SOLO: A Spoiler Story (contains spoilers)

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Just now, Werthead said:

Test

It still looks white to me

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Hmm. When I reply to one person's quote it's fine, when I multi-quote it causes the problem. Weird.

 

1 minute ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

It still looks white to me

Honest.

 

[Spring Bass]

The marketing was definitely not doing this movie much in the way of favors. It was pretty limited, the first trailer was kind of bad, and it wasn't until the second trailer that we really got some stuff. 

I don't think it was over-saturation. Sure, The Last Jedi earned a lot less than The Force Awakens, but it still earned $1.3 billion, and unlike The Force Awakens it didn't have the novelty factor of being the first Star Wars movie in 10 years to come out aside from that long-forgotten Clone Wars animated film. It was the same with Jurassic World - I bet Jurassic World 2 doesn't make $1.672 billion at the box office. 

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Can you imagine what it would have been like if social media had been this huge when Episide 1 came out?

Dear god.

1 hour ago, Fall Bass said:

The marketing was definitely not doing this movie much in the way of favors. It was pretty limited, the first trailer was kind of bad, and it wasn't until the second trailer that we really got some stuff. 

I don't think it was over-saturation. Sure, The Last Jedi earned a lot less than The Force Awakens, but it still earned $1.3 billion, and unlike The Force Awakens it didn't have the novelty factor of being the first Star Wars movie in 10 years to come out aside from that long-forgotten Clone Wars animated film. It was the same with Jurassic World - I bet Jurassic World 2 doesn't make $1.672 billion at the box office. 

 

I agree with the TFA novelty.  It also helped that it was a fun movie that didn't suffer some of the prequels shortcomings.  It suffered other shortcomings but audiences were able to forgive those.

I still have to see Jurassic world.  It was one of those films I just wasn't very enthused about but I was impressed with its popularity.  If there is in fact "Blockbuster fatigue", the performance of the sequel will tell.

Also noteworthy, despite opening in more theaters and having double the production budget, Deadpool 2 is tracking slightly lower than the original.  At the moment it's down about 10%.  I would not have expected that.  Clearly this is Kathleen Kennedy's fault. 

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdowns/chart/?view=daily&id=deadpoolvdeadpool.htm

Incredibles 2 comes out in a few weeks.  On the one hand its foolish to bet against Pixar.  This is a film that will appeal more to young children and it comes out right at the end of the school year.  Both +'s.

On the other hand, their limited history with sequels is a bit hit and miss and it's been a long time since the first incredibles film came out.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh, I HATE Jurassic Workd, but that’s a long detail.

[Aemon Stark]

Yes, it needn't be spoken of here. It's great if you like seeing Chris Pratt play much more of a straight man than normal or Bryce Dallas Howard running around on grass and green screens wearing heels. 

[The Anti-Targ]

Seems like the Solo box office performance, if it ends up as low as the opening weekend suggests, is more a case of the casual Star Wars audience finally waking up to the fact that the best Star Wars movie to come out since the original movies has been mediocre at best, and it's just not worth the casual audience's investment to continue seeing movies that aren't that great simply because it's Star Wars. 

Does anyone in Hollywood know how to do Star Wars right? It seems like Lucas has forgotten how, and no one else has a clue what to do. It has a huge fanbase eagerly waiting to throw money at it, but the suits don't seem to know how to deliver.

[Darth Richard II]

Sigh.

[Caligula_K3]

I do think that there is some oversaturation of Star Wars at the moment, and this is coming from someone who loves TFA and enjoyed TLJ a lot. I feel like I will always be going to see the main trilogy movies; but these standalones? Not so much, especially after I found Rogue One pretty disappointing. I saw Solo because the reviews were good and it's my kind of movie- I love rogues. But like Marvel movies, if it doesn't get good reviews or seem interesting to me, I feel no need to see it in theaters, or even until I'm on a long flight and it's on the screen in front of me.

I don't buy the argument that all these movies have been "mediocre." Sure, TFA has its problems, particularly in its reuse of the death star plotline. TLJ is more uneven, with an excellent plotline involving Rey/Luke/Kylo, a good one with Poe and Leia, and a bad one on Kanto Blight. But there's a reason both movies have got great reviews. Sure, they don't approach the heights of Empire, and they're not as innovative as A New Hope. But I'd say both films quality wise are pretty compare to Return of the Jedi, a film with its own flaws. And after a recent rewatch of the Prequels... Like, I just cannot comprehend people who think TLJ is the worst Star Wars movie ever or that Kathleen Kennedy has "ruined" Star Wars.

[felice]

7 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

after a recent rewatch of the Prequels... Like, I just cannot comprehend people who think TLJ is the worst Star Wars movie ever

The prequels are flawed in different ways from TLJ, so it depends what your priorities are. I haven't seen the prequels recently, and I've only seen TLJ once, but a prequel rewatch appeals more. Possibly the Clone Wars TV series building my attachment to the prequel characters is a factor.

[red snow]

21 minutes ago, felice said:

The prequels are flawed in different ways from TLJ, so it depends what your priorities are. I haven't seen the prequels recently, and I've only seen TLJ once, but a prequel rewatch appeals more. Possibly the Clone Wars TV series building my attachment to the prequel characters is a factor.

I agree, the prequels have different problems to that seen in TLJ besides both having drawn out CGI races/animals running around. The jokes in the prequels were bad while the jokes in TLJ were bad and felt contemporary/leftovers from GOTG.

I think Wert's article on his website brought up a valid point with the Disney films being the first films where it feels like there's no plan - especially in comparison to the Marvel films. Those involved in TFA and TLJ openly admit there was never any plan for what would happen in the sequel and it clearly shows in the film. It's hard to trust a franchise when that's what happens - especially a trilogy. I'm sure Marvel didn't have "infinity war" planned from Iron Man 2 onwards but they had a rough road plan that could accomodate changes without complete overhauls.

That said, it doesn't alone explain why people would shun a film that isn't intending to be a trilogy. But maybe there's just a general lack of trust? Maybe the next film featuring the new solo will undo all the potentially undoable things?

[Kalbear]

I think for the most part there's just not as much caring about that prequel storyline, period. With the new trilogy we see the actual new progression of events and get to catch up with old characters; with Rogue One, we get a backstory to something that might be a bit interesting (plus the previews were cool, and the characters were different). 

Solo is the first movie that's set in the past AND is using predominantly established characters. The new characters we know are disposable, because they're, well, never seen again. It's hard to care that much about them, so basically unless you really care about Han (and not, say, the general Star Wars Universe) it's just not that big a deal. 

[Werthead]

Interesting take I saw recently was about the importance of worldbuilding in Star Wars. The original trilogy built the world and kept it fairly consistent for those 3 movies, the prequel trilogy took on board a surprising amount of stuff from the Expanded Universe, integrated it and made it work alongside Lucas's ideas (they basically kept the good stuff, like Coruscant, and threw out stuff like Karen Traviss's increasingly unhinged take on how the Clone Wars unfolded).

The new films, OTOH, threw out all of the EU worldbuilding, substituted with stuff that was weirdly similar (a New Republic, a new empire-wannabe obssessed with superweapons arising out of the ashes, new Dark Force users, new Jedi, Leia and Han's son turning evil, Thrawn showing up albeit in a different time period) and the new stuff it's introduced has either been shit or massively derivative of what came before. A bigger Death Star! A Super Duper Star Destroyer! There's almost no worldbuilding in the new movies at all outside the tiny bubble surrounding the action. Like, what's going on on Coruscant? Why did the entire New Republic fleet consist of like 10 ships that got blown up at Hosnian Prime? What are the actual stakes of what's going on? None of this has been laid down even in the undetailed way the OT did which still made sense (the Empire controls most of the galaxy, the Death Star is to make people lose hope, the Rebels have the support of entire planets, but it's still chump change against Imperial resources).

Worldbuilding isn't everything, of course, but it's certainly needed to some degree and the New Saga films have done a piss-poor job with it. The stand-alones have actually done better, and Dave Filoni's series have been brilliant for it.

[Kalbear]

Yeah, Abrams did really shitty about worldbuilding. Johnson did better - showing things like Canto Bight, adding a couple more interesting-looking worlds and expanding the temple spot - but there's only so much he could do when he was constrained with making something out of TFA. 

Solo barely did anything in that regard. Rogue One was better, though only so much, and both were heavily restrained (as was Rebels) by having to look and feel like a pre-ANH story. 

[Corvinus85]

47 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The new films, OTOH, threw out all of the EU worldbuilding, substituted with stuff that was weirdly similar (a New Republic, a new empire-wannabe obssessed with superweapons arising out of the ashes, new Dark Force users, new Jedi, Leia and Han's son turning evil, Thrawn showing up albeit in a different time period) and the new stuff it's introduced has either been shit or massively derivative of what came before. A bigger Death Star! A Super Duper Star Destroyer! There's almost no worldbuilding in the new movies at all outside the tiny bubble surrounding the action. Like, what's going on on Coruscant? Why did the entire New Republic fleet consist of like 10 ships that got blown up at Hosnian Prime? What are the actual stakes of what's going on? None of this has been laid down even in the undetailed way the OT did which still made sense (the Empire controls most of the galaxy, the Death Star is to make people lose hope, the Rebels have the support of entire planets, but it's still chump change against Imperial resources).

That's been my main criticism of the new trilogy, too. There is, in fact, world building, but it's other media (books, comic books, even video games), but I for one don't have the time to keep up with all that. The movies rely too much on the other stuff to help people understand context.

42 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Solo barely did anything in that regard. Rogue One was better, though only so much, and both were heavily restrained (as was Rebels) by having to look and feel like a pre-ANH story. 

I thought it did a fair job. We got to see a little more of the criminal underworld, we got to see the Empire actually recruiting people and conquering planets.

[Darth Richard II]

Minor quibble, wasn’t Travis’ stuff thrown out long after the prequels filmed?

[Darth Richard II]

The new EU books have been getting MUCH better but those first few, yeah.

[Darth Richard II]

Sorry for the triple post my phone is acting up, but regarding Marvel, there was actually no concrete plan in place til phase 2. They didn’t even have any plans to include Thanos til Whedon threw in that end credit scene.

Also I think a lot of people forget that the OT trilogy had no real set plan. They were just a lot better at fudging it back then. Lucas original outline for Jedi looks like crazy fanfic if you look at it now.

[unJon]

12 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Sorry for the triple post my phone is acting up, but regarding Marvel, there was actually no concrete plan in place til phase 2. They didn’t even have any plans to include Thanos til Whedon threw in that end credit scene.

Also I think a lot of people forget that the OT trilogy had no real set plan. They were just a lot better at fudging it back then. Lucas original outline for Jedi looks like crazy fanfic if you look at it now.

This is a good point. Leia wasn’t even planned to be Luke’s sister, right?

[Cas Stark]

It's not really the same situation, since George Lucas was directing all of the original trilogy, so there is no chance that hes' going to decide to throw out all of his own foreshadowing from movie to movie as happened between Abrams and Johnson.