Solo (Ron Howard, 2018)

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Big Ben
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#101 Post by Big Ben » Thu Jan 11, 2018 2:47 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:Solo has been scheduled for more reshoots. The film is out in May.
There was an article on one of the film sites (I apologize profusely for not remembering which one.) that said Disney and Lucasfilm were simply preparing for Solo to bomb because it's a Frankenstein at this point. The veracity of that statement remains to be seen but we all know how troubled productions work.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#102 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Jan 11, 2018 3:05 pm

There's nothing like trying to fix something that probably was never broken and irreparably breaking it

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Brian C
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#103 Post by Brian C » Thu Jan 11, 2018 3:16 pm

I just can’t believe Ron Howard hasn’t been able to right the ship.

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Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#104 Post by Werewolf by Night » Thu Jan 11, 2018 6:15 pm

I don’t have a dog in this race, but remember that Rogue One was also considered “troubled,” had extensive reshoots, and ended up being critically successful and making a billion dollars. But I would also totally believe Ron Howard would break something that wasn’t broken. (He’s no Tony Gilroy.)
Last edited by Werewolf by Night on Thu Jan 11, 2018 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#105 Post by McCrutchy » Thu Jan 11, 2018 8:41 pm

Werewolf by Night wrote:I don’t have a dog in this race, but remember that Rogue One was also considered “troubled,” had extensive reshoots, and ended up being critically successful and making a billion dollars. But I would also totally believe Ron Howard would break something that wasn’t broken. (He’s no Tony Gilroy.)
To be fair, though. I've always thought that from Disney/Lucasfilm's perspective, Rogue One might have been a small disappointment, in that it only grossed about 50% of what The Force Awakens did. I mean, they could never have realistically hoped to top $2.068 billion, but, especially with the creative use of the original film (e.g. Darth Vader), I wonder if they weren't hoping for about $500 million more than the $1.056 billion they got, which would have probably confirmed audience rapture vis a vie the first film. Now, with The Last Jedi slipping well down the top ten for last weekend, I'm not sure $1.5 billion is on the cards for the sequel, either. Again, I'm not saying these are box office failures, but usually, the goal with a sequel is to try to gross more the previous film, not make a lot, but still a lot less. Therefore, I think a lot could hinge on how well Solo ends up doing.

Now, I can't see Solo being a bomb (obviously, in relative terms), but I wonder if it will take in as much as Rogue One did. I'm fairly certain society says that a male-fronted "original" Star Wars film should do better than one fronted by a female, so that works in the film's favor. More importantly, I know I really don't have any desire to see a Han Solo film without Harrison Ford in it (much less with another, younger Han Solo), so the marketing and trailers are really going to have to wow me to get me to consider going, especially after the dumpster fire that was The Last Jedi has soured me on seeing Episode IX.

I am also cognizant of the fact that we've just had Batman/Superman film and a Justice League film underperform and bomb respectively, so we do have to be prepared for the idea that peak Star Wars has come and gone, and that Disney may have to settle for each subsequent film in this cycle making less than the film before it, at least in terms of the "sequel trilogy" versus the "anthology films". It's worth remembering, too, that we've had two cycles of three films prior to this, but that the Disney cycle is five (or six?) films, which is a lot of Star Wars over a short period of time.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#106 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Jan 11, 2018 11:26 pm

I doubt that Disney was especially let down by the success of Rogue One- it was an experiment, to some degree, to see if people would be interested in Star Wars stories outside of the core saga, and it wound up being one of the top ten grossing movies of all time and making roughly quadruple its budget back. I don't think the studio was expecting a weak movie, though, despite the recuts and so forth, as they still gave it a prime release date and a lot of long term promotion. The sequels making less than the first was also the way both previous trilogies worked, so I doubt they expected this one to be bigger, as both it and The Last Jedi are darker and more challenging movies than the The Force Awakens.

Solo, on the other hand, is coming out in five months (giving it very little breathing room after The Last Jedi), and still has basically no promotion beyond a very bare teaser poster- no trailer, no merch, nothing to get people hyped up. I think this movie is going to be a real mess, and they don't even know how to sell it yet.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#107 Post by All the Best People » Fri Jan 12, 2018 12:42 am

Even if they knew how to market it, I think they still wouldn't be pushing Young Solo yet as they don't want to stomp on the tail of The Last Jedi (which has basically been on a pace for ~$1.3B WWBO from its opening, which I should think they'll be pleased with). This six-month turnaround between the movies, though long planned, still seems unusual, and feels like oversaturation of the marketplace regardless of the eventual quality of Solo. TFA was in theaters to mid-April and R1 was into the first week of May; it's a challenge to market another film in the franchise when there's still one hanging out on big screens.

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Brian C
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#108 Post by Brian C » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:14 am

I dunno, usually the release of any given Marvel movie is used to unveil/ramp up the marketing for the next Marvel movie. If anything, the success of THE LAST JEDI makes it even more suspicious that Disney hasn’t used it to piggyback SOLO on.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#109 Post by McCrutchy » Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:05 am

I have to agree with Brian. Disney doesn't mind a sort of symbiosis when it comes to these and Marvel films, and I really don't think they're concerned about any new film denting the box office of the previous one if they are advertising both at the same time.

What is concerning, especially from a long-term perspective, is how the sequel trilogy is attempting to jettison the original trilogy, when the anthology films are thus far seemingly so indebted to the original trilogy. From a franchise perspective, I don't know if I like the idea of one trilogy looking forward, as another (potential) trilogy looks back. To be honest, if Solo is a success, and then the third film is a Boba Fett film and is a success, that could damage the future of the franchise if subsequent films and trilogies can only move further away from the original trilogy.

Also, I'm not sure what Disney was thinking about when they bought Lucasfilm, but so far, we haven't had a ton of character continuity outside of specific trilogies, which means this isn't going to be like the MCU, where the same actors/characters show up in five, six, or seven films over a period of several years. For example, Daisy Ridley has said she's not interested in playing Rey beyond Episode IX, and while everyone has time to change their minds (...Daniel Craig...), it does raise the question of where Disney would go if they cannot continue Rey's storyline. Do they go back and mine the existing lore again, or do they risk moving further away from the original trilogy? If so, will any of the new trilogy actors or characters be involved? These are important questions, and at the speed Disney insists on moving with the franchise, there will have to be solutions in short order.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#110 Post by Ribs » Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:15 am

I mean, we have a general idea what the plan is, which is that after Episode IX as far as we know the only spin-off film that’s in development is visionary director Stephen Daldry’s Obi-Wan film. After that, Rian Johnson’s unrelated trilogy will probably take the place of the “main” movies. It’s expected there will be very few if any old characters and it will be different types of story set in a different part of the universe. There’s definitely still plenty of other avenues to mine in the between years for those, which might include Poe Dameron or some of the other new characters. (I’m totally expecting some kind of “Star Wars Zero” about the Old Republic, which frankly would be the first thing I’d imagine for a new trilogy, but Johnson seems more interested in doing his own thing, which is probably for the best.)

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#111 Post by Shrew » Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:16 am

Is the Daldry/Obi-wan thing anymore than rumor? Given that nothing of that has been announced yet, nothing has come up to replace whatever Josh Trank was working on, and the only news of new Star Wars is Johnson's trilogy, I wouldn't be surprised if Disney were stepping away or reconsidering the one-off films. Each project in "Star Wars Stories" has had its share of behind the scenes troubles, so perhaps they prefer the greater control and direction that trilogies might offer them. Or, as Ribs sort of gets at above, maybe Johnson's films take up the main/trilogy mantle, and then the new spin-off films focus on Finn/Rey/Poe/etc. rather than another trilogy centered on those characters (single films probably being easier to negotiate contracts for). I imagine this is McCrutchy's nightmare scenario.

And while I don't think Rouge One was a failure or disappointment to Disney at large, it does seem to have failed at the secondary task of building up an audience in the Chinese market. Despite Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen, Rouge One earned half the receipts of Force Awakens in China, and now Last Jedi has flat-out bombed there. That, more than any distancing from the original trilogy, is probably the biggest threat to the franchise's future/Disney's main concern. Indeed, it makes it more likely that Disney will pursue new avenues, characters, and settings, rather than lean on nostalgia for the original films (which is non-existent in China).

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#112 Post by swo17 » Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:28 am

Rouge One
Is that what they called the porno version?

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Shrew
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#113 Post by Shrew » Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:37 am

swo17 wrote:
Rouge One
Is that what they called the porno version?
Or, the film failed in China because the audience thought it was a prequel to Stanley Kwan's Ruan Lingyu biopic.

ETA: Oops, mixed that one up too.
Last edited by Shrew on Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#114 Post by Ribs » Fri Jan 12, 2018 12:05 pm

Shrew wrote:Is the Daldry/Obi-wan thing anymore than rumor? Given that nothing of that has been announced yet, nothing has come up to replace whatever Josh Trank was working on, and the only news of new Star Wars is Johnson's trilogy, I wouldn't be surprised if Disney were stepping away or reconsidering the one-off films. Each project in "Star Wars Stories" has had its share of behind the scenes troubles, so perhaps they prefer the greater control and direction that trilogies might offer them. Or, as Ribs sort of gets at above, maybe Johnson's films take up the main/trilogy mantle, and then the new spin-off films focus on Finn/Rey/Poe/etc. rather than another trilogy centered on those characters (single films probably being easier to negotiate contracts for). I imagine this is McCrutchy's nightmare scenario.

And while I don't think Rouge One was a failure or disappointment to Disney at large, it does seem to have failed at the secondary task of building up an audience in the Chinese market. Despite Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen, Rouge One earned half the receipts of Force Awakens in China, and now Last Jedi has flat-out bombed there. That, more than any distancing from the original trilogy, is probably the biggest threat to the franchise's future/Disney's main concern. Indeed, it makes it more likely that Disney will pursue new avenues, characters, and settings, rather than lean on nostalgia for the original films (which is non-existent in China).
It wasn't a rumor - he is in development on the film. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be made, but it's the only whisper we've heard of anything brewing on these other films in the past year or two so it's not unreasonable to assume it's the next one in line. The Boba Fett film was seemingly thrown out with Trank (and was probably intended to come out in Solo's place - thankfully Disney avoided such production headaches by getting rid of Trank before the film was seriously in the pre-production phase.) I don't necessarily see why Ewan McGregor would need to have committed to such a thing at this point, a solid 18 months out from the earliest they could start filming (he's a busy working actor, but he's got no other franchises short of his Christopher Robin reboot becoming a runaway success). He clearly would love to do it, I don't imagine it'll require much persuading on his part.

Ultimately, it's almost certain that when all's said and done Solo will comfortably have put Disney in the point where it's made its money back from acquiring Lucasfilm (if you were to go entirely off box office, it already has, but to factor in the billion they've spent making four blockbuster films it'll take one more film to push it over the margin). And so it really doesn't matter - Disney's successfully bolstered their library with the most valuable franchise on the planet and have gotten Indiana Jones for free on top of it. Anything from that point on is just adding to that.

I don't really think of an Obi-Wan film as theoretically being reliant on nostalgia for the original films! I guess it's possible that these "Star Wars Stories" (they're not really called that) are actually *all* direct prequels to Star Wars and they'll each end with the characters the moment before we see them in the original film, which'd be an interesting path to take, but I'm hopeful that at least Solo won't take that path and leave things a little less pat (and I'd be more willing to believe an Obi-Wan film would just be an independent space adventure rather than, like, doing the Searchers but with the Sand People). I think a part of Rogue One that was ignored is the way it really did lean into the recent revisionist take on the Prequels, that they were worthy and inspired (the latter I can kind of see), and Rogue One really worked to ingratiate the nostalgia for the original films to be inseparable with characters and actors we didn't really care about in the prequels. Again, it's just a savvy move that increases the worth of the prequels as part of the set, and an Obi-Wan film seems like a culmination of that idea. But I think the idea of having the main films be the *new* things and the other films be the old things would be a smart way of separating the two into distinct entities.

Oh, and also: there is a very high probability Episode IX outgrosses the Last Jedi, because people like turning up to see "the last one." Same happened to the last two third films.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#115 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:22 pm

The problem is, I don't think you can make a film like Solo or an Obi-Wan film without near-constant winking at the audience to make them feel smugly satisfied in their knowledge of references to past material with those characters. It's all franchise movies seem to do anymore. I would figure as much as Chinese audiences are looking for something new, American audiences practically demand to be made to feel smugly satisfied in their knowledge of deep franchise lore, and not be challenged with too much new stuff (I haven't seen it yet, but aren't any and all new additions to The Last Jedi the things that are garnering the most anger from hardcore Star Wars fans?)

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#116 Post by movielocke » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:35 pm

why isn't solo coming out in december 18? makes more sense than may at this point.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#117 Post by willoneill » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:36 pm

movielocke wrote:why isn't solo coming out in december 18? makes more sense than may at this point.
They already have the Han Solo Lego sets ready; there's no going back now.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#118 Post by Ribs » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:39 pm

I expect it's that they *don't* want Star Wars in December to become a thing everyone associates with the franchise, because Avatar 2 and 3 *needs* to come out in December to have any hopes of even coming close to replicating the success of the first (now that Disney will own Avatar).

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#119 Post by R0lf » Sat Jan 13, 2018 4:19 am

Ribs wrote:I guess it's possible that these "Star Wars Stories" (they're not really called that) are actually *all* direct prequels to Star Wars and they'll each end with the characters the moment before we see them in the original film, which'd be an interesting path to take, but I'm hopeful that at least Solo won't take that path and leave things a little less pat
movielocke wrote:why isn't solo coming out in december 18? makes more sense than may at this point.
SOLO is going to end with Solo sitting down in the Mos Eisley cantina, shooting Greedo first, cut to STAR WARS UNALTERED EDITION DEC 18.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#120 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:22 pm

swo17 wrote:Is that what they called the porno version?
That would be Rough One.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#121 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Feb 02, 2018 3:34 pm

Always the best part of the release of a new Star Wars film - a Nerd Crew trailer reaction video!

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#122 Post by aox » Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:38 am

I've watched the new Solo teaser, and I just don't think Alden Ehrenreich looks or sounds anything like Ford/Solo.

A friend recommended Anthony Ingruber and sent me this clip. Wow, it's almost a perfect mirror image to me. Same voice, intonation, and sly facial movements.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#123 Post by domino harvey » Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:07 am

I think people are getting pretty hung up on whether or not one actor looks and sounds like another, as though that were the only factor for this being good or not. I suspect this film's success or failure as a film will have little to do with how Harrison Ford-y the lead is

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#124 Post by bearcuborg » Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:24 am

I won’t deny he doesn’t look or sound like Harrison, but Ingruber has definitely nailed Ford’s mannerisms. However, it seems self conscious? I don’t know him well enough.

I’ll say this, it was gonna be a tall order for anyone to immediately sell us Han Solo. I would give the benefit of the doubt to Solo for having Kasden involved. Still-what seemed, at once anyway, to be light hearted looks quite brooding.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#125 Post by Ribs » Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:26 am

I'm under the impression that the crazy pitch that apparently sold Bradford Young on doing this movie was that they wanted to make it look like American Graffiti, which seems to have basically just disappeared entirely, which is a bit of a bummer.

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