I enjoyed it. Very watchable, not as dank as Rogue One or The Last Jedi. Alden did a good job as Han, he wasn’t as wooden as I’d feared. Not a lot of character development, and I do hope there is more Lando in the future.
Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
I enjoyed it. Very watchable, not as dank as Rogue One or The Last Jedi. Alden did a good job as Han, he wasn’t as wooden as I’d feared. Not a lot of character development, and I do hope there is more Lando in the future.
Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
I'm going to watch it tomorrow.
On one hand, I'm not hyped due to the controversy surrounding the making of this film.
On the other hand, I'm hyped that this movie doesn't have as dark a disposition when compared to more recent Star Wars movies.
All up, I'm curious to see how this stands alongside Rogue One.
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
I saw it on release night and was not particularly impressed. In my estimation, there are three main issues with this film.
1. They've not been able to properly patch over the trouble production.
The film essentially has one pace, being that stuff sort of happens at a middling speed. It's not really slow enough paced to be outright boring, it's not quick enough paced to be a rush.
In terms of tone at times the film was entirely schizophrenic. For example, the Kessel scenes literally juxtapose incredibly cruel treatment of Wookie slaves with slapstick humour droid uprising scenes shot by shot.
It comes across entirely as what it is - a film worked on by two different teams with two very different creative visions that was in the end cobbled together and rushed out the door when in an ideal world either a) more time and budget would have been given to Ron Howard, or even better b) Lucasfilm would have chosen the initial creative team better.
2. There's no real journey.
This probably relates to the troubled production mentioned above, but you don't ever see Han develop as a character through this film. He begins as a streetwise snarky criminal who yearns for bigger things and trusts no one except those close to him (Q'ira, at that time). He ends the film as a streetwise snarky criminal who yearns for bigger things and trusts no one except those close to him (Chewbacca).
The one character who does seem to have an interesting journey, being Q'ira who went from a seemingly wide eyed urchin to an organised crime lietenant, has any explanation of this journey hand waved away about 4 or 5 times throughout the film. All we hear is that she's done terrible things that she doesn't want to talk about. Then she betrays Han.
3. It was not a particularly ambitious film.
I don't want to come over all RedLetterMedia, but at times it did feel like a bit of a box ticking exercise for Han and Chewie background lore. Han meets Chewie, Han gets his DL-44, Han meets Lando, Han has some kind of falling out with Lando, Han gets the Falcon, Han makes the Kessel Run, Han ends up working for gangesters.
It doesn't push any envelopes - it doesn't present Star Wars in a way that we've never seen before on the big screen like Rogue One did, and it doesn't develop the core mythology of the franchise or have a strong message like The Last Jedi did.
In that way Solo is probably most comparable to The Force Awakens, which was by comparison an incredibly slick production, the release of which was in an entirely different context to the release of Solo.
=============================================
In conclusion, I thought it was the worst of the four films that have been released since the Disney takeover.
There were a lot of things about it that I did like, but compared to the above they're all superficial bits and bobs. I enjoyed the links to the Clone Wars and Rebels television shows, as well as the wider Canon and Legends lore. I continue to enjoy the commitment to using practical effects and real props and sets in the Disney era Star Wars films. I thought the actors were all actually decent, especially Alden Ehrenreich who I thought did a very very good job.
Oh, and as for THAT cameo - despite my above comments about enjoying the link to the lore, it felt needless and gratuitous. It was to me at about the level of Jyn/Cassian running into Dr Ezavan and Ponda Baba in Jedha City in Rogue One. Not a fan.
I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
I am in love with Enfys Nest, her gorgeous red hair, and adorable freckles. Please someone tell me the actress is an adult and I am not being creepy. I want a Forces of Destiny doll of her, now!
On the lookout for MISB Headmaster Highbrow, Takara or Hasbro. I'm sure I could make you a sweet deal!
I'm very hesitant to watch this as it seems that the writers couldn't even get what was established in the script without coming close to veering off a cliff. It was originally established in canon that Han was a young imperial officer who got court-marshalled because he liberated Chewie, whom he met as a slave - hence the Wookie life debt. Yet at one point there were going to have Han join the Corellian Army and I've seen nothing to suggest that they've even kept that Han Chewie relationship dynamic in place.
The thing that annoys me with all of this is that much like the way they killed off Kyle Katarn because "grrl powa", it seems that everything which came out of LucasArts, which should have been untouchable, has just been crapped on for the sake of filmmakers who clearly don't have respect for the mythology or the fanbase and appear to simply see cheap political pandering as a means to $$$.
In fact what happened to Kyle Katarn is the reason why I have't watched a single Star Wars film since TFA.
How much longer before we all start crying out "Come back George! All is forgiven!"?
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
I must have missed that. I completely bought the cover story, which is that it was done for a clean slate after two decades of often contradictory and increasingly absurd EU content all premised on the fact that thered be no more movies.Originally Posted by bowspearer
I've done some reading through and you're right, Kyle Katarn was murdered in the streets because women deemed it so. Or hated his beard. Or something.
Jesus Christ...
I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.
Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
^^
It took me a few minutes to get the jist of what you were saying and realise I was agreeing with you
I’ve enjoyed the Legends series since Zahn’s novels but its just too painful to work new movies into the web of pre-existing media. Even Solo has references to other canon material which if you didn’t know about, would make you go, “WTF?”
If Lucasfilm disagree with me on these examples, then they've tripped over themselves in spite of themselves your own quotes here prove my point.
You cite the following:
However you've completely taken this out of context, as Lucas clearly wasn't including the early exceptions here which were not licenced from Lucasfilm. Either that or Lucas had a brain fart when he was saying this.“There are two worlds here,” explained Lucas. “There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don’t intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don’t get too involved in the parallel universe.”
- George Lucas, Flannelled One, July 2002 - as reported on the Cinescape site, from Cinescape Magazine
Star Wars Screen Entertainment, which is what pertains to Solo here, was a fact-file in the form of a screensaver, which was a Lucasfilm project, took its material straight from Lucas' own notes.
Dark Forces was developed in house and personally promoted by Lucas as a Lucasfilm project.
Shadows of the Empire was developed in house. The original vague idea came from LucasArts employee Jon Knoles (not to be confused with Johnj Knoll) who proposed they do a story between ANH and ESB. The reason it focused on Black Sun and the crime boss Prince Xizor is because it was what Lucas had directed. In fact the only thing it lacked, was an actual movie. Name one other Star Wars story that didn't have a blockbuster movie in the 1990s which got its own dedicated toyline. You can't. They don't exist. So what if Steve Perry wrote the novelisation, it was a project that Lucas actively steered and had creative control over.
If you're going to class these things as licensed, then where do you start and stop. Do you say that Alan Dean Forster's Splinters of the Mind script is merely licensed?
What's stopping someone from then turning around and saying that ESB is "Licensed" then, as Lawrence Kasdan wrote it and Irvin Kerschner directed it. Lucas merely produced it.
In fact, Lucas and Kerschner clashed over Han Solo's "I know" line.
The argument which you and the likes of SharkyMcShark are making here is flawed and fails on two grounds. Firstly, as noted, unlike actual EU stuff, none of these projects operated through Lucas Licensing as their main link to the LFL and were ultimately beholden to George's creative vision.
Secondly there's this myopic fallacy. SharkyMcShark writes:
Except where the above are concerned, it's utterly false. SWSE and Dark Forces completely predate even the SE version of the Trilogy, while Lucasfilm used Shadows of the Empire as a marketing dry run for the SE Trilogy.
As for the Holocron, taking a myopic approach to it has been a complete cluster****.
You quote:
It's all well and good to want to come up with levels of canon, but you cannot take a medium and automatically presume that it's going to fit neatly into a category based on the form of media it takes.GWL-canon or "G-canon" stood for "George Lucas canon": Marked "GWL" after George Lucas (whose middle name is "Walton")[34]. It included Episodes I–VI (the released films at that time), and any statements by George Lucas (including unpublished production notes from him or his production department that are never seen by the public). Elements originating with Lucas in the scripts, filmed deleted scenes, film novelizations, reference books, radio plays, and other primary sources were also G-canon when not in contradiction with the released films.[39] GWL-canon overrode the lower levels of canon when there was a contradiction. In the words of Leland Chee: "George's view of the universe is his view. He's not beholded to what's gone before."[34]
T-canon was Television canon: Referred to the canon level comprising the animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Many stories wound up superseding those depicted in continuity canon, and the second Clone Wars animated series and its film also overwrote Genndy Tartakovsky's 2003 Clone Wars animated micro-series.[39]
C-canon was Continuity canon: Consisting of most of the materials from the Star Wars Expanded Universe including the books, comics, and videogames bearing the label of Star Wars.[39] According to a Wired article, the creation of stories that introduced radical changes in the continuity, like The Force Unleashed video-game which introduced Darth Vader's secret apprentice, required Lucas's approval, and he spent hours explaining to the developers anything he deemed necessary for them to know.[34] Games and RPG sourcebooks were a special case; the stories and general background information were themselves fully C-canon, but the other elements such as character/item statistics and gameplay were, with few exceptions, N-canon.[citation needed]
S-canon was Secondary canon: Covering the same media as C-canon, it was immediately superseded by anything in higher levels of canon in any place where two elements contradicted each other, the non-contradicting elements were still a canon part of the Star Wars universe, this included certain elements of a few N-canon stories.[39] The Star Wars Holiday Special is an example of secondary canon.[34]
None of of the examples I listed fit into that categorisation. SWSE, for example, either slots into GWL canon as it's an in-house fact file, directly sourcing GWL Canon material (eg script notes, GL written character bios, etc). Where it is S-Canon, it is S-Canon in the same way that Splinter of the Mind is S-Canon and the only example of this I can think of prior to the buyout is Owen Lars' backstory. However it for the most part falls under the category of GWL-Canon.
Likewise, Shadows of the Empire, though lacking a blockbuster movie, absolutely falls under the category of GWL canon as it was handled the exact same way by LFL as a blockbuster movie by them would be.
Dark Forces, being in the very early days of video games and developed entirely in-house, should actually belong in T-canon rather than C-canon.
In short, your entire argument is myopically fallacious.
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
You do realise that Disney bought the IP outright, lock, stock and barrel? Lucas didn't walk out, he was bought out.
He's never coming back.
Your response here is absurd and steeped in a false equivalency fallacy. It's one thing to scrap the Zahn novels, the Anderson novels and everything else that can be summed up, with 3 words - "licenced third party".
These projects never came from the Lucasfilm Group itself and therefore all bets should rightly have been off with them.
Do you know what was a part of the Lucasfilm Group? Lucasarts.
Do you know what came out of the Lucasfilm Group? Every single Star Wars game, including the entire Dark Forces series. In fact, just like Prince Xizor and Dash Rendar, Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors should have been every bit as off limits for removing from canon as Admiral Ackbar or Mon Montha.
When were those characters created by Lucasfilm? Oh yes - Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors were created in 1995, while Prince Xizor and Dash Rendar were created in 1996.
All four were created before the Special Edition Trilogy, let alone the Prequels, so your entire argument here is utter fallacy. In fact Shadows of the Empire was a Lucasfilm Group major release at the time which was designed to be everything but a movie- with even its own dedicated toyline.
It is utterly fallacious to compare that to the likes of the Thrawn Trilogy or the Jedi Academy Trilogy.
And no, it is absolutely not the same thing to eliminate one of those characters from star wars lore, as it is to eliminate the likes of Kyp Duron (who happens to be one of my favourite eu characters btw).
Likewise, the Han/Chewie backstory I'm referring to came straight from Lucasfilm back in 1994 by way of the Star Wars Screen Entertainment PC program
The fact is that if Disney can't respect their own characters (as opposed to third party characters) and their own in house developed stories, enough to work around them, then I struggle to see why I should invest in any of their movies enough to watch them. In fact, I have little doubt that they'd slice up the OT and PT on the cutting room floor if they could get away with it.
Even then I'm simply saying I'm on the fence until I know that they've respected that original story between Han and Chewie (Han throwing away a highly promising career in the Imperial navy to protect Chewie- a wookie he'd never met before). Lose that and you lose a huge chunk of what makes the life debt and their bond so amazing to begin with. Lose that and I lose all interest in seeing it.
The difference is that we're not talking about here isn't in the same category as the Zahn Trilogy, or any other piece of what should actually be EU - things which simply licensed Star Wars Trademarks and created stories and characters with minimal, at best, involvement by the Lucasfilm Group.
What we are talking about is what the Lucasfilm group established themselves - in house. Anything which fell under that category should have been as sacrosanct as the movies.
And yet, for someone so quick to talk about art, I find it telling that you ignore the fact that if the artist doesn't respect the medium, the art piece they're creating ultimately suffers. A good story can be a myopic bit of fun froth on top, or it can be deep, profound and memorable. Your argument fails to draw that distinction or recognise which will have the longer lasting legacy.
Meanwhile, letting go of expectations has done wonders to increasingly worsen the quality of Bayformers. Also it speaks volumes about the discernment of modern cinema-goers when a film like Age of Ex-stink-tion can be rated as both the worst movie of the year and one of the highest grossing films of the year.
The fact is that it would be entirely possible to create a great film that is well crafted and respects the pre-existing world it is created in. But then why bother with that as a film making company, when audiences will still hand over their money by the truckload for something far less polished.
No matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, this isn't art for the sake of art; this is a business. If companies see that people will pay by the truckload for crap, they'll serve up crap by the truckload. Why? Because when people will pay for crap, giving them quality actually costs you money.
When you say "switch off and enjoy it" what you're actually saying is "send these companies an even louder message that they'll pay for whatever is dished up.
See here's the thing. This is all about the money. Some bean counter in Disney ran some sums and decided that there was little to no money in the older fans, or that alienating them came with absolutely no risk. Likewise, they tokenistically decided that jumping on the diversity bandwagon is going to make them a heap of money so they went there. It's not about actually empowering people; it's about looking enough like you are so that people will hand over their money to you.
Maybe the "fanboy gnashing of teeth over TLJ" wouldn't be as strong if Disney weren't constantly agitating the older fanbase - the reason the property was so attractive to buy to begin with - by saying things like the new films aren't made for them at all - which the "fanboys" reasonably take to mean "we don't care about you, we don't want you - now shut up and piss off". People can't poke the bear and then be surprised when they get mauled by it.
You do realise I was using a figure of speech?
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