Solo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard, May 25, 2018) Movie • Page 84

The books really help. I kinda feel sorry for him haha

 

If you're not a hardcore fan of any series, then reading/watching anything outside of the main movies shouldn't be expected, so saying he's a weak character from that point of view is valid.

Like, I'm not going to read the dozens of Star Wars books or watch the online series in order to learn more about him because I'm a casual Star Wars fan.

 

Movies are movies. They can't assume you're going to read every book and comic and watch every cartoon. I said he might be good in those shows, but it doesn't make him good in the movies, because in both live action, theatrical Star Wars movies he appears in, he's lame. Catcher in the Rye doesn't make me read an off-shoot comic about Sally Hayes. Do the Right Thing doesn't necessitate that I watch an ancillary cartoon about Radio Raheem to understand him. If you put a character in your movie and he has direct bearing on the plot, story, and other charcters, as Darth Maul does, you have to actually make him a character and not assume everyone's gonna be stoked to see this guy.

 

Sure. But when other material exists and you choose to not consume it, your opinion is uninformed. Uninformed opinions are kind of stupid.

 

Darth Maul's appearance in Solo is like an even less significant Thanos cameo at the end of all those Marvel movies. They just assumed you'd care and didn't actually try to make him matter.

 

But this discussion didn’t start off from a “Maul sucks in the movie” statement.

 

Well for the casual fans, it doesn't matter anyway right? I mean, they're casual fans.

But for the hardcore fans, we do care. It was awesome seeing Maul pop up on the screen. I had a 5 min conversation about that scene alone on the car ride home.

 

It's a thread about Solo: A Star Wars Story. I was remarking on his appearance in this movie. When people tried to defend the character by bringing up other media he appears in, I expanded my thoughts.

 

I think it matters that you include characters for a reason, that they actually have an immediate bearing on what's happening, and not just be throwaway cameos to stoke excitement in your fanbase.

Thanos sucks for the same reasons.

 

You weren’t expanding thoughts. You literally just said “Darth Maul fucking sucks”.

That’s barely a thought.

 

For those who actually know about Maul it does have a bearing. Know Qi’ra was trying to protect Han/Chewie from getting involved with him in anyway makes sense now. Knowing she has to go to him should cause us to fear for her.

 

then people asked why and brought up the cartoons or books or whatever

 

then they should have informed their audience in any way about who darth maul is, what he does, and why he matters in this movie. they assumed audience familiarity would be enough. that's lazy.

 

Or Star Wars aren’t your standard movies?

While it is a weakness in the movie itself, Star Wars exists well outside of the movie(s) alone. These aren’t normal movies. Not that the standard criticism can’t be used, they should also be looked through at the larger narrative and canon of Star Wars as they are made to be done so. That’s not lazy, it’s just a different perspective. You’re free to not like it, but it’s not lazy.

 

Exactly you made an uninformed blanket statement and were proven wrong. You then made a distinction to try to still be right rather than just going, “oh, I wasn’t aware of all that”.

 

I mostly agree with the "you shouldn't have to watch a tv show or read a book to understand a character in a movie" sentiment, but I would also argue in this age of the expanded universe and serialization that it does have a little bit of a "because that's the way we've always done it" feel to it. This is a different form of storytelling. The overall story of the film is more self-contained, but it still exists under the wider umbrella of the Star Wars universe.

But I also don't think you need to know more about Maul for his 30 seconds of screentime in this movie. He was the scary looking villain from Episode I and he's still alive is all you really need to know.

The movie has plenty of flaws for sure, but I don't think attempting to connect to the larger universe is one of them.

 

It's not uninformed if you're a casual fan. In the movies, he's not a good character.

 

QFT

 

That’s a contradiction. A casual fan is going to be uninformed of various aspects about something they only casually care about it. That’s how it goes with everything pretty much ever. I’m a casual gamer, so there are hundreds of games I’ve never played so I am uninformed on them. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing to be uninformed.

 

I'd agree with this. it's not an uniformed opinion, if you look at just the movies, he's a pretty weak, albeit cool looking and has badass action character. however, if you go by just the movies, I think the menacing visual of him still being alive in this one is all you need, as he is clearly set up to be an overarching force. certainly think if the character is alive in other media that is considered canon, it's pretty cool to think he may get the opportunity to be that awesome character on the big screen after teasing he still exists.

 

You're quite literally saying uninformed opinions are stupid, so...

 

This kind of thing reminds me of Donnie Darko and how people who either didn't get it or did get it but didn't want to delve further into Richard Kelly's "diaries" or whatever the fuck he put out there.

I think movies should stand alone on their own and when they don't because there's extra information outside of the movie itself, I think they failed in that aspect.

 

People are really arguing over the difference between "a good character" or "a good character in the movies"?

That's where we're at? Hahaha.

He's undeniably a good character, and he's not used well in the live action movies. (And, knowing the backstories of characters adds something to lots of these characters to the more than casual fans. I lost my shit seeing the Ghost and hearing Chopper in RO.)

 

Being uninformed and making uninformed stayemts are vastly different.

As I said I’m a casual gamer who is uninformed of many things in the gaming world. If I went into a gaming thread and said this character is stupid and has always been stupid. but I say that only based on a random spin off game or his appearance in a multi player fighting game or something, that’s an uninformed statement. I’m making that statement based on partial information. That’s stupid.

 

I made a general statement that I didn't clarify enough, but I don't feel I'm wrong at all.

Whatever ancillary media exists, movies still have to work as movies and not assume their audience is going to be pumped just because they recognize a character from a comic book or a previous movie or whatever. They have to do the heavy lifting of dramatizing what a character wants and why a character matters and what they mean to the other characters. Solo doesn't do a good job with Darth Maul (or Qi'ra, whose motivations and story independent of Han is 100% left offscreen).

If you treat Star Wars and Marvel and whatever other big blockbuster properties with different rules than other movies, then they aren't movies. They're 2+ hour big budget episodes of multimedia properties that get aired in movie theaters. If they're movies, then we treat them as movies, interpreting the text of what happens in the runtime and talking about them like we talk about other works in their art form.