Solo: A Star Wars Story (Post-release)

What did you think of Solo: A Star Wars Story?


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My biggest complaint is the lack of use of the new troopers, really, outside the mimbian and "mudtroopers," the range troopers were a wasted potential for a better train heist sequence...instead, they're literally there for the trailer footage and that's it.

Why go through the entire design and build process for a new trooper just to have them stand around, fire a few times and be done with it? They were all on the rear-most car? what about the like 10 other cars in front of it?

The Patrol Trooper was just a cop cliche'. I was expecting him to be in the middle of drinking a coffee and eating a donut.
 
Does Chewie still have a life debt to Han, or does he just hang around with him because he likes him?

I mean he stopped him from falling off the train, and he let him go help the other wookies, but somehow I was expecting a bit more of why he would just stay with him forever?
Where in Canon was it said that he had a life debt? Is that an eu thing?

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So thoughts round up.

The Good!

- It wasn't Rogue One miserable!

- I enjoyed watching Lando's falcon get messed up.

- While I hated the droid, I appreciate the nod to it being the Nav computer that Threepio later comments on its dialect.

- Everything Lando was great - but was he banging that droid?

- I love GONKS, so seeing a Gonk revolt was okay with me.

- Surprisingly liked the little moment where Chewy first sits next to Han

- loved the introduction of Chewy. He straight up ate people.

- Liked Woody

- Liked that they killed off people and it MEANT SOMETHING COUGH ROGUE ONE COUGH.


my top things I liked though:

- My DAD would LOVE This flick... so I'm going to take him.

- It felt like an 80's movie at times...



The BAD.

- That droid.

- Didn't buy Alden as Han... I liked him... but he wasn't Han... mostly.

- felt a little long... pacing was weird.

- heavy exposition





I dunno.. don't want to give the movie too much thinking cuz it's NOT high art and not worth the dissection.

But it's fun if you wanna watch a space movie with "I CLAPPED WHEN I SAW IT" all over it.
 
Just saw it last night. Overall it was a good movie. But nothing special. I've been a Han Solo fan from day one. I felt most of it was rushed would have liked a little more buddy building with Han and Chewie. I had higher expectations with Lando with all the hype about Glover stealing the show but he was just ok. Glover was a great actor but the part was mediocre. I liked Beckett who I feel was more of an embellished over the top OT Han. You can see that Han mimics him and more often than not I got more of a Harrison Ford vibe from Woody Harrelson. You can see how Beckett is the template for the Han we all know.
I hated the Darth Maul surprise it felt way too forced. I get it from Clone Wars but not after watching all of Rebels. Prince Xizor would have been way cooler and made far more sense.
I did love that there really wasn't a lot of other fan service Boba Fett would not have fit but I think Bossk or Dengar would have been a good cameo.
It's not the Han Solo origin story you'd expect and it's easy to say it could have been a different story. It doesn't really have any bearing on the larger Star Wars story overall and is a throwaway side story which is great.
I do however hope they continue making sequels to it, I feel there's a lot of stories and adventures Han and Chewie can have. Alden Ehrenreich did great I wanted to hate him but couldn't. He was no show stealer and I would like to see more.
Just as I was really getting invested it ended which makes it feel like a waste if it is just a one off.
 
So here's my take. I'm sure it will ruffle feathers...

For me, the Kessel Run exemplifies the problem I had with this, which I'll get to in a minute.

I found the movie to be... fine.

And that's a problem. I don't want a Star Wars movie to be fine. I want it to excite me, not just visually, but on a deeper level. I'll even take polarizing over fine.

I mean, the movie was well made. The action was good. The visuals were solid. The actors served the material well. I don't feel as though I wasted my time watching this. On the other hand, I don't really see myself caring one way or the other if I ever see it again, which is something I have not yet experienced with a Star Wars film (including the Prequels). In fact, I came out of the theater with a strange feeling of sadness.

After thinking about it for a little while, I realized where that vague sense of sadness was coming from. This movie was answering questions I wasn't asking. No... more than that, this movie answers questions I specifically didn't want answered.

And that brings us to the Kessel Run.

One of the best things about Han Solo (prior to this film) was this sense of him being an unreliable narrator. There was this sense that everyone just assumed the Kessel Run story might, in fact, be bull****. Han is like that friend who has had a pretty interesting life, but who also has to make their stories just slightly better than yours -- even if that means embellishing. If you say you ran the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs, Han has to say "yeah, but I did it in 12."

Not knowing what about him was real and what was just a tall tale is what made his character great. You just didn't know if you could trust him, so that when he does come through as a hero, it actually means something.

I was already skeptical of this film because there just wasn't any legitimate way for it to put our main characters in any real physical jeopardy. Also, there was only so much emotional trauma this film could realistically put the characters through because we've already seen how they turn out. However, I could have forgiven that had the film stuck to material we didn't already know, because those were the parts of the film I found most interesting. The heist was fun and inventive. But I just couldn't be emotionally invested in the Kessel Run, or any other of the scenes we already knew were coming (Han and Chewie meeting, the card game, etc.), and that's not a good place to be in for the key elements and climax of the film.
 
Where in Canon was it said that he had a life debt? Is that an eu thing?
Whatever it was, it is canon now.

All new books published since 2014 are canon and there is a 2016 novel Aftermath: Life Debt which is specifically about Han attempting to pay back Chewbacca's life debt.
According to the 2015 fact book Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know (which still contains non-canon bits...), Chewbacca considered himself having a life debt to Han because Han had freed him from slavery.

I think it would be interesting to know where the idea came from, though. We can be sure that George Lucas knew about it because he reused the "life debt" concept in Episode 1 (to explain why Jar-Jar followed Qui-Gon Jinn around).
 
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So here's my take. I'm sure it will ruffle feathers...

For me, the Kessel Run exemplifies the problem I had with this, which I'll get to in a minute.

I found the movie to be... fine.

And that's a problem. I don't want a Star Wars movie to be fine. I want it to excite me, not just visually, but on a deeper level. I'll even take polarizing over fine.

I mean, the movie was well made. The action was good. The visuals were solid. The actors served the material well. I don't feel as though I wasted my time watching this. On the other hand, I don't really see myself caring one way or the other if I ever see it again, which is something I have not yet experienced with a Star Wars film (including the Prequels). In fact, I came out of the theater with a strange feeling of sadness.

After thinking about it for a little while, I realized where that vague sense of sadness was coming from. This movie was answering questions I wasn't asking. No... more than that, this movie answers questions I specifically didn't want answered.

And that brings us to the Kessel Run.

One of the best things about Han Solo (prior to this film) was this sense of him being an unreliable narrator. There was this sense that everyone just assumed the Kessel Run story might, in fact, be bull****. Han is like that friend who has had a pretty interesting life, but who also has to make their stories just slightly better than yours -- even if that means embellishing. If you say you ran the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs, Han has to say "yeah, but I did it in 12."

Not knowing what about him was real and what was just a tall tale is what made his character great. You just didn't know if you could trust him, so that when he does come through as a hero, it actually means something.

I was already skeptical of this film because there just wasn't any legitimate way for it to put our main characters in any real physical jeopardy. Also, there was only so much emotional trauma this film could realistically put the characters through because we've already seen how they turn out. However, I could have forgiven that had the film stuck to material we didn't already know, because those were the parts of the film I found most interesting. The heist was fun and inventive. But I just couldn't be emotionally invested in the Kessel Run, or any other of the scenes we already knew were coming (Han and Chewie meeting, the card game, etc.), and that's not a good place to be in for the key elements and climax of the film.

THANK YOU!

I always assumed the Kessel Run was something he said to a farm boy that had never left the desert
 
One of my biggest issues with the Disney Era is the lack of color in the aliens (and few OT aliens). Bring back brightly colored aliens (Greedo Green, Ackbar Red, Duros Blue), all the aliens are earth tones. I don’t need a tan/Golden Greedo.
Agreed. I suspect that, in a way, it's a way to imitate the desaturated color of the films from the 70s. Sort of a nostalgia appeal. But frankly, I wish they wouldn't. The aliens of the PT and some of them from the OT were indeed very colorful. It's a shame that they feel the need to make such desaturated colored aliens.
 
Whatever it was, it is canon now.

All new books published since 2014 are canon and there is a 2016 novel Aftermath: Life Debt which is specifically about Han attempting to pay back Chewbacca's life debt.
According to the 2015 fact book Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know (which still contains non-canon bits...), Chewbacca considered himself having a life debt to Han because Han had freed him from slavery.

I think it would be interesting to know where the idea came from, though. We can be sure that George Lucas knew about it because he reused the "life debt" concept in Episode 1 (to explain why Jar-Jar followed Qui-Gon Jinn around).
Probably it was lucas.

I never liked the idea of life debt. It looks a lot like slavery

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Echoing other thoughts - I thought AE did a good job as a protagonist. No issues with his acting (as rumours have suggested). I can buy him as A Solo, I just don't buy him as THE Han Solo. More like a Jake Solo. Or... a Stan Solo.

The production design was very good. I like the mud troopers. They're reminiscent of Ralph McQuarrie.

Didn't care much for Donald Glover. I like him and thought he did an alright job, but I think a lot of actors could have been just as good.

Emilia Clarke :love

Darth Maul felt like a stunt. Will we ever see him in any other movie, or was he just thrown in there as some sort of lazy fanboy service?

I thought Woody was great. Warwick Davis turning up was cool.

Overall, a solid entertaining movie. Not the trainwreck some predicted.
 
I thought it was going to be absolutely terrible, but I left feeling really great about it!

I don't think AE passes for a Harrison Ford Han Solo, but he did alright.

I was surprised by the unexpected cameo near the end. I hope it's a foreshadowing to an encounter in a future Star Wars Story film.

All the crazy talk about Lando and his sexuality here was grossly blown out of proportion and I didn't feel like anything was thrown in our faces about sexual preferences or hitting on people/creatures. I think all that is ridiculous and does not interfere with the film.

It was overall a very solid film and personally walked out of the theater feeling much better than I did about TLJ.

Solo far exceeded my expectations and was a lot of fun!
 
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