Hacker Cinema
Solo
2018 · Film · short · 15 min
Directed by Pedro Horta
"Solo" tells the story of J, a saxophonist who finds a heart beating in his saxophone case, on the eve of his big concert at the International Jazz Show.
1 positive9 negative2 neutralfrom 12 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
13 comments on Hacker News
no strong opinions on the article since I don't watch TV or go to movies often, but I do recall the in the "Solo" movie thinking that when the female (if I'm remembering correctly) abandons Han for the other guy it was surprising because she was not only behaving badly, but behaving badly in a specifically feminine way, rather than aping male misbehavior
i have no idea if this is relevant to the article or not
See, I have to disagree,.episodes 1, 2 and 3 were far and beyond superior to the Disney episodes.
The characters and story fit in the universe. Disney created an alternate reality for their garbage. The Han Solo movie having so much potential and it was the worst of the bunch, worse then the Holiday Special.
If there is a disagreement between the director and the studio, they will negotiate with each other about which changes to make. But the director is never cut completely out of the process.
There are a lot of directors who would disagree with you on that...
Disney is notorious for this; off the top of my head, Ant Man, Rogue One, Solo, and Brave changed directors because of disagreements with the studio in post-production. With the Marvels, it is widely known that the director did not have final cut of the film. Bryan Singer and Steven Soderbergh have been replaced on movies due to disagreements with studios after filming had started (and in both cases, the films at issue went on to be multiple-Oscar nominees). Cary Joji Fukunaga was replaced on It due to disagreements with the studio (but retained writing credit) right before filming started; and he replaced Danny Boyle on No Time to Die after Boyle was let go due to disagreements with the studio.
If the studio tries to take creative control completely away from the director, the director can petition the DGA to have his or her name removed from the film.
The director always is consulted during the edit, and in most cases works very closely with the editor. The studio may or may not insist on changes later, but there is just no universe where the editor makes changes alone with no input from the director at all. The DGA would have a fit if that happened.
This is just incorrect. Indeed, what you suggest is at odds with over a 100 years of film history...
The DGA does not have a fit over stuff like this because a director is not entitled to "complete creative control" or to "final cut" unless they negotiate for it, get themselves hired as editor on the film they direct (which would also involve them being a producer), or work with a studio that embraces the auteur school of filmmaking (in which the released film represents the director's vision of the film).
It's one thing to support the auteur school since it usually results in better films (counterpoint: most Netflix films), but it is objectively not the way most films are made.
Putting the pieces together, in the movie Solo the Kessler run was well-named.
The thing that makes me sad is that IMO the best Star Wars film that came out since the Disney acquisition was Rogue One (even though it trampled all over the expanded universe novel Rebel Dawn, which I loved). Likely Disney views that movie as their second-worst Star Wars outing (after Solo), while I enjoyed it far more than episodes 7, 8, or 9.
On the optimistic side, I absolutely love The Mandalorian (which I didn't expect, and resisted watching until after season 2 was complete), and I'm looking forward to The Book of Boba Fett as well.
But I absolutely agree with you on the failure of "corporate written-by-committee". I think The Mandalorian is so great in no small part because it's run by a small number of people who really love Star Wars and have been fortunate enough to be granted near-complete creative control.
I found Rogue One to be very interesting, but the newer episodes or Solo couldn't keep me interested.
Financially it's been fine, but the last movie was disliked by critics, the audience reviews were mixed at best, and the fanbase has been at each other throats.
Hollywood tends to pay a lot of attention to CinemaScore (very roughly: exit polls of people seeing it on the opening night), and The Rise of Skywalker got the lowest CinemaScore (B+) of any live-action Star Wars movie - lower than Solo and the prequels. "They audience liked it ALMOST as much as the one with Jar-Jar!" is not what Disney wanted to hear, especially since that sort of thing will have huge flow on effects to the ongoing revenue stream (toys, theme park rides, merchandising). For example, I believe the newest Star Wars ride has sharply underperformed, and Disney leadership will probably believe (correctly) that the poor reception the latest movies got was a driving factor.
And the box office take, while still very substantial, was underwhelming for what was meant to be the crowning glory of a 40 year franchise, and compares poorly to other end movies for big franchises.
The "point" of buying Lucasarts from Disnye's point of view was to apply a lot of money and some of the magic they've used on the Marvel franchise to make a truly vast amount of money, get a bunch of critical acclaim, and set up the franchise as a money spinning machine that will keep filling theatres for spinoff movies every year forever. Instead they merely made a very large amount of money, the critics said the last movie stunk, and the fanbase seems deeply disinterested in more movies, which had led to them cancelling a bunch of planned movies.
It's not that bad, and I'm sure it's fixable, and the Mandalorian is doing great, but MAN is it less than what they were hoping for.
(And persistent rumours have it that Iger intervened directly into the creative process of The Rise of Skywalker late in the cycle. If true, that makes the disappointing TRoS results reflect on him...but I obviously have no idea if that's true.)
That being said....I don't think Star Wars was bad enough to trigger this. CEOs typically can do much worse for much longer, and as others have noted, the choice of replacement (and the speed of the replacement) is mystifying. I would guess ill health, or maybe some sex scandal rather than poor performance being a factor.
Huh. I’d call TLJ the first interesting SW film since Empire. TFA was typical Abrams—ok in the moment but brain dead beyond forgiveness as you start to think about it as the lights come up. Lazy writing even by his standards, and I don’t just mean the “copying ANH” thing. Solo was straight up awful. Rogue One had great potential and didn’t live up to it, but was OK. Gave me Star Wars Feels a couple times, which is more than I can say for any of the others but TLJ (only one to achieve the thing where they make you care a ton about several rebel pilots, and characterize them, by giving you about 3 seconds with each, since Empire, and the best of that since ANH).
All content everywhere is hit or miss. With Disney, I didn't care for Solo or Star Wars Resistance. I enjoyed Star Wars Rebels and Rogue One. The Last Jedi had mixed reviews at best. I haven't been interested in a Pixar movie in several vears. It's not like Disney content is amazing all the time. It has winners and losers like everyone else.
Netflix has some of the best shows I've seen in a long time. It also has some is the worst. Just like Disney.
Rogue One was quite strongly tied to A New Hope, I'd say.
Personally I love both anthologies, and I love them a lot more than the new trilogy (I love Luke's role, but I have doubts about where the trilogy as a whole is going). I know Solo bombed, but for me it was the movie I'd been waiting 30 years for, and I wasn't disappointed.
People go to a Star Wars movie to see the hero destroy the Death Star!
I'm reminded of that scene in the Empire Strikes Back where they destroyed a Death Star. Oh wait! They didn't. Because in the middle movie of most trilogies, bad things happen to the heroes. They fail. They reach rock bottom, and the third movie is their final struggle.
You can't take any story with any characters and any plot elements and place it in the Star War Universe and magically have a Star Wars movie.
That's exactly what they did with Rogue One. Worked very well. In contrast, Solo was done in the style of the traditional SW movies and is generally acknowledged as a failure.
It's the same reason the Mad Max remake was good...You have to have some respect for the tone, themes, and plots of what came before. TLJ disrespects it's audience's desires by disrespecting the draw of the source material.
Mad Max Fury Road was completely inconsistent, tonally and other wise, with the original Mad Max, and is a direct descendant of the campiness of Beyond Thunderdome. Batman v Superman, on the other hand, ws made with the same tones, themes, and plots as the other DC Synderverse movies, and was still quite terrible. Aliens and Alien are both considered terrific, genre-defining films. Yet Aliens has very little in common with Alien other than Ripley and the xenomorph. The same can be said of Terminator and T2. Harry Potter 3 and on have little tonally in common with the first two films, yet the third is considered one of the best in the series. Etc...
See, but with Disney, at least there's an outside chance they try an Old Republic movie. So long as Lucas held the keys, nothing at all was going to be made except for cartoons mistakingly marketed at children. And books that had a limited audience.
My question to you: Have they thrown it away by making Solo? It all still exists, and they're apparently full-steam ahead making new products with that IP.
I wouldn't hate some sort of subversive twist, but at the same I don't think think it's necessary. To me the new trilogy has perfectly recaptured the heart and soul of star wars. I think a lot of the disappointment stems from life long fans who have expectations built up over years and years of being fans and speculating on what could be.
I haven't seen Solo yet, so I can't comment on that, but in my opinion I'd rather have one or two mediocre Star Wars movies a year than nothing at all.
I also think that people are greatly unfair when judging new entries in the franchise. It seems like if it isn't twice as good as Empire, it isn't worth anything.
'Last Jedi' was a lot of fun for me. I enjoyed it a ton. I can understand why people felt underwhelmed, but I also like that it was a typical cliff-hanger middle entry movie and can stand on its own. Maybe its just personal preference but I don't need mystery and open storylines to keep me interested. If anything, it leaves more freedom for the 3rd entry and provides plenty of jumping off points.
Overall I don't think Star Wars has a 'growing emptiness', I think fans are demanding way more than is realistic and are suffering from the hype machine/echo chamber that plagues media these days.