I wanted to hate the Han Solo movie

I walked into Solo with pretty low expectations, I’ve not been especially excited about this one since it was announced. Walking out though, I can happy say that I has a lot of fun with this movie. I worry though, that my enjoyment of this movie was purely from a place of deeply seeded Star Wars fandom that lessens me as a person.

I spoke about the problems this movie had in its production before, how Phil Lord an Christopher Miller were given the boot as directors and replaced with an infinitely more middle of the road director in Ron Howard. And while some of the excitement I had upon leaving the cinema has worn off, I still got a lot out of this flick.

Continue reading “I wanted to hate the Han Solo movie” →

Solo: Thoughts on a Troubled Production

I have been pretty apprehensive of the next movie in Disney’s reinvented Star Wars franchise. When we first got the news that there was going to be a spin-off movie every other year between the main “epsiodes”, I was pretty stoked.

In my mind, I was imagining all of these old stories that I’d read in the old expanded universe getting made into feature movies. I was thinking of things like a Thrawn movie, a Darth Bane movie, the story of Revan and the Old Republic or maybe even a movie about Galen Marek. Oh, how optimistic I was. Those characters aren’t going to get their own movies, nobody even knows who most of them are.

Continue reading “Solo: Thoughts on a Troubled Production” →

The Last Jedi: My Thoughts on: Luke Skywalker & The Force

This part is mostly going to be a lot of me rambling about my views on the greater Star Wars franchise. And how my interpretation of the direction of the series is chapped by this movie and the decades of Expanded Universe that came before it.

I feel that this new trilogy is aiming to smash down these traditions and rebuild the series into something its own. Something I initially didn’t think I wanted, but after some time to digest the latest movie in the franchise, a big mix-up is probably exactly what the series needs.

Star Wars might be the biggest property Disney have in there hands right now, so I’d hope that they continue to get strong directors in and produce movies of the quality the first three have been. Not only that, I hope that they continue to have the foresight to know that they need to shake things up in order to stop the series getting stale.

Over-reliance on tradition and tropes that worked in the past doesn’t make for memorable or interesting stories. It’s why a lot of modern movies that are just belated sequels or remakes always seem so forgettable in comparison to their original counterparts. This part is going to focus on Luke Skywalker’s role in the new trilogy and my thoughts on how Disney aim to change the nature of the force and being a “Jedi”.

Continue reading “The Last Jedi: My Thoughts on: Luke Skywalker & The Force” →