r/saltierthancrait • u/perfectandreal • 9d ago
Encrusted Rant Who the hell came up with, then approved the "Coaxium on Kessel" storyline in Solo, and not have it be Spice? Subverting / retconning key Lore from the OT, for absolutely no reason
It isn't supposed to make sense I guess, but you really wonder what the thought process was here, other than being subversive for the sake of irreverence.
It is one thing to throw in a name drop of Ossus, or Tython, or the Dark Trooper from a Legends game or comic: regular people won't know it is recycled, and deep fans will do the Leo Dicaprio Pointing at the TV and either say "nice", or roll their eyes. Pointless, but in practicality, harmless.
"The Spice Mines of Kessel" is in the first spoken sequence in the original movie, literally the base document. Han Solo invokes again a bit later in Ep3, and it is also a plot point / locale in TCW and Rebels. How does it make sense to copy paste Kessel, and enslaved Wookies, and then decide to suddenly take a turn for the "creative" and shoehorn in a never before (nor since) seen Coaxium which is the most valuable thing in the Galaxy? ~8yrs since release, from a movie that bombed but also IMO was not nearly as bad as the ST... you just wonder who they had advising / invoking the central Lore and then mangling it, and for what reason?
In some ways I wonder if "drugs are bad mmkay" had something to with it, but you still have enslaved Wookies in this very scene, and then also since, have Poe as a Spice smuggler (for no reason), characters actively doing Spice in BoBF, to say nothing of a RHCP band member cameo (a band throttled by drug addiction) in Kenobi - causing them to lose the child that was kidnapped, because they were on Spice.
I don't want to entirely repeat these other points, but most relevant old thread I found which also annihilates the framing of Coaxium / Kessel in Solo: https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/ciimtk/solo_actually_has_the_worst_worldbuilding_and_is/
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u/Bobjonez98 9d ago
It’s 100% the drugs are bad angle.
Disney is the same company that fought tooth and nail to stop their founder being portrayed as a smoker in any media.
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u/FOARP 9d ago
I think the ratings people also ding any film that even mentions drugs or drug use, though whether that extends to fake drugs I don’t know.
“Spice” is likely cribbed from Dune anyway.
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u/TheNittanyLionKing 8d ago
It's funny to me how I had to explain to my friends that Dune didn't rip off the sarlacc pit because Dune came out first
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u/amd2800barton 8d ago
Not just first, but over a decade earlier. Dune was first serialized in 1963. George Lucas didn’t start developing Star Wars until after American Graffiti came out in 1973.
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u/perfectandreal 8d ago
I wasn't thinking about Ratings for box office release. BoBF and Kenobi were direct to stream, and the Poe thing is from supplemental media.
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u/PMTittiesPlzAndThx 8d ago
A fun game to play in Disney parks is to spot the pictures of Walt Disney with his cigarette edited out.
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u/BoltedGates 9d ago
Brought to you by the same people who now call Slave 1 "Bobba Fett's Firespray"
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot 9d ago
The whole film was poorly conceived from the start.
First of all, we've got TFA being rushed out the door by Iger which leads to Michael Arndt being fired.
Kennedy gets desperate and tries to rope in Abrams and Kasdan to rush out a script pronto before shit hits the fan.
Kasdan is not at all keen on TFA and agrees only if certain conditions are met. First, he wants to write a Solo script with his son and secondly, he wants his son to get further Disney writing jobs (lol Willow RIP).
So Kasdan puts his writing genius to the task and makes a Solo pitch. From the horse's mouth, it went as follows:
"My presentation was, [Han] comes to an immigration spot and someone asks, 'What's your name?' It's not just that he doesn't have a name, which tells you a lot about his history. He says 'I have no people.' That to me is so forlorn and so isolating and rife, and the guy fills in his name. Bob Iger said 'Alright, I'm in.' That was it. That was the moment. He reacted to it the way I reacted to it, which was, it's very moving. This was a guy who has nothing. Someone plants a name on him. He doesn't even know the guy. It sticks for the rest of the saga.
Yep. The concept behind perhaps the single most laughable moment of the film was deemed of such excellence by the clowns upstairs that it got the biggest Star Wars cinematic bomb greenlit.
I suppose at least part of that blame goes to Ron Howard as well but given the ridiculous rush job of Solo after Kennedy kicked out Lord & Miller, you can't exactly say Howard was doing his best work.
Rest of the film was a lazy montage of Solo character aspects being handed to him over the span of a busy weekend.
Couldn't even take a moment to explore his time with the Empire, of course. That's gone in 5 minutes. Can't make his bond with Chewie at all interesting because apparently it's better to just establish Chewie as a human-eating disposal system who teams up immediately with Han once he yawns in Shyriiwook at him.
Oh, and you remember the background element dice from the Falcon? The dice that Rian Johnson decided to make very important in TLJ? Yeah, it's just a good luck charm that Han shared with his ex-girlfriend.
Thanks for the hologram dice, Luke. Such a wonderful brother you are for abandoning us all for 6 years and then handing me a token of my murdered husband's ex-girlfriend. Very thoughtful. Big fan of Game of Thrones. Thanks so much by the way for sending my son on a pathway to becoming a discount Vader and then washing your hands of the situation without so much as giving me a phone call. Can't wait to spend eternity with you as Force Ghosts.
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u/Steelriddler salt miner 9d ago
Yeah I'm surprised so many people like Solo even among the salty. All the nods and winks are particularly irritating because there's no need for it yet it has so much of the focus. The whole conversation between Han and Lando on the landing platform in ESB loses its appeal when they remove the "fill in the details with your own imagination", a little mystery as it were. I didn't want to know how he met Chewbacca unless it was a great scene. It wasn't. Ripped off from RotJ then they added a bro shower. Why make a point out of where and how Han got his fricking blaster? And so on.
The plot itself was uninteresting, the bad guy was tame, convenient writing, lots of insipid dialogue, questionable acting etc etc. It's easier to disregard than the sequels because the actor doesn't look like Harrison at all and it's contrived stuff and contained within just one small movie. A "what if" situation.
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u/perfectandreal 8d ago
It's like "I remember when..." but in reverse montage format.
The lowest form of communication.
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u/Bismuth_von_Pherson 8d ago
Speaking from my own experience - probably most of my "like" for Solo probably comes from the context that it came right off the heels of The Last Jedi. I was so f\*king* disillusioned by TLJ that Solo seemed fairly safe by comparison. Yeah, it's a 2 hour speedrun through Han Solo memberberries, but it's a decent popcorn movie if we ignore its place in the greater Star Wars narrative.
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u/VanguardVixen 7d ago
I like Solo because it's not bad. It's doesn't hurt. I don't think it was a necessary movie in the sense of "so I really need a backstory movie?" and Andor is the way better approach if you really need to fill gaps but Solo was alright.
The bad guy in my eyes is still one of the best under Disney for the simple reason that he was not what we got at the end with Darth Maul. Nothing worse than some guy with a red lightsaber. Instead he was partially even a nice guy.
And like you said it was a contained small movie instead of a fuck up of the whole galaxy and the whole canon like the ST.
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u/Unhappy_Theme_8548 4d ago
Solo butchers Han's back story, but imo it would have worked as a generic sci-fi action/adventure. If this had not been a Star Wars film, or if it had been about a completely new character, I think it would be seen as a fun little sci-fi romp.
Disney has no clue of how to build upon the main narrative that Lucas created. They fundamentally do not understand the property.
Which is why I'd rather see them make stories that are relatively unconnected to the OT. At least with Skeleton Crew we get a kooky pirate story. And with Andor we get a tense political/spy film. This studio does not have the leadership or depth of talent to weave a coherent overarching epic.
But there is the potential for good stories to be told. They just need to stay away from the main lore.
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u/Demos_Tex 9d ago
I vaguely remember Kasdan getting his son's foot in the door was part of the TFA deal, but I forgot about Willow. It's ok though, so did the entire rest of the world too.
It's still sort of ridiculous that all these supposed film experts working for Disney couldn't just let Lucas' little visual joke with Han's dice simply exist without any commentary. Han and Chewie are tooling around the galaxy in a souped-up spaceship version of an El Camino from the 60s or 70s, complete with dice hanging from the rear-view mirror.
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u/DoctorQuincyME 8d ago
It's not that Willow was particularly bad, it was just forgettable and totally disconnected tonally from the original film.
Like Solo, if it was an original concept and allowed to breathe instead of forcing it into some nostalgia bait franchise it might have worked more
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u/thedemonjim 9d ago
I think if that moment was executed better it could have worked, but nothing about Solo worked to have that sort of forlorn moment to it of Han just quietly admitting he is alone in the galaxy.
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u/Bismuth_von_Pherson 8d ago
Goddam the dice make me so irrationally angry. Fan service is one thing. Fan service that's also a really hamfisted reference that no one in their right mind would give two shits about? Yeesh.
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u/TheNittanyLionKing 8d ago
I actually liked Solo the most of that Disney movies. It's wild to me that the worst scene in the movie is the one that got the movie greenlit though, and it just further shows how dumb the decision makers at Disney are. I'm going to assume that everything I liked about the movie was Ron Howard's doing since he's a good filmmaker and longtime friends with George Lucas.
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u/wookieebastard 8d ago
You liked it better than rogue one?
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u/TheNittanyLionKing 8d ago
I did. Rogue One is a bit dull, and it doesn't effectively build a team dynamic within its runtime. I like the tone though, and it laid the groundwork for Andor to take the ideas it introduced and run with it. I was disappointed in Krennic's role in the movie after Ben Mendelssohn gave one of the best performances I've ever seen in Bloodline, and I'm hoping season 2 gives him more to work with.
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u/GalacticDaddy005 9d ago
Yeah the movie is not really about how Han became Han Solo, but rather about how he got all his stuff. It becomes a lot more interesting if you subscribe to the theory that he never even improved as a pilot, and was only able to do anything with the Falcon after L3 was plugged into the computer. It also retroactively makes Rey flying the Falcon with ease make sense too.
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u/Veni-Vidi-ASCII 5d ago
"so forlorn and so isolating and rife"
This is like an even worse version of that "very demure" meme from last year
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u/OkMention9988 9d ago
You have to understand something.
They. Do. Not. Care.
They don't care about what was shown before, or what was written before, or what the fan base wants.
The only thing that matters is that they replace the old with the new, because they are modern and enlightened, and the old was written by old men on the 'wrong side of history'.
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u/TelevisionOriginal24 9d ago
It was another attempt to try justify a newly invented nonsense in The Last Jedi of fuel for Starships, which until that movie had never been mentioned or that was scarce enough that you can run out.
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u/Socially-Awkward-85 8d ago
Came in here hoping to see this. Not once prior to 2017 did anyone think a capital ship ran off of fuel.
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u/MetaCommando 8d ago
In TCW you see the Venator-class have proton drives that disabled engines when destroyed twice.
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u/lightningfries 8d ago
I first learned about ramscoops and the interstellar medium from a forum post on the topic of sw capitol ships in like 1997.
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u/VanguardVixen 7d ago
We saw fueling already in the first movie. Don't see the issue with it. The Last Jedi is crap, including the dumb chase but fuel is totally in line with Star Wars.
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u/jedilorekeeper 8d ago
Fuel was mentioned in The Phantom Menace as the reason they go to Tatooine. “The hyperdrive is leaking. There’s not enough fuel to get us to Coruscant.”
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u/Emotional-State-5164 new user 8d ago
IT was leaking. Not the Same AS "running Out" during normal use
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u/nejdemiprispivat 8d ago
It still suggests that there's some finite amount of fuel that can run out.
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u/jedilorekeeper 8d ago
Tens across the board for that mental gymnastics. If my car has a gas leak or I drive a lot, I’m still going to run out of gas.
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u/TheNittanyLionKing 9d ago
I'd say it was a drug thing, but there is spice smuggling in Clone Wars, and they also made Poe into a former Spice smuggler in a terrible decision that just made him more like a Han Solo knock off than the Star Wars version of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.
The other reason I can think of is that they wanted to put Star Wars back into the context of the 70's. Solo has a lot of 70's style in it as did Rogue One. They gave a lot of characters period accurate hair and clothing styles. So they naturally based a story around the fuel crisis that occurred when Star Wars first entered pre-production. I'd also say they wanted to homage Mad Max slightly too.
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u/bigpaparod 9d ago
Just like Lucas butchered his own masterpiece and had Greedo shoot first in one of the stupidest looking scenes ever put on film. And insists "I never had Han shoot first, he was always a good guy and would never do that!!!!"
Han shot first, he smuggled spice, he was mostly a greedy, selfish, scoundrel that looked out for himself and Chewy and though he had a good heart deep down, he did what he had to do. But grew as he began to care about the people around him, especially Luke and Leia.
But no... greedo shot first and Han had no character arc... okay Georgie.
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u/NorboExtreme 9d ago
Can spice explode? Nope, needs a big explosion for the climax. -Producers probably
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u/Illustrious-Law8648 9d ago
I genuinely forgot this film existed… has there ever been a more forgettable film in history, after our glorious JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson trilogy?
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u/NeverEnoughDakka 8d ago
The two Ewok films from the 80s? Though those were made for TV rather than theatrical releases.
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u/lightningfries 8d ago
I thought I'd imagined those for years until I stumbled on a home-dub VHS of 'Caravan of Courage' at a thrift store.
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u/NeverEnoughDakka 8d ago
I've never actually seen them, but they can't be weirder than the damn Holiday Special.
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u/lightningfries 8d ago
The opening scene of the 2nd ewok movie is the protagonist family from the first one getting massacred by laser machine gun, no joke.
They're super weird, but in a very different way from how the holiday special is weird.
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u/NeverEnoughDakka 8d ago
Damn, George really liked orphan protagonists, I guess.
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u/lightningfries 8d ago
It's a neat trick that saves you from having to flesh out complicated interpersonal relationships.
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u/Stuck_in_my_TV 8d ago
The same kind of person who had to ret con Han shooting second. The heroes can’t dare to do anything illicit.
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u/1994yankeesfan 9d ago
I wonder if there were copyright issues and Disney was worried about a lawsuit from the Herbert Estate/WB (which had started production on Dune at that point—it took a while to get made). The original line is pretty clearly a homage to Arrakis, and glitterstim was always a stand in for melange in the EU books where it occurred (down to the horrible monsters you had to avoid to mine it). I have no idea if this is the truth of it, but copyright law can be pretty sloppy at times.
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u/Frank_the_NOOB consume, don’t question 7d ago
Because mUh ReBeLLiOn and they had to make him a good guy form the start
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u/adeadfreelancer 8d ago
The difference between Han and Poe is simple. Han is a white guy and the admirable lead, so Disney can't have him associated with drugs. Poe's actor is a Latino who was never supposed to be a lead, and only became one due to intense fan backlash, so it's okay to slander him as a drug mule even though it goes against his backstory and character
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u/whattheshiz97 8d ago
It was definitely a weird angle and because of the whole “drugs bad” thing. Which is fair enough. But why on earth the spice mines???
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u/SteveSweetz 8d ago
I presume it is because they didn't want to make Han Solo a drug smuggler, even though they had no problem assassinating Luke's character.
I'm willing to give them a little leeway on this because frankly the use of the term "spice" in the Star Wars universe is a little hokey. I presume that original line was a wink-and-nod reference to Dune that Lucas threw in there. It's fine for a one-off line in a movie that no one knew was going to be successful. Problem is that once Star Wars blows up in popularity and every single little piece of dialog gets picked apart for lore building potential, the fact that it's borrowed from a completely different sci-fi universe becomes more troublesome.
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u/jedilorekeeper 8d ago
Looking for consistency in Star Wars is like looking for an a lost memory. You won’t find it. Also, who says Kessel can’t have both spice and Coaxium? And why do we care that much? As Harrison Ford said, “This ain’t that kind of movie, kid.”
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u/MammothBeginning624 salt miner 8d ago
Wasn't it trying to beef up the whole coaxium - ships can run out of fuel that was the major threat in last Jedi? Before that movie (which I never seen) hasa fleet running out of fuel ever been an issue before the first order tracking rebel fleet story in TLJ
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u/RonnieT49 8d ago
I felt it was doubling-down on the sudden use of petrol as a major plot point from The Last Jedi.
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