Here's some movie thoughts:

Cinematography looked great in my opinion. If you're gonna do a movie about the sleezy underworld, go into the mud and darken the aesthetic a bit.

Also love this quote from design supervisor James Clyne in the Art of book: "Star Wars doesn't live in the future. It lives in the past. People inevitably think, 'it's Star Wars. It's science fiction.' They want to do something sleek and futuristic. But I would constantly be saying 'Let's look at this German flak gun or a Luftwaffe fighter from the early forties. That's our world, not the world of Minority Report.'"

That's probably the best summation of the look and feel of Star Wars I've ever seen.

While I think "market fatigue" is a rather Clintonian excuse for the underperformance of Solo, I do think that if the Lucasfilm brass had grasped the depth and with of dislike for TLJ they would have postponed Solo.

Fans may have cooled off with the passing of time. But that would have involved them saying, "we hear you and since you put us here we'll give you what you want". It would have involved not assuming a militant, adversarial stance toward their fan base.

Instead they have decided to say,

"F_ck you, you must live in your mom's basement, we're making a Lando spin-off. And guess what, we're gonna have him banging a toaster because we are so open minded! Weeeeeee, we don't believe in hell!"


Okay, they didn't say that. But Kennedy did announce a probable Lando sequel. They screwed Billy Dee Williams out of The Force Awakens, but now they want to give us our very own Lando movie. Because with all the adversity facing our black community that's what the Civil Rights movement wanted, a pansexual Lando spin-off. Thanks, Kath.

AlphaCharlieUniformAggie said:

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While I think "market fatigue" is a rather Clintonian excuse for the underperformance of Solo, I do think that if the Lucasfilm brass had grasped the depth and with of dislike for TLJ they would have postponed Solo.

Fans may have cooled off with the passing of time. But that would have involved them saying, "we here you and since you put us here we'll give you what you want". It would have involved not assuming a militant, adversarial stance toward their fan base.

Instead they have decided to say,

"F_ck you, you must live in your mom's basement, we're making a Lando spin-off. And guess what, we're gonna have him banging a toaster because we are so open minded! Weeeeeee, we don't believe in hell!"


Okay, they didn't say that. But Kennedy did announce a probable Lando sequel. They screwed Billy Dee Williams out of The Force Awakens, but now they want to give us our very own Lando movie. Because with all the adversity facing our black community that's what the Civil Rights movement wanted, a pansexual Lando spin-off. Thanks, Kath.

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For better or worse and for whatever reason, your average moviegoer wasn't excited to see Solo. It's not nearly as political or anti-Disney driven as some of y'all want to make it out to be.

I was responding specifically to this sentence in your post: "Disney has treated SW only as a money making asset to exploited and never as a beloved series to be respected - the fans are recognizing it and acting accordingly." Perhaps you meant that as a less sweeping statement than I thought.

I'm not under the impression that Disney is particularly benevolent, but they've largely hired directors and actors who respect the franchise, which is all I can ask.

Most of their mistakes are just that: mistakes, not character flaws. This is why I'm not "raging" about Kennedy et al.


The exception to much of the above is Rian Johnson. Not that he's lazy or careless, but he made a bad movie partly because he didn't know why people like Star Wars. The Star Wars formula is characters that people enjoy spending time with struggling against evil. Frilly plots and moral ambiguity are a poor substitute. Hopefully he and Disney figure that out.

This deserves a galaxy of stars...

so what is it going to be?

you spent post after post the last few days handwringing about politics, crying that the posts in entertainment should be about the movies.

and yet, you go and post that.

so much for leading by example.

make up your mind.

I was one of the more vocal ones after The Last Jedi came out to say I thought it was a poor to middling movie at best. Not because of reasons related to the original trilogy, but because it was a poorly written script, the Rose character was extremely annoying and exemplified the poor choices made by Johnson and the story group, and it was clear now that the studio had no clear well-thought-out vision for the progression of the overall story.

That being said, some of you are clearly going in to the rest of these Star Wars movies looking for reasons to nitpick them and hate them. That's a shame and really kind of silly.

This also puts into perspective some pretty hilarious facts for those whining about all the SJW/"The Force is Female" stuff that I hadn't quite been able to contextualize yet...

- Of the seven movies either made or currently in development, ALL SEVEN are written and directed by men.

- Of the four movies produced so far, only one stars a male lead and it performed far worse than all the others.

Now, I'm not at all advocating that Kennedy & co are or should ram some kind of female-driven agenda down audiences' throat. I don't want that any more than anyone else. I'm merely pointing out that if Kennedy truly had such an agenda, not EVERY movie so far would have been directed and written by men. Again, between seven movies, there have been 11 MALE DIRECTORS and 8 MALE WRITERS hired/fired (that we know of, by my count). With not a single woman in the mix. In this day and age, that's actually kind of remarkable.

In other words, spare me the SJW-fueled conspiracy theories. But also, if Kennedy DID have such "nefarious" intent to girl-ify the galaxy... it's worth noting that the box office is currently in her favor. So could you blame her?

As someone who really really enjoyed TFA and TLJ, I will say that Disney's original sin was not mapping out a general story outline from the beginning. With that said, as a grown man, I enjoyed these movies for what they were: well crafted/grand spectacle entertainment that rekindled joy and nostalgia from my childhood.

As disappointed as I am in Lucas bungling Darth Vader's origin story, I have never once felt the vitriol, hate, and entitlement that these keyboard warrior Star Wars "fans" show post-TLJ. Unfortunately our culture is filled with a bunch of man-babies who lose their minds if creatives don't make the movie they wanted or imagined. How much of a loser do you have to be to proclaim that Rian Johnson/Kathleen Kennedy "ruined my childhood!"?

If people could talk about politics here like they ought to on the politics board, it wouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately, everyone on both sides, from the entertainment industry to the message board poster to the politicians themselves, immediately turns into sanctimonious a******s the moment a political overtone appears. This includes me.

Saul Goodman said:

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How much of a loser do you have to be to proclaim that Rian Johnson/Kathleen Kennedy "ruined my childhood!"?

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What is the ratio of people saying that seriously vs people sarcastically putting it into the mouths of those who didn't like TLJ? My impression is that it is well below 1, although I'm not on Twitter or wherever the bulk of the sparring takes place.

Didn't see it. Won't see it till maybe red box or streaming as I'm no SW super fan.

But I'll go ahead and dump kerosene on this already flaming thread because I like to watch the world burn.

SeattleAgJr said:

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so what is it going to be?

you spent post after post the last few days handwringing about politics, crying that the posts in entertainment should be about the movies.

and yet, you go and post that.

so much for leading by example.

make up your mind.

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I will admit to being pretty upset about the decisions Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have made and why they have made them.

Honestly, I can't watch the news anymore because of its political agendas and now it's in my mother f'ing Star Wars.


BUT, after hearing the other sides point of view I realized that now I was doing the vary thing I felt like the d_ck bags at Lucasfilm did to me, i.e. introducing marginalized politics into mainstream entertainment.

That's not fair to the others who use this board.

I think everyone has stated their point of view and now that's been established we should

1. Treat each other with respect

and

2. Take a breath before we post - I wasn't doing this yesterday and today I feel like a bit of a deush for it.

Good post. Hopefully this sentiment catches on.

Wouldn't it be reasonable for everyone just to admit that Solo bombing (in relative terms) isn't the result of any one or two factors but many, all combined, made it impossible to get to TFA or TLJ or ever R1 type returns?

Competition with Infinity War and Deadpool.

Lots of fans just not that interested in this story.

Hangover from the TLJ (didn't we just see a SW movie?)

Lots going on right now with young people - school year ending, graduations, parties, vacations, sports playoffs/state, finals, etc.

And yes, a lot of fans and really, really, unhappy with where Disney/Lucasfilm/KK have taken the franchise. Organized boycotts? No. Just a lot of fans that range for thoroughly "meh" with SW to actually upset about it.

I've read a couple of past posts on this thread where posters claimed that "literally every SW fan I know has seen Solo". Not to be contrarian but I have not seen the same. I don't really associate with the type of people that get super dramatic about movies (kind of not something grown men should be doing) so it aint like my friends are making man child statements, but I have seen little enthusiasm out of them to see Solo.

Ulrich said:

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I was responding specifically to this sentence in your post: "Disney has treated SW only as a money making asset to exploited and never as a beloved series to be respected - the fans are recognizing it and acting accordingly." Perhaps you meant that as a less sweeping statement than I thought.

I'm not under the impression that Disney is particularly benevolent, but they've largely hired directors and actors who respect the franchise, which is all I can ask.

Most of their mistakes are just that: mistakes, not character flaws. This is why I'm not "raging" about Kennedy et al.

The exception to much of the above is Rian Johnson. Not that he's lazy or careless, but he made a bad movie partly because he didn't know why people like Star Wars. The Star Wars formula is characters that people enjoy spending time with struggling against evil. Frilly plots and moral ambiguity are a poor substitute. Hopefully he and Disney figure that out.

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You're confusing the business need to make it look and feel similar to SW, with them actually caring about SW. You gotta at least have it look like SW, or how else are all the Hollywood marketing hacks going to market it on cereal boxes? So you have to hire competent people (directors, actors, artists, etc.) to make that happen. The new Star Trek films looked like Star Trek, but it wasn't until the third movie (Beyond) that they actually started to look deeper at how the series works. But by then, the public's interest had faded away because of the prior two cash grabs. Looks like SW is on its way to the same fate.

If they had really cared about the series, and recognized that the fans were the reason why SW was successful, then they would've gone the extra mile to guarantee long-term quality. How do they do that? Well, by following Marvel's lead. The only Marvel-thing Disney should have applied to SW is a concrete, long-term plan for the series: Who are the main characters? What are their arcs? What is the overall plot? Why should the audience care?

If Disney had cared in a way that mattered, they would've gone the extra mile to plan all that out. But they didn't. So why did Marvel plan all their stuff out? Because they cared about the fans.

I'm in agreement with the notion that Lucasfilm has dropped the ball on the story arc. I really couldn't believe that Maul wasn't a bigger piece of the puzzle prior to filming Solo.