saturday night movie
Dec. 16th, 2018 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseThe Boy and I watched Solo: A Star Wars Story last night, and, honestly? I would not have thought I could be disappointed by something that I walked into thinking "What I'm hoping for out of this is a moderately entertaining movie with Donald Glover in it."
And yet.
Straight out of the gate I want to say that I don't think any of the flaws in this movie were Alden Ehrenreich's fault, and they certainly were not the fault of Donald Glover, who, despite being rather underused for how awesome he is, did a great job with what he was given. I hope he had a fabulous time making the movie. I hope it was a lot more fun to make than it was to watch, honestly.
I liked Ehrenreich very much in Hail, Caesar!, and I was thrilled when he was cast as Han Solo -- he seemed to me, based off what little I'd seen of him, to be the one actor of now who might plausibly capture the wry, sardonic charm of Han Solo with the same charisma that Harrison Ford imbued the character with originally. (For the record, I am not much of a Star Wars fan, but I did very much love Han Solo when I was young.) And to his credit, I don't think it's Ehrenreich's performance that fails the character, here. I think it's the writing, and also possibly the direction and editing. But mostly the writing, because... really, apart from "because that's the cliched way to go," why does Han Solo need an angsty backstory? Why? What indication has there ever been in the original movies that Han had a Tragic Backstory that needed looking into? Personally, I think the things people love about the character would have been much better served by skipping the whole "Woe is me" history (particularly the utterly pointless war bit) and going straight to "fun smuggler hijinks."
Part of my logic on this might also be a simple fact that cannot be escaped: I do not like Woody Harrelson. I never have, I almost certainly never will. I have no explanation for this, no deep reasoning or logic, I've just never found him to be a compelling actor, and in any role that I've seen him in I can think of another actor I would have vastly preferred to see in the role instead. In this case, I got distracted thinking how much more I would have liked, as I put it to The Boy while we were watching his first scene, "You know, blue face with the red thing on top in Guardians of the Galaxy -- 'I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!'" By which, now that I have looked at IMDB, I meant Yondu, aka Michael Rooker. Same basic character-type with lots more charisma, at least as far as I'm concerned. So, y'know, any time Woody Harrelson was on screen, I was probably some mix of bored and annoyed. And that guy had a lot of screen-time in this movie.
Straight away upon being introduced to Han's Tragic Backstory Girlfriend, Kira, I asked The Boy whether she'd die or come back later as a villain. Option number two turned out to be true. Actress was fine, not her fault, her storyline was kind of meh, whatever. It could have been handled worse.
...Speaking of handling female characters worse, let's talk about every other female character in this movie. Of which there are three, one of whom was a robot.
The first is Woody Harrelson's girlfriend, whose name I did not catch because she died before the story got interesting. The heist she died in was super pointless, because if they had just disconnected the train car from the the cars in font of it as well as the ones in back of it, they could have made off with the thing before the marauders even showed up, and it was never clear why they couldn't have done this except Because Plot Device. Nice actress, not her fault, she just wasn't given much to do. "She's gonna die, isn't she?" I asked, about five minutes before she died. Sigh. Yeah.
The second is L3. Note that I actually caught her name even though she got probably only as much screen-time as the other woman, because by the time she showed up we were into the part of the movie I actually found interesting (ie, everything after the escape from Corellia and the stupid brief war plot and then the stupid train job), and also because, frankly, Donald Glover was around and therefore I was, again, taking significantly more interest in the proceedings. L3 is a droid who is also Lando's co-pilot, and she has more personality than any other female character in the movie, which is saying something since the main part of her character is that she is a constant campaigner for equal rights for droids... which is constantly played for humor. From the beginning to the sorry end, L3's desire for equality and an end to what is essentially slavery for herself and people like her... is played for laughs. Just sit with that for a while. This was especially uncomfortable given that she identifies and presents as female. Nothing like having everyone sigh and roll their eyes while a woman talks about wanting equality. That's some hilarious shit right there, I guess, if you're the writers of this screenplay.
I might, possibly, have been able to forgive this extremely awkward ha-ha-it's-funny-because-she's-obsessed-with-equality "what a social justice warrior" type nonsense if they hadn't killed L3 off, focused a bunch on Lando's pain at her loss, and then ripped out her central processor and implanted it into the ship so that Han could take credit for her piloting knowledge. "She's part of the ship, now," Lando says in a moment that I guess might make someone feel sort of retroactively sentimental if there had ever been any indication that the Millennium Falcon had any kind of personality or artificial intelligence. Which there hasn't ever been, at least to my recollection.
Also, would L3 have wanted to be implanted into the ship? Given that her whole thing over the entire time we knew her as a character was a desire for personal autonomy, I'm gonna have to say "Fuck no."
The third other female character in this movie... does not die in the end, amazingly! Which is nice, since as soon as she took her helmet off and was revealed to be GASP NOT A MAN and therefore apparently instantly more sympathetic and less dangerous, I said "I guess she'll have to die now." So it was nice to be proven wrong once in the movie. It did feel very much as if these Horrible Marauders who have been the thing dogging Our Heroes throughout the entire movie were instantly made to be okay just as soon as we were shown that they were led by a girl, though, which... is a thing I could have done without. The actress was cute and had an interesting look about her, though she was not allowed to do much other than deliver exposition and then smile once at the end. I hope this movie didn't nip her career in the bud.
Oh, and Chewbacca was there. They subtitled Wookiee for the first scene that he was in, then gave up on that and went back to the traditional expedient of Han delivering all his lines as translation.
I guess there were some entertaining bits, but the first third of the movie was a poorly-paced mess of things I didn't care about and couldn't see the purpose of except that they were cliches that you "have" to have in a backstory movie, I guess. The other two thirds of the movie got better, but far from great, and never quite made up for the beginning of the movie being so boring and the rest of it being just... meh. They did manage to hit every Chekov's gun that they set up, for which I guess they deserve some kind of pat on the head, but I feel like that's rather the minimum requirement in this sort of movie. And I really could have done without the "Ha, see, the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs thing makes sense now, it wasn't really a mistake!" Yeah, it still was. It was still George Lucas pulling science language he didn't bother to understand to make something sound interesting, and I honestly just felt like explaining it felt cheap and dumb and wink-wink-nudge-nudge of them.
In short... I would rather have watched an extra long episode of Community where Troy and Abed drag the rest of the study group into playing Star Wars with them.
And yet.
Straight out of the gate I want to say that I don't think any of the flaws in this movie were Alden Ehrenreich's fault, and they certainly were not the fault of Donald Glover, who, despite being rather underused for how awesome he is, did a great job with what he was given. I hope he had a fabulous time making the movie. I hope it was a lot more fun to make than it was to watch, honestly.
I liked Ehrenreich very much in Hail, Caesar!, and I was thrilled when he was cast as Han Solo -- he seemed to me, based off what little I'd seen of him, to be the one actor of now who might plausibly capture the wry, sardonic charm of Han Solo with the same charisma that Harrison Ford imbued the character with originally. (For the record, I am not much of a Star Wars fan, but I did very much love Han Solo when I was young.) And to his credit, I don't think it's Ehrenreich's performance that fails the character, here. I think it's the writing, and also possibly the direction and editing. But mostly the writing, because... really, apart from "because that's the cliched way to go," why does Han Solo need an angsty backstory? Why? What indication has there ever been in the original movies that Han had a Tragic Backstory that needed looking into? Personally, I think the things people love about the character would have been much better served by skipping the whole "Woe is me" history (particularly the utterly pointless war bit) and going straight to "fun smuggler hijinks."
Part of my logic on this might also be a simple fact that cannot be escaped: I do not like Woody Harrelson. I never have, I almost certainly never will. I have no explanation for this, no deep reasoning or logic, I've just never found him to be a compelling actor, and in any role that I've seen him in I can think of another actor I would have vastly preferred to see in the role instead. In this case, I got distracted thinking how much more I would have liked, as I put it to The Boy while we were watching his first scene, "You know, blue face with the red thing on top in Guardians of the Galaxy -- 'I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!'" By which, now that I have looked at IMDB, I meant Yondu, aka Michael Rooker. Same basic character-type with lots more charisma, at least as far as I'm concerned. So, y'know, any time Woody Harrelson was on screen, I was probably some mix of bored and annoyed. And that guy had a lot of screen-time in this movie.
Straight away upon being introduced to Han's Tragic Backstory Girlfriend, Kira, I asked The Boy whether she'd die or come back later as a villain. Option number two turned out to be true. Actress was fine, not her fault, her storyline was kind of meh, whatever. It could have been handled worse.
...Speaking of handling female characters worse, let's talk about every other female character in this movie. Of which there are three, one of whom was a robot.
The first is Woody Harrelson's girlfriend, whose name I did not catch because she died before the story got interesting. The heist she died in was super pointless, because if they had just disconnected the train car from the the cars in font of it as well as the ones in back of it, they could have made off with the thing before the marauders even showed up, and it was never clear why they couldn't have done this except Because Plot Device. Nice actress, not her fault, she just wasn't given much to do. "She's gonna die, isn't she?" I asked, about five minutes before she died. Sigh. Yeah.
The second is L3. Note that I actually caught her name even though she got probably only as much screen-time as the other woman, because by the time she showed up we were into the part of the movie I actually found interesting (ie, everything after the escape from Corellia and the stupid brief war plot and then the stupid train job), and also because, frankly, Donald Glover was around and therefore I was, again, taking significantly more interest in the proceedings. L3 is a droid who is also Lando's co-pilot, and she has more personality than any other female character in the movie, which is saying something since the main part of her character is that she is a constant campaigner for equal rights for droids... which is constantly played for humor. From the beginning to the sorry end, L3's desire for equality and an end to what is essentially slavery for herself and people like her... is played for laughs. Just sit with that for a while. This was especially uncomfortable given that she identifies and presents as female. Nothing like having everyone sigh and roll their eyes while a woman talks about wanting equality. That's some hilarious shit right there, I guess, if you're the writers of this screenplay.
I might, possibly, have been able to forgive this extremely awkward ha-ha-it's-funny-because-she's-obsessed-with-equality "what a social justice warrior" type nonsense if they hadn't killed L3 off, focused a bunch on Lando's pain at her loss, and then ripped out her central processor and implanted it into the ship so that Han could take credit for her piloting knowledge. "She's part of the ship, now," Lando says in a moment that I guess might make someone feel sort of retroactively sentimental if there had ever been any indication that the Millennium Falcon had any kind of personality or artificial intelligence. Which there hasn't ever been, at least to my recollection.
Also, would L3 have wanted to be implanted into the ship? Given that her whole thing over the entire time we knew her as a character was a desire for personal autonomy, I'm gonna have to say "Fuck no."
The third other female character in this movie... does not die in the end, amazingly! Which is nice, since as soon as she took her helmet off and was revealed to be GASP NOT A MAN and therefore apparently instantly more sympathetic and less dangerous, I said "I guess she'll have to die now." So it was nice to be proven wrong once in the movie. It did feel very much as if these Horrible Marauders who have been the thing dogging Our Heroes throughout the entire movie were instantly made to be okay just as soon as we were shown that they were led by a girl, though, which... is a thing I could have done without. The actress was cute and had an interesting look about her, though she was not allowed to do much other than deliver exposition and then smile once at the end. I hope this movie didn't nip her career in the bud.
Oh, and Chewbacca was there. They subtitled Wookiee for the first scene that he was in, then gave up on that and went back to the traditional expedient of Han delivering all his lines as translation.
I guess there were some entertaining bits, but the first third of the movie was a poorly-paced mess of things I didn't care about and couldn't see the purpose of except that they were cliches that you "have" to have in a backstory movie, I guess. The other two thirds of the movie got better, but far from great, and never quite made up for the beginning of the movie being so boring and the rest of it being just... meh. They did manage to hit every Chekov's gun that they set up, for which I guess they deserve some kind of pat on the head, but I feel like that's rather the minimum requirement in this sort of movie. And I really could have done without the "Ha, see, the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs thing makes sense now, it wasn't really a mistake!" Yeah, it still was. It was still George Lucas pulling science language he didn't bother to understand to make something sound interesting, and I honestly just felt like explaining it felt cheap and dumb and wink-wink-nudge-nudge of them.
In short... I would rather have watched an extra long episode of Community where Troy and Abed drag the rest of the study group into playing Star Wars with them.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 05:43 am (UTC)But yeah, I really wish they hadn't decided they needed to do the ANGST ANGST ALL ANGST angle and instead just done something fun and heist-movie like. That's what a Han Solo movie should have been, damn it.
At least you had Ocean's 8 as an alternative, since that is a fabulous heist movie, and with not the slightest bit of "oh, no, we have to make things ANGSTY" tacked on for no reason.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 11:48 am (UTC)I feel like they were focusing too much on trying make Ehrenreich look and sound like Harrison Ford that they completely forgot that what made Han Solo Han Solo was his charisma.
I do not like Woody Harrelson. I never have, I almost certainly never will.
Oh I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I just don't get him at all.
And the death of Woody Harrelson's girlfriend was just so weirdly pointless. I wonder if something was left out in the reshoots, because there was no reason for her character to even be there, if her death had absolutely no impact on the story.
And I absolutely agree with you on the robot. She had some of the funniest lines, but the equality schtick was in very poor taste considering all the racist/misogynist crap that has been thrown at some of the actresses in thefranchise.
I felt that Kira had the potential to be the most interesting character in the movie, but it would have required a more talented actress than Emilia Clarke to pull it off with a script like this.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 09:27 pm (UTC)I'm relieved by this is as well! I always feel strange when I dislike actors who other people like for reasons that I can't explain.
The writing really did feel like the stone around everybody's neck in this movie. It all felt more than a bit rote and cliche, like they couldn't be bothered (or didn't have the talent, or weren't allowed -- I don't even know which) to do more than tick all the boxes that they'd been handed. I'm not good enough at understanding film direction to pick out where a director's influence can be seen rather than the script and the actors, but I suspect that was a problem, too, given what I vaguely recall hearing about problems with changing the director mid-stream. But while I walked into Rogue One with a fair amount of trepidation (I don't like war movies, and I'm not invested enough in Star Wars to overcome that unless pushed), I wound up really liking that movie and thinking, despite its flaws, that it worked well. This movie I mostly just hope didn't irreparably harm any of the actors' careers. And hope it did harm the writers', because I think they probably deserved it.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 09:17 pm (UTC)And the whole bit with Han asking Chewie's name, getting something very different, and then just going "Chewbacca, huh?" felt really bizarre and wrong. At least they could acknowledge he's simplifying the name for his own convenience...
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 05:41 pm (UTC)I honestly did not care one whit for Han's backstory as constructed in this film. A zany heist movie with Han & Lando could have been a lot of fun. This was just ... not. :P
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 09:30 pm (UTC)I'm glad other people have already hit on the ethical issues of splicing L3 into the Falcon -- I had to assume I wasn't the first person to notice it, but not being tied into the fandom I could only boggle and wonder what the hell the writers thought they were doing with that whole plotline. So very awkward.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 09:48 pm (UTC)Solo is the first new Star Wars movie that didn't peg my awareness at all; I actually forgot that it existed while it was in the theater. Now I'm really glad I skipped it. The L3 plot line (in addition to sounding absolutely appalling in and of itself) largely undermines the things I love about Han (crack pilot who loves no one until these Jedi weirdos rope him in) and Lando (gives everything to protect his people). It also undermines Rey's immediate mastery of the Falcon in the new trilogy. I think I'm just going to go back to forgetting this one is a thing.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 10:01 pm (UTC)Honestly, the only reason I remembered it existed is that my husband and I have been very belatedly watching Community recently, and seeing Donald Glover all the time in that kind of made me think, "Hey, didn't he play Lando in that movie a while ago? The one we never saw?"
In the end, you're probably right that not seeing it is the wiser choice, especially if you have strong feelings about the characters. I think I got by mostly on a feeling of "Meh, it's not really my fandom, so I guess if they want to mess up their own history they can do that." I like Star Wars, I've just never been especially fannish about it. I suspect if I was more invested in the universe this movie would have upset me a lot more than it did.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 10:11 pm (UTC)And I'm 1000% with you about Woody Harrelson. I hope he keeps getting work because he's really nice and pleasant to work with, but he never comes across as being good at acting.
I felt like the whole thing tasted like bad fan-fic: We have to explain everything about Han Solo in this one plot, rather than admitting he has probably had more than one adventure prior to the original trilogy.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 10:26 pm (UTC)Yeah, I've never heard a bad thing about him (which, yay for him, considering how many actors you do hear bad things about, now that these things are starting to make it into the public eye), I just... don't think much of his skill and generally feel like I'd rather be watching someone else.
It really does feel like bad fanfic, doesn't it? Everything is awkwardly simplified in that way that fanfic often does -- everything happens in big gob rather than organically over time, Lando apparently has an entire walk-in closet full of capes and never wears anything different, and people's personalities and relationships are always exactly the same, never changing over time. Bleh.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 11:38 pm (UTC)And thanks for this review- I wasn't planning on seeing Solo, but this means that if it ever ends up on our TV because there's nothing else on, I can cheerfully just ignore it and read fanfic!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-19 12:09 am (UTC)Yeah, fanfic is almost certainly a better bet. Check out some gifs of Donald Glover as Lando, because he is a marvelous casting for the role, but otherwise the movie is a big fat "Meh."