FINALLY, A SCI-FI WESTERN HEIST IN A MAJOR FILM!! (Let's talk about finally having an ACTION film!)

Before I get started...

A) Let me state that when I go to a film at the theater, I avoid EVERYTHING there is to avoid before seeing it.
I don't look at ANY pictures, and if I happen to see a glance at a store, I look away and plunge it from my head.
If commercials come on; TV screen goes off if I can't FF or skip.

When I go in, I have no clue what I'm getting.
So I seem overly excited by something that you think, "Well, yeah, but we already knew that".
I quite happily did NOT know that, so it was a surprise to me!

B) I only watch the movies. If at any point you think, "Well, X had this and this", or "It was done before in X." Where X is a cartoon or book, I never bothered with that; I have no interest in them, and I also don't care about how much any film ruins any of that material since I have no interest in them.

C) If you don't like the film because it's shallow, or thought the plot was bad...this thread is NOT for you. Go somewhere else to complain. This is a happy-time cheer fest thread!

I LOVE pulp fiction level plots, and I've been desperately wanting a light on the drama, high on the adventure, pulp fiction level film to make its way back into the mainstream for a LONG time, so that I not only GET one, but I get it IN A STAR WARS FILM...ABOUT HAN SOLO....I'm basically doing this



I LOVE this movie!
(I rated this film as 2nd in all of Star Wars before, but I think it could easily end up as my number one film because it's just SO much my jam!)

Alright, let's get started!

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One of the things that I love about it was that it was packed full of action scenes involving heists, gunslinger standoff's, and high speed chases.

I mean...damn!

The film doesn't waste ANY time and just JUMPS straight into a foot chase.
Oh god, I love you! Thank you!!!!

I was reminded of Logan's Run quite a bit during that foot chase.


That foot chase takes a few moments of a break, spent on some high wire moments sociopolitically in a way that somehow reminded me of Total Recall...

(I'll get back to this tangent about Total Recall later)

...smashed with, for some reason, Stargate and...oddly, The Dark Crystal.
I think it's the outfits...




...and the trickery of throwing the rock bit that catches them off guard, and the hatred of light.


and then....



We're back in a chase scene


The best damn "car" chase in Star Wars...hell, it's practically one of the only car chases in any of the films, and it was FANTASTIC!

I was immediately taken back to Bullitt and Ronin car chase scene level energies and styles, and a more than passing reminder of Diamonds are Forever's Car Chase scene.

Which, for me, is just YUM!!
I can't wait to see this scene again and again!

That slide and burn out that's still-framed above was beautiful eye-candy! Loved it!


Meanwhile, the larger chase and run away from Corellia as a whole had a very fall of Saigon feel to it, and it just worked so damn well.




And even when we get off from here, there's no slow down.
We immediately jump to a very Stalingrad and All Quiet on the Western Front style of films mashed up with such mercenary legends as Mad Mike Hoare

And that was ran just enough, and we are swept through a brief detainment and escape, up in a Merc world with an almost Firefly sort of environment and it all happens rather quickly;



So we're off to our first gig...nothing less than a FRIGGEN TRAIN ROBBERY!









Are you KIDDING ME!?



Complete with Han saving salvaging the day so at least someone could get out alive!
And a damn cool explosion to end it!

This is like a WAY more bad arse version of Swordfish's heist...

mashed together with...


Back to the Future 3's Train Scene

I'll say again....


Then we have a small down moment to get some plot moving, but we're in a sort of Oceans 11 sort of world.
There's an angle at all times by everyone, and everyone knows everyone's full of [beep], but everyone's going to go along anyway; and the heist that's picked is one that's absolute insanity.

YES!!
God YES!

-------------CONTINUED IN PART 2-------------

 

-------------PART 2-------------
And this is where I get back to the Total Recall.
The whole tangent with Vos really reminded me a lot of Total Recall's Coohagen and Richter scenes (mash the two together).




But this isn't all that it reminds me of.
He also pulls at me as sort of Dune's Feyd-Rautha


The styling doesn't hurt either,


However, the main relationship that I kept picking up on for the Qi'ra/Vos tangent is Blade Runner.







(can't find a shot from the near end where there's an air more close to the above, so I'll substitute with this one)



So going from a Logan's Run / Total Recall to a Total Recall / Blade Runner / Dune atmosphere was just...





But first, they have to get messy with a conman to get what they need to do the job...oh lord, YES!
Are you kidding me?

Come on; this is just CLASSIC adventure and heist films at this point!

And it starts with a mythical Western position


Funny thing; as much as showdown's are a movie myth of the real West, this between the legs shot for Western shows is basically a modern myth about Western shows because it's really not as common as we imagine in those shows...mainly because back then, it wasn't that easy to get this angle with the inflexible camera systems they had, but it was used in posters and book covers quite a lot.

However, I was reminded of the opening to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.



Which, my god, the scene came off very much like The Lost Ark's scene between Belloq and Indiana Jones.

It was just good - they played off of each other in a similar style.

Then we're in the long-shot-odds heist, and L3 makes this heist fantastic!
Because no insanely complicated, and narrowly escapable heist is complete without someone throwing a wrench right in the damn plan and causing everything to go horribly off balance.



For some reason, L3's run-off tangent reminded me a lot of Groot's run-off tangent in the prison when he starts the plan way before anyone was ready for it to go that direction.
I don't think that's a direct link; it's just a good and similar moment.

But before I skip ahead, I loved this scene - it reminded me of ANH's break into prison scene.

Get in...


Pretend to have a delivery that no one knows about


Things start to slip a bit


Then all hell breaks loose


Run like hell


While fending off Tie-Fighters


All the good stuff is there.
But even better.

I just love this chase!





Now, I don't think there's a clip of it out there yet, but ...

THE FALCON BARREL ROLLS TO SMACK A TIE-FIGHTER!



That was the coolest thing I've EVER seen in a Star Wars space chase!

And that's not to mention that power-slide dust kick.

This is by far one of my favorite chase scenes.
I'm not sure which I like more; this one or the one with Rey and Finn on Jakku.

It's so very close.

This chase has so many just "WHA?!" moments in it.

I LOVE this scene.
It doesn't remind me directly of anything, but it's just awesome!

I love that this is how the Kessel was done, because it's absolute insanity what he ended up doing.

In a way, it sort of reminded me of 20,000 leagues under the sea on 80 pounds of cocaine.



Now, then we get to the end, and yes, I realize that I haven't said much about Enfys Nest, and that's mostly because they were cool, sort of Mad Maxian antagonists, but they mostly didn't do a lot in regards of action outside of the train robbery which I covered above.

They were cool looking though, and I liked the angle that this is Solo's introduction to any rebellion group.

The Shell Game ploy was just good heist fun, and I'm glad they threw that in.
It's not like it's super twisty, and I'm actually glad that they didn't try to go M Night Shyamalan.
It's an adventure show, and they never seemed to lose track of that, so our twist is just enough for the purposes served, which in this case is to show that Solo is a quick study and not an idiot.

The fight between Vos and Qi'ra was cool, but honestly I've seen so much martial arts ballet action in the past 20 years I'm a bit numb to it, so it was just kind of wallpaper - it wasn't bad by any stretch, but I'm just jaded to this form of action.
It was incredible when it first came about in the mid to late 90's as a mainstay in action and adventure films, but it's definitely hit a saturation point where it's just another round of it when it appears.

I'd actually be more impressed with someone toning it down a bit and not going for high ballet, but more straight on, at this point just to get some diversity of action scenes.

That said, I really liked the idea of a sword fight that didn't involve light sabers.

But this is a side tangent rant about the industry as a whole, so I'll just flip over to the part that I really loved the hell out of...

Beckett vs. Solo.
Oh god I loved the hell out of this moment.

I don't think this section of the film has made it out onto the internet quite yet, but this scene was absolute classic Western standoff.
This is more what you got in the good films.

It reminded me of a slightly more intimate version of Fistful of Dollars...

...and the closing of the relationship between Indiana Jones and Fedora, which is a teacher/student/friend/rival relationship that ultimately pits them against each other in a teeter-totter where the teacher wins first, which teaches a lesson, and the student ultimately wins later.

Han's way faster on the draw, and doesn't wait for the jabbing at the mouth to properly end.
He just goes for it.

Damn good.

I'm ultimately happy as hell with this film.
I feel like I have my sci-fi Western again; even if I don't get more, at least I have this one!

And what a ride I get!
A combination of great heist, sci-fi, and western films rolled up into one.

God, I don't know how I could get any more pleased!








Thank you Solo






Cheers,
Jayson

 

Luckily, I care very little about the money of films.
Lots of films that I love were not monetarily successful.

I loved John Carter and Cowboys and Aliens (director's cut...regular release is rubbish because the distributor cut almost 30 minutes out of the film for shipping cost savings by just auto trimming silences before and after shots...ruined the pacing entirely), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Brazil, Dollar for the Dead, to name a few of a list that is rather long.

Even some of the films folks now love were giant struggles at the box office.

Blade Runner, Big Trouble In Little China, Dune, Fight Club, Idiocracy, ... hell, It's a Wonderful Life...

Money doesn't mean [beep] to me when it comes to film; neither does popular appreciation.
What matters to me is whether my eyeballs were excited.

And on that note, in regards to Solo...YES!

I can't WAIT to buy this film and watch it a LOT and just tear every scene apart! I LOVE the action in this film, and I love the atmosphere it accomplished!

I look forward to many great thoughts and discussions about the art of this film!

Cheers,
Jayson

 

QUICK NOTE, and I don't want to come off wrong here (hopefully this doesn't), if you like this thread, PLEASE mark the FIRST POST.
It's cool if you want to mark the second post too, but the tags that show up on the outside of the thread that indicate to viewers that the topic has some liked content are derived from the FIRST post, so if everyone only pops a token of some kind to second one, passing viewers may not see the interest level that everyone's giving.

OK, done with the commercial stuff. Sorry.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I finally found a segment of footage that had the barrel roll smacking of the TIE fighter!!

I clipped shots out and made it into a gif since the footage wasn't highly transportable.

I love this moment!



Since it's a mess as to who did it between VFX, different directors and the heavy reliance on Bradford Young, I'll just put it this way:

Hey, whoever made this shot...


Cheers,
Jayson

 

So, in my Solo withdrawal state, I've been surfing looking for any videos that have more of the film clipped than I've already seen, and that means I'm flipping through quite a few review videos.

Now, I don't really pay much attention to these, and most of the time I'm just skipping and hovering the mouse on the play control so I can see what footage they have, but I've noticed a trend in many of the reviews.

The reviews are all over the place regarding what "doesn't work"; there's almost no consistency, which to me speaks well as that means everyone is finding something else wrong from another person. GREAT!

But one thing that I do see almost at the beginning of every review is a complaint about the first 20 minutes of the film's lighting.
I've seen some here as well mention it.

Lots of folks thought this was just terrible cinematography, but the only way that holds up is if you also think that the rest of the film has equally poor cinematography, and almost everyone seems to agree that this film is a slick looking action film, so that's a bit of a hard sell.
Some of the reviews even state it that the lighting was terrible, showing some bad cinematography, but that the framing was good (or some variation of that phrasing; often the other way around, 'Though the framing was good, the lighting was just too dark due to bad cinematography').

My problem with this logic is that you have to imagine a cinematographer being blind, and since we're only talking about lighting, you would also have to accept that the director is equally blind for just that 20 minutes of footage in post-production when the VFX team could easily color correct any unintended issues with lighting while they are already doing color correction to the film anyway (as all films do).
To further the oddity of this logic, you would also have to imagine that the cinematographer, and director both got the lighting exactly the same level of wrong on every separate day of shooting that comprises the first 20 minutes.

It's just not likely that you would accidentally get your lighting unintentionally wrong for 20 minutes work of post-production footage consistently and also nail the framing so markedly.

So while it may be dark, let's take a look at this and see what's going on here, because it's NOT an accident.

Here's an array of shots from the Corellia scene section that's often cited as the problem.










OK, yes, that's dark, but is it undefined?
I wouldn't say that it is. I can clearly make out solid edges and fine detail; it's just a very dark mood and environment, almost as if they want me to feel like this place is horrible and hasn't any hope or life left in it.

Hold on; I think I've seen this effect used before in almost the exact same way to accomplish pretty much the exact same effect.










Huh...it's almost as if they...



um....



...were trying to...um...



...say...



...um...somthing



Oh...
Huh. Look at that. It's all Noir and dismal.

Well, maybe they went...



Darker than...



um....



...than...um...



...um...



OK Film Noir...you've gone mental. What am I even to look at here?



Anyway, the point here is that it's clearly doing this on purpose as it's modeling off of the Film Noir style where everything is bleak and dismal
We stay DARK even through the war, and we don't go LIGHT until....


Boom.
Han's life brightens when he finally gets free, and we're seeing an excited Han.

From this point on, the lighting shuffles around between lights and darks to fit the moods of settings and atmospheres, but before that it was almost entirely centered around Han feeling of suffocation and lack of freedom.

I mean, look at this progression.










We meet our brightest lighting once Han comes into his own, right after the heist, which coincides with the first time we have a Western style motif.

Yeah, no accuracy in the cinematography here...

They didn't make a mistake; they milked every part of cinematography that you could possibly pull, and slid around MULTIPLE motif styles and settings, which is NO EASY TASK.
Usually a film has ONE, maybe two, that they juggle the entire time, such as Blade Runner, but SOLO has something around 4 or 5 entirely different cinematographic settings.




And this scene gets pointed at a lot


This isn't too dark.
This is nearly monochromatic; there's a very large difference.

It has plenty of light in it, but all of the light is blue which makes everything foggy and less defined, as if we can't see very well here.
Which was the entire point. This is by far one of the best representations of the effect of darkness without actually making it dark that I've ever seen.
There was still plenty of light so that we're not drowned in shadows, but we get that effect of struggling to see any real definition at distance, which is what actually is being experienced by Han and those like him down here because these guys don't like light because it hurts them.

You can also see the very clearly illuminated red in this scene which just further nails the point that it's not dark; it's properly lit for the desired effect.



Solo is a fantastic eye-candy event, and the cinematography is spot on point everywhere in the film.
I couldn't disagree with this critique more.
If you found yourself struggling to see something, it's because you weren't meant to see well in that moment...so stop trying to.
Enjoy the darkness!


Cheers,
Jayson

 

Oh, I love the way that you put that!

I thought about this quite a lot, and I wrote my thoughts in the Ron Howard thread, but I'll put them here as well, and I think it really comes down to this a lot.

Ron Howard is a very forgettable director by a lot of people because he just doesn't chase attention at all.
He's very quiet and happy to just go about making movies.

He's a powerhouse of a director though, with essentially his entire life being in Hollywood.
Come to think of it, I'm having a hard time thinking of any other highly successful child actor who remained in the business, and flipped into directing successfully.

Is Howard the only one?
I honestly can't think of anyone else...

But I think lots of folks forget that this guy directed Splash, Apollo 13, Backdraft, Cacoon, A Beautiful Mind, and let's not forget, Willow.

I think the only person who could have done what he did is Howard.
I don't think anyone else knows how to shoot anything that fast - not even Spielberg or Abrams. They have grand visions, but Abrams shoots a LOT and Spielberg takes a long time because he's very careful and picky.
Howard still has the memory of what shooting was like on studio lots of Andry Griffith...I mean, while he was working on that show for 8 years, he also worked on over 20 additional projects and shows (to include Dennis the Menace) at the same time.

He basically grew up cramming in massive amounts of work in a little amount of time, and also learned the old shooting methods where everything was shot at lightning speed schedules (the 60's lot were not friendly to being "artsy" with your time).

Not only that, he brings the brightest sunshine and the most Buddha-like calm to a set, so that radically lowered the panic of the crew.

I think Ron Howard is simply amazing, but just not noticed because he doesn't really do provocative, and he's very, very low key.
He's the kind of person who writes a well articulated physical letter if he's upset; he doesn't social media post about it.

I wasn't sure what I thought about Ron Howard in a Star Wars film, because honestly, I never know what Ron Howard is going to do - he's very blended into the subject matter and its motif; he doesn't have a pronounced self-style that splatters all over everything.
He's kind of like the antithesis of Tim Burton.

But now that I see it, I just love where he went with it because he picked up on the Western and heist style motifs and let that govern the styling.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I'll say it again as well, he also - when I reflected - actually makes perfect sense and I kind of wish they had picked him from the beginning, because not only is he a good director with a highly flexible pallet, but he also grew up working in Hollywood during the heyday of the Western shows and films and Spaghetti Western films. He knows what a Western really is first-hand. He worked on the same lot as many of them (the famous Paramount back lot), and worked on quite a few Westerns as an actor.

When I think of it that way...he was an amazingly perfect choice!​

The only thing I'm kind of bummed about is that Ron Howard won't likely be back to direct another Star Wars anytime soon looking at his schedule.
I mean; there is a chance, because the man is a working machine and juggle far more work-load than pretty much anyone without breaking a sweat, but it's still a long shot for him to be back soon.

But I can hope!



P.S.
I've always been found to say that Star Wars is at its best when it's heavily under stress.
Something great always comes out of it. Problems seem to pop up when everything's easier and time and resources are luxurious.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Good stuff.

One thing that I think needs a point, to me anyway, is that this kind of "all about character", doesn't mean the same thing as, "character driven story".
With few exceptions, Star Wars was always good at conveying enough character without spending an entire movie on character development.
It was never a movie that was driven by character's developing the story; it was a movie that was driven by the conditions and drug the characters through it and forced the characters to develop to fit the story (ESB is somewhat the exception here, and that kind of frustrated Lucas).

Characters are quickly digestible in Star Wars; you don't need a full act to get to know them, because they play off of archetypal motifs.
Han was Han rather quickly, in less than one act, and with very few lines.
Lando was Lando with even fewer lines.

Han and Luke had a rapport with each other by the second act, and Leia had a repport with Han in a matter of minutes.
In ANH, Leia effectively has zero growth, Luke has marginally any, and Han has the most; switching from only looking out for himself and looking out for Luke and Leia.

But that's not really the story of ANH. ANH is really a story about three people finding a bond with each other through trials they face together.
Their character is well defined rapidly and isn't really strongly shifted in the film - we don't dive into their psyche and really dig into who they are and how they tick.
Instead, we get the essence of who they are - filling in much of who that is in our own imagination...ergo why everyone has these different takes on "my" Luke, Leia, Han, etc..., and it's plenty enough to suit the need.

The character that these stories are about, is more like a moral bearing and ways they act with others; the chemistry between characters that make up great moments through pithy lines, daring death defying threats, and near losses and sometimes with losses - usually the losses are actually pretty shallow; characters we hardly know that well, in all honesty, but the folks in the film are deeply affected...Han Solo was the first recent exception because it was the first time a character we knew really well was killed - before that, especially in the OT, it was mostly people we kind of knew, but we more knew that they mattered to our heroes.
We hardly knew Ben before he was killed. We know far more about Kylo than we did of Vader when Vader was killed; we know basically that he loved his son - well...at least, that's what we were told and kind of shown in the course of...um..two scenes out of three films, and wished he hadn't screwed up, and had been on the Dark side of the Force (whatever that meant in detail), and was trying to wipe out a rebellion, doing some number of bad things presumably.

Even in the prequels, we kick things off with Qui Gon dying and we only kind of knew him.
The only character we really knew closely here was Padme. We knew that she liked politics, loved Anakin, truth, justice, and the American wa - oh, wrong person...sorry. Anyway, she was really sweet and had lots of talking time with Anakin, so we at least knew her more than Vader by comparison to the big death of the trilogy.

The new films have far bigger hits than the original by a long shot, but I gauge my thinking here from the originals (and even the prequels, but the OT was markedly better at pacing and speed, imo).

So I DO agree about character, but it's more like the character of Indiana Jones films - they develop over time and multiple films; we're not forced to have characters grow in one film for there to BE a film.
If Indiana Jones were being made new today, it wouldn't have started with The Lost Ark. It would have started with The Last Crusade because we have to have internal character conflict and growth immediately.
We can't wait for that down the road; every film needs to be The Last Crusade for Indiana Jones - he cannot be a teaching archaeologist who goes on adventures with a scrappy attitude and cut of the chin with boy scout values. Nope. We can't do that now.
That's not we now mean by "character". We now mean that we have to watch him struggle with some internal drama and see him suffer instability with his self direction in life and find it through some adventure that either heals him or destroys him through forcing self discovery.

THAT is not typically Star Wars.
It is the new Star Wars, and they do a pretty decent job of balancing the new wave of writing trend with the older pulp fiction "character" archetype structure, but I really feel that Solo actually nailed that older style where the character isn't made to be a mess of their self and rebuilt through the events of the story which serve as their personality therapy.

Han isn't torn to pieces in Solo and rebuilt through learning something meaningful to his internal struggle of self.

What defines the "character" in this story is that the characters have personality and express the dynamics of the mixtures of those personalities when thrown in the mix together very well.

Again, the new films are deviating from this and making it center more on the plots linking directly to the development of the characters, and that's interesting in its own way to see, but Solo, to me, really recaptures that old essence and style.

Anyway, enough rambling...

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Where's the 1,000 likes button?!

I look forward to a Star Wars that's diverse like comics are...or were? I actually can only speak of 20 something years ago, I remember that if you didn't like a version of, say, Batman or Spiderman, no worries; just grab the other series you do like and ignore that other one.

A better example: the Discworld books.
Though by the same author, they range in style and form quite a bit. Some are big and grand stories involving huge casts and epic events, while others are smaller settings centered around one character. Some are a series on magic, others on military, yet others on economy and progress, and still yet others on the mythical.
Some move fast, others slow; some delve deep into the mind a character and you crawl into their thoughts, while others are more distanced and you know the characters by actions against events they are drug through.
Sometimes the same characters go through multiple forms and styles (Like Han has now done in Star Wars - three styles and forms; the first character in Star Wars to do so).

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I've always thought Serenity came from sitting on the couch, watching Star Wars and thinking, "You know...what is the world like for the Han Solo's of the galaxy?"

As to the weekend, maybe now? I don't know.
I know it used to be that the kick-off to the weekend was going to the movies because Memorial weekend used to be the starting gun for the Summer blockbuster season.
Then The Matrix pushed back to April to avoid TPM and everyone thought they were crazy and wouldn't make money, and then they did and the rule that you can't make big money outside of the narrow blockbuster zone that started on Memorial weekend went right out the door and it became a free-for-all with more and more movies trying to push further and further back into the Spring, and then eventually because the Spring was getting too crammed, it was eventually, "Hey! Let's try December! Because there's really nothing there to compete with!", said Lord of the Rings, and everyone was all, "Um....I mean, Yeah, Tom Hanks can make December work, but um...I don't know about this.", and BOOM it hit and ever since we've been on a three season blockbuster model of December, Spring (the smaller one - until this year), Summer; respectively typically something like December #1, Spring #3, Summer #2.

This year might alter that further; Spring might take the cake for huge hits this year with Marvel's titles.

Fall still sits around twiddling its thumbs and does the smaller shows, but I think it's only a matter of time until the flood hits there as well and the entire year is inflated to a blockbuster "season", and once that happens...I think we're not long away from an economic theatrical fallout in the film industry from over saturation.

I honestly think the issue wasn't really the weekend, but that Disney has repeatedly basically told everyone that the side movies aren't needed and if you don't want to watch them, you don't have to just to see the main trilogy.
That's a very different marketing tone than the one used over at Marvel.
That and Disney's marketing timeline for Solo was not very long, and the propagation of that marketing was no where near what was done for TLJ.
I could buy TLJ shopping bags at grocery stores months before the film came out, and the month of it, you could be forgiven for mistakenly thinking the grocery store was a TLJ convention.
Solo? I saw a few boards and kiosks.
Let me put it this way, I avoid seeing ANYTHING before I see Star Wars - I literally dodge my eyes from stuff at stores, even if it's just a shot of a character, or the title.
It basically got to a point that I wouldn't go to the store leading up to TLJ because it was impossible to avoid seeing crap.
I hardly even thought about avoiding Solo. I thought I would have to, but I had to dodge two trailers, one Facebook ad, and a couple cardboard displays.

When Disney looks back, I think it'll be pretty obvious that their choice to go light on the marketing campaign to attempt to save money that was lost in production, and instead rely on the Brand advertising itself, didn't pan out.

Cheers,
Jayson