Just came back from having seen Solo, something hardly anyone else seems to have done, if the box office numbers are to be believed. And I'm kinda wondering, are people really already sick of Star Wars? It's been only about 3 years of the series being back, yet people still watch three of those fucking Marvel Studios movies a year. Am I missing something? I mean, at least Star Was has been fairly consistently good for the last few years.
Now, I somewhat get why Last Jedi made some people angry. I don't agree with them at all, but I'm sure they have their reasons. I'm not entirely sure why people are so unimpressed with Solo. It's not as ambitious as Last Jedi but neither does it share its weird tendency for self sabotage. Meaning, it's mostly devoid of, let's be honest here, completely misguided attempts at comic relief that made Last Jedi feel tonally inconsistent.
Now, there was one character that actually rubbed me the wrong way, which was a robot named L3 that travelled with Lando. See, this robot cared about the liberation of Droids in a way that was obviously meant to invoke a sort of civil rights activist. The movie consistently treated this as a joke. For one because I fehlt like this was a legitimite grievance. Droids are sentient and they are treated as slaves in that word so it's not like this was some made up nonissue that we, as the viewer, are meant to recognize as such. Overall it felt like the sort of joke meant to pander to the type of person that would use the term "Social Justice Warrior" unironically I thought it was a bit tonedeaf..
That little digression aside, otherwise it was... pretty dang good. It doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel as far as Star Wars movies go but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Seeing a younger, more idealistic Han Solo getting betrayed and double crossed by everyone he trusts until he is the cynical space cowboy from Episode 4 was pretty fun and Alden Ehrenreich, otherwise known as the singing cowboy from Hail, Caesar (Yes, I know you didn't see that one) does a pretty good job playing him. It's hard to replace a performance as iconic as that of Harrison Ford but Ehrenreich is actually quite believable. Same goes for Troy from Community as young Lando and that hot blonde with the dragons as Han's love interest with a dark secret.
You know, overall I really like this whole "A Star Wars Story" thing Disney is doing. The main series isn't gonna break free from that whole monomyth hero's journey routine anytime soon, the original trilogy played it straight, the prequel trilogy subverted it, the new trilogy... seems to be playing it straight again while trying to throw in a bunch of unexpected twist to keep viewers on their toes, but it's always there. Where characters like the Skywalkers, Rey, Princess Leia and Princess Padme are those big narrative archetypes it's in those spinoff movies where the Star Wars series gets to be a bit more human. Choosing to focus on the preterite rather than the elect, if you allow me to make this horrifically pretentious comparison, not only lends way to better developed characters but also to developing the world around them more, which Solo very much does. It has a lot of what nerds like to call worldbuilding, something that the main trilogy of neglects in favor of its narrative.
Still, the thematic leitmotifs of the Star Wars series resonate quite loudly throughout Solo. You got the son killing his father figure, love that ends in tragedy, the young man who dreams of flying... just filteres through something that's thematically a gangster movie and structurally, mostly, a western. It's where most of its typically Star Wars-ish pulp comes from, you've got a train robbery, a heist on a mine, two characters dueling each other as if they were a pair of cowboys at the OK Corral... the sort of stuff that will always prevent this series from being proper Science-Fiction.
Still though, what Solo shows and tells us about the Star Wars world is quite intriguing. It was fun to see a movie focus on the criminal underbelly of that universe with the Empire playing only a very minor role in it and the Jedi not playing a role at all in it.
Listen, I liked it, quite a lot actually, but then I seem to be the only person that actually enjoys all three "eras" of Star Wars, which, ironically, probably makes me not a true fan in the eyes of many. It told a new story focussing on a side of this world we haven't seen in a movie yet, featuring some familiar and some unfamiliar characters. There was some stupid stuff, one weird action sequence featuring a giant space octopus that seemed to come entirely out of nowhere and one cameo that struck me as weird and pointless but other than that it, in my opinion, really good. Watch it if you... well, I wanted to write "If you like Star Wars" but let's be honest here, a lot of people who claim to like Star Wars like bitching about it more than actually watching the movies.
Now, I somewhat get why Last Jedi made some people angry. I don't agree with them at all, but I'm sure they have their reasons. I'm not entirely sure why people are so unimpressed with Solo. It's not as ambitious as Last Jedi but neither does it share its weird tendency for self sabotage. Meaning, it's mostly devoid of, let's be honest here, completely misguided attempts at comic relief that made Last Jedi feel tonally inconsistent.
Now, there was one character that actually rubbed me the wrong way, which was a robot named L3 that travelled with Lando. See, this robot cared about the liberation of Droids in a way that was obviously meant to invoke a sort of civil rights activist. The movie consistently treated this as a joke. For one because I fehlt like this was a legitimite grievance. Droids are sentient and they are treated as slaves in that word so it's not like this was some made up nonissue that we, as the viewer, are meant to recognize as such. Overall it felt like the sort of joke meant to pander to the type of person that would use the term "Social Justice Warrior" unironically I thought it was a bit tonedeaf..
That little digression aside, otherwise it was... pretty dang good. It doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel as far as Star Wars movies go but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Seeing a younger, more idealistic Han Solo getting betrayed and double crossed by everyone he trusts until he is the cynical space cowboy from Episode 4 was pretty fun and Alden Ehrenreich, otherwise known as the singing cowboy from Hail, Caesar (Yes, I know you didn't see that one) does a pretty good job playing him. It's hard to replace a performance as iconic as that of Harrison Ford but Ehrenreich is actually quite believable. Same goes for Troy from Community as young Lando and that hot blonde with the dragons as Han's love interest with a dark secret.
You know, overall I really like this whole "A Star Wars Story" thing Disney is doing. The main series isn't gonna break free from that whole monomyth hero's journey routine anytime soon, the original trilogy played it straight, the prequel trilogy subverted it, the new trilogy... seems to be playing it straight again while trying to throw in a bunch of unexpected twist to keep viewers on their toes, but it's always there. Where characters like the Skywalkers, Rey, Princess Leia and Princess Padme are those big narrative archetypes it's in those spinoff movies where the Star Wars series gets to be a bit more human. Choosing to focus on the preterite rather than the elect, if you allow me to make this horrifically pretentious comparison, not only lends way to better developed characters but also to developing the world around them more, which Solo very much does. It has a lot of what nerds like to call worldbuilding, something that the main trilogy of neglects in favor of its narrative.
Still, the thematic leitmotifs of the Star Wars series resonate quite loudly throughout Solo. You got the son killing his father figure, love that ends in tragedy, the young man who dreams of flying... just filteres through something that's thematically a gangster movie and structurally, mostly, a western. It's where most of its typically Star Wars-ish pulp comes from, you've got a train robbery, a heist on a mine, two characters dueling each other as if they were a pair of cowboys at the OK Corral... the sort of stuff that will always prevent this series from being proper Science-Fiction.
Still though, what Solo shows and tells us about the Star Wars world is quite intriguing. It was fun to see a movie focus on the criminal underbelly of that universe with the Empire playing only a very minor role in it and the Jedi not playing a role at all in it.
Listen, I liked it, quite a lot actually, but then I seem to be the only person that actually enjoys all three "eras" of Star Wars, which, ironically, probably makes me not a true fan in the eyes of many. It told a new story focussing on a side of this world we haven't seen in a movie yet, featuring some familiar and some unfamiliar characters. There was some stupid stuff, one weird action sequence featuring a giant space octopus that seemed to come entirely out of nowhere and one cameo that struck me as weird and pointless but other than that it, in my opinion, really good. Watch it if you... well, I wanted to write "If you like Star Wars" but let's be honest here, a lot of people who claim to like Star Wars like bitching about it more than actually watching the movies.
