I mean, at least some EU gave some reasoning why the Empire actually wanted such super weapons…but man it was like that galaxy far far away just popped out super weapon ships/planets like they were a naturally occurring thing.
*I will add that was a fear I had during TFA that the occurrence of such weapons was the only thing they mined the EU for, so far at least the rest of the films have been better.
At one point there was a canonical “Death Star III” specifically to explain the one seen in the original Disneyland Star Tours ride. (Since R2-D2 is onboard your ship it can’t be explained away as one of the other ones). Ironically, that was stripped from canon and relegated to “legends” once Disney bought the franchise.
I feel like Solo highlights how the people in charge of Star Wars could get it right, and ways it gets it wrong.
This business of everything beyond a certain point being canon. I saw a post on a Star Wars forum stating that anyone confused about some aspect of TLJ should read some particular book…no. It’s a movie made for fans, yeah, but to get those kinds of box office numbers you have to cater to people who aren’t necessarily totally into Star Wars like some of us are. Similarly, if you watched Clone Wars, you might have half expected that a criminal organization named Crimson Sun would have Black Sun ties, and also know that Maul took over Black Sun.
Solo on the other hand, if you read the novels, comic books, etc., back in the 90s, you probably had a pretty big grin on your face throughout the movie. I like to think that some studio exec read one of the Kevin J. Anderson novels (or at least a synopsis), got to the point where the Kessel prison administator took a hit of spice to read Han’s mind, and just said, “No. Oh, my God, no, you cannot make Han a drug-runner.” But so much of the story was taken from that. I half expected Bollux to show up at some point. But going back to Black Sun, the way Clone Wars was done, they had Falleen in charge of Black Sun, but you didn’t have to play one minute of Shadows of the Empire to know what’s going on. If you never knew about Prince Xizor’s rapey pheromone powers over Leia…well, that’s good, and best forgotten imho.
I really think this is a theater problem, and not one with the movie. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about the movie being badly lit, but it does not appear to be an universal issue; for example, in the showing (in 3D) I went to, I had no problems seeing what was going on, even in the darker scenes. And since I’ve seen people talking about things like the beach scenes on Sarenne being too dark, it sounds to me like a lot of theaters have been showing this with underpowered projectors or something.
Anyway, overall I agree – it’s not a perfect movie, and it’s not an “important” film even as Star Wars goes, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and IMO deserves better than it seems to be doing right now.
I liked the way they explained the Clone Wars, with force-suppressing marmosets allowing clones to be grown super quickly without them going mad. From what I remember, when Luke fights them he has problems because he feels the presence of so many minds that are almost identical. The extended trauma of dealing with this over the course of a war would have been a much better reason for Anakin to turn to the dark side (force-PTSD) than being a mardy teenager who didn’t want to tidy his room. As an added bonus it would have spared us the ‘I love you cos you’re not like sand’ speech and possibly also the Force as space-herpes.
I saw the first, nine? movies in the cinema, I thought the last seven of them were shit. I thought about watching this one and I just decided -I’m done. Don’t need it. I saw people online say they liked the last couple of them, then I thought about apple fanboys swooning over products made in factories with literal suicide nets. When I saw the last one before this -forget what it was called or was about I thought to myself: wow, it’s the most overproduced gif meme in history. Then I thought: I paId money to watch a gif. I hate gifs.
So farewell Star Wars, my favorite was called Jedi Knight 2 - Jedi Outcast, an old game. Sometimes I play it again.
It was not the same. Han shooting first is what made him a scoundrel and a bad ass. He also walked away after shooting Greedo. Wtf was all that hand holding death scene with Beckett anyway. Bad ass Han should have been just out of there, adios MF.
Is L3 the ultimate case of " Stuffed into the Fridge"? (I won’t link to TV Tropes. I’m not that evil).
@michaeljtobias I’m up for some more Ron Howard Star Wars. He might not be the most challenging director in Hollywood, but I think he has exactly the right temperament for making “straight” Star Wars film.
@Cunk I still don’t see how taking a right angle turn through a nebula managed to cut around 180,000,000,000,000km off the route But, they get extra points for the gigantic space cephalopod.
@Brainspore Thank you very much for a genuine giggle out loud.
@Brian_Shock I enjoyed Solo and Rogue One; but I feel like we are on the same wavelength when it comes to duration. I tend to feel that, if a film can’t make its point in 90 minutes it could probably have been made in to a TV series.
Is that the one Tarkin used to blow up Alderaan?
@TimmoWarner I felt that the colour grading was off in some of the shots; like they were trying to recreate the visual tone of the original movie (New Hope), but just ended up making some scenes look muddy.
In fairness, if space operas care about speed and distance, ships wouldn’t engage in WWI dogfights, they’d vaporize each other as they or their missiles collided to fast to ever see each other. Not that I’m complaining. I’m happy to watch the Falcon fuck up some Tie fighters!
Maybe Disney should have doubled down, and made it canon that a “parsec” was a measurement of time, a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
I like the way that space combat remains the same through out movies; being based around a setting in which defensive technology (shields) are so good, that offensive technology (blasters) can only overcome it at very, very, very short range.
Very much this. I’ve seen it twice, in two theaters, and had absolutely no issues seeing what was going on. So when I hear people saying that the cantina/sabacc scenes were just a dark blur, I have to assume they saw a crappy projection. Definitely not the movie’s fault.