Are You Effing Kidding Me?

[henke]

Finally got around to watching Solo last night, and I liked it a lot! The whole thing is well paced and there's a ton of great moments sprinkled throughout.

Random observations:
-Alden is alright, but at no point was I reminded of original Han. It's almost like this is a different character.
-awesome Chewbacca reveal, it actually managed to surprise me.
-glad to see Teräs Käsi is still canon!
-L3-37 was pretty great.
-did they actually manage to make the "Kessel Run in less than 12 parsec" line make sense? I ain't no scientist, but it kinda seems so!
-I liked the twist with Enfys Nest's gang.
-the reveal of the big baddie was silly and awesome. It kinda makes me want a direct sequel to this. I wanna know what happens with Qi'ra next.

[SubJeff]

I just watched it too.

I agree henke, it wasn't bad. And I second all your observations.

I was pleasantly surprised and thought some of the set pieces were pretty good. The train especially. And yeah, the Kessel Run made sense!

I think this was elevated by all the other actors though, and Alden was the weakest link.

[icemann]

All they need to do then is switch him with the cgi doppleganger and be all good. I plan on watching it soon.

[henke]

The latest episode of the Star Wars Minute podcast is great. They're on The Force Awakens, minute 19 now, where Rey is getting her rations from Unkar Plutt. Virgil Texas and Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House are the guests, and Matt has a great tirade against the capitalistic systems that keep regular Star Wars denizens lives miserable despite the marvelous technology all around them.

"They shouldn't have currency! They shouldn't have scarcity! They have robots and technology that we can't even get our heads around, but every dull, enervating, soul-crushing element of scarcity-capitalism still exists. What is the point of getting all that technology if your crappy life is going to be identical, but with a robot?"

[SubJeff]

Ha ha. That's so true henke!

[Thirith]

I found Solo pretty boring, but that's entirely due to the plot. The raw material, the characters/actors and individual scenes, those I thought were good fun, but the plot was so dull and perfunctory that I just disengaged while watching the film. You can have a relatively minimal plot if you're focusing on characters you want to hang out with, but there was too much plot for the film to work in that particular way, at least for me.