The center of the geek universe
by TheButcher on Wed Aug 02, 2017 5:45 am
by so sorry on Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:36 pm
by TheBaxter on Mon Feb 05, 2018 4:22 pm
by Peven on Mon Feb 05, 2018 5:05 pm
so sorry wrote:
Looks pretty good.
by Al Shut on Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:32 am
by Fievel on Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:18 am
Al Shut wrote:Since looking things up on the internet is cheating but asking people is fine
When is Memorial Day?
by caruso_stalker217 on Tue Feb 06, 2018 1:23 pm
by Peven on Tue Feb 06, 2018 1:54 pm
by Ribbons on Wed Feb 07, 2018 2:10 am
by Cpt Kirks 2pay on Wed Feb 07, 2018 9:21 am
Ribbons wrote:My thoughts:
by Peven on Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:55 pm
by caruso_stalker217 on Thu Feb 08, 2018 3:47 pm
Ribbons wrote:My thoughts:
by Ribbons on Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:39 pm
by Peven on Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:08 pm
by Ribbons on Fri Mar 23, 2018 12:02 am
by TheBaxter on Fri Mar 23, 2018 11:06 am
by Cpt Kirks 2pay on Fri Mar 23, 2018 2:19 pm
by TheBaxter on Fri Mar 23, 2018 2:53 pm
Cpt Kirks 2pay wrote:Couldn't give a fuck about this film one way or the other to be pissing about with petty crap like this.
Get a life people. Star Wars is over.
by so sorry on Mon Apr 09, 2018 3:47 pm
by Peven on Mon Apr 09, 2018 4:53 pm
by Fievel on Tue Apr 10, 2018 7:22 am
by Peven on Tue Apr 10, 2018 8:06 am
by TheBaxter on Tue Apr 10, 2018 10:32 am
by Fievel on Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:27 pm
TheBaxter wrote:but then, who would they have gotten to play his father, Grando?
by TheBaxter on Tue Apr 10, 2018 2:01 pm
Fievel wrote:TheBaxter wrote:but then, who would they have gotten to play his father, Grando?
Harry.
by caruso_stalker217 on Mon May 28, 2018 11:43 pm
by so sorry on Tue May 29, 2018 9:42 am
caruso_stalker217 wrote:Is there a discussion thread about this film? Has anyone actually seen this?
by Cpt Kirks 2pay on Tue May 29, 2018 9:44 am
by caruso_stalker217 on Tue May 29, 2018 12:30 pm
by TheBaxter on Tue May 29, 2018 12:33 pm
caruso_stalker217 wrote:I saw it and by God it is serviceable.
by caruso_stalker217 on Tue May 29, 2018 5:10 pm
by Ribbons on Tue May 29, 2018 11:03 pm
Never has the indefinite article done such heavy lifting since the “A” in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Solo is technically a Star Wars movie, but it’s one that has set pieces in place of a personality. It’s a film whose base level is “fine”. Despite some unique cinematography from Bradford Young, Ron Howard’s direction is staid, stolid, and completely without personality, which is a problem when your movie is the story of a young rogue like Han Solo. Solo doesn’t do anything egregiously wrong, but it doesn’t do much right, either. There are a few bright spots, especially the relationship between Han and Chewie, but the plot drowns in the perfunctory as new characters, outside of "woke" droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), fail to leave an impression. I don’t have a bad feeling about Solo: A Star Wars Story. I don’t have much of a feeling about it at all.
After a brief prologue where we see a young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) making trouble on his home planet of Corellia, he gets separated from fellow runaway and first love Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). Determined to make it back to Corellia and rescue her, he enlists in the Imperial Army only to desert and hook up with a band of criminals led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson). The job is to steal a supply of a valuable mineral for criminal overlord Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). Eventually, the gig leads Han to cross paths with the loyal Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), the charismatic Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), and L3.
Ehrenreich continues to amaze by channeling Harrison Ford’s devil-may-care attitude without ever trying to do an impression of Ford’s unforgettable character. Glover fares almost as well, and while he does occasionally lapse into doing a Billy Dee Williams impression, for the most part he conveys the effortless cool of Lando and how his controlled confidence clashes with Han’s constant improvisation. L3-37 is also a lot of fun and seems drawn from a better, more self-aware picture where a droid is actually concerned about droid welfare. Droids have always lived in a grey area in the Star Wars universe (are they robots, or are they sentient beings enslaved by other species?), and L3-37 is a blast playing in that grey area.
Unfortunately, the other new characters don’t really much of an impression. While it’s nice that the movie just jumps to a love story between Han and Qi’ra rather than going through the motions of a romance, the relationship never convinces because it lacks definition. We can tell that Han and Qi’ra are close, but the only thing that seems to link them is their past rather than any mutual affection or characteristic. They’re in love because the film says they’re in love. A similar issue afflicts Beckett, who is a waste of Harrelson’s talent as he’s relegated to simply playing a tired old crook who’s still looking for that one big score.
This fear or unwillingness to branch out of these archetypes and try new things renders Solo oddly joyless. It’s a movie that throws a ton of special effects at the screen, but no one really seems to be enjoying themselves or taking stock of their situation. It’s to Howard’s discredit that he could make a movie firmly in the mold of an action-adventure and it rarely feels adventurous. While it’s a futile gesture to try and take stock of how original directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller would have handled the film, I have to believe they would have had a bit more spark to their picture. For Howard’s part, his greatest concern seems to being making sure everyone hits their mark and says their lines. It’s the bare minimum of direction as the score does the heavy lifting rather than injecting an actual personality into this movie.
A Solo movie was always a bit of a tough sell because it’s not like he’s ever been one of the most layered Star Wars characters, and a movie going into his past either robs him of his mystique or explains what added texture to the preceding movies. I don’t really need to see the Kessel Run to know it’s important when Han tells Luke that the Millennium Falcon made it in less than 12 parsecs. It’s a detail to let us know that A) Han likes to brag; B) He’s got a fast ship. Seeing the Kessel Run play out in real time doesn’t add anything to the Star Wars universe. It’s just another set piece.
And sadly, Solo: A Star Wars Story is just another Star Wars movie. Despite the strong performance from Ehrenreich and the hint of future adventures to come, I can only hope that this young Solo gets better stories and better direction that play into the character’s personality. Han Solo is a roguish, daring character. Shouldn’t his movie follow suit?
Rating: C
SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. In Roger Ebert's reviews of the original Star Wars trilogy, he mentions that one of the wonders of this universe is that the droids are thinking, feeling, emotional beings, thus making their torture in Return of the Jedi a visceral thing. In Ron Howard's expediently-extruded Solo, a sassy robot named L3-37, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is fused into the Millennium Falcon spacecraft after being murdered in the middle of a slave and prisoner rebellion she's incited in another interchangeable industrial backwater. I mention this as a point of interest because L3 is the clumsy mouthpiece for broad progressive beliefs in a shockingly-bad script by father-son duo Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan. When Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) asks if there's anything else he can get her as he's leaving a room, she says, "Equal rights?" It's that kind of character. The kind usually workshopped out when the screenwriter--one of them, anyway--isn't the most powerful person in the room. She's Dobby the House Elf from a storyline smartly left out of the film adaptations of Harry Potter, screaming about "droid rights" during a droid Thunderdome sequence done better in everything (but particularly in A.I.), and there mainly I think so that replacement director Howard can slide his brother Clint into a self-satisfied cameo. So this character, liberating droids and releasing slaves and declaring that she's found her calling, is fused by a grieving Lando into his spaceship to spend the next eight or nine movies getting punched and abused by her new white masters whenever she doesn't work right away.
Don't get me wrong: Solo isn't nearly smart enough to be about anything this complicated. The L3 storyline is an accident--careless, likely unplanned, and intended as a compliment to a character whose square creators believe speaks truth to the heart of the contemporary social revolution. It's patronizing, paternal tokenism by people who proclaim their love of Get Out with the same conviction the rich white folks in Get Out declare their support of the Obama presidency. There are scenes early on where our hero Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich, embarrassingly outmatched), while trying to escape his home planet of Corellia, sees the local Corellian ICE separating parents from their children at some sort of space customs. Scenes, too, where noble Wookiee Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), delivered from bondage by bwana that speaks his language, sees others of his kind in shackles and knows what he must do. Then there's the famine planet, whose black residents huddle in abject poverty with their tongues cut out by evil gangster Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) as Han and Chewie solemnly trudge by in full Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom reverence to their plight. Look, Han's had it as tough as these lost souls. On Corellia, we learn, he's Ollie Twist to a giant space-anthropoid stick, Lady Proxima (voiced by Linda Hunt, because Suzanne Pleshette is dead), trying and failing to get his gaffed, useless girlfriend Qi-ra (Emilia Clarke) off-planet before running into her again as the space concubine to Vos. Painful? It's at least painful. And, I'm sorry but, you know, the very last person I want a lesson from in the legacy of slavery and black poverty is Ron fucking Howard.
What's most painful is Donald Glover, the artist of the moment, literally days removed from his withering statement as alter ego Childish Gambino on the role of African-Americans in American popular culture, "This is America," being asked to do a Billy Dee Williams impersonation as the single biggest piece of shit in the galaxy. The script is so ossified it's clear he's meant to be something like a heavy from The Sting: a smooth sharpie with a literal card up his sleeve who tricks Han out of a pile of money, but tricks himself into an ill-fated mission to the mining planet of Kessel. There, something something happens, something something, and that "Kessel Run" line from Star Wars way back when is checked off the list of fan-pleasing references. It says something that later, when Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando in another card game (something spoiled by The Empire Strikes Back some 38 years ago), that even with shots of Lando's empty sleeve and obvious dismay, even after a clear insert where Han hugs Lando to obtain said card, Solo still thinks it necessary for Han to throw said cheat onto the table as an explanation as to why Lando isn't able to cheat again. (Han verbally explains it, too.) This is the way you write a scene when you have absolute faith that your audience is full of idiots. Given some of the reaction to The Last Jedi, that's admittedly not a reach. Lando is also a coward, unfaithful to his word, and apparently was in the process of figuring out how to fuck his robot. Glover is exceptional, mind--it's the writing that lets him down. The timing of "This is America" doesn't seem so random after all.
Then there's rival bandit leader Lexi (Lily Newmark), who is revealed to be a freedom fighter and not a venal opportunist like dashing Beckett (Woody Harrelson), the leader of Han's criminal band. Lexi is guilty of every charge of tokenism mislaid at the foot of Rogue One or Rey; her only character note is that she's a disadvantaged kid leading a bunch of misfit marauders. It's tone deaf, insulting, and entirely non-threatening. Did I mention that after the Oliver Twist prologue, Solo turns into a space western with the world's most boring train robbery, which involves a complete-unto-loathsome squandering of Thandie Newton as robber queen Val and then a thoroughly boring series of going places to meet people. Solo's treatment of women is summarized handily by L3's devolution from Malcolm X to voiceless hardware. They are functional pieces only. They don't exceed their utility. Ditto the movie's treatment of its black characters, who are either the feckless pimp archetype or the (again) literally voiceless faces of poverty and indentured servitude. Take a moment to compare the black characters in this film to Saw Gerrera from Rogue One and his sacrifice to Val's. One step forward, twenty steps back, and all because, in this age of Janelle Monae, Beyoncé, and Childish Gambino, when this project needed a saviour, the one the franchise turned to was 63-year-old Ron Howard, who hasn't made a fresh, fascinating film since Splash in 1984. Solo is 'prequel bad,' and as anyone who really loves this franchise knows, there aren't a lot of things worse.
Alden Ehrenreich is not a bad actor. Let’s get that out of the way now. There’s a steely distance that he can project on camera that’s effective. He seems to be squinting even when he’s not. That’s part of why he was so appealing as dopey movie cowboy Hobie Doyle in the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar. The squint, the square jaw, and the flat intonation were perfect for both the silver screen hero and the doofus who played him. The problem is that those qualities weren’t right for the character he’s required to play in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Han Solo might not be the smartest man in the galaxy, but he thinks he is. It’s that supreme confidence that allows him to succeed beyond his wildest dreams in the original Star Wars trilogy. He beats the Empire. He gets the girl. He becomes a respectable hero instead of a greasy scoundrel. The loner now has a place in the world. Solo, written by the father-and-son team of Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, decides to tell audiences the story of how Han got to be Solo—an ultimately decent, optimistic man’s transformation into a cynic. It’s a bit more fun to imagine Han always being a misanthrope when A New Hope begins. It makes his rescue of Luke during the Battle of Yavin IV that much more monumental. Still, it stands to reason that he couldn’t have been a bastard his whole life.
He’s not. As we meet him on Corellia, he’s been forced into a life of crime by an underworld slaver. He’s romantically linked with a fellow thief named Qi’Ra (Emilia Clarke) and together, they have plans to escape their dead end and make a new life out in the stars. One of them makes it off-world, the other doesn’t. You can guess which one. This Han is a dreamer and a sucker for love. His knack for talking his way out of trouble is still there, but used in service of an earnest attempt to better himself.
Ehrenreich is given a chance to shine in this early section, during a speeder chase sequences through the grimy streets of Corellia. It’s a standard modern action scene, peppered with quips and visual gags. Few of these jokes work, and most of it is due to Ehrenreich’s dry, flat delivery. There’s an undeniable richness and variety to Harrison Ford’s performance as Han Solo, much of it owed to whatever it is that makes Ford an iconic actor. He’s animated. He’s passionate. He’s nervous. There’s so much going on behind his good looks that you can’t shake him from your mind whenever he’s not on camera. He’s a movie star.
Do not ask me what makes a credible leading man or woman in the cinema. That’s a waste of everyone’s time. Quite frankly, no one (including directors, studio heads, casting directors, producers, writers, critics, publicists, etc.) knows the answer and to ask is pointless. It’s simply a feeling one has, an intangible that has outsized influence on whether or not a film works—like chemistry between romantic leads or if a joke lands or doesn’t. Movie stars are movie stars because they are movie stars. No matter how many films hire Garrett Hedlund as the lead, it’s hard to classify him as such, no matter how much you like Four Brothers.
In a way, Alden Ehrenreich is at a colossal disadvantage. He is not only playing an iconic character, he’s also playing one inexorably linked to one particular beloved actor. In a way, he’s got the same task that George Lazenby had in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. You can’t quite mimic the last guy, lest it veer into parody. One can only imagine how bizarre it would have been if Disney succumbed to fan pressure and cast Ford impressionist Anthony Ingruber as Solo. Going a different direction means potentially upsetting purists. In the end, all that can be offered is bland compromise. As long as he holds his blaster properly, we’re fine.
As a whole, Solo can sometimes feel like its own bland compromise. Han is the good guy, even if part of his initial appeal came from how edgy he was. All the iconography of the character has to be established right away—his gun, his space dice, the Millennium Falcon, Chewie, Lando, etc. He even shoots first. But, chances are taken, too. This is an incredible looking film, thanks to the superb cinematography of Bradford Young and Neil Lamont’s production design.
Critics say this after every Star Wars film now, but there are sets, worlds, and ideas in Solo that we have never seen in this universe before. That’s not only a testament to the craftspeople behind the movie, but also to the elasticity of the world of Star Wars. By the time Han falls in with Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and his band of outlaws, we’ve seen industrial squalor, harrowing fascist iconography, the most gritty battle scene in Star Wars history, and an Old West-style train heist.
The centerpiece of the movie is a mid-story chase through a spatial anomaly straight out of Star Trek called the Maelstrom. It’s thrilling work from Ron Howard and his editors and it keeps the awkward banter to a minimum. It’s so clearly inspired by the asteroid field chase in Empire Strikes Back that composer John Powell borrows the famous John Williams music cue from that sequence. The movie bounces from the familiar to the outrageous and back again with ease. Star Wars can be anything it wants to be.
What this movie can’t seem to do, though, is be consistently funny. The jokes are there on the page, but something is off with the delivery and the chemistry between the actors. It’s certainly worth noting that one of the rumors about why Christopher Miller and Phil Lord were fired from directing this movie is because they were leaning too far toward comedy. But could it have been that this cast simply wasn’t the right one to be slinging one-liners and doing improv, that it simply wasn’t ever going to be funny no matter how hard they tried? There’s an entire CGI pilot character voiced by Jon Favreau that’s supposed to be comic relief that didn’t elicit a single real laugh from most of the theater I saw this movie in. Ehrenreich doesn’t have the range or the natural charisma needed to carry this film, to get those laughs, and to then pivot back to high drama.
Emilia Clarke is nearly lifeless in a role that offered her plenty of nuance and color. Only Donald Glover as Lando and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as L3-37 are able to consistently hit their marks when given comedy or camp to play with. As the Kasdans envisioned this, Solo is an old school western in space. But Harrison Ford was not an old school movie star. He tempered his swagger with a nervous energy that was popular within the 70s and 80s New Hollywood paradigm that made Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino box office titans. That template is now how the movie industry fashions all of their lead characters. The entire Marvel universe is populated by actors following Harrison Ford’s example—non-traditional lead actors full of bravado, buffoonery, and bluster. Performers like Chris Pine and Chris Pratt made their careers off of playing thinly veiled variations on Han Solo in their respective space franchises. If an actor literally playing Han Solo cannot measure up to the imitations, there’s a problem.
Solo should work. It’s a well-told story with a great director stepping in to wrangle a troubled production. It almost works, until it doesn’t. Whatever glimmer of eccentricity Ehrenreich had in Hail, Caeser is not there in Solo. It’s a mumbly, cold performance that needed an actor willing to take risks and not always look so heroic. Sometimes, it was more satisfying to see Harrison Ford take a punch than to land one. Ehrenreich never seems to get a scratch on him. Lucasfilm’s first attempt to build a Star Wars spinoff around a single character misses the mark because there’s an empty space where Han Solo is supposed to be.
by TheBaxter on Wed May 30, 2018 10:24 am
by Cpt Kirks 2pay on Wed May 30, 2018 12:08 pm
by Ribbons on Wed May 30, 2018 10:10 pm
TheBaxter wrote:anyway, that whole Kessel Run bit... even though it was really just the result of Lucas' ignorance of what an actual parsec is, it was a bit of a happy accident that i always interpreted as Han Solo attempting to brag about how fast his ship was, while accidentally undercutting his boast with his mistake and making it ultimately nonsensical. so if we ever saw the actual Kessel Run, it would be something completely different from the impression he gave in ANH. if not, if they play it straight up, then that'll be very disappointing.
by TheBaxter on Thu May 31, 2018 1:59 am
Ribbons wrote:TheBaxter wrote:anyway, that whole Kessel Run bit... even though it was really just the result of Lucas' ignorance of what an actual parsec is, it was a bit of a happy accident that i always interpreted as Han Solo attempting to brag about how fast his ship was, while accidentally undercutting his boast with his mistake and making it ultimately nonsensical. so if we ever saw the actual Kessel Run, it would be something completely different from the impression he gave in ANH. if not, if they play it straight up, then that'll be very disappointing.
SPOILERS?
From what I understand, the way that they present it in SOLO is that the Kessel Run is considerably longer than 12 parsecs, which is indeed a unit of distance and not time. But through teamwork and pluck, Han and Friends take a dangerous, shortened route through the Run that is somewhere around 12 parsecs in length. Thus when he brags about it in A New Hope, it's not about how fast he flew, but that he took a deadly shortcut and made it out alive.
Han Solo: Han Solo. I'm captain of the Millennium Falcon. Chewie here tells me you're lookin' for passage to the Alderaan system?
Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: Yes indeed, if it's a fast ship.
Han Solo: Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?
Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: Should I have?
Han Solo: It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I've outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers mind you, I'm talking about the big Corellian ships now. She's fast enough for you old man.
Ribbons wrote:Incidentally, one of my least favorite things about these new Star Wars movies is how often they desperately try to make mistakes from the old ones seem intentional.
by caruso_stalker217 on Thu May 31, 2018 2:22 am
by TheBaxter on Thu May 31, 2018 10:38 am
caruso_stalker217 wrote:You know, I always figured Han wasn't even the one who made the Kessel Run in the first place. As stated, he mentions it to prove how fast the Falcon was. He never said, "I made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, ya hear? It was me, me, me!" He never says, "What? You've never heard of the dashing super-fast space smuggler man, Captain Han Solo??" It's the ship that's supposedly famous, not Han.
The film should have been called FALCON, is what I'm getting at.
by Cpt Kirks 2pay on Thu May 31, 2018 12:01 pm
by TheBaxter on Thu May 31, 2018 1:16 pm
by caruso_stalker217 on Thu May 31, 2018 2:29 pm
by caruso_stalker217 on Thu May 31, 2018 2:33 pm
Cpt Kirks 2pay wrote:This is the shit mentality of the Zone - AND this film. It's fucking tiny detail of one line of unimportant dialogue in a film over 40 years ago - and not only have they made a fucking sequence in an unnecessary film about all of it - but THIS IS ALL YOU TWATS ARE TALKING ABOUT!
Not about anything more important, not even about the film itself - no, you're arguing the toss of a throwaway dialogue that even George Lucas didn't pay much attention to to write properly in the first place - as he didn't give a fuck and knew it wasn't worth giving a fuck about!
But here you Struggling Background Artists are wanking off about it.
Fuxake man, no wonder this place is dead.
by caruso_stalker217 on Thu May 31, 2018 10:28 pm
by TheBaxter on Mon Jun 04, 2018 2:43 pm
by Ribbons on Mon Jun 11, 2018 1:24 pm
by TheBaxter on Mon Jun 11, 2018 1:36 pm
Ribbons wrote:This proves that real Americans and Star Wars fans are sick of Kathleen Kennedy's SJW agenda. Sad!!
by caruso_stalker217 on Mon Jun 11, 2018 2:07 pm
by so sorry on Mon Jun 11, 2018 3:28 pm
caruso_stalker217 wrote:Or it proves no one actually wanted a young Han Solo movie.
Or it proves that reshooting 70 percent of your film with vanilla hack Ron Howard is not a recipe for success.
Or the lady droid was really annoying.
by Fievel on Mon Jun 11, 2018 3:58 pm
caruso_stalker217 wrote:Or it proves no one actually wanted a young Han Solo movie.
by caruso_stalker217 on Mon Jun 11, 2018 4:16 pm
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