Lando? Lando is a smooth operator and con man. He will get with anything if he has something to gain from it. And given how he acts in Rebels, he'll make a pass at about anything once to see if it can be a mark or distraction from boredom while waiting for his latest scheme to come through. Or his legitimate business that he won on a bet.
Solo still needs a direct sequel, whether that be through a tv series or (an)other movie(s). I loved it, and would love to see more of this era of Post Clone Wars / Proto-OT!
Ah. My apologies. Something seemed off given what I know of your posting history, but I figured what I said should be said anyway. Interesting observation. Though of course these days in the modern canon, the Empire is shown to have plenty of ranking officers who aren't white or male. Though many of them seem to still speak with British accents, or at least accents from Commonwealth countries, in the case of Director Krennic's Australian accent.
I've been reading Rinzler's "Making of RotJ" book and one detail that stood out is something Lucas was supposed to have said when Marquand and I think either the set or production designer were figuring out what the briefing room scene would look like. The latter were talking about giving it a dishevelled, frantic, well used and dramatically lit aesthetic, reminiscent of what one might imagine Churchill's war room looked like on the eve of D-Day. Lucas basically said something along the lines of "No, it's got to look clean and high tech. They're not so rag tag at this point, they've actually got themselves together!" Add to that the extras in that scene are clearly meant to be different groups from all over the galaxy working together retroactively makes the make-up of the force we saw in ANH make more sense. That wasn't the whole rebellion, it was just one cell. most likely the intent at the time being that the bulk of them were Alderaanian, hence, they looked like they came from the same planet as Leia. What we see in RotJ is the full force of the Alliance assembled for the first time ever. Of course the real reason the rebels looked the way they did is the simple practical reality of casting extras and bit players in a low budget sci-fi movie in England in the mid 70's: most of the performers on the books are going to be white guys.
I think that's the approach most of the books and comics have taken, that the Rebellion didn't really start to fully unite into one big group until after Yavin. We did see a few groups starting to unite in Rebels and Rogue One, but I think most of those were still just one or two smaller cells teaming up.
So, obviously this thread has been dead for a while, but I just saw the movie and I found it pretty disappointing. Lots of comments on here about how it was just 'a fun space adventure movie', but I think it was trying to be more and fell short. It 100% felt like a movie with very troubled production. Mostly, there was just way too much in there. Even within the first half hour you had a speeder chase, war section, and train heist sequence. The main plot idea was great, but it didn't really feel like the main section because so much else was going on. After that you have a completely predictable set of double cross moments and the weirdly tacked on 'no, these maruaders are actually the good guys' thing. Nothing was bad, but nothing was really the focus. Same with the characters. No character in Solo really felt like they were in Solo. Lando was fun, but he didn't really get to do much. Qi'ra could have been cool, but they didnt really get into her character enough to give her depth. That little monkey thing and Thandie died after proclaiming this was going to be 'their last big score' over and over. The bad guy was apparently Paul Bettany, but we don't really see him doing anything apart from kill one completely unknown person and be rude to Han. I know he's part of a crime syndicate, but he's honestly pretty reasonable with the main characters. L3 failed more comprehensively than any other character I can think of and became far and away my least favourite Star Wars character. Beckett was probably the best one, but then there just wasn't much there. That was really the issue with all of them. I could have gone for them just starting with a shorter train sequence and getting Han's little backstory via dialogue or maybe a short flashback. Have Beckett and Han be more of an established team before the events of the movie - that might make Han shooting him at the end actually mean something. Or you could actually explore what Qi'ra did and round out her character a little more. Ehrenreich did a fine job with what he was given, but even Han rarely felt like the main character in this movie. I'm also not sure why there was such of thing of Qi'ra telling him how he had a good heart when he'd behaved heroically and generally pretty selflessly through the entire movie. He did shoot Beckett, but then he barely knew Beckett, and all Beckett had really done was tell Han not to trust him and actually betray him, so I'm not really counting that as Han getting a darker turn at the end of the movie. I wish they'd maybe revealed he kept another fuel vial back from Qi'ra at the start and shown him using that to barter passage instead of going through that completely pointless Imperial trooper section. Or maybe he could have charged a relatively low price for the fuel instead of just giving it away, helping out the good guys while also netting enough profit for himself to buy his own ship. You know, something with even the slightest touch of moral ambiguity. And did anyone find the marauder reveal a little odd? It was framed as such an 'aha' moment that I thought she might be from the EU or something. But apparently the reveal is just that she's a young, attractive woman. I guess those people can't be evil? Finally, those goddam references. I'm not against the odd reference to other Star Wars movies, but Jesus did Solo go all out on that. So, yeah... It's hard to point to one section that was actually bad, but taken as a whole it felt like a real mess. Even just in terms of genre it never quite seems to make up its mind, probably because they kept changing things around. I've been reading about all the reshoots and rewrites, and they really shed a light on the final product. It's a shame they couldn't either stick with the original director's vision or let Howard start again instead of jamming together two very disparate approaches.
I've read 85% was done by Howard, but it could be 99% and he'd still be working on the foundation created by other writers and directors. You can't take over a movie that's already gone through so much filming/writing and have it be your own. I like the idea of having a more comedic take and a more 'maverick' Han Solo, but then who knows how that would have turned out.
Well, it's not going to be for everyone. I love the high adventure feel, with several episodes wrapped within it. For me, Qi'ra, Enfys Nest, and Voss are two of the more interesting characters introduced, with Beckett being close behind. How it all wraps together is incredibly fun.
I thought they all had great potential, but that none got enough time or more importantly focus to really become interesting. Overall I get the impression they were more interested in putting together characters and plot points for a sequel than they were in creating a really solid stand-alone movie. Obviously that's a nice goal for them, but I think it got in the way, especially considering how much of Han's backstory needed to be crammed in. Disagree with 'incredibly'. I thought it was kinda fun, and also kinda bad. Just didn't feel like it had it's own personality in the way it once might have, and that was reportedly Howard's goal when he took over production.
Agree to disagree, personally. I think each character had enough, Han's backstory was interesting to me, and each major player had just enough information. Honestly, they could do nothing more with these characters and I would be satisfied. Mileage will vary.
It's not as much that each character didn't get enough time as that none of them seemed to be focused in on. I wouldn't have minded some characters having exactly what they got if one or two stood out more.
Watched Solo again on Disney+ the other day - and it is still an incredibly fun movie, with stunning visuals! Re-watchability is an absolutely inherent in Solo