Solo: A Star Wars Story seen it thread. (Open spoilers)

I just saw it with lowered expectations, but was pleasantly surprised. It was a fun movie. I am liking these side stories much more than the new episodes.

It always bugged me in Empire Strikes Back when Lando would say “Han” to rhyme with “man”, and I loved the little reference to that in this movie.

There’s a song by The Corrs on their Live From Dublin album where one of the band says ‘Let’s see your HANS in the air’. Every time, I imagine the crowd waving Han Solo figures in the air. :smiley:

I liked all the little references to the other films. One of the characters talking about going to a Mynock roast, Beckett wearing the same disguise that Lando used in Return of the Jedi (which was probably stowed somewhere on the Falcon), one character mentioning that they should have hired Bossk, a stormtrooper using the line “move along, move along”, etc.

I really tried hard to listen to the March when it was playing and I think that it was definitely based on the Imperial March but they changed it up a bit.

I liked it. Ehrenreich is passable as Solo, which maybe is the best you can ask for. He does some of the things right – like leaning against door frames and looking roguish. So he resembles a young Han Solo who doesn’t quite have it all together yet. On the other hand, he doesn’t look like Harrison Ford in his face or hair, so you have to roll with that. Chewbacca is really good in this, there’s some funny stuff and some serious, emotional stuff and Chewy kicks all kinds of ass. Glover is great as Lando, he had suave, rich guy down.

Some quick bits:

  • I caught references to Aurra Sing, Bossk, and a handful of planets that are established.

  • So they had to do the Kessel Run and they had to explain the Parsecs comment from ANH. I get that they feel obligated to give that to the fans. What made it work for me though was when finally finish the run and Solo says it was 12 parsecs, Chewy growls at him, and then Solo says he rounded down.

  • The Millennium Falcon was fine otherwise but they made all this effort to have it look different than it looks in the original trilogy just to have it kind of fall apart and look like OT Falcon at the end. A little trite - like when Professor X has to get shot in the head in First Class in order to lose use of his legs.

  • Clint Howard cameo. We knew that was coming.

  • I like that L3-37 got incorporated into the Falcon. Previous canon stated that there were a number of droid brains in the ship keeping it working and having L3 in there explains why the ship is so feisty.

  • I was definitely surprised to see Val and Rio not make it during the train heist. I liked both characters too.

  • Apparently Warwick Davis played the same character that he played in Phantom Menace.

  • I didn’t see Darth Maul coming. I saw the cybernetic legs and my first thought was “Oh, like Darth Maul” and then they showed him and I was like “Whaaaa?” Obvious set up to further the Star Wars universe storylines – you know a Boba fett movie’s coming, doncha?

  • Finally, I’m not a big fan of the Imperial officer giving him the name Solo. It may have worked better if Han made it for himself, another step towards him becoming his own man.

Oh and I hope I’m not the only one who thought of the line from the ROTJ commercial when I saw the disguise.

So box office numbers are coming in and it’s a bust.

Doing a Memorial Day Marvel double header tonight and checked the Solo seat map while I was at it. Deadpool 2 was still totally sold out in it’s second weekend. Infinity War had a few seats sold in a late show in a school night. Solo was a ghost town. It’s a shame because it’s actually enjoyable. Heads are gonna roll at Disney.

I’m a pretty serious Star Wars fan. But I only watched a few of the cartoons. When I saw Maul my first reaction was wait…what year is this taking place? How old is Han again? Then my second reaction was…that must be Maul’s brother.

Not a great reaction for your movie goers. Totally took me out of it for a few minutes.

Sure, that was obvious and was the payoff from the double cross, but it was still strange to me when Beckett showed up in the ship the first time.

No Memorial Day in South Africa, but when I watched it in a cinema on a Saturday night, there were perhaps 10 other people there.

I saw Deadpool in the exact same cinema the Saturday before and it was packed, as was Avengers a few weeks before that.

Its not like Star Wars has no fanbase here - are there perhaps too many “event” movies (Black Panther, Avengers, Deadpool) packed too closely together?

I do think Solo being last in line of a month of huge movies hurt it. But not as much as the overall frustration the fan base had with TFA and TLJ, I think.

Also, Deadpool 2 is fucking great.

I disliked the Darth Maul cameo because it legitimized the prequel trilogy. I want all three of those atrocities to be wiped from the face of the earth. I pray that one day they’ll be removed from canon or even remade from scratch.
Was anyone else bothered by a 5’6" Han Solo?

Alden Ehrenreich is 5’9". That’s still shorter than Harrison Ford but he’s not a dwarf!

I don’t know what issues the hardcore fanbase had with those films, but they had little to zero discernable impact: TFA and TLJ are currently the 3rd and 9th highest grossing films, unadjusted for inflation. IIRC, and adjusted for inflation, all previous SW films with the exception of Attack of the Clones, grossed over a billion dollars. (yes, even that one)

I seriously doubt that the frustrations of a subset of their hardcore fanbase was enough to turn the tide against SW in the past six months, to such an extent that it will gross a fraction of TLJ’s 1.3 billion.

(Personally, I enjoyed it but not as much as Deadpool 2 and the two MCU movies.)

I liked it, give it a 7/10. I thought it was the 2nd best of the new ones. (Thought Rogue One was DREADFUL and Desperately needed the Vader cameos they shoehorned in there at the last minute). The acting was adequate to excellent, thought Alden did okay, and was able to suspend my disbelief. Story was okay, though it stalled out in certain places. I thought they covered the appropriate ground as far as expected occurances (meeting Chewie and Lando, Kessel Run, winning the Falcon), and this sets us up nicely for the obligatory Tatooine and Hutt/Fett stuff for the next one. I’m torn on Darth Maul. I think that should have been kept to the cartoons, its kind of like bringing Agent Coulson back into the Avengers without an explanation. Sure, a lot of people will get it, but a lot of people will be confused. While I accepted Maul coming back in the cartoon, I still think him surviving is total B.S. fan service. I guess, I’ll have to see how he is used in the next one. And it OBVIOUSLY sets up a next one. Thought Lando being into robots was a bit weird, and when L3 said “it would work” I found myself wondering “how?” when I should have been paying attention to the movie. I didn’t mind the Imperial March being used as the actual imperial anthem for the Empire, it’s a kickass anthem. I felt the movie exposed a little bit more of the empire than what we knew before. I’m pretty glad they leaked trouble in production and that I went in there with low expectations. This movie seem safe and straight, and I’m very intrigued to see what it looked like before Howard got a hold of it.

Anybody know why Han wouldn’t have had a surname already? He was a bit of a ragamuffin sure, due to circumstance, but his dad worked on a production line so he’d be kind of like a worker at Boeing and most certainly would have had and needed a last name in that last job? So why didn’t that get passed down to Han?

So what do the horrible box office numbers do at the studio level? Will they scrap any future movies that hover around this area (Solo sequels, Boba Fett, the supposed Lando stand-alone)? I hope not, cuz I’d really love to see more Maul on the big screen. Or will this just be a motivator for them to do better-- screen their directors better, look at the scripts closer, centralize control over the universe?

Because the writers wanted to shoehorn a silly explanation for the name Solo. I liked the movie, but I thought that was one of the sillier gags/references, and the movie would have been a little bit better without it.

I was assuming he was trying to hide something in his past, or at least was debating whether he needed to do so. I assumed the recruitment officer may or may not have picked up on this but wanted to hit his numbers without caring too much where his recruits came from.

Since this is the first stumble (and if word of mouth is good, it could have legs that make it not as much of a bomb as the first weekend disappointment might have indicated) for Disney with Star Wars, I don’t expect they’ll change their plans much aside from trying to have better quality control to avoid harmful stories of troubled productions. It might mean they hire more competent/steady directors like Howard over risking younger and less experienced ones.

The Last Jedi was only about five months ago. Was this too soon for another Star Wars movie? On the other hand, there are multiple Marvel movies over the course of the year and also TV shows and they still seem to do really well.

I wonder how bad the original directors were that they brought in Ron Howard.

The Lego Movie is really funny and I think they put more comedy into the movie than Kathy Kennedy was comfortable with. The actors were uncomfortable with the amount of improvisation and changes happening on set as well.

Hey, hire comedy actors, get a comedy movie.