I think it also was hurt by the fact that every trailer I saw was dark/shadowy/gritty. Dark/shadowy/gritty doesn’t exactly scream “Let’s kick off summer!” It may have been a victim of its Memorial Day weekend release. Plus the whole SW fatigue thing, disappointment among many from TLJ, and probably the fact that it didn’t get much positive hype in the months leading up.
Even for me, a huge SW fan who will watch anything Disney puts forward at this point, this would’ve “felt” better coming out in the usual December slot.
I’ve felt like making a separate thread on “Why did Solo bomb?” but since we’re talking about it, here’s the ones I’ve heard.
The previous “new” movies were bad. TLJ gets the most hate from what I’ve seen, and that immediately preceded it. Could be a factor?
Was too soon. Eh, maybe, but Marvel seems to manage that okay, they’ve taken care to expand the Universe though, and SW’s still seems… small for some reason.
Shouldn’t have happened after you killed off Fords version. I agree, I think they should have given it more time.
Was too “SJW”. I don’t see this really, and I’m pretty attuned to that stuff I think. The “droids rights” thing could be construed that way, but honestly that was a long time coming imo. The droids get treated like second class citizens at best and slaves at worse, and nobody says anything? I doubt that turned away many people.
Bad publicity. This was a BIG ONE I think. The firing of the directors, replacing them with a “safe” guy, and Ehrenreich’s alleged bad acting (requiring a coach), REALLY hurt I think. The only side benefit of this is I think a lot of people liked the movie more than they thought they would (in a bad way).
Not “Star Warsy” enough. Sadly, I am starting to believe Star Wars does indeed need The Force and Lightsabers. Ask yourself honestly, would you have liked Rogue One as much if they didn’t do the last minute insertion of Darth Vader?
I see your point, but to answer your question: Yes. The Vader scene was badass, but I loved practically everything else about R1; Director Krennic, Saw, the Guardians of the Whills, seeing them test out the Death Star for the first (and second) times.
That being said, I do think this was probably a turn-off for people in regard to Solo. Everyone knew there would be no Force-using badassery in this movie since Han didn’t believe in that nonsense at the beginning of ANH. I think they could’ve used more Maul, shown him in action a bit behind the scenes of Crimson Dawn instead of just a surprise cameo at the end.
Infinity War sucked a lot of oxygen out of the room. Deadpool 2 didn’t do great numbers either, though better than Solo and of course Deadpool is R-rated.
People just don’t see a lot of movies in the theater. They are invested in the MCU and don’t have time for many other tentpole FX oriented action movies.
And yeah, the trailer for Solo sucked. It made it look way to dark and gritty, and I think people are tired of dark and gritty.
Even Infinity War, which ended with (massive spoiler for the two of you who haven’t seen it yet) half the universe getting disintegrated kept a fairly light tone. So did a lot of Solo, but you wouldn’t know that from the trailer.
I wonder if this is true. If it is, that is a bummer for me. I have felt that every SW movie after the original 1977 film has had too much of that stuff. The original was just right: you get “these are not the droids you are looking for”; a bad guy’s arm is sliced off in the bar; there’s some training on the Falcon; Vader does a little Force choking and is called off by Tarkin; Obi-Wan sneaks around the Death Star with some subtle Force tricks; there’s the Darth/Obi-Wan battle; and then of course “Use the Force, Luke” in the final moments of the Death Star battle. That still leaves the vast majority of the movie’s running time without any Force or light saber stuff. Which is as it should be IMO. But subsequent movies have really leaned toward that aspect of the story, to their detriment.
Ahhh…right. Although that was only after he had barbecued at least one of them, LOL.
First, I’m wondering: did “Solo” flat-out bomb? Or just come in below expectations? That is, are they going to profit any after marketing expenses, or will they actually have to write off a loss?
Then, as to your first numbered point: the funny thing is, critics are in near-universal agreement that TLJ was great. Not just good, but really great, probably the best SW film ever. (Personally, I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like TFA either; the only Disney SW film I’ve really liked is “Rogue One”, and “Solo” is actually in second place because its strong second half redeemed it.) Which is fine: everyone is entitled to their opinion. But what really irks me is all the critics who don’t think I’m entitled to my negative opinion. They will flat-out say that anyone who dislikes TLJ is a “bad fan” whose opinions are “gross”. That makes me livid.
There’s something about Chewbacca that bothers me. “Captain” Woody Harrelson tells the soldiers to throw Han in the pit with the beast. The soldiers mention that the beast hasn’t been fed in three days, so is probably really hungry. Han gets tossed in and we see the remains of previous victims. These remains appear to be “human”.
So, we have revealed that Chewie really does get Chewie with people. This bothers me. I have friends. Sometimes, my friends get annoyed with me. But they don’t eat me. Chewie has eaten people. Yikes. I’d look at my friend a bit differently if I thought he could eat me.
On another subject, I’ve not watched a single episode of Game of Thrones, though I knew Emilia Clarke was in it. She is a goddess. :eek:
Yeah, I have been surprised not to see people complain about the character assassination of Chewbacca in this movie—yours is the first I’ve encountered.
Difficult to say. The main problem is Lucasfilm basically had the budget for two shoots merged into one, causing the need for a large return. But if I was them I would not include the first budget as part of their reckoning, and instead judge it entirely from Ron Howard’s hiring onward. In that case they need about $600m to break even. That used to be measured purely from domestic ticket sales, but foreign box office has come to mean as much or more for some movies, so now I don’t know what the new benchmark is.
I think that, after the run for Solo completes, they’d easily break $600m including foreign, but considerably slower than The Last Jedi managed to reach that number.
Disney can take the hit. All the other Star Wars movies have given them a large enough dumptruck of money they can shore up the occasional loss with. They were probably prepared for it, all things considered, far more than the public were, purely due to the double-budget debacle, so though it “under-performed” and didn’t reach whoever’s arbitrary projections, whatever that means, and it was not what they would call a hit, they can weather this storm.
They can think of it as their Iron Man 2, perhaps. A stumble along the way that only slightly disrupts their plans, and a learning experience.
If your criticisms stay away from the terms: SJW; “Diversity forced down our throat”; Luke was emasculated; and cries of firing Kathleen Kennedy then it’s fine, you just didn’t like the movie for its own sake. If you do say the aforementioned, then nobody cares, we don’t want to hear about it.
Oh, I know they can take the hit. (And I mostly agree with you about the way they should count the budget, except that I think it should be based on whatever it was initially budgeted for.) But more what I’m wondering is: sometimes a big tentpole movie underperforms, and people in the media cluck about it, but it still makes enough profit for the studio that they greenlight the sequel that was set up in the stinger or whatever. Other times (and this seems relatively uncommon), it’s such a dud the studio says “never mind, maybe we’ll explore other ideas in this universe but we’re not going to make that sequel”. So I’m wondering which category this seems to be shaping up to fall into.
I would say my criticisms don’t go within a parsec (heh) of those terms. However, I have the impression that some of the critics I was talking about would pronounce me guilty simply because I say that Rose and DJ are terrible characters, and that Holdo’s “redemption” falls a little flat for me—given that her big secret plan led to the destruction of 99.99% of the rebel fleet and personnel, and would have led to 100% destruction, if not for a nearly literal deus ex machina from Luke.
Those are legitimate criticisms. Even though I loved the movie, I know exactly what you mean. I disagree, but only because I’ve listened to the commentary and read articles that clarified some of those things, which made things make a bit more sense.
As for the plans after a failure like this, there was never any intention for a direct Solo sequel, and they’ve been saying that since before the box office returns came in. But I think the Qi’ra storyline will continue onscreen, in the Boba Fett and Kenobi movies, and I think Han, Chewie and, Lando, and Maul will recur in them too, to varying degrees. Han won’t meet Obi Wan, for example, as that would mess up continuity, but Lando might, and Qi’ra could very easily do so. I expect we’ll see Jabba the Hutt and the other known Bounty Hunters too, and maybe even Cad Bane or Hondo.
The Force Awakens has almost no battles in space so that isn’t it.
Honestly I think what Disney missed is what made Star Wars so beloved is it was rare. Now it’s everywhere and every year. It’s just another Movie that is out now.
Saw it this weekend and… liked but didn’t love it. Exciting scene with the train robbery. I appreciated all the double-crosses, and the callouts to earlier SW movies (not too many of them, I thought). As with Empire, I still don’t buy that there are enormous space critters that want to eat starships. And I thought it would’ve made a better gag if the Millennium Falcon escape pod which Solo ejected had included the walk-in closet with all of Lando’s capes.
Alden Ehrenreich is 29; Harrison Ford was 35 when* Star Wars: A New Hope* came out. Is it supposed to be six years or so before the Battle of Yavin?
I read recently that it is doing even worse overseas (not too surprising, as TLJ’s big haul was disproportionately domestic) and looks to be headed for the dubious distinction of being the first Star Wars movie to actually lose money after marketing costs are deducted.
I don’t think this is it at all. Some times stuff just comes out that is simply so far beyond anything you have seen before that it enters the social consciousness. What made Star Wars great was that it was far better than anything people had seen before at that point, you don’t get that feeling back by simply doing more Star Wars. We see this happen over and over again in all kinds of media, something comes out that revolutionizes the industry and everyone immediately goes “let’s do more of that” instead of realizing that the secret to success is simply being way better than anything else that has come before. Of course even if they learned that lesson you just can’t pull that out of your ass every year, it happens once a generation if you are lucky.
The thing that made it baffling was that the timeframe was never really established in Solo. I think we’re expected to assume that this was taking place a decade or so ahead of A New Hope, but the actors’ relative ages would give us 6 years (Ford was 34 when ANH came out, and Ehrenreich is 28).
But having Maul in there without any nod to his survival of his bisection by Obi Wan’s lightsaber in Phantom Menace is going to make people confused- clearly Han is not as old as Obi Wan, but would have to be if Maul actually died.
All in all though, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Oddly, the most entertaining call-back to me was when Beckett was wearing the primitive armor that Lando later wore in Jabba’s palace.
Chewbacca’s age is specifically mentioned as 190. I know this isn’t common knowledge, but in the promotional materials for the first Star Wars: A New Hope he was described as a 200 year old Wookiee. That makes Solo as being set ten years before. Han is around 18 or 19 in the prologue, and ~22 in the main story, making him ~32 in ANH.
Because a lot of Han’s origins were fudged around with in the old EU novels, his age wasn’t always clear, the best guess was 29 years before ANH. They’ve had to nail that down somewhat for this movie, so officially he was born ~32 years before ANH.