A/V SOLO: A Star Wars Story (untagged spoilers allowed)

Needing to be told?

Do we need anything other than, "Fun story with favorite characters?"

God knows "How the Death Star plans were taken" didn't need to be told.

 

I think there's a bit of that I can agree with, though. One thing that Rogue One has going for it over Solo is that it's absolutely the most important series of events in the lives of all the main characters in the movie. Solo is just not, and so packs less of a punch.

But I'm with you in that I'm less sure I understand the "did this story need to be told on film" criticism (which I admittedly hear a lot these days for a number of movies.) And I just kind of have to shake my head at the Kasdan criticism (which, again, is something I've seen a lot of, not just from sidv88)--if they had gone with someone else to create the story and script, folks would be complaining that it's not enough like Empire and Raiders and why didn't they just hire Lawrence Kasdan.

TC

 

I heartily agree! It's been bouncing back and forth for awhile, I had to get the Wal Mart Last Jedi exclusive to get the DVD/BR, but it seems with Infinity War and Solo they've gone just pure BD.

Now, to be fair, a few years ago they stopped adding in the DVD but suddenly they appeared again (there's a middle swath of Marvel Phase 2 movies that I don't have DVDs with the blu rays) but this seems like the final non-bonus DVD frontier. Which is odd considering other studios are still doing it.

 

I do think SOLO has too low stakes for the story. This feels like the first movie in a duology as there's a LOT of interesting things which are set up that never get a pay off. Basically, Solo for all of the stuff he gets like his ship and blaster and Wookie bestie doesn't actually have much of a major event. I hate being the one to say it but I think if they needed to do this movie they should have had Emilia Clarke's character betray him ala Bria Tharen.

Either to Not-Black Sun or to the Rebellion (which she'd be secretly working for)

It might explain why Han is less inclined to help the Rebellion later....like it did in Legends.

Emilia Clarke betraying him would also explain why he's so cagey around people.

 

She does betray him, just not in a way that's directly injurious to him: she chooses to quash his idealism and be a gangster, which I don't think Han particularly wants to be, but which he's stuck doing now because his other options dried up. Han doesn't place faith in people, but it's not because a character turned him over to the bad guys so much as the only person he had any faith in or a real relationship to turned her back on him and chose a path that, however beneficial to him it might be, isn't how he'd have preferred things to turn out. And then, alone with Chewie, he faces a profession full of people who can't be trusted either. It's less of a bang than with Bria, but I dig it.

That said, I agree that the movie absolutely feels like part of a larger web of movies in a way Rogue One didn't.

 

I think Maul is kind of an odd duck there because Maul is awesome and all but he's dead in Rebels.

Unless Han Solo is going to be the guy who faces him again, it misses something.

And then we know he'd survive, which is odd for a movie.

Maybe Maul might die in a Kenobi movie but that is still confusing.

 

I don't think possibility-of-character-death is the only way to animate a story, though. I wouldn't expect Maul to even be a very front-and-center character, mostly giving orders and being menacing.

 

While true, there is always going to be a substantial number of the fandom who don't watch the cartoons and will wonder about Maul's fate.

Sort of like if Thanos is defeated on AGENTS OF SHIELD.

 

My thought after seeing Solo was that they were building to a big gangland war film that Han, Lando, Qi'Ra and co we're going to get caught up in, that would have ended with the Empire being called down and Vader himself removing Maul and forcing him to the point we see in Rebels.

 

I mean I think that's true, but I don't think it really becomes an issue unless Maul's fate becomes material to the stories.

 

I dunno, because removing REBELS, revealing Maul is alive is a Checov's gun you can't not fire.

Equivalent to, say, in The Last Jedi if Mace Windu shows up alive.

 

It's funny how you mention a duology...I remember while listening to "Now this is Podcasting" Jayson ward brought up something he heard from the grape vine that during Joss Tranks run on Boba Fett the idea was there would be a scene in Solo and a scene in the Fett film that happens from the other character POV. Meaning we'd see Solo POV of said scene in the SOLO film and Boba's POV in the Boba film.

I'm personally thinking Boba could take on Maul-do almost a Bounty Hunter thing were Crimson Dawn is the Bando Gora and Maul is Vosa in this scenario

 

Agreed! And I look forward to seeing him be a gangster and give menacing orders from underneath a hood in future installments, I just don't think him dying or not has anything to do with that.

 

Maul can lose his entire criminal empire and get good and banished to Malachor's basement in a movie which could wrap up his story nice and good as far as the films are concerned and his end point is on Rebels. He doesn't have to die in a movie, he wasn't even resurrected in a movie. But there's ways to defeat him that doesn't involve his death.

I don't quite like the idea of Maul in a Kenobi movie, though, we have some great Clone Wars / Rebels episodes for that which frame their story. Also it seems really likely in Rebels that Maul thought Obi-Wan died in the purge and not, like, last week.

Anyway, more related to this specific movie, I don't think Tobias Becket is the most interestingly written character, it's a whole lot of cliches about trust and depth and real life consequences and yadda yadda Ima cynic mentor but, dangit, it's freakin' Woody Harelson. He even makes the valicord bit actually work! And the line "Thinking. And I prefer to be the only one with a blaster when doing that."

 

Heh

Sent from my SM-G386W using Tapatalk

 

Personally I'm just sitting here hoping we get more Enfys Nest content.

 

Enfys Nest is a lot cooler than Lando, who came across as really shady and not a guy I'd like to be around (drug smuggler, narcissist with his Lando Chronicles, overall jerk and of course professional gambling cheater). I honestly got chills when @BobaMatt posted that Lando grin a few posts ago. It's not Glover's fault, he's a great actor who did what he could with the script, but it just came down to how Lando was writen in the Solo movie.

 

Drug smuggler, narcissist, overall jerk? Kinda sounds like Han in A New Hope.

 

True, but Han came around by the end of the movie. Lando did not. He flew the opposite direction on the beach.

Part of my problem with new canon is that they took Han to even lower levels like gambling away the Rebellion's money, something he never did in the old canon.

 

Hey, want me to let you in on a little secret?

Come here.

No, closer, someone else might hear...

...

LANDO IS IN A WHOLE TWO OTHER MOVIES SHOWING THE REST OF HIS CHARACTER ARC OMG

 

The all caps sentence was not necessary. I will explain my POV line by line using scenes from the movies in question.

I don't believe that the character we see at the end of Solo matches well with the one at the beginning of ESB.

Han and Lando are genuinely friends at the start of ESB. They are most definitely not in the end of Solo.

Lando's betrayal is supposed to be a surprise in ESB, coming from my previous point of genuine friendship. Watching the movies in a row now, Lando's betrayal would surprise no one as he already betrayed Han. It shouldn't even surprise Han.

Now it's true that there may be a Solo sequel that connects the dots. The problem is that Solo undermines Lando so much my making him a traitor he would have to practically be a saint in a future movie for Han to consider him a friend in ESB. What we have here now is the equivalent of Loki tricking Thor in Thor, then having Thor be surprised when Loki tricks him in Thor Ragnarok. Even if we are missing Thor Dark World, things are not adding up and it's the same situation with Solo and ESB.

 

Honestly, I kind of disliked how unprofessional Han was as a criminal.

He turned on his employers with almost no hesitation.

Beckett was at least trying to do the job they were hired to do

 

Yes, that's why Han repeatedly tells Leia they can't and shouldn't trust him. I know that's what I tell my girlfriend about my "genuine friends". I know I've also done enough terrible things to my genuine friends that when they joke about "what you pulled" my instinct is not to deny it but to drop into a fighting stance.

Seriously, I hope your "genuine friends" are better to you than Han and Lando are to each other, cuz omg.

 

Han's fear is from the incident Chewie roared about which Han hoped Lando had forgotten. Leia tells Han she doesn't trust Lando to fix Threepio; Han says "I don't trust him either but he is my friend."

While one can argue that Han is really saying that he doesn't trust Lando not to turn them over to the Empire, it's outright shown in the scene afterwards and the shock and sadness on Han's face "I'm sorry too" that Han didn't think Lando would turn him over to a masked dark lord. Whatever Han doesn't "trust him either" about, it's not about turning Han over to torture or death by a masked lord.

The problem is that this exact scenario, Lando leaving Han to torture or death by a masked lord, is precisely what Lando does in Solo for Enfys Nest. So it makes no sense that Han would be shocked over Lando turning him over to a masked lord when he's done such a thing before.

Whatever Han doesn't trust Lando about in ESB, it's not regarding selling him out to a masked lord going by his reactions. Yet Solo precisely undermines and contradicts that.