Solo Bad

so I saw solo let's do this number one story bad I'm gonna try to do a quick flyover of things that didn't make sense or felt dumb and just get this out of the way spoiler warning for everything if I was the kind of alien where if sunlight hit me it would burn my skin off I don't think I would put my slime pool in a room with a lot of fragile glass windows and then just paint over the windows I think I would put my slime pool room in some kind of interior room with no windows or perhaps if it did have windows I would like reinforce them with something that couldn't be broken if a disgruntled person threw a rock through one especially if I had a lot of enemies who would be safer if I was dead and whom I interrogate in the slime pool room it literally makes no sense how Han got away from the guards in the spaceport like the circumstances of them grabbing only Kira who was like an inch away from Han and then the door closing between them but somehow not hitting either of them and han standing there pounding on the gate and screaming and the gate agent being like somebody just got through the gate and the guards all run to the gate where they can see and hear Han they could see him because the doors transparent for some reason and Han continuing to loudly pound and scream on the gate and the guards on both sides of the gate looking at Han and running directly toward Han and then Han just kind of casually walking to the side evading both sets of guards by putting on a hat also his loyalty to Kira is sweet but I can't believe his goal three years after leaving is to get back to his home planet to find Kira not like get out of the army and go out into space to find Kira go back to his home planet and find Kira there why on earth would he think she would still be there after three years she was getting hauled away and it kind of seemed like she was going to immediately be killed she's either dead or she's moved on with her life she is probably not hanging around in the spaceport where Tandy Newton and the little monkey alien exclusively added to reshoots because boy it felt that way I like how they both did nothing and died immediately hell thankless the little alien guy was like very starkly just some kind of Star Wars rock raccoon both in personality and physicality the main difference being that rocket racoon sometimes says funny jokes and him being the comic relief and the jarring tone of his immediate death was so weird and bad it was almost comical how Tandy and the alien died after talking at length about how this was their last big job before retirement and then woody harrelson talks about how the next job is his last big job before retirement just without any sense of irony it's so weird to set up this new team of three characters and then kill 66% of them in the next scene like when it cut to their little makeshift graves I laughed out loud because it felt like a comedy smash cut like we're all a team it's our last big job smash cut two graves I don't think Beckett would have even gotten their bodies like maybe he could get the aliens body but Tandy Newton exploded so I would say the rock piles are purely symbolic but like why were they the approximate size and shape of their actual bodies then and why this level of sentimentality from a man who's only out for himself and never mentions either of them again I also think it's funny that han and chewie walk up like right after the graves have been completed cuz like that must have taken some time like he built both of those rock piles and then also snow fell on top of them so they've been there a while like we're Han and Chewie just waiting right over the ridge waiting for him to be done so they didn't have to he'll the Tandy Newton character whose name is Val she was actually even worse because not only did she not add anything she actively undermined Beckett's only character trait which is that he didn't trust anybody Val's lack of impact was even clumsily addressed and then like not resolved later in the movie Beckett says not to trust anyone Hahn of course immediately says you trusted Val and then Beckett's just like I trust no one but like what like you just ignored what Han said he said that you trusted Val and you did and that didn't at any point proved to be a mistake so it's just a big gaping hole in his character development I mean maybe if Val had died in the act of betraying him but it was actually the opposite like she killed herself because she saw the mission going south and she was trying to prevent all of the others from dying it was an extremely selfless act which proved her worthy of trust so it's weird how Beckett just kind of breezes past that and it has no lasting impact on his character she doesn't even stay sad for very long like I thought they were basically married why is Quinlan vos his space yacht shaped like a tower like you would find on earth the reason things are shaped like towers on earth is because you use less real estate so like if you're in a city you can just buy a little bit of land and put a lot of rooms on it and they have nice views if you're on a flying space yacht you don't really need a lot of floors to have nice views you could just fly in it forever like you don't even need to park it anywhere all the towers shape does is to make it so that every floor has like limited square footage which is not ideal if you want to entertain those Planet of the Apes looking girl wookies I did not like those No thank you I liked how much the final showdown with Voss and Keira was just like the throne room scene in the last Jedi like Keira is literally standing there with a sword about to kill Han Voss is like yes you didn't see this coming but I know Keira I see her mind I see now as she turns her sword thing and kills her true enemy my biggest laughs in the movies when Kira's like we're gonna have to get enough money to make a life for ourselves and then it cuts away to this table that is full of heretofore unseen giant generic-looking earth diamonds just piles of fake diamonds they're like those paper weights you can get at the mall you know riches I also like that Kira's saying not to distract Han and like get him to go away and go get Beckett and she's like you catch up to him I'm just gonna put these diamonds like like in a bag which will take me 20 minutes I actually don't know why she left Han behind either like she pinned it all on Beckett so his name is clear she still cares about him I mean it seems like the only reason she didn't wait for him is that she thinks his big flaw is he's too dumb and lower and sweet but like she's in charge now and and I think those are pretty good traits and a trophy husband he doesn't have to be involved in your business Kira just leave him on the ship or if Darth Maul asks be like yeah that's my boyfriend what of it a great twist that would have totally explained this is if after she gets Hahn to leave the Mandalorian armor that's standing in the corner of the room like on display suddenly moves and it's Boba Fett and he's been here the whole time and he and Kira passionately kiss now that is how you set up a Boba Fett movie I will admit that I was excited to see Darth Maul but I think it's kind of because my eyes were just glazed over by that point in the movie and it was like a shot in the arm like oh a thing nothing happened he did look a little uncanny valley with the voice-over thing like i love ray Park and I love sam witwer but I think that one cannot have both and Fitz ness takes the helmet off and it's like a big reveal and it's treated so much like a reveal that I was like is that like Woody Harrelson's daughter with tandy Newton that we didn't know about and then I was like no I guess the reveal is just that it's a child and then I realized it was an adult woman with youthful features and I was like oh I guess the twist is just that it's a girl when is a fighter being revealed to be a girl going to stop being treated like an adequate twist I mean the fighter being a girl was the twist when Metroid did it in 1986 is that really a thing we can play straight anymore I mean in this particular universe it's not even that unusual for girls to fight it seems pretty equal-opportunity I also thought it was lame that Han helps specifically a rebellion right here in the prequel movie like I thought that was a growth moment for him in the original trilogy but apparently it's just a thing that he's done before number two the characters okay here's the thing one of the first things everybody started asking me was like how were the performances in the movie probably because Lucasfilm aware that the production was troubled and that they were getting a lot of bad press decided to throw Aldrin Ehrenreich rich they decided to throw him under the bus and leaked the news that he needed acting lessons which by the way I would call unforgivably cruel the thing is that asking me how the acting was in this movie is like asking me how the acting was when I've just seen a high school production of Seussical the musical like well I couldn't really tell you it's not really that kind of production friend I don't think there's a single actor in this that I haven't seen and liked and something else so I know they all can act for what it's worth nobody did a bad job but the aldryn anglerfish didn't have a single thing to do so how am I to know Han Solo was physically present in practically every scene but he spent the whole time standing around looking like he didn't understand what was going on and grinning like an idiot and he sounds so much like Christian Slater but I think that's just the guy's voice Han Solo's character development happens in the original trilogy like he's this tough guy who doesn't have very good morals and likes to act like he's only out for himself but he secretly has a heart of gold and he learns to care about his friends and the rebellion and become like a hero so I figured Han and a prequel could go one of two ways one he starts out nice and bright-eyed and wants to help everyone and then ends up bitter and jaded or two he starts out jaded and not wanting to help anyone and then learns to be nice neither is ideal because one is just kind of predictable and boring and the other one is like an echo of his other arc in the original trilogy and kind of dampens the impact of that instead though the movie just does neither of those which like kudos first surprising me I guess but the reason that surprises me is because I thought they wouldn't do it because it would be very boring and strange to do han just starts the movie one way and then ends the movie the same way like he's a con man who's out for himself but he's also loyal to the people he cares about which is pretty middle-of-the-road I would say he demonstrates by shooting Woody Harrelson that he's learned not to trust but he's still like smiley and wants to be best friends with Chewie so it seems like it didn't get him down too much I guess the lesson Han learns is just don't trust people who have already actively betrayed you multiple times which congratulations Han the two performances I specifically enjoyed were Paul Bettany and glover paul bettany stria lee fun to watch as a bad guy he's like some kind of evil Gordon Ramsay and he's definitely giving it like a hundred and ten percent but there's just absolutely nothing to his character Dominic Glover was doing such a good impression of OG Lando which was really fun to watch unfortunately there wasn't a lot of Lando in this story like he didn't have an opportunity to show a lot of range so it really was just an impression which is in donald glover fault i mean at least he seemed like he was having a lot of fun with it making strong choices and doing a distinctive character so he was my favorite Val and Rio whose names I had to look up were not characters they didn't do anything they died like immediately oh and by the way Rio and Beckett both do the same like hilariously bad death acting and were so weird come here Skippy Skippy is going to help me demonstrate a death scene as seen in solo so as you can see I'm like cradling him as he lays dying are you crying yet and Skippy goes uh that's it like they both just sighed and shrugged their heads back I call that the whatever death like you're just kind of fed up with being alive Anakin's mom did it too the only character with a consistent personality and through line was Keira I mean in the case of Emilia Clarke and Woody Harrelson it was just kind of like showing up and doing the thing that you always do but I thought Keira as a character worked okay not all of her decisions fully made sense but I think functionally she was supposed to be Hans character foil which is good because she'll basically compromise her morals and just align herself with the most powerful person in her immediate surroundings to survive which Han won't do so that worked for me number three the scrubbing the story clean of nearly every joke this movie started out being made as a comedy and then the reshoots I thought were intended to make it like still a comedy but toned down but then you watch it and you find out the three shoots were actually intended to make it like a drama with occasional jokes I wouldn't call this envers a comedy anymore than I would call like rogue one a comedy it's an action movie with a handful of jokes but the jokes are the exception and not the rule which is bizarre because I feel like the story just on its own merits doesn't really offer anything interesting but you wouldn't really need a great story if it was like a fun comedy wrong because comedies are like all journey and no destination I can't claim to know what the original cut of the movie was like but there were a few points that really stood out to me as like elements that were set up and then dropped or abandoned or felt like half of a joke which was then cut because maybe it became too funny and didn't mesh with the tone like this was the skeleton of a movie that would be filled with jokes but the jokes just weren't there and the jokes would be the muscles or perhaps the veins whatever is more important probably both of them are pretty important Han asks Chewie is name and Chewie responds with like wookie noises and then han is like Chewbacca huh and you're like how so that doesn't make sense and a good comedy movie might like acknowledge that it doesn't make sense and use it as the setup for a funny joke actually what I think would be funniest is if they're having this whole conversation Chewbacca is making these wookie sounds and then Hans like what's your name and Chewbacca is like Chewbacca and then like that's the only time he speaks English in all of Canon he only speaks Loki from then on but that is how Han learned his name I think it's funny when Chewie pulls the arms off that guard and then Han complains that that's the uniform that would have fit him and he can't use it as a disguise now the obvious follow up joke would be that the next time you see Han he is wearing an outfit that just completely doesn't fit him like it's from a guard that's like a diminutive species of alien like a tight little uniform jacket and like the sleeves don't cover his arms and like his midriff is out it's like a crop top and he just looks like an adult man in a child's Halloween costume and like he walks out to the other guards and he's trying act natural and they're just immediately like we know that's not your uniform and he has to fight his way out and then the whole rest of the action sequence like he's doing cool heroic stuff they're like shooting guards he's jumping over stuff but it's all rendered comedic by the fact that he's in these elephant emasculating looking clothes I also want to go back to l-3 this is a big one for me so l3 is a comedic character she and Lando bicker a lot and there is a scene where l3 tell Kyra that Lando has the hots for her and Kyra is like amused and taken aback by this then a few minutes later l3 is injured and dies and Lando like freaks out and he runs to her and dramatic music plays Lando gets shot in the arm han is like looking on in sympathy and just tonally it makes no sense it's very weird so here's my conspiracy theory about how it played out in the lorda miller version i think l 3 tells kira that Lando has a crush on her and Kira is like surprised and amused and thinks that l3 is just delusional droid with a crush the way I'm imagining it Lando isn't like annoyed with l3 it's just a very like courteous working relationship like any pilot with his navigation droid like there's there's no real tension between them at all that you've seen then l3 gets shot and Lando reacts massively like he runs over to her he's like weeping it's beautiful there's no dramatic music it's just all Lando with his overwrought reaction he like embraces her he kisses her weird mouth lifts face passionately as if she's a human lover and it's this beautiful operatic death it turns out l3 actually was the love of his life and while this is unfolding it smash cuts to Han or Kira and they're reacting like they and the audience realized that they have completely misread this relationship and then you can have Lando being like comedic ly melodramatic ly broken and weepy until the point where they plug in l3 spray into the ship cuz then it's like she's still alive or it's what she would have wanted or whatever and then he can be his normal self again also for the record I don't like that l3 is like a lady voice robot with shapely hips and long legs like imagine how much funnier that scene would play out if she was like basically a Dalek from Doctor Who like just a big garbage can shaped robot with like big metal arms that like move like this and like our synthesized voice and it's like Lando and I we are and anyway here's what passes for a joke in this movie and I wrote it down because I was aghast okay so something crazy or dangerous occurs and then the little monkey armed alien goes you've never been to a my Knock roast on Rd Nia it's nuts Wacka Wacka that is like the part of the movie where I started to go oh no number four the outfits the outfits were so boring half of the clothes were just stuff you could pick up at the mall like Kira's in like a bomber jacket and she has a bob but then later her hair style is just like a ponytail with bangs and she's wearing like little stud earrings it's like yay we're in space it's a space ponytail she has the one good outfit that's like the leather collar thing with like the red cape that she changes into for their mission and I imagine that's the one everyone's gonna cosplay as because it's like the only memorable one and then after that she changes into like a plain black jumpsuit that looks like she got it at Urban Outfitters the bad guy Voss he's just wearing like a suit just like a earth businessman suit the shirt underneath is satiny and one of the jacket sleeves is like oversized and billowy kind of like a cape and that's all we get and then they go on their mission and they come back like at least a full day later and he's still wearing the same outfit like I know the reshoot schedule was tight but surely they had time to change Paul Bettany Scott's between shots I mean admittedly sitting around in the same clothes as yesterday eating space caviar is like a big mood the infantry that's fighting like World War One style and the trenches are wearing like modified stormtrooper armor that's supposed to look older and more earth-like I guess and like it doesn't protect the soldiers as well so what's the point of that because the Empire never seemed like they were financially strapped to get those stormtrooper costumes like we've seen a lot of them before lambdas wardrobe was fun to look at and had fun colors but it did kind of bum me out that it was just capes like I've never gotten the impression before that Lando only wears capes and he has a big closet that's full of capes like Lando wore capes in the original oh gee and I guess we can't make up anything new so Lando is only worn capes his whole life and nothing else I would think if Lando's like this zany personality and he loves fashion that he would have an extremely varied wardrobe and every outfit has some kind of zany quirk to it like one has crazy sleeves and the other one is covered with sequins not just like the same outfit in a broad spectrum of colors but no we don't have any thinking outside the box and the box is the existing Canon like you can't use the Canon to draw new exciting conclusions you just have to do the same thing that we've seen and by the way why would Lando build like a bulky mechanical cheating at cards device to put inside his sleeve which would then shoot out a card to cheat with which is surely harder to conceal than just a single flat playing card that you could easily put in your sleeve apparently no one is checking up sleeves if he's got the device I personally I feel like he's over complicating it a lot more than he needs to Oh blame my inferior eyes and my failure to buy a visual dictionary if I'm wrong but Kier is wearing this necklace and it looks like it's just like a silver necklace chain and then like a silver rectangle on a necklace and then at the end of the movie after the big adventure you see Lando again he's wearing his like Hawaiian shirt outfit and it looks like he's wearing the same necklace is there some kind of space significance to a rectangle or are they just really in fashion right now or is Lando wearing Kira's necklace and I missed something like what does it mean what's going on number 5 l3l 3 gets her own bullet point because hot take I hate l3 I hate that she's named leet I hate that we like never get girl droids and when we do she has to have like curvy woman hips and she has to stand like this like a sassy woman does and and like nag people all the time here's the thing about l3 where you couldn't really feel those rewrites happening so they made out three like a social justice warrior droid and she shouts obvious things like droid writings that's what she's doing the very first moment we meet her she's like talking to these recreational battle droids that are being fought to the death like trying to appeal to them to rise up against their oppressors she's trying to get a chant going anyway okay droid rights and then they're stealing the co axiom and they're in like this control center and she takes a restraining bolt off of a little droid at the console and then she says very sarcastically like yeah you're free okay get out of my way go start a revolution or something it's very sarcastic and very dismissive like she's just trying to get destroyed to get away from the console but then the little droid that she freed does do that it does start a revolution and then l3 calls Lando over the comm device and she's like I found my calling as like a Liberator of droids the rear ID part is when you're like wait what does that mean because that's been her goal the whole time and why was she so sarcastic about freeing the droid when that's something she really earnestly wants to do why was she like a weird jerk to the little droid and just acting like she wanted him to get out of the way so here are two ways that could have played out and like made sense number one she gives a passionate speech to the droid earnestly trying to urge him to break free we've seen her do this before and it's never worked before the droid that she's talking to looks like it's just like an idiot it's like she's talking to a toaster like it just has this big vacant eye it doesn't look like it's processing anything she's saying the character she's with like rolls their eyes and it cuts away to some action somewhere else then later in the action scene things could be like going south for the heroes like oh no how do we get out of this one and then suddenly all these little droids charge in and the joke is like surprise all these apathetic stupid-looking astromech droids actually did start a revolution like oh my god it worked one of them that looks like a vacuum cleaner could like roll in carrying a little makeshift droid flag that looks super like in EPS like a kid made it and it's like a tiny baby droid leh miserab or something it's a fun callback joke and a good triumphant moment for the good guys and it's also funny because the droids are like cute and silly looking and it would be a satisfying comedic payoff to how dismissive all the other characters have been of l-3 up until that point instead of it just being like all her friends were jerks to her and then she died and okay way number two l3 isn't droid rights robot she's just kind of blasé and snarky and the droid rights thing has literally never mentioned or maybe they could even give her a line about how like her relationship with Lando is special because she's smarter than all those other stupid droids then she the way she does in the movie she sarcastically tells the little Droid to go start a revolution she just wants him out of the way but then he goes and he does that then when she calls Lando and she's like I found my calling it's funny because it's like the first time we've seen her get excited about anything and we the audience feel it with Lando when he seems irritated because it's like really this is like the worst time that this could happen it's weird that in some scenes l3 is all like droid rights and then other ones like seems not to care and act completely different it's almost like this whole element of L freeze personality was added in the reshoots and never successfully rounded out or integrated into the story but that's ridiculous it's not like in the scene where they established this for the first time there are like battle droids that are there in some shots and not in others and sometimes they'll cut to two characters conversing and there's like an orange glow so there's no background behind them and they didn't have to put them back on the set and Clint Howard is there so anyway l3 dies and Lando is like really upset about it and it's played as a super dramatic moment but that's confusing because Lando always just seemed really annoyed with her and you never really saw them getting along and she never did anything right and she was kind of rude to him and everybody else it also was a little ghoulish that they did play all threes death completely straight because then in the very next scene Lando is making like little quickie sarcastic remarks directly to L threes dead body number six explaining things that nobody needed or wanted explained and then also the explanations are not interesting the Millennium Falcon has a weird shape which is what makes it an iconic looking spaceship design and I swear at some point I read an expanded universe thing that like it's a freighter so it's like a space forklift and the reason it's got that notch taken out of it and the little prongs in the front is they're gonna push the crates with the little prongs it doesn't really make sense because why couldn't it just be like a stick like a nose why wouldn't that get the same job done in the same way but anyway in solo it's revealed that originally it had an escape pod so the reason it looks like there's a rectangle missing is that there's literally a rectangle missing this takes me back to the tone thing because if this was in the context of like a goofy Lord Miller comedy it would kind of be like haha you thought it was an iconic spaceship design and it's just missing a piece but like it's framed like that's supposed to be this huge revelation like it's a dramatic moment you're gonna be like oh my god mind blown I didn't even realize that Han Solo had one specific blaster he used his entire life that had emotional significance to him I kind of just thought it was like a common model of blaster that he like bought at the store somewhere like its iconic to fans because it's like a space thing that we don't see every day but I kind of thought within the Star Wars universe that it was just like a basic handgun but the solo movie gives us an explanation about how Han Solo got his special blaster and the backstory is just the Woody Harrelson was like here have this blaster Chewbacca where's that bandolier and I always just figured it was like a personal preference he developed over time and I assumed the things on it were like bow caster bolts for his weapon of choice I was never like how did he get that bandolier but no Chewbacca also gets the bandolier in this movie and the backstory of the bandolier is that Woody Harrelson's team was like here have this bandolier I guess he liked it so much that he wore it for the rest of his life there's this bit of Star Wars lore that the Millennium Falcon is like a temperamental ship to fly because it's computers comprised of three different droid brains and they argue with each other sometimes I always figured that that was meant to like sum up the nature of the maintenance the ship has seen over the years and the fact that it's like a hack job and repurposed parts probably a lot of paperclips holding it together so I was never like which droids brains that's got to have emotional significance because I always just kind of figured that Han like over time pulled different droid brains out of garbage piles because he's cheap and they needed to fill in gaps in the system but no it's l3s brain so that gets a backstory too and maybe we'll see the other two droid brains in the next two installments of the solo trilogy I didn't need it explained to me in a prequel how Han ended up calling Chewbacca Chewie because I just kind of like lived in the world before and I understand that if you know someone a while you might start calling them by a nickname but the movie had to show Han declaring that he's going to give Chewbacca a nickname I guess nf is nest is supposed to be the leader of like a smaller pre rebellion that possibly leads to the later proper rebellion rebellion I never felt I needed an explanation of how the rebellion came to be like you you know their mission so what does it matter are we gonna get a pre prequel about a second even smaller pre pre rebellion that inspired emphasis to start her priva million I mean I'm not really kidding we're probably gonna get a book about that number seven wasting time they don't mean by this bullet point that the movie was a waste of time I mean that's also true but it wasn't what it mean but I am saying that within the runtime of this movie a lot is wasted on pointless stuff this movie tries to cover so much ground we have Hans youth on a corrupt planet car chase action sequence Han in the army army escape action sequence a train heist action sequence negotiating with vas negotiating with Lando a hyper fuel stealing action sequence a space monster action sequence then a final confrontation with vas a vas fight action sequence and then a gun standoff with Beckett there's a whole lot of stuff here I don't need most of it and I like even less of it if it's a prequel and we know where ultimately han and Lando and Chewie are going to end up the drama would in the story needs to be more character-driven but we're just not given enough time within the story for the characters to play off each other and have their relationships matter to us the best explained relationship is han and kira and i feel like that was setting up some interesting groundwork for an eventual sequel but there just wasn't enough between them in this movie to justify the time spent on it even that relationship is told more than it's shown like they talk for one second and then it's a car chase and then when they reunite like their reactions aren't even excited enough given the circumstances like this was Hans whole driving motivation for three years he thought she was possibly dead and then they see each other they like hug tightly and then they just relax back into reserved conversation it's like I've been more excited to run into old classmates at the grocery store han and Lando's like frenemies thing was kind of poorly defined and they had more time interacting with other characters than each other and Han and Beckett had even less bonding time which totally undermined what I thought could have been a really good last standoff scene so like why didn't they just borrow some time from all those action sequences and all the time waste see stuff to just flesh out these relationships a little more and make it good by the way all of our time with Val and Ryo I'm counting as wasted time because then they died and they never mattered again the most egregious action sequence is the space monster escape scene when they're coming back with the hyper fuel and it's like such an obvious sci-fi concept it felt very familiar not particularly engaging and like loads of lighthearted family adventure movies have these mid-story action scenes that are just filler and that I skip when I rewatched them I mean the rathtar scene in the force awakens is like a golden example of this I thought that scene was so boring that I would use it to refill my popcorn when I rewatched the movie in theaters for the 3rd 4th 5th and 6th times I kind of just feel like scenes like this are usually mandated by the studio like they don't want a certain amount of time to elapse without some kind of action sequence to keep the energy up or something they usually happen in like the first third and the miniscule impact they have on the plot is that at least they give your new team of characters an opportunity to bond and work together in this kind of environment oh this also applies to that scene in moaña with the coconut men but the space monster thing in solo is like weirdly close to the end of the movie the characters have already bonded as much as they're going to which is not much as an audience you're aware that the characters are on their way to the final confrontation with the bad guy which is going to actually matter and this scene is like a bizarre de-escalation from the previous action scene which just happened in which one of the major characters died as a story beat this makes no sense and it's where you're like really feeling the runtime dragging but I know exactly why it's in here it's because Han Solo doing the Kessel run is a story in the original series and this movie they've decided they had to show the Kessel run but they didn't have anything interesting to happen on the Kessel run the interesting stuff actually all happened right before that so they just threw in a space monster number eight Solo is a triumph for diversity and it is fabulous I am living there was a lot of talk about how this movie is great because of its diverse casting but I didn't think that the writing of the characters in question was particularly groundbreaking or even kind i don't know how hashtag woke it is that there's a tribe of literal exploited natives and black people who look just like Native Americans on earth and have an in story reason that they can't speak and don't have any lines because they decided to write it so that their tongues were cut out and they need Han Solo to help them Tandi newton is a black woman with a major on-screen role in a Star Wars movie and she was super excited about it she even at one of the premieres were like a dress with images of other black Star Wars characters action figures on it it was really cute and she seemed so excited and her excitement was so like infectious and he just wanted to be happy for her so I was kind of disappointed to see her character had like five lines and no real personality and didn't matter in the plot at all and then died and wasn't mentioned again our other black character Lando owns l3 who is a slave and keeps saying that she's upset that she's a slave and Lando makes fun of her I just don't know if that counts as great representation oh and in an interview Lawrence Kasdan's son said that Lando is pansexual which makes him a fabulous queer icon OMG except that this all happened after the movie was already made and it's not actually textually supported and it's kind of like he just made it up in an interview because it would get clicks it's like gay Dumbledore it's like if Lawrence Kasdan's son said in an interview that even though Emilia Clarke is a white actress when he wrote Keira he knew that she was mixed race and it's not mentioned in the movie but it is canon that Kyra is mixed-race he knows it to be true there is a scene in the movie where Lando and Han are like just talking to each other normally and then l3 sarcastically says stop flirting in order to be rude to them like she's making fun of them or something maybe that makes Lando pansexual and I guess Lando is pansexual for having sex with a robot that's not male or female even though it is a female robot with a woman's voice and feminine curves I'm just saying that if that robot who's played by a woman is supposed to be understood by the audience as anything but a woman and that that makes Lando pansexual then why didn't you just make it c-3po what are you afraid of Kasdan and Lando also seems to have had sex with Kira but that doesn't mean anything because every man Kira interacts with seems to have had sex with Kira and they always have at least one line hinting at it thanks I love it I guess there was no insinuation that she's had sex with Darth Maul but I assume they're saving that for the sequel number 9 the sequel did any of you guys see the remake of the mummy that came out last year probably not it was supposed to launch universals dark universe franchise before they cancelled it in shame see I always figured that the best way to launch a cinematic universe was like to make a really solid first movie that stood on its own and that people liked and then those people would be like can you please make a sequel and you'd be like sure I can but what do I know instead in the mummy they just crowded out all of the character stuff all of the story stuff in what was already a pretty sloppy and weak story in order to just shove in as much groundwork as possible for this cinematic universe it's gonna be big you guys there's an entire bizarre interlude where the characters go to dr. Jekyll's laboratory where he has all these different samples hinting at the other monsters that are going to be brought in for his monster Avengers like he has the the Creature from the Black Lagoon webbed fingers in a jar and Igor's shirt and it's tailored so it would fit around a hunch I'm making all of these up I don't actually remember my point is that solo reminded me so much of the mummy 2017 they put in the thing with N finessed but then don't really explore those characters they don't resolve the with Kira they have Darth Maul for a sequel tease and I've heard people say that the reason Darth Maul was in it is that it's not teasing a solo sequel its teasing like the boba fett movie or the obi-wan movie or something and the reason that's not true is then why would they keep Kira and have Kira working with Maul Kira's only interesting as far as she relates to Han he's the one she has a relationship with like if Kira pops up in an obi-wan movie are you gonna be like oh boy I can't wait to see how Kira and obi-wan play off each other like no it only works if they're doing another solo so I think wasting time setting up all this stuff instead of strengthening the story that you're working on right now is really putting the cart before the horse or I guess putting the dooba sand skiff before the Ronco does that make that sentence I said a joke because I put silly Star Wars words in it because when the monkey did that it made it a joke it was a pretty dead crowd and when he said that line one man in the audience like way down in front of me went number ten what's with all the slaves so you know what I'm saying this movie had a whole thread going through it about slaves and marginalized groups and I'm not sure what they were going for with that lady Proxima at the beginning she basically in slaves orphans and Runaways by like forcing them into a life of crime in order to get like just enough to survive it's this weird Oliver Twist esque operation and she's a gross slime monster she's depicted as unambiguously evil Han demonstrates to us that he's not a good fit for the army because he remarks to his commanding officer that actually the Empire are the savages because they've come onto somebody else's homeworld and are attacking them I got thrown out of the Academy for being too woke that tribe that emphasis is helping is like a bunch of abused and exploited natives whose lands have been ravaged by people trying to take all their resources we are meant to sympathize with the tribe and even Han is one over to their cause even Kira isn't a free agent they have that line about how she's like indebted to crimson dawn and she couldn't leave even if she wanted to and she's even got like a brand looking tattoo indicating that she's kind of owned by them then when they're showing up to the mining colony Lando has that terrible line that sounds like it was added after the fact where he just says like really unenthusiastically mining colonies are the worst but anyway the use of slaves to mine hyper fuels depicted as an evil practice and Chewbacca's tribe slash family are all slaves which is framed as tragic and then you have the droids l3 is like a social justice droid which doesn't work at all droids are like the house elves in Harry Potter like if they're happy they're like cute little pets and they just want to work for the humans it's all good it's fine it's a little creepy because they have like human level intelligence and they can talk enough personalities and stuff but it's fine they're robots it's okay if even one of them starts to express that they don't like that they're slaves and they feel like they're second-class citizens and that makes them unhappy you basically have to confront the fact that all of your favorite Star Wars characters are complicit in the ownership of slaves so if l3s activism is played straight that's weird and bad because of the implications it has for other Star Wars stories but instead l3s activism is supposed to be a thing that you mock which is even more weird and bad firstly because she seems like a straw man that you're supposed to use to by proxy make fun of maybe groups in the real world that want equal rights so that's great for your family picture but it's even weirder because if l3 has free will and doesn't like being owned then yeah you should want to empathize with her like it's not an insignificant issue she is actually a slave Lando owns her he isn't nice to her he mentions that he wishes he could wipe her memory and delete her personality and he also apparently has sex with her which when paired with the slavery angle feels not awesome Belle 3 complains that businesses won't serve her and that they're fighting creatures like her to the death for entertainment and our main characters Huff and rolled their eyes she starts a droid revolution it's a comedic moment and in medians to the crew and her writing is so bad at one point Lando is like do you need anything and she's like um equal rights walk walk this would be a weird incidental joke in any movie but it's even weirder in a movie that has the wrongness of slavery as a recurring idea throughout like what are they trying to do it's almost like this script was written thoughtlessly like in a patchwork fashion with multiple creators and then wasn't edited competently before it was made into a movie and put in theaters oh and by the way we're supposed to think this is really sweet that L threes brain is put in the Millennium Falcon so she can live on forever I don't know is it a beautiful fate for l3 who hated being owned and not having any agency that her brain is now permanently trapped in a ship which other people drive around unable to speak forever I have no mouth and I must be Boot number eleven the stuff that was good I just felt up nine fingers like I thought it was the number love it I liked when Beckett says that dryden vos is gonna be super mad at him and kill him and Han says they're gonna go talk to him together it was just like a sweet loyalty moment it was a good establishing thing for Hans character I'm here for these moments of friendship they make me feel very happy although it was weird that it was followed by Beckett being like he doesn't know who you are you don't have to go with me cuz it was just kind of really obviously spelling out what had already been made really clear in the whole conversation prior to the beat about Han saying he would go to I guess Lawrence Kasdan and his son were worried that I wouldn't understand there were like four good jokes which I assume were holdovers from the Lord and Miller version when Hans in the spaceport and he looks over at the Imperial recruitment ad you can hear under the announcers voice like a little teeny recording of the Imperial March and I thought that was funny although if the movie is not a screwball comedy and is like a drama that's Canon and Star Wars that becomes really weird like imagine if that happened in the force awakens you'd be like what I liked the scene where Kira and l3 talk to each other just take it on its own it's a funny scene I liked the one line from Han when he said he learned to maneuver from a pilot before he crashed and died doing this it's a funny line oh there's a part where Kira puts her hand on Hans shoulder and it's like a show of support from her but visually it echoed apart in Voss's office when Voss puts a hand Kiera's shoulder and when he does it it's like him being overbearing and it's sinister and I wondered if it was foreshadowing that Kyra can't be trusted and she's gonna take Voss's job and it probably wasn't but if it was that's kind of cool I liked the use of Han shot first I thought that was the only like pander EBIT that felt really natural within the story and it was a good dramatic beat I liked the droids in the Droid Revolution scene I thought they were very cute designs okay that's it number 12 he's named Solo because he's a load his interaction is so hilarious and how badly it plays out so Han runs up to the recruitment counter acting kind of shifty but trying to sign up and get off the planet and draw as little attention to himself as possible so he doesn't get killed by thugs the recruiter tells Han that most recruits end up in the infantry and then hunt for whatever reason decides to arrogantly tell the recruiter that no he's gonna be the best pilot in the whole galaxy which is an odd thing to declare to someone when you're trying to fly under the radar and there are thugs right behind you looking for you I mean he said that so that line could be in the trailer the recruiter asks for Hans name Han for some reason tells him his real name and then the recruiter asks Han what instead of making up a name han stares blankly which prompts the recruiter to ask who are your people I appreciate that he worded this question as unnaturally as possible so it can be a super on the nose question about Hans identity han says that he has no people and apparently is unwilling to make up a last name because showing up to the counter with no papers and no last name is the best way to avoid being arrested so there were cruder shrugs and goes hmm han Solo han Solo do you get it he's named Han Solo because he's alone solo means alone and canonically it has meant that he was alone this whole time how many other people passed through that gate and got named solo or some other cruel name relating to their personal baggage why would that even be the first word that guy thought of it why not Hondo or Han Smith Han alone Han by himself Han not applicable Jimmy scrambles and Han just decided to keep that name forever and never change it if your name is not even your real name and it just means the year alone aren't you morally obligated to change it when you get married and start a family and and been solo you mean to tell me that Ben solo took his father's last name his mother is a princess and he inherited his father's last name solo which is not even a real last name and just got made up by some guy at the airport and never changed I just thought in the world of Star Wars that it was understood that people are named things like sometimes they're named nouns and that's just normal in this world if Han Solo's character name is supposed to be literal and that's something that characters in this universe are capable of recognizing who promoted General Grievous this Grievous guy he's a good candidate why was it Darth vader-like oh you're you're naming me the German word for father that's a bit cruel actually because you just told me that my wife and babies died that's true isn't it that thing that you just told me why would you name me father what does that mean this entire scene feels like a scene that somebody would make up as a joke to make fun of the idea of making a han Solo movie like if somebody was trying to think of the stupidest tackiest thing that a han Solo prequel movie could ever burden us with they would be like what if we find out that he's called solo because he always work solo and this is exactly what I mean about explaining things that do not need to be explained how did Han get his name a guy gave it to him how did Han get his blaster a guy gave it to him how did Han meet Chewie a guy gave Honda Chewie the only thing that Han had any agency over was winning the Millennium Falcon in a bet which happened at the very end in which we already knew about and played out exactly the way you would have expected ask for all of Hans other origin stories it kind of seems like the only reason we didn't know them before is that they weren't interesting enough to bear repeating this movie doesn't add anything new meaningful or interesting to Star Wars which wouldn't be a problem if it was just like a fun comedy romp but it's not that either it's not funny but it never gets into any interesting drama it's boring to look at and it's too long it's just not worth seeing at all like if you're curious just wait till it's on Netflix in like four months and I know star wars movies inevitably make money but I hope that underperforms just enough that they don't waste resources on a sequel and maybe they'll stop doing prequels and will like finally get a good anthology movie so that was my list and it wasn't actually a list of anything I just if you make a really long youtube video it helps to put numbers in the middle to trick people into listening to you talk for a really long time did it work to break up the monotony okay if you haven't seen solo yet seriously don't see it in theaters okay bye thanks for watching bye you there's that scene in Voss's office where Voss is like I know your plan because my associate ratted you out and Han is like what what no Kyra what did she tell you and Voss is like no no not Kyra my other associate and a one of the doors to open and it's just CGI young Princess Leia from rogue one and you're like what other contenders jyn erso the ghosts of both Val and Rio or a new character played by Harrison Ford

Channel: Jenny Nicholson

Views: 1,560,482

Keywords:

Id: XP8FZ4cBzaI

Length: 49min 55sec (2995 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/adashiel]

Even though I liked Solo well enough, I agree with pretty much everything she said. Hell, I even like L3 and I agree on that, too. I think it helped that I went in to the movie absolutely convinced it was going to be the worst thing ever.

[u/a_floppy_koala]

She has some good points, good enough for me to watch the entire video. But I still have to disagree with some of them and I still like Solo.

[u/hijabikababi]

I think we need to stop letting people on YouTube decide what we like or do not.

Watch the video, enjoy Jenny's sublime sarcasm, understand where she comes from AND RESPECT IT, but decide how legitimate her views are for yourself. Use her opinions as a way to start conversations, not as a means to attack her views.

[u/Siruzaemon-Dearo]

I think it was a good takedown of L3. I have no idea why she was included as some sort of agent to introduce the question of droid slavery. A question a silly series like star wars is not remotely equipped to tackle. Also having her mind being chained to the ship was so bizarrely contrary to her motivations, it would work better as a dark joke.

Also "i have no mouth and I must beep boop"

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I'm only about 15 minutes in so far and while I'm kind of on the fence about Solo overall, a lot of what she's saying is really nitpicky. Like, complaining about the yacht being tower-shaped? Really? She says that it makes no sense for Han to go back to Corellia to search for Qi'ra and says that he should instead just start....in space? Sure, there's a good chance Qi'ra won't be back on Corellia by the time he returns, but it's pretty logical to start the search at the last place he knows she was at rather than just picking a planet at random and hoping she's one of the billions of people there (although, ironically, that's exactly how it worked out in the movie).

[u/ohoni]

I love her videos, a ton of great points here.

[u/xereeto]

She put into words everything I was thinking when I was walking out of the theatre.

And calling him fucking Solo because he's alone made me literally facepalm while watching it.

[u/[deleted]]

I usually like her videos, but this one is particularly nerd-picky. I really don't care in terms of the overall movie why the sun-weakened snake lady is in a glass room. I don't think she designed the building? I think the entire underworld here is designed like that? There's a million cop-outs someone could magically think up for something that is pointless anyway. It just reminds me of the "bombs falling in space" thing that people thought was a MASSIVE PLOT HOLE in Last Jedi. Then Lucasfilm just says "magnets" and it canonically works.

Good takedown of L3 though. Everything about that character is just so weird, both in the universe and at a meta level. Like, this movie brings up the idea of a human having romantic (even sexual) feelings for a robot... and then completely brushes it off like it never happened. Like, this brought an otherwise fun and simple movie to a screeching halt for me and it was apparently for no reason.

[u/1person12]

Great video! It kind of surprises me how few people I’ve seen really analyze Solo like this. Her points are spot on.