For what it’s worth:
My opinion of Solo–
The most actioned packed, yet boring Indiana Jones movie ever made.
The Movie Thread
cyclops
#202
nose
#203
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be,… but not very good either. I have franchise fatigue on starwars so hard though, I’m just not even in it really anymore.
I did end up rewatching “Await Further Instructions” and that was definitely one of those movies that clicked just right with me in the third act and ended up being like a 4.7/10imdb score. Always an interesting reality check when I get blown away by something that the vast majority hate.
“Under the Skin” was similar in that way. Shredded by viewers but It’s one of my favorites. I think I might have to rewatch that one this weekend now.
Stich
#205
Just in case you were thinking of checking out more of director S. Craig Zahler’s work [Bone Tomahawk] he has another film called “Brawl in Cell Block 99.” As the title suggests, it’s a '70s style prison movie suitable for a drive in. Despite an awfully slow start establishing the relationship of Vince Vaughn and his wife, it does eventually offer some entertainment. Like BT, it’s full of graphic violence, some of which is pretty new. The fight scenes are brutal and involve a lot of broken bones, and often graphic touches that are nice. A lot of the makeup effects are however kind of amateur and make you shake your head that they included them. None the less, for what it is the film delivers. Enjoy!
Jayson
#206
For what it’s worth, Lucas was going to do the same thing.
He, for ages, declared that the non-movie content didn’t control the films, but the films controlled non-film canon.
In other words, Lucas could say whatever and everyone else had to follow along. Period.
For example, his ideas by 2012 for SW VII was basically the Luke and Rey part of SW VIII minus Luke dying (Lucas was going to kill Luke in 9), and he seems to have had this kind of idea since at least 1983 as he asked Hamill, who mentioned it in an interview back then, if Hamill would be willing to reprise Luke handing the torch off to a new generation of Jedi in or around 2011.
Lucas’ plans were really out there, actually.
He was going to make it about the Whills and how the midichlorians were the Whills way to drive the vehicles that are Force attuned people.
It would have pissed a lot more fans off to have a story telling you that Luke’s choices were being piloted around by a collective deity group that was driving the dark side and light side together to generate a balance in some kind of cosmic collision…so…basically turning SW into a Dark Crystal style of storyline, but our gelflings aren’t there.
Fucking love Solo.
My tied for first are ANH, TFA, and Solo.
Now, that said. I should note that I was not that impressed by Rogue One because it didn’t have any fairy tale motifs, or allegorical narrative structure to it, which to me…is what makes SW different from just being sci-fi.
The main saga’s chaistic narrative structure is absolutely stunning. There’s no other story in all of history that has done a nine volume 3 act chiastic narrative…not even the Bible or great Greek epics.
So a SW film that doesn’t drive itself by allegory is immediately not interesting to me. That’s what SW is all about to me; allegory.
I should be able to make a stained glass window in a church out of the story.
Solo is a badass allegorical space fantasy noir western heist romp. I loved every minute.
Cheers,
Jayson
Jayson
#207
Not looking likely.
RJ has a trilogy coming, and Boba Fett has an anthology after IX.
They started towards an Obi-Wan and canned it.
I’m pleased, though.
I’m not an EU fan. Never liked it.
Zhan was alright, but none of that stuff felt like Star Wars to me. It wasn’t poetic enough; didn’t do things because it was symbolic - not because it was rational or logical.
Solo impressed me because I expected it to be like R1; just a scifi film without an allegorical and symbolic motif that was driving the story instead of it being a typical character-driven narrative sci-fi.
But it did fashion after the Saga in that way; it gave me a western fairy tale in space with huge metaphorical images.
I don’t see a Luke soon though.
Obi-Wan likely sooner, but not likely for at least 5 to 10 years (unless the TV series does Luke, but I seriously doubt that).
Cheers,
Jayson
Roo_Stercogburn
#208
Rogue One is a war film against a Star Wars backdrop. Its aces and you actually get to see why Darth Vader is so menacing. That film just plain delivers.
Ruin Johnson really messed up Last Jedi so badly. His crowning achievement was to come up with characters more annoying than ewoks. His goals to change direction may have been lofty but he missed the mark with inept scripting and logic holes all over the place. E.g. Dropping bombs in space? REALLY? Crystal dogs that run into the cave FOR NO REASON other than to provide the storyline with a get-out when the bad guys turn up. And so on.
He turned the bad guys into the keystone comedy cops. Zero threat/menace.
Rubbish story with rubbish storytelling. A few decent bits but not many. Dull, predictable, unexciting.
nose
#209
I went into solo expecting it to be terrible, but I actually felt it was rather enjoyable. It was a fun flick, and the cast pulled it off. My biggest complaint is the antagonist is extremely weakly developed (although with a main villain like Vader, it’s some stiff competition). Still, a fun popcorn flick.
I think I just got burned out of starwars, which is sad because I genuinely enjoy them. I haven’t even seen The Last Jedi or Rogue One yet. I just need to sit down and get them both under my belt.
I had no idea there was like, 6 seasons of The Clone Wars. Is it good?
metaside
#210
Imho it’s probably great for younger people, but for adults probably only if you are a complete fan - but mostly people I know didn’t even want to give it a chance lol. I enjoyed some of the stories, though. But if you want to get into SW animation, SW Rebels is much better imho, I really enjoyed that, especially the first season.
Jayson
#211
TLJ is holds my number two slot. 
I completely disagree with you for reasons in that link I first shared, but, I’m glad you’re enjoying Star Wars in your way. R1 is at the bottom of my list (because it’s just a war film against a Star Wars backdrop), but if it’s kicking it for you then aces! 
Cheers,
Jayson
Jayson
#212
TLJ is wonderful as a giant metaphorical painting.
As a piece of scifi, it’s absolute dog shit.
Of course, as Kershner put it, Star Wars isn’t scifi because none of the shit makes sense and no one tries to make it make sense. It’s a giant fantasy fairy tale in space and things happen because it’s symbolic; not logical.
Anyway; for my opinion, TLJ is a damn brilliant film. I hope you enjoy it!
Cheers,
Jayson
nose
#213
So given your vibes on that - how did you like the prequel trilogy? I always felt the scripts were shit, lots of biblical type speaking and all kinds of prophetic stuff.
Then again I’m also a bigger fan of hard scifi… (that being said I enjoyed the prequel trilogy for what they were)
Jayson
#215
Prequels for me are a mixed bag of nuts.
On one hand, their scripts are terrible because Lucas didn’t collaborate on them with anyone, and he is terrible at dialogue, by his own admission.
I think he did this for two reasons: 1) He didn’t want to compromise this time around, having had to do so on the OT quite a bit (He and Kasdan argued a lot, even though it was Kasdan who gave us most of what people loved in ESB and ROTJ about the Force - the whole Yoda exposition bit was almost all Kasdan, for example), and 2) Knowing Lucas, he probably also wanted to challenge himself to do it on his own and prove to himself that he wasn’t incapable of writing a script that was to his satisfaction (I have no idea which way he holds on how well it turned out).
That all said, the scripts are terrible.
The stories are brilliant. They just needed someone else to write the scripts.
It’s the same with the visual side of things. The cinematography concepts are brilliant, but the editing (order of events, what those events convey, and the pacing) is … ooph. Rough.
Marcia Lucas (Rodrigues), we need you! (So sad that she stopped being a part of Star Wars after Lucas and her divorced!).
One of these days I want to take the Prequels and treat them to a filtering of their visual and audio that will make them appear as if they were from the 1930’s/40’s.
I believe that they will actually improve upon appearing in that form.
The reason I think this is that Lucas was really hitting the nail hard on making a film that is in the style of the old silver screen form where it’s very much closer to a play on a screen than the modern idea of a movie.
That means almost every shot is on a camera on a track, everybody is hovering around center screen constantly, dialogue is spaced out and broadcasted, action shots are heavily wide shots with little camera movement…etc…
And I mean that…everyone seems to really like the duel between Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Darth Maul, but I think they do in spite of the shot blocking and editing; not because of it. This is no Scott Pilgrim or Matrix scene.
The camera hardly moves, and when it does it’s a slow tracking shot that also slowly pans as characters move from point A to point B. THRILLING!
LIke this…
or THIS thrilling motion!
The camera hardly does much of anything. All of these swings often happen without a single cut, and the camera is very far away a lot.
I mean…VERY far away from the action.
…
And yet… in spite of all of this miserableness from a modern point of view, these are actually wonderfully done films IF you put on your George Lucas hat for a moment and squint your eyes a bit to see what he was aiming at.
He was attempting to make a silver-screen styled film shoved into modern technology.
This causes a strange juxtaposition between the highly CGI action scenes where the camera moves all over the place, and everything done with a real camera which moves more like a silver screen scene.
I think the CGI stuff was just too delightful for Lucas to keep his pants on straight - all of the limitations he previously had were gone, and I think that messed with continuity control being focused on.
So if you toss out all of the CGI shots all over the place, and focus on where a real camera is used, then you have a very silver-screen style film. The shots move like it, and a TON of shots are ripped right out of old films (I won’t go through them here, but there’s just a ton of shots that are just pretty much right out of other films - not that this is new to Star Wars; that goes back to ANH).
In THIS respect, I find the films impressive, but you have to put on your film-geek hat to get there.
Further, as someone who studied biblical exegesis and textual anthropology for the better part of a decade, I found the prequel’s relationships to the original trilogy’s motifs and symbols just simply AMAZING!
I mean, here’s basically what’s going on under the hood in Star Wars from the 5,000 foot layer (and as you get more and more zoomed in it gets more and more complicated).
The arrows inside of II, V, and VII are because each of these is a symmetrical film. What happens on one side, happens in reverse on the other side of the film. Each goes about doing this in their own way.
So, these are NOT hard scifi … at all.
They are far more closely related to Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, Cinderella, or the Bible than to things like Aliens, Twelve Monkeys, Gattaca, Gravity, etc…
So my thoughts on the prequels are…they’re flawed films, but there’s some damn brilliant genius tucked inside of them.
Cheers,
Jayson
Jayson
#217
Oh, lol…you don’t know the half of it. lol
My Star Wars analysis is insanely FAR over past geek and off into weirdo land. lol
I have a 2 hour video of episodes 1 through 7 with a cinematography lines overlay for the purposes of examining the differences of camera blocking and shot composition between the films.
Then there’s crap like…have you seen Billy Budd? Ever heard of it? No? lol Yeah, I’ve watched it.
Why? Because it’s the inspiration of the original Throne room scene.
Guy on the right is the “Man in Black”, Billy there is facing the death sentence and is a goody tooshoo that puts Mr. Rodgers to shame, and the Captain is deciding the fate based on the antagonist “Man in Black” (task master).
Lucas flipped the Captain and Man in Black around so that the Captain (Emperor) was the antagonist and the Man in Black (Vader) was the one trying to decide which way to go and feeling torn about it.
I’ve tracked the theatrical audience approximate approval of each film…
Compared the online rating score systems for the last SW Saga Film against each other to verify accurate demographic modeling (end result: metascore and IDMB are the only ones that have properly weighted and distributed demographic modeling).
Counted, from script, character growth moments to examine the idea that we have two protagonists and not one protagonist and an antagonist (so far only have been able to do TFA - TLJ script isn’t officially out yet).
And tracked the box office …
I’ve been a Star Wars nerd since … um … hmm.
Well, let me put it this way, the way that I tell people my birthday is this:
Person: “When’s your Birthday?”
Me: “Two years to the exact day after the release of Star Wars.”
lol
So yeah… total SWNerd! 
Cheers,
Jayson
nose
#218
So I finally saw Spiderman Spiderverse flick.
Pretty damn good… not my favorite soundtrack or character cast but my God was that a feat of animation. Insane respect to the artists that developed it.
cyclops
#219
man…did I just read a bunch of nonsense?
sips an Earl Grey, hot
It’s amazing that some people allow themselves to get crazy over a little film.
Han shot first.
nose
#221
That starwars breakdown is so intense I don’t even know where to start, so I’ll just say… mad respect… I don’t know that I’ve ever liked any film franchise in comparison. hahaha. Intense dude!