Solo Complaints/Criticisms of Solo

In a film that covered 6 years of Han's early life, I didn't expect the Kessel Run to be center stage. I completely understood the film would cover a couple different milestones not highlight just one.

 

@Blackhole E Snoke

Seemed like an amazing feat to me. I mean, they flew through a massive cloud of planet-sized icebergs, escaped a black hole, and outsmarted a vacuum-breathing giant monster squid. If anything, it was TOO amazing a feat. Wasn't quite plausible next to the rest of their criminal exploits.

And I don't see why it needed to be the main feature of a Solo story. It was just a fun thing he used to brag about as a braggadocio. Didn't even need to be in the film, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Outrunning the Imperial Blockade wasn't too shabby either.

 

It's a good question - what is the eigenvalue of Han Solo. Some might say it's how he won of the Falcon. Others might say it's the Kessel Run. A prequel of Han would certainly set up an expectation to address those two items. Han's blaster is not made special in OT. Han's last name Solo is not made special in OT. Han's relationship with Chewy is not made special in OT. One could say these things are stated as assumptions in the beginning and then taken for granted as a matter of course. There is no real there, there, in the way that there is a there, there with such referred to mysteries as "that bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mandel" and "many Bothans died to bring us this information" and "my little maneuver at the battle of Tanaab". Those are all seed values for future Disney streaming content.

I cannot quite recall what my expectations were going in to viewing one, with the wife, because after TLJ I am certain I had zero. I wanted to be as honestly open to what was about to happen as I was able. So it's not like "I didn't want" there to be a representation of the Kessel Run. I think I remember expecting that there would be a trilogy of Han Solo, and so, NATURALLY, they would save the Kessel Run for something in the latter two, if not third movie. I thought there'd be a well thought out, long runway, leading from this whoever it is young Han Solo to the Han Solo that is imminently about to head over to Mos Eisley.

What we got is of course not that and my hot take after viewing one was very disappointed in this compaction of highlights and greatest hits in the exact same way Abrams was guilty of with TFA. The thing with TFA is it's all checks written forward, the whole movie. SOLO:ASWS has payments inside. You get paid back for your patience several times. One complaint I hear is the finale dragged on too long. I am in the camp (maybe of one) where the finale is a symphony of multiple resolutions. Might as well be Brandenburg Concerto or Beethoven's 9th, as far as what I have seen from Star Wars as oeuvre. A film technician shall point out that what I am calling all resolutions is in fact all part of rising action.

Anyway, the delivery of the Kessel Run was a let down for me. EU had set up a rich expectation that the daring do of accomplishing the Kessel Run would involve physically straining the ship in some form that might be analogous to submarine warfare like in Das Boot. We in fact do not receive any tension at all concerning the physical mechanics of this interaction with a high mass object. The makers of SOLO:ASWS could have done well to review Disney's The Black Hole to get any sense at all of how to set such a stage. Granted, Lucas did not himself imply that the Kessel Run had any astrophysical significance so as to justify a sci-fi level of attention to detail. EU is of course the native lands that Disney has taken over and is colonizing and stealing the gold, gems and precious jewels from, and the disenfranchised EU has no rights in how the products of its hands are implemented in the cultural product of this new shareholder empire.

In retrospect, I would tell Disney to hold off on the Kessel Run for the second movie, if they simply had to have it within the first two. But its legendary status in the OT is so great that the expectation value for its delivery was high. Now, it is all implemented in a very small version of what majesty was expected. And if I have the story straight, this was going to be a comedy movie. And so the most legendary feat of the OT was to be conveyed in a vehicle where it is played among laughs. Not a good look. This cheapens what walks onto screen in SW77.

Aside from the Kessel Run, I am very happy that the film is layered with subtle flavor, subtle reference, subtle call back, subtle hint, about what walks onto screen in SW77. most of what I am happy with is the positions on the emotional game board for a relationship with Leia that walks onto screen as early as SW77, Mos Eisley. "Trying not to, kid."

 

Nitpicking: Qira not finding the word "smile" is a bit annoying.
More generally, there are several lame lines of dialogue here and there in the movie.

 

Not defending it. I can suppose that the first time the conversation went there, she was most decidedly in the house of and within the sphere of influence of her crime boss boyfriend. She could not afford to mobilize old tension by giving Han too much. So "smile" is probably not the word she would have chosen, and it would have been the wrong thing to say in that context. Whatever she said in that context had to be not enough, not as much as Han was fishing for. Even in the Falcon wardrobe, Dryden of course still being alive but distant, her position was to not give Han a lot of line to hang himself. (Han hung himself.) It turned out that what happened in the wardrobe did not stay in the wardrobe, because Becket was more than concerned about Han's loyalties or priorities. From the practical standpoint, her strategy was correct.

ONCE Dryden is dead, and she is free to go her own way, or Han's way, or Dryden's boss' way, she still builds a tidy wall that gives Han enough clues to not be surprised when she doesn't follow him and later flies off. And one way she could have done that was to down convert the original, initial, tense, response, which may have mobilized something unnecessarily, with a truly gut punchingly measured profession of how much he means to her, allll things considered.

So, Qira in middle of crime syndicate ball, sees a lost sweetheart from a former, more hopeful, more honest life -> Her initial response if she had let it out might be, 'it always made my heart leap for joy / made me dream big / made me so happy', etc. She's a smart manager of information. She stuffed that right in the footlocker. Later, when she has assessed all matters, and had a good idea of Han's prospects, and had a good idea of her own prospects in contrast or comparison, she was in a much stronger bargaining position to let him loose / off the hook / down by damning the union with faint praise. Not a permanent goodbye like drop dead, but a substantial goodbye like, we're not a thing, get that straight. That's how the 'smile' line can be perceived as a parting, severing, 'light' blow.

 

@Hernalt
I'm not saying it's not plausible in the story, but only that I found it cheesy.

 

I found it annoying as well. It was a blemish in an otherwise smooth sequence of several varied courses of denouement. I am as bad as a defender of TLJ.

 

I'm late to this party (saw SOLO at the end of September) and apologize if the two subjects I'm about to mention had been addressed already.

A) Lando Calrissian holding on to such a tin-can droid? Sorry, didn't buy that for one minute. The only droid such a classy and vain guy would keep for company would be Maria from METROPOLIS or - of course - its Star Wars equivalent, i.e. a (female) protocol droid like Threepio. I thought to feature such a rebellious droid was a fresh and bold idea, but the execution could have been better and less cheesy.

B) Are there nice Imperials or are they all opportunists that don't care about anybody than for themselves? I found it rather interesting how the deletion of Solo's academy days changed the original context of his recruiting scene:

I.e. during the recruiting the elderly Imperial officer seemed to care about him and according to the academy day scene Solo did become a TIE Pilot until he screwed up (does it really take 6 high-ranking Imperials for a cadet's tribunal?)

Once the scene was deleted the context was changed, i.e. it now appeared that the paternal Imperial recruiter lied to Solo who didn't end up in the "Navy" rolleyes: - it's the "Imperial Starfleet") but seemed to go straight to the "Infantry" which brings me to

C) Thus far in the SW Universe all ground combats utilized clonetroopers, stormtroopers and first order stormtroopers. In Solo this premise has been somewhat changed, instead of keeping the battle armor for high-ranking officers in the field (e.g. General Veers) it has now become some non-"trooper" standard gear although we'd never seen it before or after (the era of SOLO). Felt odd and not convincing, too much WW I analogy for my taste.

 

You know, I was just reading the Women of the Galaxy passage on Lady Proxima and was wondering something. I had never liked that character and thought it was too 80s B-movie themed; but what if instead she was actually a Hutt? Jabba wasn't the only Hutt that was still active and in power at the time of Solo, was he?

 

The Five Families were still in power-wait oh no which franchise am I in?!

 

I really hate those videos.

 

Yeah they're terrible, and some of the criticisms make no damn sense. Why does the movie get a ding for the logo at the beginning? Every single movie has to show it.

 

Cinema Sins is click farm. I wish YouTube offered a block channel option.

 

You shouldn't take their criticism seriously, it's meant to be amusing rather than an actual breakdown of everything wrong with it

 

Plinkett reviews are both funny and often quite insightful, but I'm not surprised that in a SW forum I won't find many fans of them. It seems to me that people take this stuff too personally, as if it was a sort of direct attack to whoever likes the movies.
That's not the purpose.
In many cases I disagree with RLM but I enjoy watching their videos anyway.

 

I'll readily agree with this. We must avoid using youtube videos as a sort of reference to validate an opinion.
If we agree with something seen elsewhere, it's important to always explain why.

 

As I said in my other Solo review post, there are some issues I have with the film, many of which have been touched on here. But anyways:

1) I needed to see more interaction & development of Hans relationships with Chewie & Lando, NOT Beckett and Kira.
2) The movie feels the least part of the SW universe if that makes sense. When watched in the series in chronological order, it feels almost disconnected and irrelevant.
3) Hans character is awesome but we get that from the existing films. I hate to say it but this film just doesnt need to exist and you've lost nothing. I believe the box office issues are directly related to there NOT being a lot of hype for a Solo movie that takes place prior to the events of A New Hope. He has a complete arc in the exsiting films. Thats all we need, IMO.
4) Other than the expected "check boxes" and references that the fans wanted, this movie doesnt add much development to the SW universe - hance it feels disconnected and rather unimportant.

 

I have the most minor nitpick, but still a nitpick nonetheless. The Millennium Falcon had more history behind it than being newly acquired by Lando. There's some unintentional humor in how poorly it was treated since Solo to when we see it in A New Hope. If you want to analyze things under a microscope, the Millennium Falcon as seen in Revenge of the Sith (Lucas canon here) didn't have the escape pod in between the front two prongs.

Although this leads into a somewhat substantial criticism that the film tried to explain too much. We didn't need to see the Millennium Falcon was brand new, just that Lando owned it. We didn't need to know the backstory of Han's name, nor the Kessel Run being incorporated as part of the main plot. Which, while some saw it as a logical fallacy that needed to explain how distance could be cut off from a course, it was really an intentional bit of dialogue by Lucas to show that Han was trying to talk himself up without knowing what he was talking about.

Overall, the film had a focused plot and memorable characters that only suffered from trying to connect to the original movie a little too much.

 

I've heard this off and on over the years. Do you have a source? Or at least what year Lucas said it? Lucas has this tendency to...

 

I can understand that, but this isn't a case of Lucas "clarifying" what he meant years later, but rather fans looking at the original script and the context in which the quote was spoken:

The script says that it's outright misinformation. If this was indeed the intent, it flew over most audiences' heads. Ironically, the people that knew what a parsec is thought it was a mistake.

(The date on the script was January 15, 1976)