Should we anticipate seeing more Solo films?
Saw it tonight
Though not cutting edge it was very enjoyable
Light hearted with some embedded force themes
Well worth a ticket - and a clever spin off to indulge fans old and new
Should we anticipate seeing more Solo films?
The film that nobody really wanted or cared for, that doesn't really have much information anyone wants to know. The money machine keeps on working for them though.
Where would you rank it in the Star Wars saga?
Rogue One spin off was superb compared to the new trilogy
Loved it. Hated the last one so was a bit nervous this would be utter pap but it was a cracking yarn.
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I really did enjoy Rogue One and haven't really cared for either of the other two new Star Wars films. Among my friends I was the only one who seemed to realise that The Force Awakens was the original plot rehashed. I thought it was OK but little more than that yet people I know thought it was genuinely amazing. I'm looking forward to Solo - If Rogue One is anything to go by the spin-offs seem less burdened with the weight of expectations.
Saw it yesterday and pretty disappointing actually. Maybe 6.5/10 Compared to Rogue One 9/10.
Lot of action anyway...
I thought it was the best Star Wars film since the original trilogy.
Who honestly watched the originals and thought 'i wish i knew Han's back story'?
As stated earlier, it was a film nobody really cared for or wanted, but may have sounded good to the execs, but in reality prequels are hard to do, as the element of risk isn't there due to being around main characters, that's why Rogue One worked, it was about a back story in the original film, and as we weren't aware of those involved, they had a license to do what they wanted.
I thought so.
I was 7 when I watched Star Wars.....my only thoughts were 'wow!' I seem to remember that Star Wars wasn't that popular when it was released as well. Personally,if they are well made,I like these sort of films. To be honest Rogue One and Solo are far better than The Force Awakens & The Last Jedi (although I also liked those films) and immeasurably superior to the prequel trilogy.
I’ve also grown up with the Star Wars movies and I enjoyed Solo. I remember there were a few books released about Han and Chewie’s adventures shortly after the empire strikes back came out which I read as a 12 year old and this captures the essence of those books imho. I also loved Rogue 1, but sadly the force awakens and the last Jedi (particularly the last Jedi) were dreadful imho.
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I haven't seen Solo yet, been too busy. But will go this week.
Recently I re-watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi back to back. I thought perhaps I might enjoy the last jedi more if the first one was fresh in my head. But I really didn't. It's a massive dissappointment. Rogue One is by far the best of the newer releases.
4/10 for the film overall. 9/10 for the Han/Chewie/Landau dynamic. Bit of a shame really....
Depends on the spin.......
The BBC reports
”Solo: A Star Wars Story, the latest prequel in the huge film franchise, has failed to make the impact Disney had hoped in North America.Analysts had predicted Ron Howard's film about a young Han Solo would take between $130m (£97.6m) and $150m (£112.7m) on its debut weekend.
But it had to settle for $103m (£77.4m), which was still enough to knock Deadpool 2 off the top spot.
Solo, starring Alden Ehrenreich, took an estimated $168m (£126.2m) overseas.”
Haven’t seen it yet but I am surprised at the poor reviews on here as IMDB have it at a fairly solid 7.2 (Rogue One is 7.8)
It's not bad. Not great either. The magic of Disney continues (money magically vanishing from my pockets).
I agree that rogue one was enjoyable (mainly due to the last 15 minutes and the other Vader appearances) but lm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Disney are continuing Lucas's prequels mission of destroying the Star Wars universe l grew up with
The more films made the less special the originals seem to become. I'm waiting for the internet to produce an image of a young Luke Skywalker stood on Tatooine, silhouetted against its twin suns, next to an image of an old Skywalker dying needlessly on a rock on a mountain in Ireland with the subtitle "Wasted life - should never have left home.".
After all he went through to defeat Palpatine and save his Fathers soul, dying "fighting" the most rubbish villain in the history of sci fi - basically a sulky wimp, with quite literally the longest face in the galaxy, was a terrible decision in my opinion.
But l am a fan and l clutch desperately to the hope that the third film will make it all right again...
I've got a feeling it will do okay - word of mouth reviews are getting around that it's decent, factor in DVD and merch and it will easily break even. The issue is Disney wanting $$$$$ without realising the Last Jedi was pretty average and this arrived too soon afterwards and the tone of the two main films + Solo have been far too similar. Middle class, white English woman as the main female lead, a sassy droid, some familiar characters and off they go.
Factor in that this is a story a lot of people didn't think needed to be made and it's not a recepie for success.
Which IMO is a a shame, I thought Solo, barring the first 15 mins which were pretty poor was excellent. Far better than Last Jedi. Emilia Clarke was awful - bad casting and she was her usual wooden self. The lead, plus Donald Glover as Lando worked really well. The Droid, despite my comment above, was at least different but the bar has been set high by K2-S0 in Rogue One.
I was a bit bored. A step by step, fairly telegraphed route through all the Han Solo touchpoints. Much better than the prequels, I guess, but it didn't add anything. Character development was sorely lacking.
It will struggle to break-even - industry sites suggest that because of reshoots - it cost between $250-$300m to make. You then generally factor in a third again for marketing and advertising - so that's about $450 million. It looks like it might only take $400 million at the cinema and remember the studio does not get most of that - more like 60%. So you end up between $100-$150 million in the hole - you are not making that back on DVDs and other revenues.
Even if it was as leggy as say the Greatest Showman and somehow managed to break even - Star Wars films should not simply break-even, someone is going to be out on their arse shortly.
If making $100million profit on $300m is a flop then well I can't come up with a clever enough quip. But I'm sure the studios will be happy with that great percentage return plus the merchandise sales and DVD/Streaming sales etc for the coming years. Disney shares are looking a very good buy at the moment.
I'm a box office nerd - your analysis is way off.
That's not profit - $400 million is the box office revenue, Disney will see about $240 million of this as it is - spilt with the distributors. So if it costs $300 million to make, you spend $150 million on marketing and it makes $400 million at the box office, then you are likely $200 million or so in the hole before you have done anything else.
Disney has had a very successful year but is a red herring in regards to analysis of this film. Nobody at Disney is going to be happy that one of its premium franchise films is struggling to break-even, especially when one of its other franchises is likely to break $2 billion (Infinity Wars).
(As a side note, I enjoyed the film myself).
It's hardly bombed, I think the $300m figure is a very ott and to be honest most films made nowadays go to reshoots, especially Disney films. It's the new way of working so I doubt if the reshoots would push it over budget. Disney have half of Pinewood as their own now so set up costs etc have been reduced. I'd be very surprised if it did not at least break even.
Episode 9 has just started shooting with the 3rd spin off starting in September. If spin off No3 is cancelled or postponed that might give an indication that you are right.
Most of these are pick-ups and completely normal - that's different to what happened to Solo where they ditched the original directors and most of what they filmed and parachuted in Ron Howard to try and fix it.
As for the $300 figure that is coming from the mainstream trade press like the THR so its the best one we have to go with.
I don't think the spinoff will be cancelled but I bet they are currently rethinking the Boba Fett film that it was likely they would have announced this week if Solo had a decent box office performance. We are likely to get something much more akin to Rogue One (which was a box office success) and I bet we get a bigger gap between films.
Last edited by Alansmithee; 29th May 2018 at 14:04.
I thought it was OK. Certainly an emjoyable couple of hours of escapism.
Emilia Clarke is just lovely.
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
Me an my son enjoyed!
Seeing the YT 1300F 'almost' fresh out of his Corellian factory was awesome. Did not care much about Emilia.....
See I would take "Cost" of the film as including everything it takes to get it onto a screen and bums on seat paying for it. The cost of perfume is pennies, but add on the marketing and packaging and the margin is actually relatively slim. So when you said $300m cost and $400m box office I presumed all costs were included in the $300m.
I would still presume that the long tail will more than recoup the costs to make it. i.e. merchandise, licensing (LEGO, Fast Food, Toothbrushes etc), streaming, DVD's etc etc and I certainly don't think it will go down as "one of the greatest flops"
Sorry that's my fault - I normally discussing this with fellow box office number crunchers and forget that (just like watch collecting) that there is certain short-hand and shared ways of discussing things that might not be clear.
It's very unlikely because the long tail is connected to how well the film does. Once a film gets outside of it's opening weekend, the rest of the box office is fairly easy to predict - Solo has a few problems - it's overseas box office was disastrously low and it launched on memorial weekend in the US - if you don't do well on memorial weekend, you don't improve from there.I would still presume that the long tail will more than recoup the costs to make it. i.e. merchandise, licensing (LEGO, Fast Food, Toothbrushes etc), streaming, DVD's etc etc and I certainly don't think it will go down as "one of the greatest flops"
It would need to be 'leggy' like the Greatest Showman at this point to come back.
Last edited by Alansmithee; 29th May 2018 at 15:56.
https://www.the-numbers.com/news/231...es-Competition
Fairly pessimistic about the profitability.
Box office is fairly predictable - after the opening weekend, most films drop-off between 55-60% - now and again we get some oddities but generally speaking you have a fairly solid item of the range. The real puzzle with Solo is why it's done so poor even in markets that are generally hot on Star Wars.
Thanks for the info Alan. Is there a specific forum for discussing such things?
Further info, and Disney response here
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-a8374111.html
As I understand when Howard came in he was asked to work with and edit what was already shot, they certainly didn't reshoot from the beginning.
Half term this week so it will be interesting to see the figures once the kids have all gone to see it.
As for the next spin-off, I would guess it's already written and the last I heard starting in September.
I thought it was dull, that main issue for me was no real spark or connection with the characters. Sort of vital for a movie about one of the biggest space rogues!
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I liked it 2nd to Rogue One , then the rest of the FA and LJ lagging behind . It just didn’t connect as well as I would of hoped and the villains where rather dull if not wasted as Paul Bettany as convincingly menacing as he can be was sort of wasted. Still as a ‘solo’ star wars romp it was good to explore new territory and not remake old star wars films.
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It’s not a bad popcorn adventure yarn, it keeps moving and goes for fun rather than the kind of mythic scale that often gets injected into origin movies, which is no bad thing. But capturing the charming but dangerous cocky charisma of a young Harrison Ford is a hell of a lot to ask of anyone. Ehrenreich doesn’t do that bad a job and looks the part, but Ford is / was a superstar and had that extra something. Ehrenreich hasn’t got Solo down in the way Chris Pine just was Kirk in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboot.
Landau is smooth, and Clarke got everyone through several seasons of Game of Thrones, but the worst droid in the history of Star Wars certainly doesn’t help. It’s fine but it’s the B team in the end, never more than a side story, and at times it feels as if (not really a spoiler but look away now if you don’t want to know anything...) they’ve concocted the whole plot just to explain away the whole ‘It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs’ thing.
One other thing - I saw it in IMAX and I don’t think the film’s resolution lived up to it. You can tell when the effects haven’t been rendered at that kind of resultion, it just looks a bit soft on a screen that size so it’s not worth the extra price.
Last edited by Itsguy; 31st May 2018 at 15:00.
Took my boys to see this yesterday, wasn't expecting much tbh after reading reviews, but really enjoyed it. They loved it, as they do all things Star Wars.
Since Disney paid the big bucks I have found the two main films well below par and the two anthology films to be far better, especially Rogue One.
J
Liked Rogue One and thought it better than the main film thread reboots; however, the Death Star element of it made it feel a little too familiar.
I liked Solo; didn’t love it but would watch it again, so I’d give it a solid 6.5/light-7
Acting was decent, plot explained some of the personality quirks and it expanded the SW universe. As has been said, it has defiantly been left open for Solo 2 (here comes Jabba!).
One thing I do hope they explore further is Dathomir (sp?), which is mentioned at the end. Won’t add more to avoid spoilers but the mythology and story lines that all converge there are some of the more interesting and darker elements of Star Wars.
Lastly, I joked about a Bobafett film in a previous thread but it has now been confirmed that they are making one - now that I am up for.