Star Wars: Solo First Details of 4K Blu Ray

I would agree with that.

See also: Bryan Singer and Superman Returns.

 

That's a very, very charitable interpretation...

 

Although i would say JJ and Rian got closer to the mark with Star Wars than Singer did with Superman. There's very little of the Donner DNA in his movie aside from the Williams theme, CGI Brando as Jor-El, the crystaline fortress and Lex Luthor real estate huckster.its a weird Frankenstein monster of tones and themes and asthetics and was boring as hell. At least JJ and Rians movies actually feel and look like Star Wars movies. Plus to me they are enjoyable for what they are. I fell asleep in the theater watching Superman Returns.

 

Not really, when one of the valid complaints about the sequel trilogy is that it is too self reverential of those earlier movies that they nearly border on remake, particularly The Force Awakens. Rian did change things up a bit in places but got raked over the coals for it.

 

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

 

thisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthis

Same damn thing happened with Star Trek: Discovery. Change something, you're a heretic to be burned at the stake. Dare to make the main character connected with a classic character? You've ruined childhoods. Welcome back to the stake.

 

Way off topic so sorry in advance.

Are you referring to my comment about Enemy?

Enemy (2013)

A depressed history professor (Jake Gyllenhaal) rents a film and spots his own lookalike as an extra. He becomes obsessed with the background actor and decides to track him down.

The story set up reminded me of Speaking Parts (1989) by Atom Egoyan which was partly about a woman who was obsessed with a background actor. Also coincidentally both films are set in Canada. I expected an arty film with obtuse elements, and I knew it was highly unlikely the ending would explain anything. So I think I approached the film with the right attitude. Right from the very start it annoyed me. The cinematography was far too dark in the night scenes to the point it was a struggle to see anything, and the day scenes had a digital tint on them that I would describe as beige. It's not a nice looking movie.

The pace was a tad slow but it was only towards the end that it became clear to me that it was glacial.

The characters are the type of people who can't communicate so they talk in broken half-formed sentences with lots of pauses in short 'discussions' that go nowhere as nothing is properly articulated. Also the characters behave in odd ways – primarily I don't understand why him having a double is kept a secret and treated like an apocalyptic issue instead of being out in the open as an interesting curiosity. I just don't understand why the characters act like they do. There is very little hint of psychological meltdowns taking place despite how discordant the music gets on the soundtrack.

The story has a beginning but it doesn't have anywhere to go beyond that, and so goes nowhere in circles. Then the climax is shockingly pointless and arbitrary. Why this ending? Why not something else? What have the spiders got to do with anything? The lack of any explanation for the specifics is one thing, but I'm not sure there's any point to any of it. Possibly it's all a dream, but if so it's a pretty banal one. It doesn't have more than a few ideas in it. They could easily have added more stuff happening. Or at least had the characters actually talk to each other. This complete story could have made a tight 20 minute short movie without having to lose much content. At 86 minutes (PAL DVD) it's a tiny non-story stretched well beyond its natural length. Very little happens, and what does happens is not half as interesting as it should be. I think the script is incompetent and the direction very poor (if the director's technique is annoying you then he's in the way of the story). It's an abysmal movie that wastes the viewers’ time, but it is watchable in a very low-key way. It's an annoying movie that made me angry at the makers for putting something this pointless together and calling it a story. It's a failed attempt at a David Lynch-style surrealist film. You can argue I just didn't get it. I just don't think there was anything to get.

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I copy and pasted this from two unrelated reviews on IMDB to create a good single quote:

Further proof (as if we needed it) that an artist can put a frame around a blank canvas, and a predictable proportion of the audience will read into it some unfathomable work of genius that only they are clever enough to perceive. I guess the people who like this film all feel that they're the ones clever enough to "get it." No, sorry... just gullible enough to be "got" by this pseudo-intellectual rubbish.

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Speaking Parts (1989)

An actor gets the chance to audition for his first speaking part in a medical transplant drama.

I much preferred this to Atom Egoyan's Exotica (1994) and The Adjuster (1991). There was more of a discernible plot to it and the setup was more appealing. Also it helps that the characters actually talk and communicate with each other a bit more than is usual for his films. Film industry infighting etc. is fun so the subject matter hooked me in. It has large echoes of sex, lies, and videotape (1989) to it. Also the long male hair looked very silly and 80s while all of the women had normal looking non-80s hair. Egoyan’s usual banal, mundane style of course sucks much of the life out of it, but it was interesting enough despite that. The plot strands don’t really have a lot to do with each other and the videoing of the weddings section seemed to have nothing to do with anything. The movie was ploddingly average but watchable. Then the ending happens. Like a lot of surreal or odd movies it doesn’t know how to end the story it’s been telling. So it gives up and doesn’t climax the story. Instead they hit the button marked ‘weird random ****‘. A bunch of weird, cryptic images dance across the screen and the film ends without dealing with the problems the characters have been wrestling with. The story comes to no real conclusion. A total non-ending. Disappointing and lazy.

NOTE: I read this comment online which I think is very astute. ‘Atom Egoyan’s early films are interesting, offering an alternative to Hollywood. But his recent films have been disappointing. Raising the question of whether the interest of the early work was just that it was formally different – maybe Egoyan had an interesting language but didn’t have anything interesting to say in it.’ I agree with this. He had a stimulatingly different oddball technique, but he didn’t have good stories to tell within that peculiar one of a kind style. His films are often both interesting and dull at the same time.

 

I was mildly irritated with the Viper Probe Droids appearance during the train heist... Changes Empire continuity when he claims to not know what the on one Hoth was.... "I dunno, some kind of droid"

 

I watched this on 4K Bluray and my LG OLED C7 65" inch

Still the black levels were pretty hazy but it was watchable - way better a than the theater for sure.

 

After taking a year out of everything Star Wars, I picked up Solo on iTunes to rewatch via Apple TV on the main system downstairs. I was struck by how much clearer and intelligible the image was, especially with the early scenes on Corellia and Han's stint in the Imperial forces. This was all as muddy and indistinct as heck at the cinema (a cinema I visit regally and have otherwise never had a problem with their projection & sound), but was SO much better for home viewing.- my TV is pretty good but far from best in class. Kudos to the whoever made the call to change matters for the better.

As for the film? I enjoyed I much more than I did at the cinema. One or two moments were a little too on the nose (quoting Williams' The Asteroid Chase during the Kessel Run for example), but the only real Why did they do that?! moment remains

Spoiler

the reveal of Darth Mail as Vos' boss. I know he was resurrected in The Clone Wars and Rebels, but its something I've chosen to ignore. Like Boba Fett, Maul is more a cool silhouette than a character

.

Given that the film itself hasn't changed, other than the visual intelligibility of those earlier scenes, I'm guessing that Solo's original release coming so soon after TLJ cinema and home video releases made for over saturation. I can't help but think holding Solo back until last December would have made for a better reception.

 

One could reasonably explain this by Solo himself not being down at that end of the track. He's preoccupied with the marauders and trying to navigate the aircraft.

I re-watched this last night and I had just as much fun as when I saw it in the theatre. It's not perfect and the predictable callbacks to SW and TESB can be a little tiresome, but it has the old Star Wars feel and a sense of thrilling adventure that's been missing from these movies for the longest time. The best episodes of The Mandalorian get that too. I'd love to see another movie or two with this cast.

 

19 minutes and 18 seconds in, I determined that this movie was unwatchable, so I flipped over to Netflix to find anything less insulting to critical thinking.

I just don't see this Superman-Han-Solo of the past being anything like the Han Solo we met in A New Hope. This guy talks better than Han, flies better than Han, hustles better than Han, and though he doesn't look better than Han, he also looks nothing like Han.

The Force has been strong with me lately, so I'm calling it a lead balloon.

 

Remember that part where I said I was curious what you might think about Solo?

Yeah, me either.

 

I went overboard on my review. I know I did! It's just difficult for me to imagine anyone - anybody in our solar system - who can capture the lightning in a bottle that was Harrison Ford as Han Solo. Not even the old Harrison Ford. Not that Ford's performance was a masterclass in acting, but it was magical cinema.

I should have thought about that before I dove in, huh? But I'm grasping, because I love these stories from my youth: all that is Star Wars.

But hey, it's fun to dig on different impressions of the same thing.

 

I agree with you except for one thing: one hustles better when one's young, no matter how experienced one is, body and looks are verything when hustling and there's nothing than the body and looks of a young person, at least that'smy experience being almost 47.
When I was on my 20's I could get a laid when I wanted, now being almost 47 I get a laid when I can, what means seldom (the Covid-19 may have something to do with that).

And the attitude of a twenty or thirty something it's not the same as the oneof a seasoned guy who is near his 50's. I was more arrogant and cocky on my 20's than Iam now, damn, I miss it.
Just my 0.02 $.