Solo [Official Info] Phoebe Waller-Bridge (L3-37) in Solo

I had kind of an odd problem with L3. You know how when you watch some actors in a movie, you just see the actor, not the character? (I often get that with Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example.) Well, I kind of had that problem with L3. I just kept seeing/hearing Phoebe, despite the fact that L3 obviously looks nothing like Phoebe. For whatever reason, I just didn't see L3 as a droid, I saw her as Phoebe in a mo-cap suit. I don't know why.

 

^ Ditto, all I could think of was Fleabag...

 

I wasn't familiar with Waller-Bridge, but I kind of focused on the voice as well given I thought she sounded similar to Gwendoline Christie. I knew it wasn't her, but still it was distracting.

As for the character as a whole, not really a fan. R1 just had quippy sentient droid, and the whole droid rights thing seems like something that deserved a more serious, focused arc if they were going to tackle that angle. Here it came across as a rather throwaway (and sometimes comical) aside that L3's compatriots didn't even pay that much attention to.

 

I think it came across as comical because it was.

 

But should it be?

 

In a movie like this? Probably a bit of both.

 

Droid rights are definitely played for laughs in here, even L3 is a bit dismissive of it to her droid compatriots. "You're free now, Scootch!" but there is a bit of genuine joy when she finds her "purpose" which makes her demise kind of tragic. So it's a gag until it isn't when she dies and get her brain ripped out for parts.

Anyway, great Waller-Bridge line delivery in the film that flies by but it's genius: "The director says their reconditioning process is excruciating but effective!" cuz she sounds so chipper about it.

 

You ought to start a thread. The needs of the challenge you raise are to tease apart two (not hopelessly) convolved aspects of the character, [1] robot, [2] coded female.
It will also require asking where Lucas had the grounds to use 3PO and R2, droids, as avatars of a servant underclass that shall not ever, because of a variety of 'not easily modifiable attributes', attain to the coveted first class status of dominant bipedal species that happens to appear to look exactly like homo sapiens, or, to the special class of usually bipedal lifeforms with a variety of prosthetic foreheads that are Force users. Structural inequality is already baked into the "rules" of Star Wars, the film that won the awards, garnered the fan base, etc etc. One can treat Star Wars as a living document that needs to be reinterpreted dynamically, and amended periodically. A strict constructionist ought to agree some things can be viewed in new light.

That being said, and having a fair guess what your opening statements of such a hypothetical thread would be about, I am not able to clutch my pearls about L3 because there exists inside the same film a counterweight example of a female (not coded female) that makes her own way, cleaves to her own agenda or set of priorities and ends her oppressor. (Are there shades of Leia.) Now, that's me being fairly convinced that no one can persuade me that Qira is not drawn to power.

You cannot get a single yes or no to a "should", on this. If someone asserts I am NOT to find it worth laughing at the fictional plight of fictional beings of artificial intelligence in a fictional universe, then I am required to lobotomize awareness that Uber and Tesla self-driving cars have killed people recently. If someone asserts I am NOT to find it worth laughing at a coded female re-enacting a struggle for suffrage under a male gaze that ultimately or cinematically dismisses it as a straw man doomed to inevitable self-destruction, such that the status quo is destabilized barely a moment, then that is a chewy nougaty problem to look at. But it has to be teased apart from 'droids as representations of a Hidden Fortress underclass', and 'droids as very glancing blows, for Star Wars, at the Azimov hard science fiction subtopic of artificial intelligence and what constitutes consciousness such as to warrant ethical parity'. L3 has three distinct dimensions, here.

 

My daughter is a vegan.
She's not preachy about it, but our family has gone through phases of thinking about it.

At the start we made the usual dumb vegan jokes, but eventually accepted this is what she is, and finally she kind of won us over. We get why she is vegan, and respect and admire her for it. And though the rest of us haven't gone full vege, we're all rather less meaty and happier for it.

(Was that too preachy? I'm not trying to convert anyone...)

Anyway, the initally appearing silly stance was gradually understood and respected.
I think the Solo storyline could have done it better, and I think that of alot of the story, but I get the intent of the character tragectory. Comedy to Pathos.

 

The movie is kinda vague on this. L3 brings up the idea to Qi’ra, but it might just be a whimsical idea on her part. All we get from Lando is that they’re really good friends, by going back to get her after she gets shot and crying as she dies.

I’m sure the novel expands on this. What do you all think?

 

I think the droid was in love with Lando and he cared for her.

 

Hmm, guess this part of the forum isn’t very active

 

I think it's one of the best mocap/voice performances I've ever seen. Ironically, the whole SJW joke and relationship with Lando made her very human, and attached me to the character. Having watched it again last night for the first time in years, I again got upset over her death.

 

Agreed. I find almost everything about the movie quite underrated. Really enjoy it. Sure, it doesn’t reach the cinematic heights of Rogue One, but IMO it’s much better than any of the ST films.