Solo: A Star Wars Story - please use spoiler tags

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Mr Morden**

Manchu wrote:
Darth Vader is probably bored and depressed most of the time. In R1, we see that he lives in a castle on the planet where he murdered his wife and got owned by his former BFF. At home, he's just a quadriplegic hanging out in his bacta bathtub while the Emperor's red-robed spies babysit him. Not much fun compared to being a prequels-era Jedi, somersaulting all over the place dismantling Confederacy droids.

Krennic, let's face it, is not great company. Nonetheless, Vader seems eager to chat and the highlight of that audience is our Dark Lord cracking a corny joke. Similarly, the shot of the Devastator arriving over Scarif, where the ship abruptly rushes up to dominate the screen, communicates Vader's hankering for fun, which is confirmed when he boards Profundity alone.

I really wonder whether Edwards was influenced by the scene in ESB where Lando serves up his erstwhile friends to Vader in one of Cloud City's formal dining rooms. Vader clearly set that up and even had a dry joke prepared: "We would be honored if you would join us." How long was he saving that one? (And was Boba Fett wincing behind his helmet?) That same dramatic flair is present when Vader finds himself in a darkened hallway with a dozen terrified Rebel troopers. You know there is a moment there when he thinks to himself, this is gonna be so badass when I ignite my lightsaber. Some people describe the ensuing massacre as Vader being enraged. But he's clearly having a grand time, slicing and dicing, even if he has less mobility than in the good old days.

That shot of Vader watching the Tantive IV escape is definitely obligatory and Edwards totally missed the opportunity to have Vader emote. By the time he catches up to the blockade runner, Vader lets his squad handle the boarding action. He must be feeling a little pouty but I think he's having fun again by the time he's murdering Captain Antilles. I mean, he hardly let's the dude answer his questions. He's just so caught up in doing villain stuff.

Sadly, most of the rest of ANH is "back to the office" type drudgery for Big V: miserable staff meetings and hovering around awkwardly. He gets to torture Leia and kill Obi-Wan though so pretty good. But that same sense of "oh boy fun time" glee is present in his hustle to the fighter bay to go out in space and shoot some scum in a barrel. Of course, if you really want to see Vader having fun - probably the most fun of his whole life - that's where ESB comes in.

Brilliant post

**Tannhauser42**

I'm reminded of a scene in one of the old books, can't remember which one, and they're not canon anymore anyway. Vader was in his chamber, and worked himself into a rage where he could strengthen himself with the Force to the point he could breathe on his own. It made him feel alive, but it didn't last. But he told himself that the next time would last a little longer, and a little longer the next,

**ZergSmasher**

Tannhauser42 wrote:
I'm reminded of a scene in one of the old books, can't remember which one, and they're not canon anymore anyway. Vader was in his chamber, and worked himself into a rage where he could strengthen himself with the Force to the point he could breathe on his own. It made him feel alive, but it didn't last. But he told himself that the next time would last a little longer, and a little longer the next,

I think that was in Shadows of the Empire. Great book, and the thing with Vader breathing for a few seconds without needing the suit was awesome!

**Manchu**

Wasn't that whole chamber thing also brought up in the ESB novelization? I think the idea was, he was practicing breathing with having the chamber open (which is why Veers gets a peek of his bare head).

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Seems to be getting decent early comments.

Common thread is ‘shaky start, but ends really well’

**Tannhauser42**

Oddly enough, I'm just not really excited about the idea of a " young Han Solo" film. A "young Lando" film sounds cool, though. And the trailers suggest it's a heist film, so a heist film that's set in Star Wars and just happens to have a young Solo could still be good.

**Manchu**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems to be getting decent early comments.

TLJ came into theaters with around 97% fresh rating. I have no doubt Disney will ensure similar results here.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Or people enjoyed the film.

But whatever.

**Yodhrin**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems to be getting decent early comments.

Common thread is ‘shaky start, but ends really well’

Also there's apparently some huge secret thing in there that will blow everyone's mind. Wasn't there a rumour going about a while back that they made Lando bi? I can see some folk who hadn't heard that getting a bit over-excited by it if it turned out to be the case.

**Manchu**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Or people enjoyed the film.

There is also a metric measuring that ... but, as you say, whatever ...

Yodhrin wrote:
I can see some folk who hadn't heard that getting a bit over-excited by it if it turned out to be the case.

I can't imagine the plot or themes turn on such a reveal. Praising the overall film for something tangential seems unlikely (for worthwhile reviews, anyway).

**gorgon**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Or people enjoyed the film.

But whatever.

Honestly, if the consensus is only good-not-great, that's a giant win for Disney considering how troubled the production was.

It's not very often that you fire directors a couple weeks away from completing principal photography, then hire a new director to reshoot most of the film using the same script.

**Manchu**

gorgon wrote:
good-not-great

That seems to be the target, for both Marvel and LucasFilm. Marvel consistently hits it.

**BobtheInquisitor**

At least it will develop the franchise...

**reds8n**

where Lando serves up his erstwhile friends to Vader in one of Cloud City's formal dining rooms. Vader clearly set that up and even had a dry joke prepared: "We would be honored if you would join us."

What I like best about that scene is that Lando states that Vader and Co. arrived right before Han and Co., yet Vader still insisted or found time to ensure the table was fully laid out for dinner.

Touch of class that.

**Kilkrazy**

I think the basic fact is that Star Wars isn't one of the foundational pillars of western literary civilisation like Aeschylus, Shakespeare or Moliere, it's just a fun SF series.

Don't take it too seriously!

**Yodhrin**

Kilkrazy wrote:
I think the basic fact is that Star Wars isn't one of the foundational pillars of western literary civilisation like Aeschylus, Shakespeare or Moliere, it's just a fun SF series.

Don't take it too seriously!

And yet a huge majority of people will never had read any of those things, but will have seen Star Wars. Not being ponderous "literature" doesn't mean something is complete fluff undeserving of emotion or analysis.

**Thargrim**

Well I kind of feel relieved that it's more or less a guarantee I will at least like this one more than TLJ. Cause i'm not sure things can get much worse than that movie. I trust RH more than RJ anyways. I'll probably wait until the initial hype dies off and I can see it in a half empty theater, as opposed to being crammed in with a full load of people.

**Vulcan**

Yodhrin wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems to be getting decent early comments.

Common thread is ‘shaky start, but ends really well’

Also there's apparently some huge secret thing in there that will blow everyone's mind. Wasn't there a rumour going about a while back that they made Lando bi? I can see some folk who hadn't heard that getting a bit over-excited by it if it turned out to be the case.

In the previews, where Lando says "Everything you've heard about me... is true.", in the background his robot says "Are you done flirting yet?" Anyone with common sense would assume the robot was messing with Lando. Certain... elements.... took it literally and assumed that Lando was, indeed, flirting with Han, and there'd be a gay romance in the movie.

Given the heavy-handed political messaging in TLJ, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if they actually did it.

**Mr Morden**

Manchu wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems to be getting decent early comments.
TLJ came into theaters with around 97% fresh rating. I have no doubt Disney will ensure similar results here.

Money and power talks....no other explanation for those reviews

**Lance845**

Or people liked it. Everyone i actually know is i. That camp. Its honestly only this forum where i have seen the negativity.

Calling it worse than phantom menace or attack of the clones is insanity.

**Formosa**

Lance845 wrote:
Or people liked it. Everyone i actually know is i. That camp. Its honestly only this forum where i have seen the negativity.

Calling it worse than phantom menace or attack of the clones is insanity.

I find that very very hard to believe, , how could you not have seen any of the articles, you tube videos, reviews, fan reviews etc. That didn’t like it??

**Lance845**

Formosa wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
Or people liked it. Everyone i actually know is i. That camp. Its honestly only this forum where i have seen the negativity.

Calling it worse than phantom menace or attack of the clones is insanity.

I find that very very hard to believe, , how could you not have seen any of the articles, you tube videos, reviews, fan reviews etc. That didn’t like it??

I listen to the weekly planet podcast, ive been watching this recently, and i talk to my friends. My moviepass tells me rotten tomatoes ratings. Why would i care what the crazy sw fanatics think about the movies that will never be what they want it to be? Youtube isnt going to have videos posted by people with mild middling or even reasonable opinions. Its going to extremists who are raving positive or negative which is all nonsense.

**Mr Morden**

Lance845 wrote:
Formosa wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
Or people liked it. Everyone i actually know is i. That camp. Its honestly only this forum where i have seen the negativity.

Calling it worse than phantom menace or attack of the clones is insanity.

I find that very very hard to believe, , how could you not have seen any of the articles, you tube videos, reviews, fan reviews etc. That didn’t like it??

I listen to the weekly planet podcast, ive been watching this recently, and i talk to my friends. My moviepass tells me rotten tomatoes ratings. Why would i care what the crazy sw fanatics think about the movies that will never be what they want it to be? Youtube isnt going to have videos posted by people with mild middling or even reasonable opinions. Its going to extremists who are raving positive or negative which is all nonsense.

Not a fanatic nor where all the people I went to see it with - we all thought it was turgid, awful rubbish - and def the worst film I have seen for years,

Many of us liked TFA - this pile of crap was a waste of time and money. It was a on a par with Phantom menace in terms of awfulness - when you look at elements like the pathetic plot, pointless boring extended Chase after the Ship of Fools, the trip to casino World and pretty much every character (or lack of them) it has put me off bothering to watch SW films at the cinema

I will likely watch Solo on Sky as the trailer seems ok, they might even heve bothered to use something other than crayon to write the plot this time and not just rely on buying off the critics.

**Elemental**

Lance845 wrote:
Or people liked it. Everyone i actually know is i. That camp. Its honestly only this forum where i have seen the negativity.

Calling it worse than phantom menace or attack of the clones is insanity.

In my circle of "me and people I talked to about the movie", the consensus was generally "not great, but good".

But people who find something extremely okay or unbelievably decent tend not to be vocal, and then discussion passes over to those with an axe to grind, who reaffirm to each other how right they are.

**Lance845**

See, I was super happy they killed Snoak without an explanation of who he was, and that Rey's parents were nobody.

I felt like SW has been so bogged down in this one families story. It's all blood lines and destiny and blah blah. This movie was a breath of fresh air. A clean break. The first step on a new path that allows them to move forward and tell new stories.

Who is Snoak? Doesn't matter hes dead. Who were Rey's parents? Drunks. Nobodys. Doesn't matter, their dead. The last shot of the film shows a little kid who is also nobody pull the broom into his hand with the force, hold it like a lightsaber and look off into an expanse of stars. The heroes can be anybody. They don't have to come from anywhere. And there is an entire galaxy of places it can go.

If SW ended right there with the boundless potential before it it would be a good ending. If they take this clean break and run with it to give us things that are new than good. Thats what I want.

My circle all felt more or less the same.

**Mr Morden**

Lance845 wrote:
See, I was super happy they killed Snoak without an explanation of who he was, and that Rey's parents were nobody.

I felt like SW has been so bogged down in this one families story. It's all blood lines and destiny and blah blah. This movie was a breath of fresh air. A clean break. The first step on a new path that allows them to move forward and tell new stories.

Who is Snoak? Doesn't matter hes dead. Who were Rey's parents? Drunks. Nobodys. Doesn't matter, their dead. The last shot of the film shows a little kid who is also nobody pull the broom into his hand with the force, hold it like a lightsaber and look off into an expanse of stars. The heroes can be anybody. They don't have to come from anywhere. And there is an entire galaxy of places it can go.

If SW ended right there with the boundless potential before it it would be a good ending. If they take this clean break and run with it to give us things that are new than good. Thats what I want.

My circle all felt more or less the same.

No real interest in the blood lines aspect either. Snoak seemed vaguely interesting but died before he could be. I quite like Rey - she's fine, the fighter pilot is ok, the rest can burn in a fire - cardboard cut out that they were.

My issue was the fun, plot, characters and pace - or lack of any of these. Star wars for me was always just a fun action film - I had hoped they would carry on with this - but in the prequels and dismal Last Ledi I was disappointed.

On the forthcoming film - looks like it could be a fun crime caper and I notice Emilia Clarke is in which is good (although hopefully better than Terminator)

**Orlanth**

djones520 wrote:
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Why is the ship pointed? What is that nonsense extra bit that they've added to the front. Are they going to try and say that's what YT-1300 are meant to look like and that Han/Chewie modified it to remove that? Because we've seen other freighters like that in the prequels. They didn't have a pointy bit at the front.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about this:

Finding a zoomed in picture, it's called Kessel Run.

That... has me worried.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
So I found this.

It's an add-on to push barges around?

That makes sense. Enabling volume cargo is good for the profitability of a commercial vessel, yet the attachment is of less use for low volume high profit smuggling. So it makese sense how one could buy the attachment, and fit it, yet later find the cause to remove it.

**Yodhrin**

Lance845 wrote:
See, I was super happy they killed Snoak without an explanation of who he was, and that Rey's parents were nobody.

I felt like SW has been so bogged down in this one families story. It's all blood lines and destiny and blah blah. This movie was a breath of fresh air. A clean break. The first step on a new path that allows them to move forward and tell new stories.

Who is Snoak? Doesn't matter hes dead. Who were Rey's parents? Drunks. Nobodys. Doesn't matter, their dead. The last shot of the film shows a little kid who is also nobody pull the broom into his hand with the force, hold it like a lightsaber and look off into an expanse of stars. The heroes can be anybody. They don't have to come from anywhere. And there is an entire galaxy of places it can go.

If SW ended right there with the boundless potential before it it would be a good ending. If they take this clean break and run with it to give us things that are new than good. Thats what I want.

My circle all felt more or less the same.

I don't particularly disagree with the idea of moving past the bloodline stuff, having grown up immersed in the EU material the Force was never just the Skywalkers for me and so the TLJ treatment of it was kinda just - yeah, so, and? Always been that way, really. I even quite liked Old Man Luke.

The main issue is expectations. TLJ wasn't just a "saga" movie with all that entails, touted as a direct continuation of the OT, it followed directly on from TFA which was if anything too safe and nostalgic - nobody who came out of TFA, based on what they saw, would expect TLJ to be what it was, and no matter how much snobby spank critics insist otherwise being "surprised"(ie, getting very nearly completely the opposite of what you paid for based on entirely fair expectations) by a film is not a good thing. The vast majority of people walked into TLJ expecting to see a Star Wars movie in the traditional mold, and if that's also what they wanted to see and paid for then them reacting badly to that is not "negativity" or "entitlement" or even "latent misogyny", it's a perfectly reasonable position. The secondary issue was that quite a lot of TLJ is just really, really dumb while also very obviously considering itself to be extremely smart - and before you jump on that, plenty of stuff in several of the Star Wars films has also been pretty dumb, but they weren't pitching the intellectual deconstructionist "thinking being's Star Wars" angle, they were just sci-fantasy movies, and if you ask people to think about something and then insult their intelligence, then subsequently try and deflect any of the resulting criticism as motivated by bigotry using guilt by association(and this is a general remark about discussions surrounding the film, not an accusation against you specifically), reacting with indignation to their annoyance doesn't really work.

Disney sold people on a Sequel Trilogy - all the things you know and love, but with a fresh twist, and establishing a new era for them to move forward with afterwards. The key part being afterwards. Not halfway through, in the direct wake of a nostalgiafest, and in a deliberately provocative way. The vast majority of the backlash was a rod Lucasfilm made for their own back.

**Lance845**

Look, not everyone who hates tlj and fa are mysogynists. But you cannot claim that a bunch of them were not out there making derogatory comments and bashing on rey for having tits.

You are not a woman hater for disliking the movies. But criticising the people who hate the movies because they ARE woman haters is fair. If its not you who is woman hating then they are not talking about you when they are laying into them.

**Mr Morden**

Yodhrin wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
See, I was super happy they killed Snoak without an explanation of who he was, and that Rey's parents were nobody.

I felt like SW has been so bogged down in this one families story. It's all blood lines and destiny and blah blah. This movie was a breath of fresh air. A clean break. The first step on a new path that allows them to move forward and tell new stories.

Who is Snoak? Doesn't matter hes dead. Who were Rey's parents? Drunks. Nobodys. Doesn't matter, their dead. The last shot of the film shows a little kid who is also nobody pull the broom into his hand with the force, hold it like a lightsaber and look off into an expanse of stars. The heroes can be anybody. They don't have to come from anywhere. And there is an entire galaxy of places it can go.

If SW ended right there with the boundless potential before it it would be a good ending. If they take this clean break and run with it to give us things that are new than good. Thats what I want.

My circle all felt more or less the same.

I don't particularly disagree with the idea of moving past the bloodline stuff, having grown up immersed in the EU material the Force was never just the Skywalkers for me and so the TLJ treatment of it was kinda just - yeah, so, and? Always been that way, really. I even quite liked Old Man Luke.

The main issue is expectations. TLJ wasn't just a "saga" movie with all that entails, touted as a direct continuation of the OT, it followed directly on from TFA which was if anything too safe and nostalgic - nobody who came out of TFA, based on what they saw, would expect TLJ to be what it was, and no matter how much snobby spank critics insist otherwise being "surprised"(ie, getting very nearly completely the opposite of what you paid for based on entirely fair expectations) by a film is not a good thing. The vast majority of people walked into TLJ expecting to see a Star Wars movie in the traditional mold, and if that's also what they wanted to see and paid for then them reacting badly to that is not "negativity" or "entitlement" or even "latent misogyny", it's a perfectly reasonable position. The secondary issue was that quite a lot of TLJ is just really, really dumb while also very obviously considering itself to be extremely smart - and before you jump on that, plenty of stuff in several of the Star Wars films has also been pretty dumb, but they weren't pitching the intellectual deconstructionist "thinking being's Star Wars" angle, they were just sci-fantasy movies, and if you ask people to think about something and then insult their intelligence, then subsequently try and deflect any of the resulting criticism as motivated by bigotry using guilt by association(and this is a general remark about discussions surrounding the film, not an accusation against you specifically), reacting with indignation to their annoyance doesn't really work.

Disney sold people on a Sequel Trilogy - all the things you know and love, but with a fresh twist, and establishing a new era for them to move forward with afterwards. The key part being afterwards. Not halfway through, in the direct wake of a nostalgiafest, and in a deliberately provocative way. The vast majority of the backlash was a rod Lucasfilm made for their own back.

Excellent post