Solo: A Star Wars Story

[philby]

You know, I'm amazed you can still type after having your house of glass come crashing down on top of you. Guess you didn't get the memo about people in glass houses not throwing stones.

You accuse me of looking like a fool, yet in doing so, you only show how utterly clueless about the Star Wars mythology as set up by George Lucas that you truly are.

After all, if you actually knew what you were talking about here, you'd know that my issue with Solo has nothing to do with Kyle Katarn and what was changed here wasn't originally EU.

In 1994, Lucasfilm released an online version of a Fact File. It was called "Star Wars Screen Entertainment" - where the fact files could either be played deliberately, or viewed randomly as a screen saver. In fact, from memory, as a bonus, it also contained some BTS footage and featurettes of the SE Trilogy. This was no more a game than a coffee table book on Star Wars is.

As it's been noted, the character bio section took its notes from Lucas' Episode 4 script and character notes. In other words, everything there was from the mind of Lucas.

It was there that Lucas, not Crispin as everyone keeps saying, came up with the backstory of Han Solo having a promising Imperial Navy career, only to throw it all away by turning on his superior to save Chewie from the brutality he faced as a slave. That was the entire reason the life debt existed to begin with.

And yes, when that plot gets needlessly replaced by shallow overt, virtue signalling mixed a Michael Bay set piece in the worst way possible, then yes, I am absolutely going to call it down for the dumbed-down garbage it clearly is!

After all, the same moral lessons and more were given with what Lucas originally penned and Lucas did it 100 times better, over 40 years ago!

i can type, don't worry too much

in one of your first posts of this thread you whine that kyle katarn was removed from rogue one because of grrll powaa. i know this has nothing to do with solo as a movie specifically it shows that you cannot get over new people in a franchise making new stories and not letting years of old books, games and comics hold them back.

in this movie han solo joins the academy! he decides to throw his career away! he frees chewbacca! they have taken the essence of that backstory as created by george lucas and made a new movie about it.

pablo hidalgo and leland chee are still involved. they have a wealth of material from the past which they can use or not use. yes i know shadows of the empire was a big 'multimedia event'. however at the end of the day george lucas said the movies was it and anything else star wars related was a tier below. it doesn't matter how "official" they were.

kyp durron, the sun crusher and the jedi academy novels were batshit crazy at times. as annoying as it was in a way, when disney bought star wars them saying they are starting fresh and not being beholden to the old EU is one of the best things that could have happened. what they can do is look at things that stuck with people and resonated with them and incorporate them if they think it fits, like the han and chewie backstory and thrawn in rebels.

[XMan]

Ugh god do we need another thread closed?

[bowspearer]

i can type, don't worry too much

And yet your stone throwing in a glass house still brought that house completely down on you.

in one of your first posts of this thread you whine that kyle katarn was removed from rogue one because of grrll powaa. i know this has nothing to do with solo as a movie specifically it shows that you cannot get over new people in a franchise making new stories and not letting years of old books, games and comics hold them back.

There's a term for what you've done here: cherry picking.

After all, here's the full quote, complete with what you conveniently omitted in bold.

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!"?

Wait, what's that? The entire post makes it clear that Rogue One being a gender bent ripoff of Star Wars turned me off the franchise, but even then, if they had've kept the original story Lucas originally wrote, I was still going to go and see Solo?

Yeah, that's some really damning and conclusive evidence you've gathered against me there - not.

Oh and since we're talking about bringing up my old posts, let's bring up this snippet of a response I made to M-bot, which clearly puts my "people switching off their brains comment in context:

I love the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...” (google the rest of the quote, totally worth it). Not saying anyone here is small-minded for having an opinion, but art is much better enjoyed when one lets go of any pre-conceived ideas of what it ‘should be’.

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.

in this movie han solo joins the academy! he decides to throw his career away! he frees chewbacca! they have taken the essence of that backstory as created by george lucas and made a new movie about it.

SPOILER ALERT

Then I guess you and Mansoor Mithaiwala from Screen Rant, as well as others I've spoken to, saw completely different movies.

Mansoor Mithaiwala from Screen Rant notes:

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han Solo enlists in the Imperial Academy but is kicked out for one too many transgressions. He eventually finds himself as an infantryman at Camp Forward on Mimban, where the Empire is conducting an invasion against the Mimbanese population - and that's where he meets Chewbacca. After his attempt to notify his superiors about Tobias Beckett's real identity backfires on him, Han is thrown into a pit in which a "Beast" lives and hasn't been fed in a couple days. That beast turns out to be Chewbacca, who seemingly attempts to kill Han. That's when Han speaks Shyriiwook for the first time and tells Chewie that they could help each other escape, which becomes the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.

Compare this to what was written in Lucas original story notes:

Chewie:

Decades after his capture, Chewbacca met a young Imperial officer named Han Solo. Solo felt for this demoralised creature and, despite strict rules forbidding interference, helped the Wookie escape. In return for sacrificing his career, Chewbacca offered the Corellian a life debt. And after quite a few years of shadowing the officer-turned freelance, Solo broke down and accepted the offer.

Han:

Han was a spunky child, spunkier than most Correllian Children. He did well in school and was immediately accepted into the Imperial Academy. After graduating with honors, he sailed towards a commanding rank in the Imperial Navy, where he would have been able to use his talents to their fullest extent.

One day, however, he found a noble Wookie being beaten in a nearby slave camp and compassion directed him to interfere. Imperial Law declared all Wookies fair trade, and Han was forbidden to counter that ruling in any form, but that didn't stop him. He rescued the Wookie and was subsequently discharged. Although the Wookie, Chewbacca, pledged his life to Solo, he found little reason to feel proud. He wandered the galaxy, accepting small contract work here and there, all the time being followed by the Wookie. This annoyed Solo to no end, until he finally realized the sanctity of the Wookie Life Debt, and accepted it. Before long, they were good friends and partners.

How are these even remotely the same story - even in spirit?

pablo hidalgo and leland chee are still involved. they have a wealth of material from the past which they can use or not use.

As I said earlier, the entire Holocron was a giant screw-up by Chee, which threw the baby out with the bathwater at every turn. The form of media which something took doesn't dictate how much of it came from the mind of Lucas. Just because the Character Bios appear in the screensaver equivalent of a coffee table book, doesn't change the fact that the source for them is Lucas' own story notes. If you go off the media form it can be mistakenly categorised as C-canon, but in fact as it's from Lucas himself, it's actually GWL-Canon.

If that isn't a fair call, then explain why its successor, Behind the Magic, ultimately became the foundation for the Holocron itself:

Around 2000, Chee moved from LucasArts to Lucas Licensing, where he was tasked with creating an even more detailed version of Magic for internal use. "We had several game-design teams, several comic book writers, and dozens of novelists," Roffman says. "We needed a reference for everyone who was playing in our sandbox."

So if Behind the Magic counts as sacrosanct, then why doesn't SWSE when they both fall under the same category of media and both draw on the same source?

Furthermore to quote the following:

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.

In other words, the backstory which was mentioned in SWSE is GWL-Canon.

yes i know shadows of the empire was a big 'multimedia event'. however at the end of the day george lucas said the movies was it and anything else star wars related was a tier below. it doesn't matter how "official" they were.

No actually, GWL canon is literally anything from the mind of Lucas - not just the movies, as highlighted above. In fact anything which the LucasArts group developed in house, where George Lucas himself had a hands on role with its development, could be argued to fall under the banner of GWL-Canon. After all, since when were the OT not a collaborative process which took place officially within the confines of Lucasfilm. Han Solo's now famous "I know" as a product of Lawrence Kasdan is an example of this.

Or are you telling me that if Lucasfilm were more confident about the franchise's cinematic success in the mid 1990s, that Shadows of the Empire wouldn't have been the very first side story movie?

kyp durron, the sun crusher and the jedi academy novels were batshit crazy at times. as annoying as it was in a way, when disney bought star wars them saying they are starting fresh and not being beholden to the old EU is one of the best things that could have happened. what they can do is look at things that stuck with people and resonated with them and incorporate them if they think it fits, like the han and chewie backstory and thrawn in rebels.

You're comparing apples and oranges. I happen to be a fan of Kyp Durron. Do you know why I never mentioned him and voiced my disappointment at his story being reduced to a mere legend? Because at the end of the day, he was a third party creation by Kevin J. Anderson whom Lucas had little to do with the creation of. He was completely fair game because he was nothing more than a licensed third party creation.

It is a speciously reasoned fallacy to compare culling an in house major Lucasfilm project, which Lucas himself was directly involved with the creation of or even script notes by Lucas himself, with novels he had nothing to do with except agreeing with characters he did not create having the Star Wars brand label slapped on them, based on media formats. Even the spirit of GWL-Canon demonstrates that.

In fact it's highly telling that the so called "haters" actually have concerns based out of love for what George Lucas created.

[SMHFConvoy]

I miss the 80's

[philby]

😳
They are almost the exact same story in spirit. The key points you are looking for are that Han is an imperial officer. Han decides to throw that career away. Han meets Chewie who is a captive. Han helps free Chewie.

???

[bowspearer]

😳
They are almost the exact same story in spirit. The key points you are looking for are that Han is an imperial officer. Han decides to throw that career away. Han meets Chewie who is a captive. Han helps free Chewie.

???

They're not even remotely the same story in spirit. In the original, Han threw away a promising Imperial career to save Chewie. In this one Han is a problem child of the Imperial Navy who gets thrown into a pit and only saves himself when Chewie discovers he speaks a little Wookie.

They're not even remotely the same stakes, the same moral dilemma oflr the same relationship dynamics. The later does nothing but piss on the reason the Wookie Life Debt was given to Han.

[SMHFConvoy]

So... How was school today?

[Raider]

So... How was school today?

I laughed way too much at this.

I've been watching a lot of YouTube reviews (both positive and negative) about Solo and TLJ lately and whilst you can generally tell inherent bias, a number of them make solid points on both the pros and cons of the movies.

I'm not going to list them all but suffice to say Solo continues to surpass my expectations of it upon reflection. TLJ, only gets worse...

[philby]

So... How was school today?

It was great! We learnt about the dangers of falling glass but I haven't seen any yet. I will keep my eyes peeled 😄

[philby]

They're not even remotely the same story in spirit. In the original, Han threw away a promising Imperial career to save Chewie. In this one Han is a problem child of the Imperial Navy who gets thrown into a pit and only saves himself when Chewie discovers he speaks a little Wookie.

They're not even remotely the same stakes, the same moral dilemma oflr the same relationship dynamics. The later does nothing but piss on the reason the Wookie Life Debt was given to Han.

han solo is a scoundrel, a smuggler who is in it for the money. someone who takes orders from only one person: himself.

a promising imperial navy recruit who decides to make a stand for the good guys and free a wookie and then travel the galaxy together taking on jobs doesn't seem to match.

a guy with no loyalty to the empire but who uses the imperial academy as a way of reaching a goal, has trouble following orders, makes selfish decisions (that may backfire) to try and further himself at the risk of others, who sees uniting with an enslaved wookie to free themselves from capture and then taking on jobs to still reach his goals to me seems like a better match.

i think the han solo as presented in the spinoff movie seems a closer alignment to the han solo we meet in the cantina than what george lucas may have come up with.

does that not match up better?
do you think that it doesn't even matter because only what george lucas wrote down is what counts?