Solo: A Star Wars Story

I just watched a clip with Woody Harrelson playing holochess with Chewbacca on the Falcon. They literally animated the exact same footage that they used in ANH and TFA for the move on the chess board where the one piece body slams the other one. Are they THAT creatively bankrupt?

Having not seen Solo yet, I can't comment on that... But TFA specifically and deliberately reversed the confrontation in ANH. The monster that got slammed originally takes out its opponent in VII. As for repetition in chess animations... Ever play BattleChess, back in the day? I lived for some of the rarer interactions, but got soooooooo tired of several of the more frequent ones that 1) weren't all that amusing to begin with, and 2) dragged on way too long.

Part of their problem is that they seem too concerned about making Star Wars relevant by adding in themes that are concerned with today's culture rather than making timeless stories that will resonate for generations.

By setting the stories up with themes like that they, by definition, date themselves so that those ideas may not have the same impact ten years from now that they do today.

Disagree. As Star Wars ('77) drew a lot from protests against American involvement in VietNam, from the fascism that had recently dominated Europe and threatened to spread, the military-industrial complex Eisenhower had warned America against, and the still-rising (perceived) threat of Communist/Soviet anti-individuality, George was immersed in that growing up, so it was the background noise he channelled through his "homage to Flash Gordon". In very rough, awkward form, it's there from the first notes and story treatments. By slapping the veneer of the fantastical setting and classical storytelling themes over top of that, it removes it from being dated by referencing anything specifically Terrestrial.

The Prequels fell flat not because of the themes or social commentary, but for simple storytelling reasons. It's the same thing with Tolkien. He wrote history textbooks, basically. Peter and Fran and Phillipa went through the Hobbit, LotR (and its appendices), the Silmarillion, and just about every other source of Middle-Earth lore out there, and wrangled out a script that incorporated the people and places and events, but with an actual eye to narrative (even if I wish to this day they'd done it as four movies -- there's more than enough after the War of the Ring, from the coda and appendices of LotR). I like pointing to their somewhat-famous flowchart taking the chapters from Two Towers and Return of the King, and moving things around so you see what's actually happening simultaneously across two books.

Social commentary totally has a place in Star Wars. What matters more is how it's ultimately woven into a story.

Here's what the fans ACTUALLY want:

A fun story with characters we can relate to going on an adventure in space and illustrating themes that anyone, in any time can relate to.

Themes like, friendship and loyalty are part of what makes a person a hero. Or doing the right thing is more important than being popular. Things like that resonate far more powerfully than, never meet your heroes because they are sure to disappoint. There is enough cynicism in the world. Star Wars was supposed to be fun and uplifting and doesn't have to use the same characters/ plots all the time to tell positive themes like the ones I listed.

There's room for darker notes, like Han's starting cynical pragmatism, or the loss handed to Our Heroes in Empire. It doesn't actually work if it's all escapism. What matters most is just telling it right.

Putting cayman's original post behind a spoiler tag, not for spoilers, but for size. It's what josh is replying to, so I want it here for context...

But it's true.

Some people love the EU novels. Other than the Thrawn Trilogy, I think they're almost entirely trash. And I've read most of them (yes, I'm weak). If a SW movie felt like an EU novel, I'd feel like I was sitting through Comic Book Guy's fanfic. I'd want to die.

Other people are really into video games, and are very invested in those characters. I'm not. I think video games are dorky and boring.

Having said that, I love a lot of Star Wars comics (in my brain, they're NOT dorky. No, I can't explain myself). I would have loved a Dark Empire storyline, if the SE had been done earlier. I would also love Exar-Kun/Ulic-Kel-Droma movies. I imagine that some other fans would find that cheesy in the extreme.

I refuse to watch the SE. For some, the PT does not exist.

Then there's the bulk of ticket buyers who have no idea what the hell I've been talking about, because they're just regular folks who go to the movies and aren't invested the way super fans are. Those are the butts Disney needs in the seat. They pay the bills. But neither can Disney utterly write off fandom, because it's huge (and annoyingly, hysterically, shrill).

There is no pleasing everyone. If it was simple, they'd have done it.
That's a separate problem entirely. People who put their own requirements on Star Wars as far as which characters they want to see and which supplementary material should be included isn't what I'm talking about... and you can't fix those sorts of problems.

What I'm saying is create something new utilizing the themes of a traditional hero's journey and place it in the Star Wars universe. You're not undoing the arcs of previous characters. You're doing something new with a new set of relatable characters. And you're still following the themes that appeal to mass amounts of people. You could do that over and over again and people will continue to go see it.

The reason the hero's journey and the archetypes that are embedded in it resonate with us so deeply is because it is a timeless story. All you have to do is change names, conflicts, and settings.

The problem actually kinda is the ancillary material. I was talking about this with David Michelini (one of the writers on the old Marvel comic series). I was asking him about the basic premise of one of the better-known story elements from that series' run -- Leia meeting Fenn Shysa on Mandalore. Those two issues were scripted in late '82 and hit the racks in February and March of '83. I.e., not too long before RotJ opened, and a couple years after Empire. The premise of the half-dozen issues around then was Leia going off one direction and Lando taking Chewie and the Falcon another, both trying to find where Boba Fett had taken Han. That made no sense to me -- we saw at the end of Empire everyone knew Fett was taking Han to Jabba and they were all going to meet on Tatooine.

I did say a single line or something to the effect of "he hasn't shown up at Jabba's palace -- he must be laying low to try to throw us off his track" would have fudged things nicely. But the main gist of the conversation was how the game companies and comic publishers and the novel authors and such are all basically scrambling to keep new product coming out on the regular -- no matter what half-baked schlock sometimes has to get shoved out the door to meet deadlines. What's worse is knowing none of it ultimately matters, as you can't contradict what's on the screen, you can't make drastic changes to the characters without permission from LFL, and so, more often than not, it'd end up being a lot of easily-dismissable filler...

...Except when they're able to play in a sufficiently-removed time period. That's why the KOTOR era holds such appeal for so many. The remove of three to four thousand years from the films was a wonderful place to explore those themes newly and have it still be Star Wars. There's a lot of character growth and evolution of the setting therein.

But now we have the "Sequel Trilogy". As others have pointed out, a lot of us are coming at it with the same granular expectations all of the EU gave us about the OT characters, forgetting most of them didn't even have names, let alone complex biographies, prior to the late '80s/early '90s -- years after the films had come out and George wasn't going to be making any more Star Wars. A lot of us gradually forgot we didn't always know every little nuance. This hasn't really been helped by the trend started with the Prequels of cross-sections books and visual dictionaries accompanying each release so we get all our ancillary data right then, rather than having to wait -- but it's still not in the actual film/series.

The problems have arisen more recently when it comes to determining what's relevant or vital to the story, what's ancillary, and where the focus should be. This started in '95 or so when George started working on the Special Editions, and it's persisted and morphed and grown since. To preserve the story integrity, the Prequels should have focused on Obi-Wan, with Anakin a supporting character, and Anakin's fall taking place off-screen and reading between the lines. For the Sequels... Either they needed to wait for Favreau and Filoni to fill in the thirty years between RotJ and TFA, so the audience knows at least roughly what's been going on, or TFA needed to do a better job of narratively following on to RotJ. I and several others have a pretty well-honed text slug of what's transpired between the Battle of Endor and the Battle of the Starkiller, to help those who don't read everything -- but we shouldn't have to. The themes and characters and events should be universal and comprehensible out of the gate, with the relationships, or lack of, obvious.

it is simple to make a Star Wars film that would be loved by such a wide and broad swath across the movie-going public. KK hasn't done it because she has her own agenda, and she hires filmmakers based on their willingness to promote her agenda--instead of based on their SWIQs.

Put together a team of high-SWIQ filmmakers, and we'd get a great Star Wars movie that the LARGE majority of fans (new and old) would love--a film with just the right balance of creative new story lines, homages to the OT, and modern sensibilities that are natural and fitting, not forced.

As long as the filmmakers value SJW-ism more than SWIQ, we're gonna get more of these tripe movies, which are Star Wars in name only.

I couldn't disagree more. It's not about socially-conscious casting. It's about story-blindness. George had it because he was too close to the ideas in his head. JJ has it because of his beloved Mystery Box. Kathleen has it, Rian has it... All due to what they bring to the table. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself. It just needs some awareness drawn to in on their part, and checks put in place to honor the story over the autopilot of any one creative factor. There were a lot of good elements in TFA, and in Rogue One, and in TLJ -- and in the Prequels and Holiday Special, for that matter. They just need someone, or several someones, over the years, who are both strong storytellers and strong personalities (as Marcia and Irvin and Gary were to George) to both know how to work with and, when needed, overrule their bosses.

Having a "high SWIQ" is no guarantee of quality, either, at the other end of that scale. As above, I could argue Tolkien had an incredibly high MEIQ, but he wasn't very good at translating that into good narrative. But then, a lot of historical events aren't nice enough to so order themselves, and that's what he drew from. See also, the fifteen endings of LotR. *heh* It's not when the Ring is destroyed, it's not when Aragorn is crowned, it's not when he parts company with the Hobbits on the border of the Shire, it's not after the Scouring, it's not when Frodo decides to go with Bilbo and Gandalf into the West... Ultimately, it's in the Appendices. After Aragorn has died, when Legolas fells one of the last mallorn trees to build a small ship, collect Gimli, stop off at the Grey Havens to pick up the widower Samwise, and set sail to the West, the last of the Fellowship heading over-sea.

I remember the first two seasons of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and the handful of jaw-dropping scenes it had, due to an intense story with well-built characters that you were emotionally invested in.

Gotta disagree with you there. I had to force myself to finish out that show. None of the characters were likable. There was no one I was rooting for, except maybe a couple of the Cylons. And Ron Moore is a good writer, but, like George, needs to be held in check. He's a "PvP witer" -- he feels the story conflict should come from the characters interacting. I prefer "PvE writing", where the characters work together to overcome an external threat. And I'll never forgive him for demoting Miles O'Brien because he can't tell the difference between a Starfleet officer's job (Transporter Chief) and his rank (something like Chief Petty Officer). Never mind those Chief Engineers and Chief Medical Officers, no. Transporter Chief Lieutenant Miles Edward O'Brien had to be a gruff old enlisted man. *sigh* Can STIQ and BSGIQ be things, also...?
 
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I said it waaaaay before Solo, and I'll say it again....

Bringing back Maul is just plain stupid, lazy writing. He was a one note character that people took a shine to... resurrecting him in Star Wars canon (and even more so now in movie canon) cheapens what Obi-Wan accomplished and that part of the saga.



Yeah so that one hundred percent confirms it then. Guessing this was meant to tie into Clone wars/rebels...and set up for obi wan movie and future solo movies
 
I never said it should be all escapism or that there shouldn't be darker elements, but the overall theme will be more successful if it's ultimately an uplifting one vs a negative one.

I agree with you in that it should be a collaboration and not a dictatorship. Which is why the prequels and TLJ were failures in that regard.
 
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Apologies if someone has already posted the spoilers earlier, as I just couldn't be bothered to go through every page on a Saturday night.

Here they are for anyone interested(from the pulled YouTube video): Jedifyfe, this may be from the YouTube video you mentioned?

•Film starts with text, not really a crawl


•Han and Qi'ra are trying to leave Corellia. They are boyfriend and girlfriend, and they kiss.


•They try to bribe an Imperial officer to escape Corellia, they get separated, Qi'ra gets captured by gangsters, Han hides in a recruitment center where he joins the Imperial army to leave Corellia. He says his name is just "Han" and that he's alone...Imperial guard gives him the last name "Solo"


•3 years later


•Han is fighting on Mimban. He sees Beckett and his team including Val and Rio Durant. They are disguised as Imperial troops, but aren't fighting. Han tries to tell on them because they won't let him join their crew, but Beckett rats Han out first, saying that Han is trying to desert the Empire.


•Han gets thrown into a prisoner camp, where Chewie is. They escape. Beckett's crew sees this and they decide to "rescue" Han and Chewie and let them be part of their crew


•They try to steal fuel cells from a train from the trailer. Enfys Nest and the Cloud Raiders are also there, trying to steal it. Val sacrifices herself. Rio Durant, who is the pilot, also dies.


•Now Han must pilot the ship (not the Falcon) He drops the fuel cells and they blow up.


•Han, Chewie, and Beckett now go to Dryden Voss' hangout. He is the gangster they are trying to sell fuel cells too. Beckett comes up with a new plan, saying that there is some on Kessel.


•Qi'ra is now Dryden's girlfriend. She tells them that she knows Lando has a fast ship they can use.


•Han, Chewie, Beckett, Qi'ra go see Lando.


•Han plays sabacc with Lando to win the Falcon. Han loses because Lando cheats, Han knows he cheats, but can't prove it.


•Lando and L3 fly the Falcon with the crew to Kessel. Han and Qi'ra have another moment alone, they kiss again.


•L3 tries to save robot prisoners, but gets shot and teared in half


•Chewie tries to free Wookies. Doesn't seem like he knows them.


•The crew escapes Kessel with the fuel cells. Han must fly the Falcon now, because Lando is sad L3 is basically dead. They use L3's "brain" to help navigate through a black hole and the tentacle monster from the trailer


•The fuel cells from Kessel are unstable, so they have to go to a new planet to make them stable some how. Enfys Nest and her gang are there. Turns out she is a 16 year old girl and they are trying to help some "rebellion" and needs the fuel.


•Not clear if Han and the gang give them some or what, doesn't seem like any Cloud Raiders die


•Lando flies away with the Falcon.


•Han, Chewie, Qi'ra, go back to Dryden Voss. Beckett stays behind for some reason, it sounds like he thinks Dryden Voss may kill him.


•It turns out Beckett double crosses Han and tells Dryden Voss that the fuel cells are fake (even though they are real)


•Han, Qi'ra, and Chewie fight Dryden Voss and his guards. Voss and his guards die.


•Han goes after Beckett for revenge. Qi'ra stays behind, using a hologram message to speak with her actual gangster boss: Darth Maul


•Darth Maul is a crime lord now. Ray Park is the actor, but they use Sam Witwer's voice


•It sounds like Maul is only in hologram form and is in the movie for less than a minute.


•This is the last mention of Qi'ra. It is unclears what happens to her


•Beckett tries to talk his way out of trouble with Han, but Han shoots first and kills Beckett


•The movie ends with Han and Chewie going to a new planet to find Lando.


•Han hugs Lando, similarly to how Lando hugs Han in ESB. While hugging, Han steals Lando's cheat card he kept in his sleeve.


•Han goes all in on his sabacc hand, winning Lando's Falcon


•Han and Chewie fly the Falcon, stating they need to go to Tattoine to meet a "big time gangster" presumably Jabba the Hutt, although Jabba is not mentioned by name


•No Boba Fett.
 
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He was a one note character that people took a shine to... resurrecting him in Star Wars canon (and even more so now in movie canon) cheapens...


Gotta say, this is exactly how I've always felt about a certain gentleman in a dented helmet, and people LOVE the idea of that one appearing literally anywhere. :lol
 
I just saw a clip of an interview with Alden and Harrison walks in to interrupt him. Alden stands up and they are the exact same height. Weird.
But I thought he was supposed to technically a dwarf according to some. Screenshot_20180512-204634_Facebook.jpeg
 
Gotta say, this is exactly how I've always felt about a certain gentleman in a dented helmet, and people LOVE the idea of that one appearing literally anywhere. :lol

Yes...as the OT continues to be altered and tinkered with, it will most likely become a “Where’s Waldo?” phenomenon with that character continuing to be sprinkled randomly into more and more scenes as time goes by...
 
AE is in between Harrison and Ron Howard in that pic, closer to Ron. These days that is probably 5'9" territory. But I haven't seen a pic of Alden where his shoes/heels don't look visibly raised. That points to more like 5'7" for Alden which is where the guesses have been all along. They call him 5'8" which is the lowest they ever call any leading-man type.

I still don't quite know why Alden's height is so compelling to us all. I guess we need something to wonder about. Nobody thinks he will live up to Harrison Ford in the role and scrutinizing his shorter height is a way to vent that feeling.
 
Gotta say, this is exactly how I've always felt about a certain gentleman in a dented helmet, and people LOVE the idea of that one appearing literally anywhere. :lol
I don't disagree there, either. I've never quite understood the fuss about Boba Fett. While, I'm not necessarily opposed to his backstory and involvement in the prequels, it did seem to be a bit of fan service.
But, at least Boba Fett wasn't resurrected from the dead... at least not in movie canon (yet).
 
AE is in between Harrison and Ron Howard in that pic, closer to Ron. These days that is probably 5'9" territory. But I haven't seen a pic of Alden where his shoes/heels don't look visibly raised. That points to more like 5'7" for Alden which is where the guesses have been all along. They call him 5'8" which is the lowest they ever call any leading-man type.

I think you're right. Alden is, at most, 5' 7". A half foot shorter than a young Harrison Ford. But Alden might even be 5' 6". Ron Howard is listed at 5' 9", which means he's probably 5' 7"...particularly since he's getting up there in age. But in this pic, it appears that if Ron were to stand up straight, he'd be an inch or two taller than Alden. Which puts Alden in the 5' 6" range.

alden1.jpg

The Wook
 
Well why would they not get the original guy to do the voice, even if he is busy doing something else, he could literally just phone it in.
I assume you talk about Maul. The voice actor in Episode 1 (Peter Serafinowicz) has been vocal about not being happy about the previous experience, so I think neither he nor Lucasfilm would be interested in him doing the voice again.
Plus, Witwer has more time doing "resurrected" Maul for The Clone Wars which you could say isn't the old Maul anyway.
 
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