Solo: A Star Wars Story

I agree but I do think there was fun stuff there lurking beneath the surface. Really, really wish we could see a Lord & Miller version

I dunno, they were playing up the improvisation and comedy werenā€™t they, Donald Glover aside that could have been absolutely horrible.

I think there are some line deliveries that clunk pretty hard in the final version as a result of the fact that they were supposed to sit in a much more knowing/comedic film. I think a frivolous and tongue-in-cheek version of this could have been a lot of fun without it negatively impacting the canonical episodic films.

At some point they are going to need to branch out and take risks within the Star Wars universe if they want to keep milking the cash cow and this could have been the start of that. An ironically funny space heist film with much lower stakes (this is a screenplay fault as opposed to a directorial one though tbf) feels like exactly what a Han Solo prequel should be to me really.

I agree they need to try something different, and a film fleshing out every tiny detail that weā€™ve already heard doesnā€™t really add anything, but donā€™t really agree that comedy is the way to go, given that the forced comedic lines that are crowbarred into almost every blockbuster now (the Poe/Hux scene in Last Jedi, FFS) are often what is worst about them. For me.

I agree to an extent although I think theyā€™re the worst thing because theyā€™re crowbarred into films that arenā€™t broadly comedic. If theyā€™d played this whole thing for laughs with itā€™s tongue firmly in itā€™s cheek I think that would have been interesting and worth watching.

I really would love to see a whole bunch of straight genre pieces set within the Star Wars universe though, I think the scope of ambition with the current spin-offs has been way too narrow. Give me a jump-scare horror on Dagobah or a Glengarry Glen Ross style business film in uptown Coruscant or something. Stuff that broadens the scope of the universe instead of narrowing it to just stuff we know about from the Episodic saga.

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a star wars western / samurai type thing would be awesome

a lone jedi walks into a near deserted town ā€¦

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Exactly. Would be properly good fun innit.

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why arenā€™t we in charge of Star Wars???

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the worst thing for this was the empire recruitment video at the beginning that was playing a tinny version of the imperial march. it would have been funny in a funny film, but this wasnt that film

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Yeah, I think that is the most egregious thing in the whole film and itā€™s weird to me that more people arenā€™t mentioning it as irksome. It basically retcons the fact that the Imperial March is a diagetic theme tune or something.

Tbh it was probably more the ā€˜improvisedā€™ than the ā€˜comedyā€™ that put me off because Iā€™m not really a fan of that stuff if itā€™s not Christopher Guest. I find all the quipping in these films to be incredibly off-putting, because it feels like there is a standard number of humorous lines mandated by the studio and lot of them are not funny, out of character or spoil the tension. Like Tony Stark being a smart ass is fine, but Thor stopping to quip to the person standing next to him instead of fighting the person whoā€™s trying to kill him just really slows the film down.

I agree about the genre stuff, but I think itā€™s unlikely because itā€™ll all have to be PG and family-friendly. Although giving a minor character their own film can be interesting, like you said if it just tells us what we already know then itā€™s kind of a waste of time, itā€™s almost as if they are afraid to use their imagination and are only willing to stick with what the audience have responded to already. While I think that the reaction to Solo has been massively exaggerated, if it causes Disney to have a re-think before giving every single character from the original trilogy their own film, Iā€™m okay with that. The occasional one could be okay but we donā€™t need Solo and Lando and Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi all having successive solo films. The fact that the response to the first of these has been lukewarm is probably a good thing. At least give us something we donā€™t know, take the most obscure character and do that. Give us Bossk!

Personally, Iā€™d quite like to see what itā€™s like for the regular, non-superpowered people to live under the Imperial rule, like living in occupied France, trying to survive while living in fear of reprisals every day. Small acts of insurrection, where the rebels act in small cells and thereā€™s a blurred line between rebellion and terrorism, that could be interesting. Rogue One threatened to do that, and the advertising suggested it (it does basically call the cell on Jedda terrorists), but then sort of backed away. The Empire should be properly scary and not just faceless cannon fodder who canā€™t shoot straight.

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Yes, yes, yes.

This is exactly the sort of film they should be making for sure.

Marvel Comics did that back in 1977 after they adapted the film in six issues. The next story ripped off The Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven with Han in the lead role.

One the seven was a giant green space rabbit.

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Iā€™d like to see an absurdist Greedo film, where all the characters speak entirely in alien languages and none of it is translated. Greedo is a total wet lettuce and a fuckup, itā€™s all heavily slapstick based with a sort of fatalistic melancholy undertone to the whole thing. The film ends with him eagerly bounding into the Mos Eisley cantina, thinking that nabbing Han Solo will be the thing to finally turn his fortunes around.

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A bit like this?

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This reminds me of the Mos Eisley cantina Robot Chicken sketch

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Ha!

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i wonder what they think of the decision to make it more boring now that it underperformed at the box office

Thereā€™s nothing to say that an improvised screwball comedy would have done better

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I think theyā€™ll (correctly) attribute a lot of itā€™s underperformance to itā€™s release date tbh, itā€™s a really weird time to have put it out, should clearly have been another Christmas release but they donā€™t want to cut into their Mary Poppins take

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