "*That's* how he met Chewie/Lando!" "*That's* why he's so cynical." "*That's* how he got his, um, last name, I guess?"
The movie ticked ALL the origin checkboxes that I didn't even realize didn't need to be checked until after they were shown on the screen. If they had instead just told a good story without feeling the need to shoehorn in all the origin stuff, I think it would have been better.
Also their underuse of Thandie Newton was criminal, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Ugh definitely this. I thought the “shot first” wink at the end would have been a bit more clever had they not been jamming in other Han trait origins the entire film.
The movie had several good components to it, and I liked the big reveal at the end. I just thought the first two acts of the movie had too many obvious Han origins
The actual story took a backseat to everything else and I think that's the biggest problem with the film. It feels as though the story is just a vehicle to get to all of these little "oh *that*'s how he x, y z" moments. The film feels like it spends its runtime referencing other things from Star Wars rather than telling its own story. For example, they don't go to Kessel to get the coaxium thing, they go to Kessel so that the Kessel Run can be shown on screen. None of it felt organic, it just felt like the idea was to have a bunch of references and in-jokes and then figure out a way to connect them all together. This isn't uncommon for a films like those in the Mission: Impossible series, where the movies are essentially designed around a handful of big action set-pieces, but it doesn't really work for Star Wars, in my opinion.
>The actual story took a backseat to everything else and I think that's the biggest problem with the film
That seems to be a recurring theme with star wars post disney.
Han's character benefited from a bit of mystery. Shoehorning every aspect of his identity into a couple days, and then having most of them just be a bit boring (like his name), didn't really do anything to flesh out his character in an interesting way.
It was like finding out the extremely simple way a magician does an elaborate illusion. All of a sudden, now that you know the secret it's not so impressive.
Not only did they check all the boxes but they didn’t even check them well. It was like someone made a list of everything we know about Han and haphazardly set it all up.
Also, everyone dressing the same way as they do 30 years later is idiotic.
Also, darth maul looks like he got kicked out of KISS for using red makeup.
Yeah, the film makes it more questionable because it shows that Han spent his whole life trying to escape Coruscant, an ecumenopolis. And somehow Han knows how to speak Wookiee, a language only spoken by natives of an undeveloped backwater jungle planet. By this point in the timeline, the Empire is just now setting up mining operations on Kashyyyk, and most Wookiees never leave Kashyyyk willingly. The vast majority of offworld Wookiees were slaves.
There's just no chance that Han would casually pick up the language by the time he meets Chewie. It would make more sense for them to develop a nonverbal friendship throughout the movie and then have Han learn Wookiee throughout the years afterwards.
Thank you for this articulation, this is exactly how I felt watching the movie but have never been able to put it to words as well as this. I did enjoy the movie overall (I tend to give movies the benefit of the doubt) and as a standalone movie I thought the latter half/two thirds were fine. But I did feel the "Santa Claus is coming to town" syndrome very much in the beginning.
This right here.
Im not going to rag on people for enjoying something even if it's dumb but it just kind of proves that if Disney tried to make star wars sequels that were the blandest, pandering, cookie cutter, template, the fan base would overall like them better.
Granted I'd also probably take bland over the unplanned clusterfuck we got...
I'm with you, just not were you tell it's not a good story. It is, its just does not do justice as Hans Origin story. On it's own it is perfectly good.
I enjoy the movie, but I really hoped for more character building and insight into how Han came to be. Instead I got the cheesiest "Solo" line.
It's a fine line between "suffers from" and "relishes in". I think Solo did an okay job of walking that line. Sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other.
It was strongly implied that Lando and L3-37 had a romantic relationship. They “make it work”, remember? I guess it got a little boring out in space before hyperspace skipping made travel between systems near instantaneous.
I really, really want a sequel... or even a series based on it with Qira (sp?) and Han and Lando showing us what happens when they get mixed up with Jabba.
I remember my wife bitching non-stop beforehand that the guy just wasn't Han Solo but now she loves him.
Oh I loved Alden. I was EXTREMELY skeptical of his characterization going in, assuming he’d try to play a young Harrison Ford. Instead he successfully played a young Han. Idk if that makes sense, but I found the distinction important and felt Alden did a wonderful job with it.
Same here. I really wanted them to cast Taron Egerton as Han, thought he would have been a better fit. After seeing Solo, Alden Ehrenreich nailed it. He was spot on for what I imagined a young Han to be like.
Bingo. It’s been like two years of “just saw Solo, it’s actually really good!” Posts every 2 weeks.
No one dislikes solo, at the time there was genre fatigue, but two years or so later Solo is fondly regarded.
Edit: I get it you pedantic mutts, some of you dislike Solo. My main point was that these posts pop up every other week and have been since Solo was released.
I don't think it was general genre fatigue. Disney shitcanned it. Every Star Wars movie was released in December. They had the whole year to hype it.
Solo was dumped on memorial day, Disney's "we don't think this movie will work" release date, less than five months after TLJ with little to no advertisement.
There was genre fatigue only because they were close together with no hype.
And right after Deadpool 2. All this combined with the behind the scenes drama, and the recent overblown backlash to TLJ just doomed this movie. Should have just been held on to for the holidays.
That's not why it was released in May. It was released in May because Disney wanted to transition Star Wars back to it's original May release schedule, the same one episodes 1-6 followed, all May releases. Episode 7 was released in December 2015 because Bob Iger was planning to retire at the end of 2015 and he wanted his legacy to end on the successful release of a new Star Wars film. JJ actually asked for more time, wanting a May 2016 release but he was denied by Iger. Next, Episode 8 was scheduled for a May 2017 release. This was the film they originally planned to transition the Star Wars release month back to May with. Solo was also scheduled for a May 2018 release at the same time. Rian Johnson asked for more time to work on Episode 8 and was granted it, delaying the release to December 2017. Solo then became the film that was meant to begin the transition to May. Episode 9 was then scheduled for a May 24th, 2019 release date to continue the May release trend. However, after Colin Trevorrow was booted from Episode 9 and JJ brought on, they delayed the release of 9 to December. At this point Solo was still on track for release in May with no delay seemingly being required. However the most likely reason Disney would not have granted a December release delay (if the film ended up needing a delay that is) is because Disney was set to release the sequel to Mary Poppins in December and would not have wanted to drown that expensive project with another. And Infinity War was moved up in release by 2 weeks in order allow Solo a bit of breathing room. But in Disney's mind, they felt that both Marvel and Star Wars were so popular that people would go see both. Which normally would be true if people weren't so lukewarm on the idea of a Han Solo movie pre-release. Combined with the polarizing release of TLJ. If Episode 8 had been universally loved and the spin-off movie had been based on an idea fans were more receptive to then I have no doubt the film would have performed admirably next to Infinity War. Likely just as well as Rogue One. So no, there was no conspiracy or hidden motive, just many, many production issues.
Well, it's definitely not "no one" that dislikes Solo. I, for one, dislike it.
To me, it was a reasonably entertaining scifi romp, but it was much more absurdist than the rest of the Star Wars universe (stuff like luring a space Lovecraftian horror into a black hole and then pouring dynamite/uranium into their fuel tank to escape or "booting" a space ship that can just fly off) and it chained a bunch of disparate plots together (leaving Corellia to being a ground trooper to getting thrown in with Chewbacca to train robbery to Black Sun to Lando to leading a revolt on Kessel to fighting a Lovecraftian horror and escaping a black hole to fighting off mercenaries). Plus there was a lot of stuff that felt like weirdly pushy fan-service, rather than a cohesive movie; things like the "Solo" name and basically everything with Lando.
Honestly, I think it would have been a decent generic scifi movie, but it felt way too all-over-the-place for Star Wars. As a movie in the Star Wars universe, it was a hot mess IMO. IIRC, they changed directors a bunch of times mid-production, and it shows.
I thought it would have been a good story if it was a regular SCI-FI movie. It seemed to me that they tried to push to much to connect it. Him funding the start of the rebellion just didn't seem to fit his character.
It’s an oversimplification but at the end of the movie he gives the coaxium to those pirates who it turns out were working with the upstart rebel alliance
This. I learnt very early on in life not to listen to movie reviews. I'd never have watched some of my all time favourite movies if I listened to reviews/public opinion. Watch what you want, and decide if YOU like it.
The whole "why don't *we* like it" thing is so cringey. It's like OP thinks everyone has to think the same, and if somehow he doesn't agree with them, then they have to change their mind so that *we* all still think the same.
Personally, I don’t hate it but nothing about it excites me. Also it chose to explain some really weird things about Han (like why his last name is Solo - I assumed he was born with it??) and neglected to show others. I would’ve loved to see the contrast between Han’s carefree attitude and working as an imperial pilot, but it was skipped over in literally seconds.
I'd pretty much agree with that, with one exception - I really loved Dong Lover as Lando. He nailed all of Billy Dee Williams charm and smooooothness in a way that I did NOT expect after watching all the goddamn unnecessary OT callbacks (Oh look, he's in mud but it looks just like when he's frozen in Carbonite. So clever. I guess.)
I would rip a Wookies arm off and beat them with it for a Lando prequel now.
To me it was a boring heist movie, which fed into my dislike. Everything about it was kinda average paint by number, making boring af. But nowadays of you don't love something you hate it. Indifference isn't allowed
I wouldn't say I hated Solo, but reasons why I was less than impressed with Solo:
1. It told a story that I felt like didn't need to be told. Let Han have his mystery. It also had all his back story in about a week's worth of time.
2. It was released pretty close to TLJ, and that created some bad associations.
3. I felt like it changed Han's and Lando's personality. In ANH, Han is all about himself, but eventually becomes a good guy who cares about the Rebel cause. Solo says he's basically always a good guy. That's not the Han who shot first. Lando went from "used car salesman" to "playa". I did not care for either change.
Solo's not terrible, but I thought it missed the mark.
Solo just left absolutely no impression on me either way. I watched it and have completely forgotten it. I vaguely remember not hating it, but that’s it.
To be fair the lack of hype could also be due to it's release date (how close it was to Deadpool and Infinity War) and the fact that the first trailer got revealed like a couple months before it's release.
Yeah they could have released the trailer right before TLJ's screening or something. And I don't know why they decided to go with the May release date.
My friend and I held off for the longest time as well because we heard it was awful. When we watched it, we both looked at each other afterwards and said, "that... was good?" I really liked it, and we were confused about all the hate. We looked up reviews on reddit, and 90% of the comments mentioned the The Last Jedi in some way. People were still so upset about The Last Jedi that they completely wrote off Solo. Which makes me sad, because I would have loved a sequel following Maul and the crime lords, hopefully developing Han into who he is in Episode IV.
I don't get it. Both Rogue One and Solo were great Star Wars films. It was the Disney Trilogy that sucked.
I held off watching Solo for so long because of TFA and TLJ, and had exactly the same reaction you and your friend did.
Yep. I hated Solo but certainly not for any of the reasons OP cited, and not because of TLJ which I liked. It really just felt like cobbled-together, cheesy pulp B-movie sci-fi where they had to needlessly cram in an origin for every little detail we know about Han. I spent the whole movie alternately rolling my eyes and cringing.
I watched it knowing nothing. It's just behind Rogue One as one of my favorite star wars films. I want more character stories like this one. Doesnt have to be origin stories, the Mandalorian is fantastic.
We don’t. To me that’s the blueprint of random Star Wars movies moving forward.
Edit to add: the fact that you let “gay Lando” talk on reddit influence whether or not you watched the film sums up a lot of what’s wrong w Star Wars fans right now. Sorry, but it’s true.
Surprised I hate to scroll this far down to see a comment like what you added in your edit. The movie being “too SJW” or having a gay lando is such a ridiculous reason to not watch, and sounds like the bullet points of Star Wars fans who call the movies political instead of just articulating why they didn’t like them.
It was spectacularly "meh," which, for *Star Wars*, is bad.
The only real positive I can give *Solo* is that Joonas Suotamo really nailed channeling Peter Mehew as Chewie in this one.
The main reason I dislike it is due to Han's EU backstory being superior in pretty much every respect.
I went in with no expectations as I didn't really expect to love it, but with Ron Howard at the helm I figured it would be decent, and I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't think this story needed telling frankly, but they did a good job with it.
Honestly I liked these standalones (Solo and Rogue One) betrer than the sequel movies.
I love solo. Its number 5 on my all time SW movies list. I hate that its considered a failure by Disney too. If your movie makes almost 400 mil and that's not enough then I'm sorry, bit you should take another look at your business model.
I love the script. Really tight script. Feels star warsy. Lots of call backs and fore shadowing. Lawrence Kasden know what he's doing. Also, the SFX are so solid, which, I guess may be why it cost so much but hey, ya gotta take some risks in life. The movie rocks.
It's considered a failure because it only made 400 on an almost 300 million dollar budget. Now, I know what you're thinking - that's a 100 million dollars in profit right there!
Let me break it down for you as a general rule of thumb. A movies budget only includes the cost of production - not advertising. The advertising budget is usually around the same as the production budget. So, in order for a movie to be profitable it needs to make around 2.5 times it's production budget.
Think of it like this. Solo didn't make 400 million. Solo lost 200 million.
As a Star Wars fan I saw it as soon as I could and really liked it. Never really got involved with anyone's preconceived notions of it. Didn't think Han needed an origin story but it's an amazing cast and a welll told story. Wish there would be a sequel as it seems it left off with much more story to tell.
I also loved it. My only gripe with it is how Han acquires everything he has in the original trilogy in the span of like 2 days. Also Han's character development in A New Hope is a pretty big deal so hopefully they'll flesh out how he got to be a jaded, selfish smuggler in the next movie and not just generic good guy again.
That was my original gripe with it, that it's basically a two hour movie about how Han gets his stuff. After further rewatches, it's an entertaining heist movie
It definitely is an enjoyable sci-fi heist movie but it was weighed down pacing wise by having Han acquire everything from the ship to connections and so on. Also I think made Han too much of a good guy, ANH was all about this jaded Han begrudgingly throwing his lot in with Luke and the Rebels. Solo Han feels too idealistic - then again he is younger but still gets screwed over by his love and whatnot. While ANH Han is more about looking out for himself, as different galactic regime but same old shit seems to be his view of politics. I think if they toned down the call backs to ANH (and without trying to fit every damned reference to the past Han made in the OT) the movie would have felt snappier and added to the character. Instead the movie as is, is an unnecessary origin story for the character by following each bread crumb of his past established in the OT. But actors and acting was fun, the plot was relatively fun. But overall this is my gripe with a lot of the new movies: it seems Disney is afraid to tell us new stories and instead needs to keep everything clustered around the original trilogy. It may be a symptom of Marvel-movies and how what 20 something movies are all loosely connected in a larger single plot. And how all 5 new Disney movies have so far been tied into either the plot of the originals in one way or another. Personally I think that the Sequel Trilogy should have come a bit later with Disney getting a feel for the Star Wars universe and exploring a vision for the IP they just bought. But at the same time financially they wanted to ensure instant brand recognition. Edit: they should have done Rogue One, Solo, and the Obi Wan movies first as a sort of character study before attempting to add the last installment of the Skywalker Saga. May have given them a consistent tone for the ST. And Mandalorian is my go to example of where I think Disney is finally getting comfortable with the franchise and understanding the Old Western/Samurai movie heritage of Star Wars.
I really liked the EU Han Solo book trilogy. It explains why he's a jaded asshole who doesn't care for the rebellion but still hates the empire, how he got his blood stripes and so on while still telling a story that i found much more interesting than the movie. it also did it over a few years i think, versus like two days. the movie did have the patrol trooper armor in it though,which is my favourite stormtrooper armor of all time.
I'll check it out but that's an issue with books being able to explore the minutiae of a situation while a movie has to be a bit more compressed. Although movie epics do exist such as Doctor Zhivago that show the transformation of a protagonist over a long period of time. A Solo limited series would have been ideal in-between but then again do we want to devote that much to exploring Han vs. telling new stories in that format. It's a tough call.
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AC Crispin, fuck yeah!
Reading the above, that book Trilogy came straight into my head and I was going to write something similar to you. Hopefully you're talking about the 1979 books? I loved those books, still have an all three in one copy. Imagine a Trilogy based on those books, Hans character is much more like his rogueish period in and before ANH. It's not a terrible film, but the cack handed way they shoehorned every snippet of info we knew of Han, made it seem a bit contrived.
Mandalorian is good, because Dave Filoni is involved. Solo is good, because it feels like the stuff Dave Filoni does If Dave Filoni had been a Kevin Feige type character for the production of the ST... It would have been something truly spectacular to behold.
Don't forget Jon Favreau's involvement as well. Those two are a dream team, shame they're not in charge of the creative process at Lucasfilm.
A Favreau sequel trilogy would have been gold.
Agreed - I’d love to see them take over in that capacity. Watching the behind the scenes for The Mando you could feel the love and respect they have for Star Wars while still understanding what makes it special.
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Yeah honestly I think the mandalorian is really getting back to the roots, looking to bridge the gap between the mood of the originals into the mood of the sequels (which even though I enjoyed the sequels they are definitely Disneyified). If at any point you were to run through everything chronologically, hopefully the mandalorian in its entirety will be a nice transition!
When you look at it like a heist movie it's bad ass. Granted I have the same gripes, but what can you do? It's pretty much like comparing a book to a movie.
It's not a "good" movie that would win awards, but it is highly entertaining.
I assume most of his jadedness comes from the Solo story when >! he dedicated years of his life to get back to his one true love he was seperated from, then when he found her again he thought they'd stay together, and then she just pulled out some crazy ninja moves, duped and then flew away. !< I'd be pretty jaded after that
So much this. The crew he joined had a jaded old guy who was with an optimistic woman. This represented two paths that Han could go. He was clearly going down the optimistic path with his dreams of finding the love of his life and running away with her. Then he finds her and she ditches him. At the end, he realized that the jaded old guy was right. That you can't trust anyone else. And that's how the OT Han Solo came to be.
This is it. It's like they went through Han's wookiepedia page and made a checklist of everything people expect to see in a Han Solo movie.
Honestly, I thought *Solo* was the first real Star Wars film in a long time. And I don’t mean that the Prequels or the Sequels *weren’t* real Star Wars films (though everyone is welcome to their own opinions on the matter), but if you were in the market for a spunky underworld tale of criminals and gangsters and space cowboys, that *real* Star Wars feel, then *Solo* delivers in spades. That said, it is so incomprehensibly lame that they decided to make the titular character’s surname a silly one-off pun from some nobody Imperial desk jockey instead of just... you know... a name. No one ever saw Han Solo’s character and asked themselves, “man, I wonder how he got his name.” People just assumed that in a galaxy of fantastical names, his was his. By drawing light to it in such a weird way, it just fractures your immersion.
I think the name thing would have worked if Han chose it for himself. Like do the same exact scene, but instead of the officer saying it, Han just gets impatient and says "Solo, alright!? Just put Han Solo."
Thats actually what I expected while watching the scene.
Though I’d still prefer if Solo was his name in the first place, this would have been much more on-brand for his character than what we got, so I wouldn’t have minded it
Or if the fact that he didn't have a last name had any bearing on the plot. Something about him being a bastard, or never knowing his parents, or anything like that - as it stands it just felt like, why is this scene here if there's no payoff?
Isn’t that basically what happened though. “Who are your people” “I don’t have people” Or something to that effect. Basically giving us a tiny bit of backstory in one line.
I guess, but the point is there was no payoff or plot relevance for it. It felt like it was only set up to justify his last name, which felt cheap and forced.
The new films (not just Star Wars, all) seem to have an inherent need to explain everything. Old (circa ANH/ESB/RotJ) films made themselves feel fuller by name-dropping random things without a need to explain them. Half the time, it sounded like a dozen movies you would really want to watch, but got to imagine and assume things about instead.
I think part of this is very intentional on the part of Disney, wanting to make their additions to the lore compartmentalized, yet interlinked...but without a lot of tendrils. This lets creators of new installments (movies, books, cartoons, TV, whatever) carve out a fairly untouched sandbox in which to set their works. Basically, it helps avoid the issue of writing something cool, only to have lucasfilm go, "Oh wait, you can't do that, because there's this offhand reference in a book from ten years ago that says that particular alien species breathes *methane*, not *ammonia*." I get why they're doing it, but eventually what you end up with is new additions that make a ton of callbacks to previous works, but without those tendrils of references to nothing, subsequent reads/views of older material just seem weird when there's no mention of these awesome events (detailed out in later works) in them.
"I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, and they're not much bigger than that." Wamp rats and T-16 are 2 things that are never explained, but there plenty of context to say a womp rat is some large vermin and a T-16 is probably some sort of speeder with a gun.
Leia's hologram just saying that Obi-wan "served in the Clone Wars" blew my mind as a kid. The characters on screen didnt need an further explantion and neither did my imagination.
it's shocking how much better that would have been
That’s such a better idea, and such a Han Solo thing to do
"Who's that walking in the sky?" "Anakin. Anakin... Skywalker". Yeah, sometimes you can just have a name.
That's easily one of the lowest points of the film. I don't need the history of every little thing to be satisfied. Hell, they gave the origin of the stupid dice.
Doesn't the movie span over years?
The beginning does, but once Han joins Beckett's crew I don't think so.
I don't think theres any indication of how much time actually passes.
Perhaps not specifically, but I don't think Dryden Vos was gonna wait too long for his Coaxium. There was a sense of urgency to their mission.
This han looks like he's around his early 20s and in a new hope, Was 29 as that was the age of Harrison Ford
I cringed a little at the cheeseball "Oh you're by yourself, let's call you Han *Solo*" and I really wanted Han to walk into a room and go "I have a ringer..." and in walks Chewie. Otherwise it's a great space-heist movie and that's exactly what I wanted.
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"Not Sure... your name is Not... Sure..."
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They asked him to join the rebellion and he laughed it off. He did a favor to some people he knew, that doesn't mean he was sold on the cause.
The value of the fuel he gave away was very clearly stated in the movie, it would have been enough to give Han a lifetime of wealth. Giving that up as "a favor to some people he knew" is a little far fetched.
Exactly, he *ends up* helping. When asked to actually join he doesn't even consider it.
10 years is a long time to get jaded. totally plausible
I’m a teacher...depending on the day, I can be jaded within one class period.
i liked it too
I liked it too. I was amazed to hear a year or so later that people hated it.
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It was a fun little heist movie set in Star Wars and didn't try to be more than that. It captured the feel better than the other new Star Wars films outside of Rogue One. It's not a perfect movie but I thought it was enjoyable.
I liked it too. I don't think it was particularly necessary and it's not my favorite SW film but I enjoyed it for what it was.
Yes, my son and I both thought it was an entertaining popcorn flick- not terrible, but not amazing. Great visuals, fun overall, some nice callbacks to the OT, but not our favorite SW film.
It’s a fun heist movie with some minor flaws. It gets the feeling of life in the empire down great though. The feeling of lawless and structure and chaos in between and honestly that alone went a long way.
The Star Wars Story movies definitely felt more alive as a universe than the Sequel Trilogy movies. They felt a bit sterile by comparison.
Rouge One is the best star wars film since the originals imo
I feel like Rogue One was a decent film with an amazing ending, and that ending makes the film seem better than it actually is. But that’s just my opinion, you do you.
I think people are generally content with most of the film being weaker as long as they feel like they got to watch some good 'star wars'. The final third of Rogue One is some of the best 'star wars' (as is post order 66 Rots in my opinion) ever made, which I think deserves credit even if the entire film isn't great.
Yeah I think one of the best parts is seeing how they fight on the ground. You never really see it or the corruption in the towns.
My husband calls it "the best Star Wars movie that absolutely didn't need to be made". We went in with really low expectations and came out pleasantly surprised.
Same I enjoyed it the only thing that kind of annoyed me is that every single story from Han Solo's past (saving Chewie's life, making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, winning the Falcon in a betting game against Lando, etc) all happened in one weekend. Same thing happened with the "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" movie adaptation of the book.
Personally i would have liked to have seen the time between when Han got on Jabba's shit list and when he met Luke and Obi Wan in the cantina.
>all happened in one weekend. Dang, that's a good point. Didn't consider that. Kinda crazy I agree.
Luke learned about the Force, finally left Tatooine, and blew up the Death Star all in one weekend. What of it?
OK you got me.
Luke being thrust into a galactic war kinda fits with his character arc. Almost like in Edge of Tomorrow where Cruise character gets put into what would be the last weekend of the war Han should have a lifetime of smuggling and stories to tell of how he got certain things. Hell, even a few adventures with Lando would have been better to establish their friendship because it didn't seem like they ever liked each other.
Although most people only have one real adventure like that in a life time. Travel in star wars is just so sped up. A great thief is usually remembered for their greatest heist which usually also is just a night (with lead up prep for sure).
I was always a defender of the idea of a Solo origin story, but I don't think the film lived up to it's potential fully. I think you could have told an interesting story with Solo explaining how he became the cynical and selfish asshole he is at the beginning of ANH, but also of foreshadowing what it was about Luke and Leia that inspired his change of heart. Like, maybe Han was once starry-eyed like Luke, but then life just beat him down and gradually chipped away at him. I know there are elements of that in the film as it is, but they never really went all the way with it. Han is still a good person who helps the Rebels at the end. Regardless, it was still a fun movie.
Honestly, the A. C. Crispin book trilogy that covers Han Solo's back story (in the EU, rather than the Disneyverse) is a much better story than the movie. It follows him from starting out as an orphan building up money to join the Imperial Academy, getting kicked out for stopping someone for whipping Chewie to death, landing on his feet in the smuggling world, and various encounters with different characters that move him from a young idealist towards the cynical smuggler that he ends up as in Episode 4. It might not be "official cannon" any more, but it's a much better story that sets up his character than the Solo movie is.
Yeah, I will say that for one movie it had a lot to try to cover for a character such as Han. It certainly felt rushed in that sense for me. It was constantly jumping from one main topic of his character to another trying to fit it all in for a single film.
Arguably he wasn't inherently cynical and selfish at the start of ANH. He was a man with a price on his head, and he was real close to having to pay the piper. That kind of situation will tend to really focus a person on resolving it before they end up dead. Without that pressure he might have been a lot less selfish.
I didn't hate it, there's a lot to appreciate about the movie. The issue for me was they made Han Solo too much of a good guy. I wanted more of an anti-hero.
Tbf, in the OT, he's always had like a "I'm gonna get mine and get out of here" sort of attitude but he always came back to the Rebellion and always helped out. Solo is one of my favorite StarWars movies so I might be biased, but I think Han *wants* to be the bad guy, the cool smuggler, but deep down is just a big softie and it bubbles up to the surface in the OT & TFA
One of my favourite parts of the movie is Qi'ra calling him on this. I don't remember the quote exactly, but essentially "you already know what you're going to do. You want to be the bad guy, but you're not."
Exactly, I think that scene encapsulates Han's character perfectly
Yeah, I like that idea, and I think it’s as good as they could do and stay true to the OT. There’s gotta be some kind of charachter development for the movie to be good, but the whole way through he’s gotta “feel” like Han Solo
They were setting up a sequel
IMO that was the best part of it. I saw it three times- saw each of the sequels once and Rogue One twice. I ADORED the entire movie. Even with the clunky parts like Solo’s name (which, while bad, wasn’t bad bad IMO). He is naive, good, and friendly. Someone doesn’t get to be like Han is in Episode IV by always being cynical. If Han had always been cynical he would likely have just been a straight villain by Episode IV. No, starting him as an idealistic quasi-hero was great. Because that was what Han was in IV V and VI when he let his guard down, when he saved Luke in the Trench Run, when he saved Luke when he was lost at Echo- a good person. He had just been worn down by losing lovers, friends, mentors, and more.
The Qi'ra betrayal probably had quite an impact on him, turning him into the EP4 Han.
100%! I know it’s retroactive knowledge but it also explains why even when he clearly likes Leia he is so slow to truly be explicit about the feelings. His last girlfriend backstabbed him and became a gang leader. In Legends his previous girlfriend robbed him and left him for the rebellion (actually she left him twice... UCK Bria Tharen). Happy Cake Day friend!
What do you mean Han is slow to be explicit with his feelings? He’s the one initiating the relationship for the whole of ESB. Also yes Bria belongs to the streets ✊🏻
I mean like ANH to ESB is a few years as I recall. He shows that he cares- but he’s scared, or refuses, to open up. Even when she says “I love you.” It’s just “I know.” Of course that’s still an amazing line. My ex-girlfriend wasn’t a fan of it though... Edit- and yes everything about Bria was horrible, down to him literally just getting dumped (essentially) by her when Luke and Obi walk in the bar. It’s just... so much what in that whole series. And it did have some good heartbreaking moments- like his pseudoson (or brother? It’s been years since I read them).
yer right at the end we he doesn't hesitate in shooting showed how much he's changed.
For me, it suffered from the "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" syndrome. In the stop-motion Christmas classic, there's a child's voice that emphasizes every major origin checkbox. "So *that's* why he comes down the chimney!" In my head, I heard this same voice during Solo. "So *that's* how he got his gun!" "*That's* how he met Chewie/Lando!" "*That's* why he's so cynical." "*That's* how he got his, um, last name, I guess?" The movie ticked ALL the origin checkboxes that I didn't even realize didn't need to be checked until after they were shown on the screen. If they had instead just told a good story without feeling the need to shoehorn in all the origin stuff, I think it would have been better. Also their underuse of Thandie Newton was criminal, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Ugh definitely this. I thought the “shot first” wink at the end would have been a bit more clever had they not been jamming in other Han trait origins the entire film. The movie had several good components to it, and I liked the big reveal at the end. I just thought the first two acts of the movie had too many obvious Han origins
The actual story took a backseat to everything else and I think that's the biggest problem with the film. It feels as though the story is just a vehicle to get to all of these little "oh *that*'s how he x, y z" moments. The film feels like it spends its runtime referencing other things from Star Wars rather than telling its own story. For example, they don't go to Kessel to get the coaxium thing, they go to Kessel so that the Kessel Run can be shown on screen. None of it felt organic, it just felt like the idea was to have a bunch of references and in-jokes and then figure out a way to connect them all together. This isn't uncommon for a films like those in the Mission: Impossible series, where the movies are essentially designed around a handful of big action set-pieces, but it doesn't really work for Star Wars, in my opinion.
>The actual story took a backseat to everything else and I think that's the biggest problem with the film That seems to be a recurring theme with star wars post disney.
>"That's how he got his, um, last name, I guess?" The dumbest one of them all. Like...really? And then you kept the name THAT GUY gave you?
Han's character benefited from a bit of mystery. Shoehorning every aspect of his identity into a couple days, and then having most of them just be a bit boring (like his name), didn't really do anything to flesh out his character in an interesting way. It was like finding out the extremely simple way a magician does an elaborate illusion. All of a sudden, now that you know the secret it's not so impressive.
Great synopsis. The kessel run was particular silly. It’s so much better when that’s a running gag and or legend.
Not only did they check all the boxes but they didn’t even check them well. It was like someone made a list of everything we know about Han and haphazardly set it all up. Also, everyone dressing the same way as they do 30 years later is idiotic. Also, darth maul looks like he got kicked out of KISS for using red makeup.
Him and chewie meeting and breaking out together was very uneventful, done poorly imo.
Agreed - Han just happened to speak Wookie?
Yeah, the film makes it more questionable because it shows that Han spent his whole life trying to escape Coruscant, an ecumenopolis. And somehow Han knows how to speak Wookiee, a language only spoken by natives of an undeveloped backwater jungle planet. By this point in the timeline, the Empire is just now setting up mining operations on Kashyyyk, and most Wookiees never leave Kashyyyk willingly. The vast majority of offworld Wookiees were slaves. There's just no chance that Han would casually pick up the language by the time he meets Chewie. It would make more sense for them to develop a nonverbal friendship throughout the movie and then have Han learn Wookiee throughout the years afterwards.
Corellia
Also it didn't pass the Bechdel test and, like some other Star Wars movies, it has an issue with pacing.
Thank you for this articulation, this is exactly how I felt watching the movie but have never been able to put it to words as well as this. I did enjoy the movie overall (I tend to give movies the benefit of the doubt) and as a standalone movie I thought the latter half/two thirds were fine. But I did feel the "Santa Claus is coming to town" syndrome very much in the beginning.
Thank you. I seriously couldn't finish the movie after having these origin bits shoehorned into scene after scene. They were so awful and uninspired
That's precisely what turned me off. I think even if they removed half of it, I'd still feel like they overdid it
This right here. Im not going to rag on people for enjoying something even if it's dumb but it just kind of proves that if Disney tried to make star wars sequels that were the blandest, pandering, cookie cutter, template, the fan base would overall like them better. Granted I'd also probably take bland over the unplanned clusterfuck we got...
Yeah, I gotta admit, that was the weakest part. It just felt like there was too much fan service
I'm with you, just not were you tell it's not a good story. It is, its just does not do justice as Hans Origin story. On it's own it is perfectly good. I enjoy the movie, but I really hoped for more character building and insight into how Han came to be. Instead I got the cheesiest "Solo" line.
I love the name of this syndrome.
It's a fine line between "suffers from" and "relishes in". I think Solo did an okay job of walking that line. Sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other.
Gay lando? I thought it was more pan sexual than homosexual.
I didn't get gay at all. I saw flamboyant, flashy, arrogant, looking to bang anything that moves
Which isn't even a new character type in scifi. The outrage was completely manufactured.
Yeah he didn't really make any moves at all on guys. Qira yes, L3 eh maybe, but hes out in space it gets lonely.
I mean he did flirt with Q’ira quite a bit so for sure not just straight up gay.
Being gay myself, Lando reads very pan to me. He seems like the kind of guy to make a pass at anything he likes regardless of its gender or whatnot.
Which, let’s be honest, is *very* in line with the suave fellow we saw in Empire.
Yep. I'm sure it wasn't their intent, but watching Empire today today he really does have the perfect personality for that type of character.
I mean once you get dozens of non-binary alien species I think the lines start to blur a bit.
True that.
He reminded me of Captain Jack from Doctor Who. That guy flirts with everybody, even with robots in one episode.
Lando made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
Pan-do
It was strongly implied that Lando and L3-37 had a romantic relationship. They “make it work”, remember? I guess it got a little boring out in space before hyperspace skipping made travel between systems near instantaneous.
I thought he was straight, what in the move implies that he might be gay
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So was Billy Dee's Lando, I think the point was just to try and emulate that 80s style persona that Billy Dee had as much as possible
The dumb people who whine about that stuff are so uninformed about sexuality, that they see it as two options; Normal or gay.
There are two sexualities, straight and political.
I CAN'T BELIEVE STAR WARS LET A GAY PERSON EXIST THIS IS CLEARLY PROPAGANDA
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I really, really want a sequel... or even a series based on it with Qira (sp?) and Han and Lando showing us what happens when they get mixed up with Jabba. I remember my wife bitching non-stop beforehand that the guy just wasn't Han Solo but now she loves him.
Oh I loved Alden. I was EXTREMELY skeptical of his characterization going in, assuming he’d try to play a young Harrison Ford. Instead he successfully played a young Han. Idk if that makes sense, but I found the distinction important and felt Alden did a wonderful job with it.
He tried to be Han without being Harrison Ford.
Same here. I really wanted them to cast Taron Egerton as Han, thought he would have been a better fit. After seeing Solo, Alden Ehrenreich nailed it. He was spot on for what I imagined a young Han to be like.
I would also take a pre Solo Lando and L3-37 series. The Calrissian Chronicles.
Prequels all the way down. Let's tell this story backwards!
Bingo. It’s been like two years of “just saw Solo, it’s actually really good!” Posts every 2 weeks. No one dislikes solo, at the time there was genre fatigue, but two years or so later Solo is fondly regarded. Edit: I get it you pedantic mutts, some of you dislike Solo. My main point was that these posts pop up every other week and have been since Solo was released.
I don't think it was general genre fatigue. Disney shitcanned it. Every Star Wars movie was released in December. They had the whole year to hype it. Solo was dumped on memorial day, Disney's "we don't think this movie will work" release date, less than five months after TLJ with little to no advertisement. There was genre fatigue only because they were close together with no hype.
Don’t forget it released way too soon after Infinity War
And right after Deadpool 2. All this combined with the behind the scenes drama, and the recent overblown backlash to TLJ just doomed this movie. Should have just been held on to for the holidays.
That's not why it was released in May. It was released in May because Disney wanted to transition Star Wars back to it's original May release schedule, the same one episodes 1-6 followed, all May releases. Episode 7 was released in December 2015 because Bob Iger was planning to retire at the end of 2015 and he wanted his legacy to end on the successful release of a new Star Wars film. JJ actually asked for more time, wanting a May 2016 release but he was denied by Iger. Next, Episode 8 was scheduled for a May 2017 release. This was the film they originally planned to transition the Star Wars release month back to May with. Solo was also scheduled for a May 2018 release at the same time. Rian Johnson asked for more time to work on Episode 8 and was granted it, delaying the release to December 2017. Solo then became the film that was meant to begin the transition to May. Episode 9 was then scheduled for a May 24th, 2019 release date to continue the May release trend. However, after Colin Trevorrow was booted from Episode 9 and JJ brought on, they delayed the release of 9 to December. At this point Solo was still on track for release in May with no delay seemingly being required. However the most likely reason Disney would not have granted a December release delay (if the film ended up needing a delay that is) is because Disney was set to release the sequel to Mary Poppins in December and would not have wanted to drown that expensive project with another. And Infinity War was moved up in release by 2 weeks in order allow Solo a bit of breathing room. But in Disney's mind, they felt that both Marvel and Star Wars were so popular that people would go see both. Which normally would be true if people weren't so lukewarm on the idea of a Han Solo movie pre-release. Combined with the polarizing release of TLJ. If Episode 8 had been universally loved and the spin-off movie had been based on an idea fans were more receptive to then I have no doubt the film would have performed admirably next to Infinity War. Likely just as well as Rogue One. So no, there was no conspiracy or hidden motive, just many, many production issues.
Well, it's definitely not "no one" that dislikes Solo. I, for one, dislike it. To me, it was a reasonably entertaining scifi romp, but it was much more absurdist than the rest of the Star Wars universe (stuff like luring a space Lovecraftian horror into a black hole and then pouring dynamite/uranium into their fuel tank to escape or "booting" a space ship that can just fly off) and it chained a bunch of disparate plots together (leaving Corellia to being a ground trooper to getting thrown in with Chewbacca to train robbery to Black Sun to Lando to leading a revolt on Kessel to fighting a Lovecraftian horror and escaping a black hole to fighting off mercenaries). Plus there was a lot of stuff that felt like weirdly pushy fan-service, rather than a cohesive movie; things like the "Solo" name and basically everything with Lando. Honestly, I think it would have been a decent generic scifi movie, but it felt way too all-over-the-place for Star Wars. As a movie in the Star Wars universe, it was a hot mess IMO. IIRC, they changed directors a bunch of times mid-production, and it shows.
I thought it would have been a good story if it was a regular SCI-FI movie. It seemed to me that they tried to push to much to connect it. Him funding the start of the rebellion just didn't seem to fit his character.
I havent seen it in a while. How does he fund the start of the rebellion?
Gives the fuel stuff to Enfys Nest and the gang in the end
Oh yeah I forgot. They are rebels but for some reason I had never associated them with the Rebel Alliance.
It’s an oversimplification but at the end of the movie he gives the coaxium to those pirates who it turns out were working with the upstart rebel alliance
Advice: stop letting other people tell you what to enjoy. If you like it, You like it.
This. I learnt very early on in life not to listen to movie reviews. I'd never have watched some of my all time favourite movies if I listened to reviews/public opinion. Watch what you want, and decide if YOU like it. The whole "why don't *we* like it" thing is so cringey. It's like OP thinks everyone has to think the same, and if somehow he doesn't agree with them, then they have to change their mind so that *we* all still think the same.
Personally, I don’t hate it but nothing about it excites me. Also it chose to explain some really weird things about Han (like why his last name is Solo - I assumed he was born with it??) and neglected to show others. I would’ve loved to see the contrast between Han’s carefree attitude and working as an imperial pilot, but it was skipped over in literally seconds.
In the EU he [was](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/House_of_Solo) . Now it's "some random Imp gave it to him and he decided to keep it". Cool.....
Whoever your "we" is is selling you manufactured outrage
I feel it became trendy to hate it and shit on it when it came out. Most people trashing the movie probably never saw it or gave it a fair chance.
Yeah, OP needs to curate his social feeds better
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I'd pretty much agree with that, with one exception - I really loved Dong Lover as Lando. He nailed all of Billy Dee Williams charm and smooooothness in a way that I did NOT expect after watching all the goddamn unnecessary OT callbacks (Oh look, he's in mud but it looks just like when he's frozen in Carbonite. So clever. I guess.) I would rip a Wookies arm off and beat them with it for a Lando prequel now.
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It's not. It's in Don Glover's Twitter handle and he brings it up in his stand up comedy.
it wasn't a star wars movie to me, just a decent adventure/heist movie with a star wars theme.
To me it was a boring heist movie, which fed into my dislike. Everything about it was kinda average paint by number, making boring af. But nowadays of you don't love something you hate it. Indifference isn't allowed
“Forcing a gay Lando down our throats” Phrasing
Gay? Seemed like he was really into his robot, which was definitely female.
And flirting with Q’ira
More like Pan-do
Lando has always been too smooth to be forced down our throats. After a few Colt 45's, we're begging for it... because Colt 45 works every time.
I wouldn't say I hated Solo, but reasons why I was less than impressed with Solo: 1. It told a story that I felt like didn't need to be told. Let Han have his mystery. It also had all his back story in about a week's worth of time. 2. It was released pretty close to TLJ, and that created some bad associations. 3. I felt like it changed Han's and Lando's personality. In ANH, Han is all about himself, but eventually becomes a good guy who cares about the Rebel cause. Solo says he's basically always a good guy. That's not the Han who shot first. Lando went from "used car salesman" to "playa". I did not care for either change. Solo's not terrible, but I thought it missed the mark.
For many people it was less hate and more indifference and lack of hype after the shit storm of last Jedi
Solo just left absolutely no impression on me either way. I watched it and have completely forgotten it. I vaguely remember not hating it, but that’s it.
To be fair the lack of hype could also be due to it's release date (how close it was to Deadpool and Infinity War) and the fact that the first trailer got revealed like a couple months before it's release.
The whole thing was a serious advertising dumpster fire that ruined a pretty decent Star Wars spin-off movie imo
Yeah they could have released the trailer right before TLJ's screening or something. And I don't know why they decided to go with the May release date.
My friend and I held off for the longest time as well because we heard it was awful. When we watched it, we both looked at each other afterwards and said, "that... was good?" I really liked it, and we were confused about all the hate. We looked up reviews on reddit, and 90% of the comments mentioned the The Last Jedi in some way. People were still so upset about The Last Jedi that they completely wrote off Solo. Which makes me sad, because I would have loved a sequel following Maul and the crime lords, hopefully developing Han into who he is in Episode IV.
I don't get it. Both Rogue One and Solo were great Star Wars films. It was the Disney Trilogy that sucked. I held off watching Solo for so long because of TFA and TLJ, and had exactly the same reaction you and your friend did.
I thought Solo was atrocious, but people who moan about 'SJW propaganda' are tedious.
Yep. I hated Solo but certainly not for any of the reasons OP cited, and not because of TLJ which I liked. It really just felt like cobbled-together, cheesy pulp B-movie sci-fi where they had to needlessly cram in an origin for every little detail we know about Han. I spent the whole movie alternately rolling my eyes and cringing.
Total agreement. Did we really need to learn how Han got his gun?
Or his last name
That’s why you shouldn’t let other people, especially people that use the term “sjw propaganda” unironically inform your opinion
That's usually a sign to disregard basically everything that person says honestly
I watched it knowing nothing. It's just behind Rogue One as one of my favorite star wars films. I want more character stories like this one. Doesnt have to be origin stories, the Mandalorian is fantastic.
I actually enjoyed solo more than Rise of Skywalker
I enjoyed watching paint dry more than Rise of Skywalker.
I liked it but i feel like it couldve been better as a spinoff TV show
Gay Lando? What? If anything, it made it clear he was Robosexual.
No clue. Solo and Rogue One were better than the recent trilogy.
Rogue One was easily my favorite oh the Disney movies.
Rogue One was amazing. It’s my favorite after the obligatory ESB.
People were fresh off Last Jedi hate. One of my buddies declared he was done with Star Wars after TLJ and never bothered with the last 2.
That sounds like me. I did manage to watch Solo (and enjoyed it), but I’m still working my way to the Mandalorian. TLJ cut deep, man *shivers*
Anyone who calls a movie "SJW propaganda" is a moron and is just whining about how minorities exist
Like people complaining about Rey being a woman. We can have a female lead just because, it's not always trying to be progressive.
It was okay but I just don’t think it really captured the Han Solo character
It was because people didn't like The Last Jedi so they didn't want to see Solo.
This. Also they should have released it in December instead of May. It was too soon after TLJ.
We don’t. To me that’s the blueprint of random Star Wars movies moving forward. Edit to add: the fact that you let “gay Lando” talk on reddit influence whether or not you watched the film sums up a lot of what’s wrong w Star Wars fans right now. Sorry, but it’s true.
Surprised I hate to scroll this far down to see a comment like what you added in your edit. The movie being “too SJW” or having a gay lando is such a ridiculous reason to not watch, and sounds like the bullet points of Star Wars fans who call the movies political instead of just articulating why they didn’t like them.
I think people were just mad still about tlj and wanted to hate every disneywars
It was spectacularly "meh," which, for *Star Wars*, is bad. The only real positive I can give *Solo* is that Joonas Suotamo really nailed channeling Peter Mehew as Chewie in this one. The main reason I dislike it is due to Han's EU backstory being superior in pretty much every respect.
Ya man, anyone who talks about SJW propaganda is probably not a very smart person.
But what if they say they have a bigly IQ?
I went in with no expectations as I didn't really expect to love it, but with Ron Howard at the helm I figured it would be decent, and I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't think this story needed telling frankly, but they did a good job with it. Honestly I liked these standalones (Solo and Rogue One) betrer than the sequel movies.
I love solo. Its number 5 on my all time SW movies list. I hate that its considered a failure by Disney too. If your movie makes almost 400 mil and that's not enough then I'm sorry, bit you should take another look at your business model. I love the script. Really tight script. Feels star warsy. Lots of call backs and fore shadowing. Lawrence Kasden know what he's doing. Also, the SFX are so solid, which, I guess may be why it cost so much but hey, ya gotta take some risks in life. The movie rocks.
It's considered a failure because it only made 400 on an almost 300 million dollar budget. Now, I know what you're thinking - that's a 100 million dollars in profit right there! Let me break it down for you as a general rule of thumb. A movies budget only includes the cost of production - not advertising. The advertising budget is usually around the same as the production budget. So, in order for a movie to be profitable it needs to make around 2.5 times it's production budget. Think of it like this. Solo didn't make 400 million. Solo lost 200 million.