Star Wars Episode II - A New Thread

[Gendo'sPapa]

Key reason why they reveal THAT character is behind all the evil at the end of the film is because most likely he’s going to be the main heavy for the Obi-Wan: A Star Wars Story Disney is not-so-secretly working on at the moment. That’s probably going to be the first post Episode IX Star Wars movie in 2020 would be my bet. Based on the disasterously low box office numbers (this movie reportedly cost $300 million to make BEFORE marketing is taken into account - that’s what happens when you have to make the same movie twice - and opened in every major movie-going market in the world this past weekend except Japan and only made a total of about $168 million. I could see the film closing at about $400-450 million worldwide which would be disasterous considering it’s monsterous production & marketing cost. Solo is the first true Star Bomb.) I doubt there will be a Solo 2 BUT I would not be surprised if Disney really starts leaning into the Marvel game plan and have Baby Han Solo start popping up in other movies. The same game play of using multiple characters to support less appealing ones helped turn the Thor & Captain America franchises around for sure & we’ll probably see Ant-Man 2 do much bigger business this summer than the original did in 2015 now that he’s been featured front-and-center in what was essentially an Avengers movie.
You get a little Baby Han Solo in a Ewan McGregor starring Obi-Wan movie, maybe add a dash of Baby Han Solo in Baby Boba Fett, do a larger team up film here & then give Baby Han Solo 2 a try.

[soul.assassin]

That's why once again they'll have to screen the film in China to recoup their losses.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Repeat: Solo: A Star Wars Story opened in EVERY major movie-going market except Japan this weekend.

The movie opened in China this past weekend. It made $10 million on the opening weekend. About 1/3 of what Rogue One: A Star Wars & The Last Jedi did on their opening weekend and 1/5TH of what The Force Awakens opened to. China won’t save this film. China is really not into Star Wars & why should they? These movies are all conitnuations/spin-offs of things the West has grown up on for 40 years & Chinese audiences are only now getting introduced to.

It also doesn’t help that Star Wars is primairly a United States phenomenon that doesn’t translate that well worldwide. While most blockbusters now can bet on foreign sales being where the money is at with the US usually accounting for roughly 35-40% of a movies total theatrical gross, Star Wars is & always has skewed heavily weighed toward US audiences with domestic viewership usually accounting for over 50% of the film’s final sale. Rogue One for example made more money in the US then it did in the rest of the world combined.

If Solo is a bomb in the US (Ron Howard voice: It is) it’s going to be a bomb worldwide.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

I don’t want to see a Lord & Miller cut of Solo. They’re good, but weren’t a good fit for this movie in the first place.

I don’t want to see the Howard cut of this movie. He’s just gonna run around butting band-aids on the entire production.

I don’t want to see Ehrenreich play Solo. His best role was playing an actor who couldn’t act in the movie Hail Caesar.

I don’t want to see a Han Solo film. He was only an interesting character because of the rest of the characters around him. (Even Harrison Ford felt this.) Making a movie about Han before he became interesting is a bad idea to begin with.

I’m just not in the mood right now. Sorry.

[kuribo-04]

He was only an interesting character because of the rest of the characters around him.

I dunno, I disagree with that. The Han in this movie didn't need to be the Han from the OT either, who I admit, isn't the most complex character. A fairly complex story could have been written like I said in a previous post, of how dissapointments shape Han.
It's just that they went for something far simpler.

And I assure you the movie doesn't feel like some kind of mess, Howard deserves major praise IMO for how he came in in the middle of production and did a well put together film (with amazing special effects btw).

And I can write here all day long about how I see wasted potential in the film, the truth is I smiled the whole time I watched it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't see this film as anything negative at the end of the day.

What I have noticed is Star Wars fatigue has set in for me. I'm not too interested in SW IX, though I'll like seeing how Abrams decides to close the story he started.
I don't care much for the Obi Wan spinoff, and the Rian Johnson films I'm sure will be something worth watching, but I'm just not too excited right now.
Maybe the 1.5 years between now and episode IX change that.

[soul.assassin]

China won’t save this film

That's the problem with this industry in general. Marvel's gonna make more money.

[IronEvangelion]

I think The Last Jedi was a major factor in Solo's weak sales. TLJ pissed off a massive portion of the fanbase, many of whom gave up on Star Wars at that point. So it does make sense that Solo would do far worse in sales, following so closely on the heels of that fiasco. That said, movies in general seem to be doing badly at the theaters right now. Weak sales or not, Solo is still at the top of the box office charts sales-wise.

[FrDougal9000]

Can I ask y'all here a couple of questions about Star Wars? They've been on my mind a bit as of late, and I'm curious to try and get a few new perspectives on this.

1. Why do people like Star Wars?

The series has been a continual presence in my life; largely due to being in a family who adore sci-fi; but I've never really understood why the series resonates so strongly with people. I like Tartakovsky's Clone Wars mini-series well enough, along with a couple of the video games (Jedi Academy on the Xbox was my jam back in the day!), but that's more for the cool spectacle of awesome battles than anything else. Much like John Williams' music or Hayao Miyazaki's movies, Star Wars just seems to elude me completely - like, I can't even start to figure out why it's so beloved, and I consider myself to be pretty okay at getting people's perspectives.

Maybe it's like that old saying about jazz - if you have to ask, you'll never know. But I'd still like to try and know.

2. Why do people seem to dislike The Last Jedi so strongly?

Yes, I've heard it's a very divisive film, but I'm curious to know more. As far as I can glean, the film did some strange things, some of which might have come from a clash between the director and the producers/franchise brand/whatever, but I don't know why that should merit such hatred. I can't help but wonder if it's a bit like Alien 3, which is actually pretty good but gets a lot of hate largely because it did minor things that really annoyed fans.

This is a question I'm very curious about, because I have this assumption that the reason people* disliked TLJ is because it didn't go out of its way to please the fans like Rogue One did. I'm aware that's a shitty, petty assumption to have, which is why I want to know more about the reaction towards TLJ and get past that assumption.

*People as in a general concept. I don't mean to belittle those who have very good reasons for disliking the film, or dislike for reasons that have nothing to do with my assumption. That's why I'm asking this to be dissuaded from that assumption, but I apologise in advance if I have annoyed someone with the way I've worded something.

[Chuckman]

The only complaint I share about *The Last Jedi* is that it was obvious the script writers felt they needed to give ever cast member something to do, like everyone needed equal time, so the movie has a bizarre aside. It needed to be tailored more to the slow chase concept, or the slow chase concept abandoned entirely or rewritten. As it was, the movie feels like a third act drawn out over an entire film. So, pacing is the main issue.

I know the other big fandom complaint is how they handled Luke Skywalker's departure from the franchise, but I thought it was perfect, and brought the psuedo-mysticism of the Jedi back around to the way it was presented in ESB/ROTJ and away from Lucas' own Lensman-ripoff Buck Rogersy interpretation, which often borders on incoherent.

SPOILER: Show

Luke wins without fighting and becomes one with the Force. It would be a betrayal of the idea of ROTJ where he wins by *discarding his weapon* and overcomes the power of the Emperor with the soul-force of nonviolence if he showed up in this movie swinging his laser sword and made a 'heroic sacrifice'.

As to why people like *Star Wars*, I think it's past the point of a specific reason now. It's a cultural touchstone, it's part of the fabric of American culture. The original films represented a return of idealism- the first movie came out in a very (for the time, anyway) dark period of American history and followed a period of American cinema that was dominated by cynicism and nihilism under the 'art must be challenging' banner, mostly as a rebellion against the Hayes code, etc.

It came out at a time when the prevailing American cultural myths of the Western and the 'clean' war film (think John Wayne) went out of style and were torn apart in the style that would later be called 'deconstruction'. The Western and the war film became too immediate to be myth anymore thanks to Vietnam, so the culture was ready for a new myth that was sufficiently distanced from reality to be accepted. "Long long ago in a galaxy far far away" standing in for the age of heroes and gods.

The curious thing is that Star Wars is so established that with TLJ (and, in a more ham handed and amateurish way, ATOC/ROTS) Star Wars is moving into the "deconstruction" phase right as superheroes take Star Wars' place as that cultural touchstone myth again. Note that the modern superhero wave really took off with Iron Man, a movie about the personification of American imperialism transforming himself into a 'clean' and heroic version of that same force that does the 'right thing' by murdering guilty people without all those pesky geopolitical and legal concerns. The culture was ready for a new myth that's more immediate and topical. The zeitgeist seems to shift between a mythical what-was and a mythical what-should-be.

Star Wars came about because the 'what was' (the Western and 'the good war' of John Wayne) lost its luster, and faded in favor of more immediate mythology when people wanted to start fantasizing about the imposition of ideals.

[IronEvangelion]

I just got back from seeing Solo in theatres. Han and crew need to be locked up...

SPOILER: Show

...for smuggling way more fun into a Disney-era Star Wars film than what's legally allowed these days. I had a smile on my face for most of the movie. Solo successfully recaptures the spirit of the pre-Y2K Star Wars films (ANH through TPM), while at the same time turning into its own thing instead of blatanly copying its predecessors. And it works! There isn't a single unlikable character in the entire cast, unlike TFA. It's not heavy-handedly preaching the director's sociopolitical views, unlike TLJ. It doesn't lose its soul to its own grand, overarching, and largely superficial conspiracy drama like AoTC and RoTS did. It's simply an entertaining movie about space pirates pulling off a heist, which is all it needs to be.

The actors absolutely nailed their roles, especially Donald Glover as Lando. Alden Ehrenreich was very good as Han Solo, except for maybe being a little too softspoken (though not to the degree of Cassian Andor in Rogue One). Emilia Clarke As Qi'ra was good, although her character needed a bit more screentime for fleshing out her background with her being a new character and all. They never did get around to mentioning what kind of stuff she had done in the past three years, which would have done a lot to solidify her character. The supporting characters (Beckett and company) are thankfully kept in the background where they belong, instead of becoming more Rose Ticos that are forced into the spotlight for no good reason. The biggest surprise (even bigger than Mecha-Maul at the end) was the droid L3. It's probably a good thing she was killed off at the halfway point, else she might have stolen the spotlight from the main characters. Whoever voiced her did a fantastic job. It was also cool to finally see a humanoid droid with a female AI.

Lastly, I'm not going to ignore Solo's proverbial elephant-in-the-room, the Mecha-Maul reveal. Although he does look wicked cool with robotic legs, I've always had mixed feelings about bringing him back to life. I thought Maul being brought back from the dead in TCW was simultaneously both the coolest and stupidest twist that has ever happened in Star Wars, and I feel the same about his return in Solo. Granted, they pulled of the big reveal very well. It's just that the whole concept of Maul surviving is the coolest thing that absolutely did not need to happen, and arguably should not have happened. The Qui-Gon fan in me needs to point out that it's also a slap in the face to Qui-Gon fans. The two fought each other in TPM. Qui-Gon gets run through with Maul's lightsaber, falls to the ground, and dies. The Jedi burn his body on Naboo. But maul gets completely sliced in half, falls down a shaft that's hundreds of feet deep, and fucking survives long enough to get a prosthetic lower body? Where is the logic?What they've done is open Pandora's Box by removing the permanence of death, just like the Metal Gear Solid series and Kingdom Hearts series did. Now almost anyone can come back. I wouldn't be surprised to see a baconized Palpatine cackling his way onto the set of Episode IX at this point, I mean he fell down a similar shaft while completely undamaged. There's more logic in him being brought back than Maul. I'm not going to place blame for this on Solo, though, since it's something that was carried over from the Lucas era.

Overall, I think it's the best SW film since TPM. I don't even need to see it twice to know that Solo is now my third favorite film in the entire series. My ranking of the films from favorite to least favorite is now as follows:

Return of the Jedi
The Phantom Menace
Solo
The Empire Strikes Back
Rogue One
A New Hope
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi
Revenge of the Sith
Attack of the Clones

[Chuckman]

I saw it- it really isn't that bad. It's a good thieves screwing over thieves heist film in space.

The weakest parts, by far, are all the references to the OT/prequels, and the main character being an established player in another story. They need to cut the apron strings and start doing original SW stories.

[movieartman]

SPOILER: Show

But maul gets completely sliced in half, falls down a shaft that's hundreds of feet deep, and fucking survives long enough to get a prosthetic lower body?

My ranking of the films from favorite to least favorite is now as follows:

Return of the Jedi
The Phantom Menace
Solo
The Empire Strikes Back
Rogue One
A New Hope
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi
Revenge of the Sith
Attack of the Clones

SPOILER: Show

In the old canon it was explained that no vital organs of Maul's species were in the waist and the blade cauterizes the wound so he didn't bleed out. He built the robotic spider legs himself I think using the force down in the pit and then got goat leg replacements later on. How he survived the fall I don't know maybe used the force to dull the impact.

Care to explain Phantom being so high up?
Not calling you out, I like it more then the other Lucas prequels also. Just curious.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Solo has dropping almost (or over) 70% in attendance in its second weekend. Wows! This is especially astonishing since all other studios steered clear of releasing any big projects this weekend having assumed Star Wars 10 was going to be a financial juggernaut. This movie most likely won’t even hit $200 million in the US when the theatrical run is over. It also is very unlikely Solo is going to reach $400 million worldwide. Disney won’t even recoup the production costs from this when all is said and done.

I hope that Steven Spielberg, Paramount & (looks online... deep sigh) Disney* take a lesson to heart from this movie while working on Indiana Jones 5 and accept you CAN’T just recast a character that is 100% tied to the charisma & personality of Harrison Ford. You can make Indy 5 a restorative swan song for the character so things don’t end off with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but you can’t follow that up with a theatrical franchise built on Young White Dude playing a Young Indiana Jones. Even River Phoenix could only make Young Indy work for 15 minutes.

*Since Disney now owns Indiana Jones - Paramount has distribution rights - I sadly expect Indiana Jones 5 is going to be 20% a final adventure for Harrison Ford as Indiana & 80% setting up a cinematic universe of some sort. A cinematic universe where Indiana’s students inspired by his adventures go off and have their own. The Indiana Jones Students Cinematic Universe. IJSCU...

[Sachi]

I think they anticipated the loss with this film. Solo wasn't originally supposed to be such a high budget film, but they allowed the budget to double itself with the reshoots because they wanted to ensure a quality final product that would maintain the integrity of the direction these new Disney SW films have in mind. Imagine how things would be right now if Solo flopped *and* failed completely as a SW movie; that would have severely hurt all future SW films under the Disney banner, even if the rest of them end up being good. As things are now, many SW fans are at least happy with the film, including some who absolutely hated TLJ. It's personally my second favorite to come out of Disney, the first being Rogue One, and so I actually really hope they continue on with these stand alone stories. If they manage to avoid the same production mistakes they made with Solo (and let's be honest, the firing of directors halfway through was entirely unprecedented, and is unlikely to happen again any time soon, at least not if they learned their lesson), then I have no doubt that their investments into this film are going to pay off for them in the long run with future films.

[Chuckman]

I still don't know how they expect any Indy adventure top top finding the Holy Grail. The archetypal ultimate quest.

Still I'm disappointed that Crystal Skull wasn't Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars.

It'd be neat, too, if they did the Indy vs Soviets idea justice and made the movie about something related to the Romanoffs or Rasputin or Koschei the Deathless or something from Russian folklore. Better to start over with a new character, though.

[IronEvangelion]

SPOILER: Show

In the old canon it was explained that no vital organs of Maul's species were in the waist and the blade cauterizes the wound so he didn't bleed out. He built the robotic spider legs himself I think using the force down in the pit and then got goat leg replacements later on. How he survived the fall I don't know maybe used the force to dull the impact.

Care to explain Phantom being so high up?
Not calling you out, I like it more then the other Lucas prequels also. Just curious.

Thanks, that makes a little more sense. I didn't know the anatomy of his species was that different from that of humans.

As for why I enjoy TPM so much:

SPOILER: Show

TPM happens to be a convergence of many of my favorite characters and/or fight scenes. Plus I'm one of the few people on earth who can tolerate prolonged exposure to Jar-Jar . TPM is the only film with Qui-Gon Jinn, who is not only my favorite Jedi, but my favorite character in the entire series. One of the biggest mistakes Lucas made with the prequels was killing him off in TPM, he should have stuck around until at least halfway through AoTC. TPM also introduced battle droids and droidekas, which happen to be my favorite droid types. A large portion of the film takes place on Naboo, which is my favorite SW planet. Speaking of Naboo, it also features my favorite version of Padme. That's how I like to remember Padme: the badass, tough-talking warrior-queen she became in TPM, not AoTC's naive senator who falls for the creepiest suitor ever, or RoTS' whimpering moeblob. I also greatly prefer Lloydnakin over Haydenakin. Lloydnakin's line delivery might have been a little off, but at least he didn't destroy Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader as a character the way Haydenakin did.

I didn't mind the Coruscant/Senate segment, actually I thought it fit very well in the film and was necessary (although it could have been done a little better). I loved the podracing, even though it does take up a little too much of the film and could have been shortened. As for battles, The Battle of Naboo (both land and space) is pretty solid, although I wish they had given the Gungans better weapons to make them look like a credible fighting force. The final battle with Maul, though, is hands-down the best lightsaber fight in the entire series. Maul himself is a real standout and a very well-designed character visually. He's another character I wish they had kept around until about the middle of AoTC.

That's about the best I can describe why I like the movie so much. It features many of my favorite characters who either aren't in the other films (Qui-Gon, Maul) or are in their prime in TPM (Padme, Anakin). I also love the Trade Federation/droid army, the podracing, Naboo itself, and the final battle. A lot of the things other people hate about the movie don't bother me. It did some things wrong (overuse of Jar-Jar, the overly long Tattooine segment, killing Qui-Gon and Maul way too early, making Anakin 9 years old while Padme is 14, etc.), but it did most things right. All of this is just my opinion, of course. Sorry if I got too vitriolic about Padme and Anakin, I have very strong feelings about how they were portrayed in the other prequels.

[Chuckman]

I'm spoilering this relating to Solo since that's the reason we're talking about this character.

SPOILER: Show

As great as Christopher Lee is, he added nothing to the prequels and the whole Darth Tyrannus thing severely overcomplicated the whole Sith thing. Maul should have been the face of the Sith throughout, replacing both Grievous and... Count Dooku.

Dooku. Dooku. Really?

Palpatine should have had a much smaller role throughout the PT.

[Gus Hanson]

Now that I have finally seen all of The Last Jedi in it's entirety, it's time to chip in my two cents:

SPOILER: Show

It's not that bad when it deals with it's characters that debuted in this trilogy but as for the original, they get so out of character with Leia being strict on Poe and Luke acting all whiny the first half that for me, it was a relief when the second half starting with Rey and Kylo in the presence of Snoke got going. Because Luke refused to show any spine in the beginning, I felt like his sendoff was not to be remembered as that noble a sacrifice overall. And for those who ask, no I don't think Rose was as much a problem on the plot as many fans and critics keep trying to hammer in our consciousness. The memorial in the credits dedicated to Carrie Fisher packed an emotional punch especially when the piano dipped down to make a solemn yet upbeat note.

[Chuckman]

SPOILER: Show

Rose wasn't the problem per se, the random Casino Royale aside was.

They structure the story around a slow speed rolling battle and kept killing the tension.

[IronEvangelion]

SPOILER: Show

Regarding Dooku, I think he was horribly underutilized in the prequels. He was only in AoTC for a couple of brief cameos and one battle scene, then dies almost immediately at the beginning of RoTS. It was such a waste of a great character and actor. Ideally, I'd have liked for him to first appear standing on the balcony with Palpatine and Maul (and maybe even Plagueis) during that scene in TPM. Just throw out the Rule of Two altogether, it was a bad concept to begin with. The three or four of them betraying each other and trying to eliminate each other over the course of the films (with Palpatine still being the main villian, of course), until only Palpatine is left standing, would have made for a much better Sith conspiracy than the one we got. Of course, I realize that not all of those characters were thought up during the filming of TPM, but maybe some day the prequels can get a "special edition" that adds extra scenes, edits some existing scenes, and ties the three films together better. Maybe even fix some story issues at the same time.

Regarding Rose Tico, I don't have a problem with her being in the TLJ. I do have a problem with how much screen time she gets, to the point where she gets an entire side quest that pretty much revolves around her and her views on how things should be. That, and the idiotic stunt she pulled at the end that put the Resistance at a severe tactical disadvantage, dooming her allies until Luke pulled his deus-ex-machina. Anyhow, she should have been a Lando-level support character at the most, having a semi-important role but not getting the same screen time as the main characters. It's a little late to start introducing more main characters during the halfway point of a trilogy. Plus, there were already three main characters in the sequel trilogy: Rey, Finn, and Poe. When you add more than that, it starts to interfere with the ability to tell a coherent story in a 2 to 2.5-hour film format, just as it did in TLJ.