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Thread: Solo: A Star Wars Story

  1. #91
    bowspearer Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    The SW fandom likes to think it is the majority and that the things they think, say and do can have an impact.
    Yes and no, I don't think the majority are the SW fandom, but it's myopic to think they're not going to have an impact because casual moviegoers outnumber them. In investment terms, the SW fandom is the equivalent of Blue Chips investments - the safe core of your investment portfolio; yes you want to attract other audiences, but it's foolish to alienate that audience, because in the days of social media, they are just as crucial a part of generating hype as everyone else. Remove that hype or worse, generate a negative buzz around it, and that is something which the casual moviegoer is going to pick up on.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    I think that the assertion that Solo “failed” because of the direction Disney has taken is just utter trash.
    Only if you ignore the impact fans will have on the buzz around a movie in this social media age.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    it’s not because Kathleen Kennedy hates SW fans.
    Again though, alienating fans is going to affect the buzz surrounding the movie, so you can't realistically look at this in a vacuum.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    But I guarantee you that Disney understands that the majority of the people that rock up to a Star Wars movie don’t give a shit about whether Disney is respecting ol’ George’s original vision about Han and Chewie because they don’t know and frankly, don’t care. They haven’t spent hours reading EU books and comics that perpetuated the boring, one dimensional character that Luke was to be horrified when he threw aside his lightsaber (the cinema I was in erupted in laughter). Most of the people that see a Star Wars movie just want to be entertained by space wizards with laser swords and see space ships, wacky droids, and Stormtroopers missing whatever they’re aiming for.
    I completely agree that the casual movie-goer simply wants to have a good time and see an enjoyable movie and aren't going to get hung up on canon. However they are going to be swayed by whether the buzz around a particular Star Wars movie is good or bad and base their decision to watch it on that to a reasonable extent. The thing is that it's the fans who will pay that much attention and do care about things like respect for canon, who are going to create that buzz- either good or bad.

    Remember, the most effective form of advertising is word-of-mouth.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    It’s because the majority of the movie goers, like me, are a bit over the frequency of Star Wars films. It’s burnout. Simple.
    That doesn't hold true though. If the hype were there, then people would be turning up in droves - even if it was 6 months apart; Black Panther's proximity to Infinity War is a textbook example of this. The fact is that TLJ was divisive and had mixed reviews, while Disney alienated the fandom rather than reaching out to them, whereby they would have generated hype about Solo. That didn't happen, so what marketing that was done, wasn't supported or hyped up anywhere near as much as it could have been. The end result was a killed-off buzz around this movie - hence a feeling of fatigue among general moviegoers.

    And no, that's not saying that casual movie-goers don't matter compared to fans; rather it is saying that with established franchises, while casual movie-goers get swept up in and ride the wave created by the hype, it is the fandom which is the group which is instrumental in creating that wave to begin with. Without that wave, there's simply nothing for casual movie-goers to get swept up in to begin with.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    And no, SW cannot be compared to the MCU because they are vastly different in what they are, and what they are trying to achieve.
    Howso? How are the two not trying to build a massive cinematic universe with a tapestry of stand-alone and event movies which both appeal to the fandom and generate and maintain wider audience appeal?

    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    At least the Transformers fandom (to a degree) understands this. That while most fans think the Bay movies sucked, we understood we were not the target audience.
    You're comparing apples and oranges here though. SW fans were introduced to the property through the original films and then the prequels so for them, it's very much centred around the films. The same cannot be said for Bayformers, where you really do need to draw a distinction between the transfandom and bayformerfandom, where there will in some cases, be some overlap. The reaction from the transfandom wont do much to to kill a Bayformer movie (though I hear fire helps ), but, if you start talking about say, the Bayformerfandom, such as with ROTF in the case of Western Markets and TLK in China, then it's a very different story.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trent View Post
    TL;DR: Star Wars fandom needs to extract its head from its own anus.
    I find it interesting how everyone was saying that before this movie came out - right down to the fact that Solo would be a success, the boycott would achieve nothing and Disney wouldn't feel it if it did happen. Yet the complete opposite has happened. While I'm sure many people in Disney and who are viewing these new movies as vehicles for Cultural Marxism, would love it if fans did suddenly become silent and compliant, it's not going to be happened and it's a factor you ignore at your peril as Lucasfilm.

  2. #92
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    Quote Originally Posted by bowspearer
    I find it interesting how everyone was saying that before this movie came out - right down to the fact that Solo would be a success, the boycott would achieve nothing and Disney wouldn't feel it if it did happen.
    Funny, most of what I had read was the quite opposite, that this was gonna be a bomb. A lot of articles just post-TLJ mention this:

    Disney is bracing themselves for the Han Solo movie to bomb. They were worried about it before all The Last Jedi controversy, but now they’re essentially writing Solo off. The lead actor, Alden Ehrenreich, can’t act, and they had a dialogue coach on hand for all of his scenes. On top of that, the script is unworkable. It’s going to be a car crash.
    Source: https://www.screengeek.net/2017/12/2...story-to-bomb/

    There are multiple reasons for the flop depending on demographics. TLJ backlash was definitely a factor for the serious fans. Bad publicity and lukewarm word of mouth for the casual movie-goer. For my mates, they cited Star Wars fatigue as to why they hadn’t seen Solo yet.

    The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a joy to movie-goers but a pain in the arse for movie studios. Marvel captured lightning in a bottle and every other franchise has been left standing there staring at a clear sky. Stop trying to be Marvel everyone!

  3. #93
    drifand is offline Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
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    I don’t think is fatigue at all. And I think everyone knows the reason and just not owning up.

    Sad to say if the actor can’t act and they still carried on then this is their fault.
    Personally it doesn’t bug me, I am not expecting a replication of Harrison Ford.

    If they are cancelling solo sequel and think people are going to watch Rian’s trilogy more then I think we expect Disney to continue to loose more. End of the day is Disney’s money so they are entitled to say or make what they want.

    People just vote with their wallets.

    For me personally, I have never seen Star Wars in such a state, to me is kinda sad. There has never been so much bad talk I have seen in my life for this franchise after tlj.

    I just hope they control the damage and do it quickly.

  4. #94
    bowspearer Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Wiggum View Post
    Funny, most of what I had read was the quite opposite, that this was gonna be a bomb. A lot of articles just post-TLJ mention this:
    To be clear, I was referring to the public face and line of Disney and their shills.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Wiggum View Post
    For my mates, they cited Star Wars fatigue as to why they hadn’t seen Solo yet.
    Yet fatigue can only set in when the wave has died down - until that happens, everyone generally just keeps riding the high as the MCU proves. That's why I have a hard time seeing the "fatigue" argument as being anything other than myopic. Sure it's happening on the surface, but when you start to scratch the surface and look at the hype or lack thereof which caused it, there's far more to it than mere burnout.

    I'm not discounting the experience of them or their reasons. I simply consider the "it's burnout" argument to be analogous to having someone die from a car crash and insist that they "just died from the car crash", without digging deeper to what caused the crash to begin with.

    That where I think the fan backlash played a huge part. I'd argue that the fans are generally your stone in the pond that causes the ripples, or rather waves. They turn around and get hyped, they get other people hyped, other people get other people hyped, and so it continues.

    Given how divisive TLJ was, not only did you have a lack of hype, but the opposite, so you have a marketer's worst nightmare- negative word of mouth advertising.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Wiggum View Post
    The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a joy to movie-goers but a pain in the arse for movie studios. Marvel captured lightning in a bottle and every other franchise has been left standing there staring at a clear sky. Stop trying to be Marvel everyone!
    Yet the MCU has merely mimicked the original Lightning in a bottle, which is Star Wars. That's the problem with saying they're not the same thing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Wiggum View Post
    Jesus man, settle down. Of course an actor’s character and their acting ability can be critiqued. But when the vitriol turns to personal attacks of a sexist/racist nature, then yeah the fandom is getting toxic.

    Case in point: https://m.huffingtonpost.com.au/entr...b06d1621b6b2bb
    In light of what I've experienced on facebook in the past 24 hours in relation to this, there is one thing I wanted to touch on here. The sexism and racism aren't the problem here, they're simply a vehicle for the bigger problem.

    The divide in the fandom has brought the worst out in people. People out there aren't interested in discussion on the fringes, but in shutting up and shutting down everyone who does not adhere to their ideology: Star Wars has become a battleground of the Alt Right and Alt Left.

    Racism and sexism get used because they're nasty and are likely to cut deeply without trying too hard, but they're simply tools for the intent.

    The intent here is to be as nasty as possible to shut people down. In the past 24 hours on facebook, I stated I was critical of the needless change to Lucas' original backstory to Chewie. Things got real nasty real quickly - I was hit with constant accusations that I was a loser, having a sad life, mental illness based slurs, emasculating attacks, chauvinism; it was anything to shut me up and shut me down (I was just lucky that thanks to decades of psychological abuse, these people were rank amateurs and I was able to civilly hold my ground without stooping to their level). It started with one person, then two more joined in. In the end, it was hard to tell whether there were more nasty text posts, or more s***posting memes meant nastily. Then today, after I blocked the three last night, another joined in. In among it all, they then, after acting like I'd committed some secular heresy, claimed "dude.... it's just a movie" - irony much.

    You can bet that if Kelly Marie Tran or anyone deemed "the enemy" by this war of extremists have been beaten of molested as a child, that the "righteous crusaders" would think nothing of using it as a weapon to attack their target with.

    The racism and sexism are horrible vehicles, but let's be clear, they are just that vehicles for the underlying intent. They're not being used because of a person's sex or a person's race; they're being used because someone has been othered by an ideological camp and deemed so virulent and such a threat that it justifies them being taken down by any means necessary.

    It's ironic, Star Wars drew so many people to it because its message of hope brought out the best in people. Meanwhile, these current movies are bringing out the worst in people. It's a tragic shame. *sigh*

  5. #95
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    Goddamit I had a whole reply typed out then the stupid browser logged me out and now I've lost it and I can't be arsed typing it all over again.

    But in a nutshell:

    1. MCU took four years involving two successes (Iron Man 1 & 2), solid results (Thor, Captain America) and a bomb (Incredible Hulk) before they really gained momentum with 2-3 releases each year bringing in a minimum $500 million. Despite Star Wars' immense popularity, I personally didn't expect them to reach the heights MCU has built on over the past 10 years.

    2. Social media sucks, people suck, and I don't give a crap whether Star Wars characters are black/white/female/male or the reasons as to why they cast this way.

    3. Solo failed for many reasons, all of them right one way or another.

  6. #96
    bowspearer Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Wiggum View Post
    1. MCU took four years involving two successes (Iron Man 1 & 2), solid results (Thor, Captain America) and a bomb (Incredible Hulk) before they really gained momentum with 2-3 releases each year bringing in a minimum $500 million. Despite Star Wars' immense popularity, I personally didn't expect them to reach the heights MCU has built on over the past 10 years.
    Star Wars has been around 40 years. According to Box Office Mojo's Adjusted movie takings figures It had two immediate successes over three years, with ANH making an adjusted US Domestic gross of $1,631,575,500 and ESB making an adjusted US Domestic gross of $899,334,600 - in fact they're the 2nd and 13th highest domestic grossing movies of all time on adjusted figures.

    Likewise ROTJ (#16) had an adjusted US Domestic gross of $861,584,200.

    Jar Jar didn't even remotely harm Episode 1's takings (#18), with it making an adjusted US Domestic gross of $827,258,600.

    It had its one bomb of Episode 2 (#97), taking in an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $489,771,200. Even then it still out-did the first two Hunger Games movies at #104 and #102 respectively.

    It then recovered with Episode 3 (#67) making an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $543,413,200.

    Then The Force Awakens shot up to #11 with an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $990,334,300.

    Rogue One (#60) came in at an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $553,645,200.

    For all its divisiveness, The Last Jedi (#43), bounced back with an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $619,169,000.

    The worst offering in there, Episode 2, has an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $489,771,200 - just over $10,000 shy of that $500k mark on US Domestic figures alone.

    Conversely the highest grossing Marvel movies, Avengers (#29), Black Panther (#30) and Avengers Ave of Ultron (#96), failed to reach the heights of even then Phantom Menace - with Avengers making an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $704,231,900, a good $124,000 less than it.

    Meanwhile, Iron Man 3 (#113), Captain America Civil War (#123), Iron Man (#140), Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (#148), Guardians of the Galaxy (#172) and Iron Man 2 (#189), didn't even match the height of even Episode 2, with Iron Man 3 making an adjusted US Domestic Gross of $447,459,600 - more than $40k less than Episode 2. All the others didn't make the list.

    In short, not only are both long enduring franchises and high earning franchises, but if anything it's not a case of Star Wars not meeting the heights of the MCU, but rather the other way around.

  7. #97
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    One of what no doubt will be the many research / opinions out there on why Solo flopped, this one from a investment research firm:

    https://cowen.bluematrix.com/sellsid...om&source=mail

    Short, sharp and to the point. Basically it all came down to piss poor marketing

  8. #98
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    Quote Originally Posted by bowspearer View Post
    Racism and sexism get used because they're nasty and are likely to cut deeply without trying too hard, but they're simply tools for the intent.

    The intent here is to be as nasty as possible to shut people down.
    Quote Originally Posted by bowspearer View Post
    The racism and sexism are horrible vehicles, but let's be clear, they are just that vehicles for the underlying intent. They're not being used because of a person's sex or a person's race
    Sorry, but I can't go past this. That's absurd.

    If you're using someone's sex or race as a tool to be nasty to them, that makes you a sexist, or a racist, full stop.

    (That also goes for mental health too, for the record)

    'It wasn't meant pejoratively, it was just something said to get a rise and it doesn't mean that the person saying it actually hates X group' is the piss poorest of excuses for that kind of behaviour. Essentially you're suggesting that as long as you marry abusing some disadvantaged group to a barely coherent point or cause of some type you get a free pass.

    (This also applies to the abuse you took for your mental health too, for the record, and I'm sorry that happened to you)
    I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.

  9. #99
    bowspearer Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by SharkyMcShark View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by bowspearer View Post
    Racism and sexism get used because they're nasty and are likely to cut deeply without trying too hard, but they're simply tools for the intent.

    The intent here is to be as nasty as possible to shut people down.
    The racism and sexism are horrible vehicles, but let's be clear, they are just that vehicles for the underlying intent. They're not being used because of a person's sex or a person's race; they're being used because someone has been othered by an ideological camp and deemed so virulent and such a threat that it justifies them being taken down by any means necessary.
    Sorry, but I can't go past this. That's absurd.

    If you're using someone's sex or race as a tool to be nasty to them, that makes you a sexist, or a racist, full stop.

    (That also goes for mental health too, for the record)

    'It wasn't meant pejoratively, it was just something said to get a rise and it doesn't mean that the person saying it actually hates X group' is the piss poorest of excuses for that kind of behaviour. Essentially you're suggesting that as long as you marry abusing some disadvantaged group to a barely coherent point or cause of some type you get a free pass.

    (This also applies to the abuse you took for your mental health too, for the record, and I'm sorry that happened to you)
    Actually you're completely off the mark here. Mind you, given how close to home and uncomfortable what I am about to say will be for some people, that's not surprising. After all, better to oversimplify the problem than be forced to admit to being part of the culture which caused it - generally speaking that is.

    There is no question that the behaviour in question is racist and sexist. There is also no question that given the nature of the attitudes and behaviours in question that the individuals in question are not automatically racist and sexist. They may be, but what's driving this is so much worse than that.

    The thing about actual racist and sexist individuals is that they actually believe what they say; these people don't.

    The thing about ventriloquists, the good ones that is, is that they can get away with making politically incorrect commentary by having the puppet make it, while the ventriloquist then gets offended at it, because the puppet "isn't real" - even though the voice behind the puppet, the ventriloquist, is very real and standing right there.

    In my more than 15 years of being on online message boards and social media, I can honestly say that the same holds true for the bad behaviour an instances of bullying I have seen on message boards. It is all too often excused and ignored because it's just "names on a screen" (read "fictional characters") and therefore "not real".

    When someone is "not real", then much like what comes out of a puppet's mouth, what gets said to that "fictional character", doesn't matter, because they're "not real". It's where the phrase "fictional characters" comes from. To this mentality, you can't be racist, because whatever you say cannot make you an actual bigot because the target "isn't real", so you can say whatever you want, regardless of whether you actually believe it.

    It becomes an interactive version of bashing a piñata with a stick. They're traditionally made in the shape of a horse, but just because a person does it, doesn't mean that they secretly desire to bash every single horse or donkey they see with a stick until they're beating a dead horse into glue dust. After all, that's what those racist and sexist barbs were in the minds of these individuals - nothing more than swipes with a stick at a piñata.

    In fact Tober put me onto this meme from March 19, 2004, years ago, which is proof of it.

    When social media evolved, things didn't get any better, in fact facebook has in many ways made things worse, but recently it's gotten even worse. As bad as this was, it's not the worst thing to happen to someone in the Star Wars community due to this bad behaviour. No, that award goes to the lowlifes who swatted Matt Jarbo back in 2016. For those not familiar with the term, it's where someone calls the police on someone in such a way that the police dispatch a SWAT team to their homes (and for any sick twisted POS reading this who might think that's funny, no it actually isn't). Given all the ways it could go wrong, it's tantamount to attempted murder by cop. Then again at least Matt Jarbo was able to live to tell the tale; this guy wasn't so lucky.

    To the mind of whoever did that, it was perfectly ok, because in their mind, Matt Jarbo wasn't a "real person". That's where this mentality of treating "fictional characters" like crap by any means necessary being acceptable, because they're "not real" and the bullying and bigotry is also "not real" has led society to.

    When that is the mentality of someone, leaving a few racist slurs and bullying someone off a social media account, is deemed trivial.

    And that's just it, to these people, Kelly Marie Tran was no different to a fictional character, so in their mind, they couldn't be racist to her or sexist to her, because in their mind, she wasn't a "real person".

    That isn't the mentality of a racist.

    That isn't the mentality of a sexist.

    That is the mentality of a complete psychopath and sociopath.

    Take it from someone who had the misfortune of taking one in at the end of 2016, only to be in fear of their life within 3 weeks of them being there.

    At least with people who are just racist and sexist, there is enough basic empathy there that you can educate away the bigotry.

    Not so with people like this. These people are dangerous, degenerate monsters and deserve to be treated as such.

    To reduce this to mere sexism or racism, is to minimise, trivialise and excuse it.

    Although as I said previously, having been around various fan communities for over 15 years now, I can honestly see why people would want to make this just about racism and sexism; in this case, garden-variety bigots do make an incredibly convenient and credible scapegoats.

    After all, if the true nature of the problem were acknowledged, it would mean acknowledging that the culture of individuals treating people like scum because all they see said individuals as nothing more than avatars and screen-names, brought rise to this culture of using anything to attack "faceless individuals" - even such disgusting things as racism and sexism.

    In turn it would require multiple people to take a look in the mirror and own the fact that the culture they have contributed to through their behaviour on message boards, is a culture where it is deemed acceptable to use even racism and sexism as mere weapons of convenience in attacking "faceless characters" they don't like and even potentially subjecting them to death by SWAT team. After all, if you lob a stone in the pond, you're responsible for creating the ripples it makes.

    But then that's the thing about the oxymoron of "keyboard courage", isn't it?
    Last edited by bowspearer; 8th June 2018 at 01:26 PM.

  10. #100
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    Just remember people, this topic is for talking about the Solo Movie - either the actual movie, or its production & popularity.

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