OFFICIAL NEWS Solo Reaction Thread

Interesting take, @TheDroidM6-B7 ..... why do you put such weight into whether a movie had production difficulties or not? I mean what does that matter once you see the finished product?

 

Bloody good stuff!

I expected to like ‘Solo’.
I didn’t expect to utterly LOVE it.

There was very little that I didn’t relish about this beauty.

There’s also much potential (doors opened) for more (good) stories to be told within the Star Wars underworld... which may’ve very well been a tertiary goal of this film. -If that’s the case, they’ve got me on board already.

(And hey, -it’s their game- if Disney is going to pop out a new SW film every six months in the nearish future and run a few parallel-TV series, I’m good with that too— provided the stories are decent, and I get my dose of “dark” somewhere in there. I think the money is gonna be rolling in good & steady for the long term.)

Back to Solo...
Everybody loves Chewbacca. I’m not exempt. This may not have been “Chewie’s Movie”, but it’s near enough for my tastes. As said a million times previously- the Han/Chewbacca dynamic is just delicious to watch.

In fact, I don’t recall one singular character whose portrayal I disliked... though favourites certainly included Beckett and Calrissian— loved these characters!

—
I’m gonna drop out for now- I’d mainly prefer to read the opinions of others than write about my own at present...

 

I would have thought that anything that can have an impact on the finished product is important, no?

I liked all the pieces in the Solo puzzle, but something about them didn't quite mesh into place for me. I think a second Solo film could be a more polished, slicker finished product if less course corrections are required along the way.

 

I think it was good movie even with some of the unnecessary and dumb origin crap(Solo name needed to be explained i guess). Would love to see a Lando film and now with all the origin stuff out of the way another Solo adventure would be fun. Perhaps Lando can't support a film by himself and they can do some sort of film together. Giving Lando a bigger role in the sequel would be my hope if not his own film. Clarke was ok but the character didn't seem to be well defined as a femme fatale, which seemed like what they were going for, or even as a person who will do anything to survive as the film tries to suggest. Overall I give it a 7/10 and think its a good movie and hope to see more.

 

Well I just finished watching it, and overall I was surprised at how good it was. I think even if my expectations were more optimistic, this would still rank as above-average. I mean all you could really want from this is a fun adventure that doesn't ruin the character and is entertaining to watch, and I felt that was achieved. Many have compared it to Indiana Jones, and I would agree.

This could have EASILY been a trainwreck, and it's not. The writing and directing were really well done, and I was surprised that the characters were as likeable as they were, especially Han. The cinematography and editing were very well done, it had a good look and a good pace. I thought the humor was not out of place. I appreciate the smaller scale and focus on characters, which is what I thought the spinoffs would be like when they were first announced.

Overall, it was a fun B-story in the Star Wars world. It had better momentum than The Last Jedi, it was more consistent than Rogue One, and very surprisingly it had less fan service than Force Awakens. At it's worst, it's a bit average, but at it's best it's fun, exciting, and well told.

It's a solid 7.5/10 for me, and I want to see it again. I didn't expect it to blow me away, it works like a fun EU story. I have no specific complaints against it, which was not the case for the previous Disney entries, but maybe I will on a second viewing.

 

This was a very enjoyable film. I started getting hyped back when I saw the first trailer, but deep down I was worried. Yeah, Ron Howard is an excellent director and really should have been their choice from the start.

Anyway, I really liked Alden's performance. I believed him as a young Han Solo. I'm not sure who the "critics" of his performance think could have done a better job. The idea that he "doesn't look like Harrison" is silly (i've seen that criticism). None of the subsequent James Bonds look like Sean Connery. Who cares? Take the character and make it your own, which he does.

Lando was cool as heck. I also like that you don't get much of the empire in this film. It is, after all, a big galaxy. I'll see it a couple more times, as I usually do. I also would love to see a sequel.

My fear is that it's going to do way below expectations. Dr. Strange levels from the looks of it (at least here in the US). Unless the word of mouth is good enough to turn it around.

 

Yeah you know what @Darth Wardawg it is terrible that we have to base so much on box office these days. I loved the movie too. I had same trepidation going in, although a huge Ron Howard fan I was worried about the production problems, changing directors, stories on Ehrenreich having an "acting coach" ...... wow....come to think of it how ridiculous does that sound now? Alden killed it in this movie....

 

Exactly!!! One of the worst performing MCU film is Dr. Strange, but it was my favorite. $220 million in the US? Not great. I also loved Ant Man. Also low performer. I just go in and enjoy the darn film.

Heck, Infinity War, a film I did like, but I don't think it's GREAT.

And yep. Alden definitely killed it. When they talk of his acting coach they never mention the fact that he wasn't getting what he needed from his director(s) (Lord/Miller) and WANTED to put in a great performance so requested a coach. That's being a professional. At least he wasn't willing to take the cash and move on.

KK seems to have gotten her act together after the recent debacles. Reward RJ with a series set in "whatever time period he wants" (probably going to have NOTHING to do with Skywalker, which is good). Bring in guys who know how to hire directors (the Game of Thrones guys) and get them to do at least one film, if not more. But give the next film to a great writer director who absolutely kicked ass with Logan. God I have so much love for that film. Hell, that's another film that only made $88 million opening weekend.

 

Probably, but who knows? Maybe KK will remove head from anal rectum and realize you just don't hand these films over to a "young hot director" with little to no track record working in this genre. She seems to have moved in the right direction with the hiring of James Mangold. And if anyone can revitalize things with IX it's JJ.

After Boba Fett (or the bounty hunters film, whatever it turns out to be) I hope we get away from this focus on characters we "already know" from the OT. Strange, I didn't want the Solo film, and now I'm kind of sad that we may not get more Solo adventures. LMAO

 

I'm just hoping Mangold stays on. If it's a Boba Fett film, a "bounty hunters" film or even the Obi-Wan film.

I think people need to keep their expectations reasonable and get over this head cannon thing they have. If the film doesn't do what they WOULD have done, they throw their toys out of the pram. Totally insane.

As long as KK doesn't bring in the equivalent of Lord and Miller again, all should be good. I just never saw them fitting in, and I was worried they were going to give us 21 Jump street version of Han Solo. Talk about blah.

 

After solo bombing...that ship is gonna sail

Abrams will either treat fans like kings of the franchise or they will find someone who will

 

Um.
Abrams has always been about fans; he's more devoted than fans when he works on a film.

When he worked on Star Trek, he required them to go back and collect all of the old foley work from the original series, and where such didn't exist, go find and talk to the original foley artists and get as best of a description of how it was done as possible.
There was one sound that part of which came from a light turning on in a closet in the original studio area, and allegedly, the crap wiring was still there and so he actually had them go back and re-record it for part of the use.
Hell, he's the one who had everyone go and hang out for months with the prior actors, and for those who died, folks talked to everyone else as much as possible and watch as much material on them as possible.

He did much the same in TFA; he really went out of his way to go get as much original material and references as possible.
He practically wore Kasdan out with late night phone calls and the endless walks where he would drill and question Kasdan about everything to do with Star Wars.

Abrams is like a nerdier Spielberg; he's all about digging at the details of the original, and he's big on fanfare...fanfare is kind of his jam.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

He can start by killing rose, undermining snokes death, and bringing Luke back, keeping the resistance dead and replacing them with a republic, and bringing in the mandalorians, bringing a snoke/Luke wizard duel, and having a Rian Johnson lookalike blow up after trying to fly a ship

 

The thing about this--and it's something that slipped my mind when I first realized that Howard was re-filming almost everything--is that most of the budget is spent in pre-production and post-production for a film like this. In other words, leading into filming, once the script is done and all the design work is complete, the costumes are made, the props built, the testing is all done, the gear and equipment and sound stages all booked, the sets are built and all the cast and crew are hired and already in the swing of things--that's money that is spent that doesn't need to be spent again when you extend the production period.

The money you lose is the sets you need to rebuild that were already struck, thinking they were no longer needed--and the reports are that Howard only built half-scale sets where possible and used the full wide shots from the original Lord and Miller shoot where possible, plus they must have used a few scenes from the first version as Howard is said to have only done 70%--and the extra months continuing to have actors and crew on hire. Which obviously is a decent amount, but the cost didn't increase double, it was probably more like 50% at most.

Which means if the original budget was something like $140 million (my own estimate based on seeing the film), then the final product with all the reshoots would have been more in the $210-215 million range.

So it's not quite the behemoth that refilming almost all the movie would imply, on a small-budget drama or comedy then yes, but so much of the budget for this is in the design and effects areas. I could be wrong, I suppose on movies of this scale there are always hidden costs because of so many people and moving parts involved. But in retrospect, I feel like is overstated because the behind the scenes drama is so scandalous. It doesn't look like an expensive movie to make compared to other blockbusters of Star Wars scale.

 

Crew costs are large, but VFX costs are much larger as they are small army of artists all on decent to great wages. They would have been doing shots on the old footage, so those shots would have to be scraped and the new shots started so that alone could blow out the budget. You are right in the pre-production costs would not be doubled but they would still probably pre-vis a whole bunch of new sequences if you believe the reports. Some actors were replaced because of scheduling so that is more costumes and the line. I would think that the final budget would be close to 60-70% more of the original.

 

I definitely agree that there was some post production waste in that work was being done on the Lord and Miller footage; editing and effects, and all the nitty gritty small stuff behind those processes. But I would think they would have kept as much of that as possible. For example, the train heist is one area where I can see them using most of the existing compositing work that was completed by then, there's only little moments to that scene performance-wise and therefore little need to scrap existing stuff (my own speculation, of course).

The word is that Howard is responsible for 70-80% of the film, which is believable. But he also apparently built only sections of sets that were previously done as full-scale, using the wide beauty shots Lord and Miller got when he could; as Howard himself said, some of their stuff was "very useable", maybe even entire scenes or sequence sections. So they were very conscious of keeping as much of the expensive stuff already done as they could. It's part of the process in situations like this that the producers sit down with the new director and go through the entire edit thusfar and say, "okay, what can we keep?" and be really really pushy about what absolutely cannot be re-used. So much gets recycled.

They even re-used that opening jungle shot from the teaser for Rogue One that shown at a convention before the production began and never was released officially. They went deep to the recycling bin.