The Star Wars Thread

[Skummy]

Just now, Adam es Tranquilo said:

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I agree with that, I've no interest in a Boba Fett film for the same reasons. I hadn't thought much about Han and Fett's implied relationship so I suppose that would add some fuel for the two of them to appear together.

Perhaps, somehow, they'll tie individual Solo, Fett and Obi Wan films together instead of having a series of Solo-specific ones? Might involve too much shoehorning for my liking but it's one way of going.

On Maul and the Rule of Two, I only have a passing knowledge of the events of Clone Wars, but is Mail still supposed to be a Sith entity or just his own thing post-Phantom Menace? I've only seen him referred to as "Maul" with this film at any rate.

 

 

My reply is above your quote for some reason.

Spoiler

True, he seems to have dropped the "Maul" - I'm not au fait with the Clone Wars, I had to consult a superfan friend (who also happens to be a big Darth Maul fan) as to how it all fit together. If he's dropped the Darth, and just become a generic villain, then that makes sense, I suppose? Though there's not much frame of reference for someone dropping the Sith Lord identity while remaining a baddy, so who knows?

I believe Maul dies in Star Wars Rebels, which is supposed to be set four years before A New Hope - so we have to assume that the events of Solo are all taking place post-Clone Wars (which falls between Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith), and pre-Rebels.

Someone tried to work out where it fits in the timeline - A New Hope is year 0BY, Revenge Of The Sith is 19BY, so Solo has to fall somewhere in-between. Apparently by cross-referencing with canon novels and the spin-off series, it's been worked out that Solo takes place between 10 and 13BY, but most likely 12BY.

So, for context, at the time of Solo, Luke and Leia are seven years old at the time of the events of Solo. If the film ends with Han and Chewie on their way to work for Jabba, that means that they spent 12 years working for Jabba The Hutt prior to A New Hope.

 

I think the movies are going to have to tie together - Solo hasn't performed too well, comparatively speaking, at the box office, and I think that'll put them off making the movies too standalone. They also must be looking at Marvel and recognising the success they've had from dropping references and easter eggs to connect all of their films. They need to foster the sense that you can't afford to miss any of the movies, even when it's a story like Solo where the ending is never in doubt.

It's a shame because it means repeating the mistakes of the prequels - to me, the charm of the original trilogy was in the illusion of the size of the universe; everything felt huge and impossibly old (the Empire felt monolithic, like it must have been in place for centuries, not just a matter of 20-25 years, the Force and the Jedi order felt like a forgotten legend, not something that was still predominant less than 20 years earlier, and so on). I've said for years that the most perfect scene in Star Wars is the Mos Eisley cantina, because every character feels like they have their own story, like there's a whole galaxy of other stories going on out there, you just happen to only be following one of them, and getting these little tantalising windows into what else is happening.
The prequels just contrive to make that universe smaller - Chewbacca and Yoda are mates, Darth Vader built C3PO, Obi-Wan hung out with R2D2, The Emperor knocked about with Obi-Wan and Yoda, all the Stormtroopers are clones of Boba Fett's dad, and so on - and I think Star Wars, as a whole, loses out immeasurably from that. Tying all the new "Star Wars Stories" movies together just risks repeating that mistake.

It's a shame, because Rogue One was great and filled me with a lot of hope - similar to how some Marvel movies can be of a slightly different genre to just a standard superhero flick (Winter Soldier basically being a spy movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy being a space opera romp, etc.), Rogue One could afford to be a war movie rather than a typical Star Wars adventure, by virtue of being separate from the main franchise. That it did so without relying too heavily on established characters (for the most part) only added to that. The Star Wars universe is big enough, and interesting enough, to tell so many different stories outside of the trials and tribulations of the Skywalker family, and to do so in a thousand different ways.

I don't want an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie to be an action-adventure filling in the blanks of what he got up to in-between Episode III and IV by giving him a bunch of new exciting adventures, because I think that does a disservice to the character of Obi-Wan as we meet him in A New Hope. I want to see a slow burning story of Obi-Wan alone on Tattooine, like a mad Jedi Gran Torino. I want to see Obi-Wan eking out a meagre living, defending himself against Sand People without betraying his Jedi identity.

 

Boba Fett, to me, is the worst victim of that conscious shrinking of the universe (aside from the baffling concept of C3PO's camp busybody personality having been programmed by Darth Vader, and Obi-Wan just being a total dick when he says he doesn't remember owning any droids) - his strength as a character came from the fact that we knew nothing about him. We knew he was the most feared of the bounty hunters, bore a grudge against Han Solo, was dangerous enough to earn Darth Vader's respect - and that's about it. From the weathered, battered state of his armour and spaceship, we could surmise that he'd been around a while. From the music that accompanied him, and the way he carried himself, we could draw associations with old Western outlaws. Everything beyond that was a blank slate. Even the little bits of canon autobiographical information were just tantalising - he was an elite Mandalorian guard; well, shit, that sounds bad-ass, but I don't even know what a Mandalorian is. It could mean anything. The absolute last thing the prequels should have shown us was Boba Fett as a child. His whole character was built on mystery and intrigue - he could have been hundreds of years old, could not have been human (after all, again, what is a Mandalorian?), showing him as a kid kills all of that. If nothing else, it means he's at most only at most mid-30s when he appears in Empire Strikes Back, so the idea of him as this bounty hunter of renown doesn't feel quite as impressive.

 

 

[apsham]

James Mangold is directing a Boba Fett movie.

[Maxx]

It will be interesting to see if they do end up trying another Solo movie considering this one's poor performance.  I think they may give it a shot because they've got money to burn and one would assume they won't have to double the budget of a sequel by firing the directors and reshooting the entire thing again.

[livid]

They will because I have a hard time believing it still won't make a bunch of money overseas. 

Saw it last night. It was fine but nothing particularly great about it other than Donald Glover's charisma. 

[apsham]

Solo was awesome, loved it.

[GoGo Yubari]

Honestly I thought Donald Glover was fine but not really a revelation. The best stuff in the movie for me was the early parts. I loved some of the weird, really Henson-y alien concepts and I feel like the pacing is pretty fast and enjoyable. Once it settles down into the main plot I went from "oh wow, I'm actually really loving Solo" to "oh yeah this movie's decent but not a revelation."

Spoiler

I get that the Kasdans' point by shoehorning in "actually the pirates are secretly freedom fighters so there are Moral Stakes involved" is that everything, no matter how small it may seem, contributes to the balance between light and dark (which they explicitly said in relation to Maul being Dryden and Qi'ra's boss), which is I guess a refutation of Han's jaded attitude later in life, but I honestly didn't want or need that and it felt tonally jarring.

 

[Maxx]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that instead of a Solo movie, we should have gotten a Poe Dameron movie, or something that's an offshoot of the new story they are telling.  There's a ton of shit they introduced in TFA that they still have barely explored.  They should be fleshing out that universe, instead of adding footnotes to a story that's already concluded.  The new films are introducing us to a bunch of new characters we'll never actually see again, because they have to get killed off, or we know that's their eventual fate.  How does that help push the franchise forward?

Its entirely the opposite of what Marvel is doing, where their films shoot off in a bunch of different directions, then converge for an event, and then shoot off again.  And its in those offshoots that they find new franchises to keep the MCU going in different directions.   Yeah, Solo sets up for a sequel, maybe you could have milked a trilogy out of it, but the young Han Solo story has a very clearly defined end point that you won't get going past.

[apsham]

I figure that wouldn't happen until the trilogy is closed out, just because something from 'X' characters past might become a revelation in the third movie, and they don't really want to juggle anything except this setup trilogy from the start.

I don't think there's anything wrong with hitting up things like Solo, not only because there can be more Solo movies - but because they are easy setups for other movies that explore the universe.

[Your Mom]

I know this isn't a new thing but Han was actually the least interesting character in Solo. The rest at least had something to them. He was just boring and didn't remind me anything of the Han in any of the other movies. I suppose that was the point though? Like the events of this movie made him that way. I don't know. It wasn't great and was probably my least favorite Star Wars movie that wasn't one of the prequels.

Even then most Star Wars is still good to me. I'll gladly take one a year

[Gabriel]

I feel like Disney made a mistake by not just rolling with the idea of a new Star Wars film every Christmas season. They threw Solo to the wolves, putting it out around Deadpool, Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp and all of the other big movies we've had this year. They couldn't have seriously expected a performance much better than this, right? I mean, they've got to be smarter than that.

I haven't seen Solo yet, but I keep hearing that it's a paint-by-numbers Star Wars flick, minus the Jedi, and that just won't work to draw people in when they have so many other, more intriguing options. Rogue One was a perfect standalone film, and I was hoping they would continue that trend with Solo, but it sounds like they missed the ball.

I would probably have made an effort to go see it if it came out at Xmas time, but I haven't had the chance to go see DP2, Avengers or A Quiet Place yet, and all three of those seem like way better options than a half-assed Han Solo movie.

[apsham]

Rogue One on reflection was so meh for me in the end, and a movie without Jedis that has a better tone than Rogue One was pretty much exactly what I was looking for out of this.

[Your Mom]

42 minutes ago, Pentashám Jr. said:

Rogue One on reflection was so meh for me in the end, and a movie without Jedis that has a better tone than Rogue One was pretty much exactly what I was looking for out of this.

I think I got a little hung up with this having pre existing characters in it. Because it was pretty much the exact movie I was hoping for when Rogue One came out. It was a fun caper with action and good comedy. But the fact that this guy was supposed to be Han Solo really stuck with me and not in a good way

[Lint]

On 01/06/2018 at 12:31, Maxx said:

The more I think about it, the more I realize that instead of a Solo movie, we should have gotten a Poe Dameron movie, or something that's an offshoot of the new story they are telling.  There's a ton of shit they introduced in TFA that they still have barely explored.  They should be fleshing out that universe, instead of adding footnotes to a story that's already concluded.  The new films are introducing us to a bunch of new characters we'll never actually see again, because they have to get killed off, or we know that's their eventual fate.  How does that help push the franchise forward?

Its entirely the opposite of what Marvel is doing, where their films shoot off in a bunch of different directions, then converge for an event, and then shoot off again.  And its in those offshoots that they find new franchises to keep the MCU going in different directions.   Yeah, Solo sets up for a sequel, maybe you could have milked a trilogy out of it, but the young Han Solo story has a very clearly defined end point that you won't get going past.

Thats how I feel and why I won't go see any of these Star Wars spinoff movies.  Everything in this "galaxy far far away" seems to revolve around these 12 or so people we know.  Tell me a story that doesn't somehow manage to connect to Leia, or Luke, or Han

[Skummy]

6 hours ago, The Chiksrara Special said:

 But the fact that this guy was supposed to be Han Solo really stuck with me and not in a good way

I think this is part of the problem I had with it - I rewatched A New Hope recently, and I just don't recognise that Han Solo in the new movie. Han Solo in A New Hope is cantankerous, self-centred and world weary, and through the original trilogy we see him grow into a hero. But at no point in Solo do I feel like the character I'm watching could ever grow into Han Solo as we first meet him - he's too much a smug hero already, whereas in A New Hope, Han is a killer, doing business with bounty hunters and crime lords, who thinks nothing of fleecing a naïve farm boy and an old man out of their money. That in Solo we see him as a young bright-eyed hopeful hero makes it seem like A New Hope was just a bad patch for Han, and that by the time he's being all heroic in Return Of The Jedi he's just back to normal, and that completely undermines the growth of his character.

What I wanted from this film was a look deeper into my favourite bits of Star Wars - and that's Mos Eisley, Jabba's palace, bounty hunters, all the horrible seedy underbelly. That's where the most interesting characters are, and where all the stories must be.

[SeanDMan]

23 minutes ago, Skummy said:

I think this is part of the problem I had with it - I rewatched A New Hope recently, and I just don't recognise that Han Solo in the new movie. Han Solo in A New Hope is cantankerous, self-centred and world weary, and through the original trilogy we see him grow into a hero. But at no point in Solo do I feel like the character I'm watching could ever grow into Han Solo as we first meet him - he's too much a smug hero already, whereas in A New Hope, Han is a killer, doing business with bounty hunters and crime lords, who thinks nothing of fleecing a naïve farm boy and an old man out of their money. That in Solo we see him as a young bright-eyed hopeful hero makes it seem like A New Hope was just a bad patch for Han, and that by the time he's being all heroic in Return Of The Jedi he's just back to normal, and that completely undermines the growth of his character.

What I wanted from this film was a look deeper into my favourite bits of Star Wars - and that's Mos Eisley, Jabba's palace, bounty hunters, all the horrible seedy underbelly. That's where the most interesting characters are, and where all the stories must be.

We need a Ponda Baba origin story.

[Skummy]

Just give me a "Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina" anthology series and I'll be happy.

[Naitch]

I just want a film starring Temeura Morrison. Post-Sarlacc Boba Fett or aging clonetrooper/s, I'm not fussy.

[CobraKaiEnTai]

Porkins movie or nothing.

[Josh]

Nothing.

[apsham]

Great. I had to look up Porkins on Wookiepedia to see what extended universe stuff there was on him.

Quote

Over three decades later, Porkins was remembered through the Porkins Belly Run, a Resistance flight maneuver named in his honor.