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S01E29: Suds Up with Solo!
37 Plays6 months ago
Ben and Phil are back again, this time exploring the unfairly maligned Solo: A Star Wars Story. Did it deserve to bomb, or is it a victim of FORCES beyond its control? Let's dive in!
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Transcript
Introduction to Solo: A Star Wars Story
00:00:00
Speaker
We're taking a look at Solo A Star Wars Story. It's one of our faves. Might not be yours, but we liked it. It's a Star Wars cleaning crew. Grab your droids and broods. Welcome back to the Star
First Impressions of Solo
00:00:11
Speaker
Wars cleaning crew. As we welcome Ben and Phil back, we turned our attention to Solo A Star Wars Story, which as with the prequels that we talked about before, Ben and I had seen many times before, but Phil was watching for the first time. So we had a great conversation. Let's dive in and listen now.
Han Solo's Transformation Debate
00:00:30
Speaker
All right. We have reconvened to talk about Star Wars. Well, we always are talking about Star Wars. Let me say that again. We have reconvened to talk about Solo, a Star Wars story. And as we've done with all these, I'm going to start with Phil. It's your first time. What did you think? You know, as I've started all the last three episodes, I've often started with an ah r RIP to someone. But is it more for this one, the birth of Han Solo?
00:00:57
Speaker
um but Honestly, I don't know. I didn't really feel like it was. you know I don't really feel like that line is true for this story. The reason I say that is because I thought what I was going into was sort of an origin story of the Han Solo that we meet at the beginning of A New Hope. and It felt a lot, much more like a slice of life from his early days as opposed to something that sort of transformed him into the person that we see at the beginning of Episode 4.
00:01:26
Speaker
yeah That being said, it was a ton of fun. I enjoyed it. So I think on like a very non-serious level, it was great. In terms of the story itself, you know maybe it didn't have quite like the the character arc that I was expecting going into it.
00:01:42
Speaker
Ben, what about your reaction to watching it again?
Han's Journey from Idealism to Cynicism
00:01:46
Speaker
I'm going to differ from my colleague, Phil. And I think a little bit maybe I, I think the question here in terms of the origin is what do you expect to see originate? And when I go to see solo, I want to see us get to the point where somebody is willing to say, I ain't in in it for your rebellion. I'm in it for the money. Right.
00:02:06
Speaker
And that version of Han Solo, the Han Solo that shoots first, the Han Solo that is out for himself. And you're going to be really surprised when he comes back to help out Luke at the climax of episode four. That's the Han Solo I want us to see get born. And so what did we see in this movie? We saw Han Solo starts out with a little bit of idealism. He's got this scrappy upbringing. He's in trouble. he But then he gets his heart broken.
00:02:31
Speaker
And look, if we all were sweet on Amelia Clark and she turned on us that way, whose heart would not be broken? I mean, that's that's as bad as it gets, you guys. He got done dirty. He did. Yeah. So I think we we get a little bit of the cynicism. We get a little bit of the I liked that in this one, he shoots first and Beckett goes down and you're like, Oh, I love that moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Performance Praise for the Cast
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, I have a feeling because the movie is written by Larry Kasdan and his son, John.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I think a lot of it really came from John having grown up with it and seeing all of these different things, which some people might argue are fan service, but agreed. Like what you just mentioned then him shooting first, uh, was super, super huge. Also a couple of very interesting.
00:03:21
Speaker
references to Star Wars Galaxy's Edge, which was just about to open up at the Disney parks right after this movie opened. I'm sure they went over Phil's head, but that's okay. I still really enjoy this movie. And I might've mentioned this on the pod before, when when I went to see, I went to see it opening day Chinese theater with my friend Jeff and with my wife Sherry and another friend. And Jeff and I looked at each other at the end and we're like,
00:03:47
Speaker
I was good. Yeah, yeah, it was good. Well, yeah, okay. Well, yeah, thanks. I watched it again and again. And every time I watched it, I enjoyed it a little bit more. And now it's kind of at the point where if I want to just sit down and like put on some Star Wars while I'm working or something, just background music, I will do solo more often than not. I just find it really, really fun.
00:04:10
Speaker
It is really fun. I think for me, you know, a big fan, obviously, of Ron Howard and the movies that he's made in the past. I think that definitely shows here. I mean, I think Alden did a really good job in the role. I mean, it's hot it's a ah tough task to try to play a young Harrison Ford and a young Han Solo, two of the most iconic actor and character in yeah modern movie history, I would say. I think he does a pretty good job. All things considered, I think he captures that kind of like charisma and gun wholeness that defines Han Solo. I also, I'm a big Donald Glover and Childish Gambino fan. he Really enjoyed him as Lando. I really think he captured that sort of like that swagger that Lando has.
00:04:54
Speaker
So I think in terms of performances, really strong across the board, even, you know, considering like Woody Harrelson, Dandy Newton, Paul Bettany, I think across the board and Amelia Clark, a lot of really strong performances. Really, really good. And Phoebe, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Yeah. Yeah. yeah great She was great too. Yeah. that That took me a second to that that voice. cause It's an iconic voice, but obviously you don't see her, but she was great as
World-Building and Storytelling
00:05:15
Speaker
well.
00:05:15
Speaker
One thing I noticed while I was rewatching it was I see where you're coming from, Phil, in that it maybe it wasn't quite the Han Solo origin story that you saw, but I saw like an increased naivete in him at the beginning of the movie.
00:05:31
Speaker
And again, to Ben's point, you know, once his heart is broken, you can see him getting burned a few times during this that lead to him going in and having that final Sabak showdown with Lando and getting the jump on him and being one step ahead. And it took that amount of pain for him to get to the point where he could do that.
00:05:54
Speaker
So i you know I did see a little bit of of character growth there, but overall, I think it's just it's just so much fun. It is from the from the first minute. It really just sort of drops us in the action, I think. And it was it had my attention immediately. So from a storytelling perspective, it was super fun. And I think the world building, at least in sort of my kind of scope of having seen Star Wars. The world that we sort of start with high on Han on is not one that I've seen portrayed as much in the Star Wars Corellia. Yeah. Just not, you know, sort of that very grimy industrial dirty. I know it's maybe other worlds sort of have some elements of that, but it felt very distinct and a really interesting place, I think, to start off the story as well. I think it's going to be really interesting when we go on later to watch Andor.
00:06:39
Speaker
to contrast that with this. There were elements of the Han Solo stories that I think I wanted to see more of.
Production Challenges and Directorial Changes
00:06:46
Speaker
I wanted to see him going to the Imperial Flight Academy or whatever and getting kicked out. I wanted to see what that moment was like. He references it like really quickly in passing and what that tells me is that like That was probably some kind of a script edit or somebody going, yeah, we don't want to do that. Or, oh, that's been cut for budget. Oh, there was, it was, you can watch the deleted scenes. If you buy the digital version and it's Scott him flying up a type fighter in that. Yeah. Well, okay. There you go. That would be fascinating. Editing the floor there. Yeah.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and then there's so many other neat moments in here where I think I'm kind of surprised, honestly, that we have like a complete movie out of this. So one of the things I did was I went back and kind of looked at what some of the production hell was like on this one. And I guess the original directors yeah were fired within like three weeks of principal shooting being done. And then Ron Howard came in to kind of patched together. So in one sense, I don't know that we have yet seen Ron Howard's Star Wars movie. um I don't know if they'll ever get him to do one sort of from scratch, but it'd be a really interesting to kind of know what those two movies that they each were thinking of would have looked like independently.
00:07:55
Speaker
yeah That's interesting, Ben. I had read after the fact that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who I'm big fans of, I don't know if anyone's seen the 21 Spider-Verse, Jump Street movies. Lego movie. Really great. um I think Lego movie, yeah, really talented filmmakers. I didn't realize that it was how troubled the production was actually around it. I understood they were the original directors of it. I didn't realize like how much had actually been done before Ron Howard was brought in. and So that's interesting. Interesting take, I think.
Impact of Release Timing on Solo's Success
00:08:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:24
Speaker
The story that I read was the way those guys like to direct is to make it very improvy. Like, Hey, the script is an outline. You know, you guys take this and you make it your own. And that Larry Kasdan didn't like anybody messing around with their script and in a,
00:08:41
Speaker
In a wrestling match at Lucasfilm It's gonna be the guy who wrote return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark Who is gonna win that battle? But you know again It's just part of the problem that we currently have with with the state of Star Wars today with directors getting hired and fired and all that kind of stuff We don't we don't need to get into that too much. Well and I also guess when they I had heard, I guess, ah as one of the things I read said that they were kind of going over budget. And so this was ah becoming a pretty expensive proposition with all the improv and all the overtime that that implied. Oh, that totally could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. when Well, here we are slinging rumors, you know, hopefully. Yeah, who knows. We don't get a cease and desist, you know. We'll see. One thing I'll say, though, too, is I think to your point earlier about kind of warming up to it more after the release, I think that it really suffered
00:09:29
Speaker
by its placement near the other movies in the Skywalker saga. And by you know just the fact that that people had other things they were comparing it to in their head. I think if you release that movie today, it would probably be much better received. Yeah, I agree. And release it at Christmas time because that seems to be the best time for Star Wars movies now is Christmas.
00:09:48
Speaker
you know I know that it also bombed like super hard at the box office, lost a really like decent chunk of money. I'm curious, is do you think from the two years' perspective, do you think it's because of the time which was released, either the year or the sort of placement in the holiday calendar, or do you think it was just the maybe not as enthusiastic reception to it?
Future of the Solo Storyline
00:10:09
Speaker
I think it's a combination of things. First off, I think more people went to see it than conventional wisdom thinks right now. And the reason why it was a bomb is because production overran because they basically wound up making the movie twice, like we just said, right? So that was a part of the the financial failure of this movie. The Last Jedi had just been released in December.
00:10:30
Speaker
This came out in May and Last Jedi was still in a few theaters when this movie was released. And it also came within a couple of weeks of, was it Avengers Endgame? It was one of those two movies. And Disney basically put all of their marketing muscle into the Avengers and there was hardly any for Solo. It was very, very sad.
00:10:51
Speaker
So they really kind of left it out there to dry. I do agree that if it was released, you know, ah maybe again at a different place or if they made another one, I think it would do better. Do you think we'll ever get another one? Because I read that there is, I guess, like the contract options are for maybe another movie. But do you think we're able to see it just given the fact that it, you know, bomb so hard at the box office the first time around? It just feels like unless they're really sort of strict in the production and don't let it have the overhead that it did.
00:11:18
Speaker
first time around. I think we could ever see a continuation of the Han Solo prequel story. I kind of don't think so, largely because they kind of opened that up for other media. So there are a couple of comic book series that focus on Kira taking over Crimson Dawn. She shows up in the Star Wars Outlaws video game. So you know if you had if you didn't get enough Kira, like I did not get enough Kira.
00:11:43
Speaker
a good way to get a Kira fix is to read those comic books and then play Star Wars Outlaws. And you can actually run jobs for Kira and let her try to stab you in the back. It's pretty good. It's pretty funny. So no, I don't think that they're ever going to make a movie. There's a ah fan campaign that's been going on for years of make solo to happen, but I just don't see it
Fan Service Highlights
00:12:05
Speaker
happening.
00:12:05
Speaker
You know, the the amount of things that we saw in this movie that I was so excited to see of of just things I dreamed about as a little kid, only watching the first Star Wars movie, you know, the Kessel Run, the whole Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, like we made up stories around well what was that? What does that mean? You know, there's a big almost a scandal when people realize that a parsec is not a unit of time, but it's a unit of measurement of a distance. And so it was obviously just a goof that, well, Lucas probably didn't even goof. He's just like parsec sounds better. 12 parsec sounds better. But then they made this whole convoluted story that, oh, it is a distance, but it's like, how fast can you make the run? And they did that in this, right? You know, they took the hard sharp turn into the maelstrom and that's how he was able to do it in 12 parsecs.
00:12:56
Speaker
just all sorts of fun stuff. Seeing the Millennium Falcon clean and new was really fun. I was going to say, I certainly think the dynamic between Han and Lando was something the actors nailed really well. um You know, I'm watching that and the very last thing you see of of Lando before we get the kind of the end shot that Kota really is, him just going, I hate you, I don't want to see you again. Yeah. Well, though robert he again, it's a little fan service. He says, I hate you. And Han says, I know. I know. Yeah. I was, it's funny because, you know, I mean, the Kessler one for me, it's again, sort of from my perspective of having seen the movies, you know, obviously I'd heard it. Right. And then seeing it was great. And I know they kind of alluded to it throughout the movie. I kept hearing them say like, Kestle Kestle. So I was like, oh, we actually going to see it.
00:13:40
Speaker
So that was really cool to see. i I was wondering if we were going to get a Kira Han, i I love you, I know. And we didn't, but obviously we did get a flip on it with Lando. So that was a fun like little sort of inside fan service.
Reflection and Transition to Andor
00:13:56
Speaker
you know it's funny it felt like we could have kept going solo like i said at the beginning one of my faves really enjoyed this movie there was a lot that we could have talked about maybe we'll come back and do a part two on solo since we likely will never get solo to the movie Anyway, thanks again to Ben and Phil for joining me. And our plan now is to dive into Andor, which once again, Ben and I have seen Phil never has. I think as a student of film and acting, he's really going to enjoy Andor and we're going to enjoy discussing it with him.
00:14:31
Speaker
So that's it for this episode of the Star Wars cleaning crew. We'll see you again next time. In the meantime, keep your kitchens clean. May the force be with you. Tell all your friends. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.