Han Solo Anthology Film - "Solo: A Star Wars Story"*

Agreed. Releasing it in December may not have resulted in bofo box office, but its clear having it out the same time as the juggernaut known as Infinity War and the sequel to the biggest R rated film ever, both of which are made up of the same demographic as your average Star Wars fan was not a good idea.

 

Ok, but what have to be done with those people? Do you think that the franchise have to interact with them? I honestly don't understand what's your idea, how these people could be punished, and what this has to do with the SW franchise? And is it fair everyone who doesn't like some SW movie or character to be categorized as part of these people?

 

I think they didn't worry about this because... it's Star Wars. Ordinarily, Star Wars would be the juggernaut other studios move their movies away from.

Infinity War opened a month before Solo, and the Deadpool movie is R rated so younger Star Wars fans can't see it (theoretically anyway). I don't think it would have mattered much if they'd had a better movie to release.

It's funny, when The Force Awakens became a December release fans were going, "I can't imagine watching a Star Wars movie at Christmas time!" And now one of the new movies has come out at the time all of Lucas's were released, and it's a terrible decision.

 

There's very little of significance (potential-blockbuster-wise) being released this holiday season, aside from the Fantastic Beasts sequel in mid-November. No Marvel movies. In fact, only one other major "franchise" movie - Aquaman, in December. But given DC's track record, I can't imagine that would have posed any real competition.

Increasingly, there are lots of people who really only do limit themselves to seeing a very small number of movies in an actual theater. And almost always, those are big-budget franchise films. Asking those people to shell out money for three big ones in a row (remember, Infinity War came out just over a month ago, believe it or not) was a bad mistake.

 

I'm not blaming Kelly Marie Tran for anything. I already said people on the internet can be a**holes. My post was in response to the idea of the horrible vocal element you obsess over.
White knight anyone?

She's a celebrity, and I extrapolated my experiences on the internet to suggest that celebrities must get it even worse, but suggested that they should know they're going to get that treatment by entering public life. No, that doesn't make it right. It's not right at all. There are bullies in the world and the internet has made it worse. But the alt-right people you keep alluding to aren't the only online bullies that exist.

 

So what's your solution? As I said earlier, I've had hateful things spewn at me over my political beliefs on other boards, so that's bullying based on ideas rather than race or gender or whatever hot button issue of the day. But you only want to focus on a certain kind of bullying to fit your narrative.

 

I guess... to me as a regular filmgoer, a month between big releases is a long time. If the two movies had come out on the same weekend, I would probably have seen one on Saturday and one on Sunday.

 

I would agree with you wholeheartedly, had Solo been a genuine work of creative expression instead of a corporate product. I don't mean that in a totally derisive way - corporate film products can be good exciting fun. But it wasn't so much created as calibrated, and whatever was calibrated didn't work to the satisfaction of the corporation. Which must be somewhat puzzling to them, as they seem convinced that "fan service" exercises are what the fans want. I guess that's what they want - in the absence of something greater, anyway. I would argue that sometimes films succeed greatly because they give people something that they want, but which they didn't know that they wanted. No amount of audience testing could have created or predicted the impact of Jaws or the original Star Wars, for example. And then there's basic supply/demand issues. The market has been glutted by these middling to good Disney Star Wars films and I think the market is saying that annual installments of serviceable fan service isn't good enough to set box office records. Box office records are set by delivering magic - or at least creating the reasonable expectation of it. I would say that Disney has not created that expectation for enough people to get the box office results that they want. Sadly, their reaction will probably be to make fewer of them, not to make better ones.

I saw that in the theater and loved it. It's almost hard to believe that people didn't get the satire, although IIRC, it wasn't marketed as a joke. But the Nazi imagery, the whitening of Buenos Aires, the propaganda ads... seemed pretty obvious to me. Anyway, I think people should re-watch it today - thing about satires is that they sometimes can have a really long shelf life.

 

I agree with your first part. They need fan-service to an extent. This isn't some art film. This is film by committee, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to listen to some of the fans.

And no way KK should apologize or have any sort of press conference. Make better movies, that's it. And I also think Disney expected the film to not do so well months ago. This didn't surprise them.

The real test, again, will be how IX does as that is the direct sequel to TLJ.

 

Its a pretty decent flick, and Im the biggest grump when it comes to the "new" Star Wars

 

Yeah I am still waiting to see it in theaters. I'm waiting for my friend to confirm when he can see it but otherwise I'm just going next week one night.

 

I bet if "Solo" had been a pre warm up to "The Force Awakens" that it would have had flocks of fans.

I think a good portion of this is the new Big Gulp is old hat now.

"More Star Wars...?...eh ok..I guess.

Hey who is that new super hero..?!?"

 

Agreed. "She" was horrible. IMO the doid revolt sequence was the only truly awful part of Solo. And it's kind of ironic that the same film that counted on fans to remember this or that reference to the original trilogy didn't stop to think that a lot of fans who remember what the Kessell Run was might also remember Spaceballs.

 

It was pretty ridiculous. KK needs to cut that crap out.

 

Don't you think that since (according to the reviews) the movie has been a flop and not making any money that this kills any chance of us seeing Solo II, A Star Wars Story?

 

These are some very good questions. As far as I know, Lucas has yet to say he likes or dislikes any of the Star Wars films after he sold Lucasfilm to Disney. The worst he's said is either, "I haven't seen it" (a very safe answer), or "well, it's not the kind of movie I would make." Ron Howard is laying low. I'm convinced he did this film because he's done 3 or 4 bombs in a row (Inferno, In the Heart of the Sea, The Dilemma, Rush), and I think he was looking at a big film like this so he could say, "there -- now I've made a huge blockbuster than made a billion dollars." But that's never gonna happen.

I truly believe the core issue of why the Han Solo movie failed was because it was movie by committee, and this is an example of corporate thinking where a bunch of suits around a table did market research and came up with two dozen bullet points that had to be in the film, then they had writers craft a story around that. And that's not an organic way of telling a story. I think this was a movie designed to make money... not to tell a great story.

Say what you will about the Marvel movies, I get the impression that the people making these movies are having fun doing them and really enjoy these stories. I think they're grateful that they're also commercially successful, but I really believe they care about the characters and are really involved in making them work first as films, and secondly as money-making entertainment. The "Zack Snyder/DC Comics" approach at WB is the polar opposite: a director wanting to imprint his or her own creative stamp on existing characters, to the point where it pushes the story into a direction that doesn't really fit the origins of where the comic books came from. I didn't love the Chris Nolan Batman films, but I recognize they're very well-made and got an audience... but those aren't films I want to see 10 times. The original Star Wars films are movies that many audiences willingly paid to see many, many times, and I think there was an affection and respect that went into making them that people could feel. (I did not get that sense from Lucas' prequels.)

 

It came out in the Making of Return of the Jedi book that Lucas was planning to have Lando fly his beloved Millenium Falcon into the new Death Star as a suicide mission, taking out the evil ship but dying in the process. Lucas was reminded, "hey, this is the main black character in our movie, and his death will disappoint and anger some members of the audience." He realized that was true, then Harrison Ford again asked if his character could be killed off, but Lucas adamantly said no, because it would bring down the movie too much. So most of the characters survived (save for The Emporer, Darth Vader, a few burned-up Ewoks, and thousands of unnamed stormtroopers.)

With the current storyline, it's good that Han stayed alive all these years to father Kylo Ren, even though we know how that ended up.

 

Well we can start by not making excuses for their behavior. Wrong is wrong.


And no not everyone who dislikes the current direction of things are a part of this group nor should be equated with them, but as decent people we should all be in agreement that its not okay to personally attack people and when someone is seen doing just that, we shouldn't just brush it off and go " Welp..thats the internet for ya!" if you are being a jerk...you should be called on it.

The irony is 90 percent of these a-holes wouldn't say these things in person to Kelly or anyone if they had to actually use their real names and have their faces attached to their names. They are cowards.

I'm not calling for people to be punished, but we need to stop just brushing it off as business as usual. It shouldn't be business as usual. The fact it has been is a much larger problem.

 

Yes. I doubt that there will a sequel. I have my doubts about Boba Fett as well. I don’t think there’s much interest there. Boba Fett is barely a character. He’s more of an image. He’s a suit. I think Disney is seriously reconsidering their game plan with these standalone films.

 

Well i appologize. No type of bullying should be justified. However two wrongs don't make a right. Just because KK made a frankly stupid comment in an interview about white males no longer being catered to doesn't mean it excuses people from striking out against an actress who has the misfortune of being in a movie produced by Kathy Kennedy. You seemed to be equating the two earlier. If that wasn't your intent I appologize for thinking that.

I never said they were the only online bullies to exist. Absolutely they aren't. Leftists have some real nutcases on their side too. I'm not disputing that.
However when it comes to Star Wars specifically there does seem a significantly louder response from the alt right side of things. And this is a Star Wars discussion. No it doesn't mean there aren't leftist malcontents too out there fanning the flames in Star Wars fandom, but the people that bullied Kelly Tran based on her looks and race are probably alt right.

 

I think the ObiWan movie may still happen though. Partially because in general fans do want to see Ewan get another turn as Obiwan without George Lucas directing, and Ewan seems to want it too. He was the best thing about the prequels.

They are talking about James Mangold for Boba Fett? I say let him make the Obi-Wan movie.

 

I didn't really like the movie but I'm actually quite surprised it hasn't done at least as well as Rogue One. It's not like it was a fiasco. I haven't seen anything like the negative reactions there were to Last Jedi, although people aren't really jumping up and down about it either.

 

George Lucas “really likes” Solo: A Star Wars Story, according to writer Lawrence Kasdan

And Ron's been active on Twitter, it seems.

 

Don’t you think it would have helped ratings say if Harrison Ford had made a cameo in the film? I think it would have been cool even if it was the actor bumping into his shoulder and he turned around for a moment. I don’t know something like that.

 

The mention of Kasdan reminds me of Ridley Scott and Alien... a creative person that fans believed had the key to a franchise, until he returned to it and didn't fare any better than others at recapturing the original magic. I'm sure you could find a million posts from Star Wars fans back in the prequel days saying "If they could just get Lawrence Kasdan back..."