I'd imagine roughly about the same amount of football fans who weren't first hooked on football when they were a child.
Film Solo: A Star Wars Story
- Thread starter harshad
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I think honing in on actual viewing figures kind of misses the point. I'd imagine a lot of Pixar movies have a decent number of adults attending, because while they're undoubtedly kids movies they've gained a reputation for being very good and can appeal to audiences of any age, as all genuinely good films should.
Again, they're not kids movies in the sense of being for really, really young children, but they're definitely largely aimed at young teens I'd argue. There's no swearing, it's mostly a standard story of good vs bad, there's violence but it tends not to be extremely graphic, and there's often lots of juvenile jokes. In the end the good guys eventually win, albeit with plenty of twists and turns in the middle.
I was a massive Star Wars fan when I was a kid, had all the movies, games (Rogue Squadron, Jedi Outcast, Galactic Battlegrounds) and heaps of Lego. Then in my mid teens I realized it's all a bit naff and grew out of it.
I'll probably give Solo a miss, was pleasantly surprised by The Last Jedi but I imagine this'll be more like Rogue One which was 133 minutes of pure agony.
I'll probably give Solo a miss, was pleasantly surprised by The Last Jedi but I imagine this'll be more like Rogue One which was 133 minutes of pure agony.
Not just Pixar. The most recent film in the Harry Potter series had an audience of which 65% were adults, for exactly the same reasons that Star Wars attracts a large adult audience. If Star Wars isn't a kids series then neither are the Fantastic Beasts films, which they clearly are.
On the second point, a look at the BBFC ratings of these and other kids/YA films is interesting (well, not really):
TFA - 12A - "moderate violence, threat"
TLJ -12A - "moderate violence"
Rogue One - 12A - "moderate violence"
Solo - 12A - "moderate violence"
HP8 - 12A - "moderate threat, injury detail and language"
Hunger Games - 12A - "intense threat, moderate violence and occasional gory moments"
HG2 - 12A - "moderate violence and threat, infrequent strong language"
TLJ -12A - "moderate violence"
Rogue One - 12A - "moderate violence"
Solo - 12A - "moderate violence"
HP8 - 12A - "moderate threat, injury detail and language"
Hunger Games - 12A - "intense threat, moderate violence and occasional gory moments"
HG2 - 12A - "moderate violence and threat, infrequent strong language"
Not only are they pitched for this audience, they're not even at the highest end of YA/12a bracket.
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I wouldn't use the word 'mistaken' as the dynamic is complicated. Short answer is probably 'No, it's not solely aimed at children. It's a broad range campaign aimed at maintaining a very unique situation'. Bit more involved answer is that it looks like it's aimed at children because the most prominent marketing is aimed at children, because that's where you're most actively trying to establish brand loyalty, which is already established in your largest customer base, who currently make up the bulk of merchandising (and movie ticket) sales. The people who are the target of this:
If we're just talking merchandising, SW toy sales are unique in that their core customer base didn't do this:
And that customer base is wildly active. Think of it like a huge spike in a stock market; an aberrant wave in what's usually a sine wave of waxing and waning interest. Hugely powerful entities grew up around and came to be engaged in maintaining this spike and riding this one particular wave, knowing that due to human lifespan, there's a built-in force (ha) that will drive this spike down, a point at which it will exit stage right beyond the screen, and those entities being built-around to its level of income and hence currently desperately needing to re-seed the next generation.
The Lucas quote about SW being for 12-year olds - while maybe true about his intentions - is separate from the larger end result of multiple industries getting involved and growing around it until it became very clearly not aimed at children and more aimed at growing with and around its aging and ballooning (due to simple overall population increase) fanbase.
In an aside (sorry for mentioning something you Spoons already know) it created the "Birth of the modern blockbuster" regarding the usage of SW's structure as a template to manufacture as-broad-as-possible-inoffensive appeal until we've arrived at RN.7's very-pertinent issue with the current state of nothing but attempts at highly-engineered four-quadrant tentpoles and audiences being treated very much like livestock or foie gras geese.
Kind of hard to wade in here with most of the discussion comparing tips of icebergs but basically it's complicated and the short answer is it just looks like it's aimed at children, who do not constitute the bulk of merchandising income. As of now it's still mainly aimed at maintaining that 'spike' and a part of that effort is igniting brand loyalty in children.
Again, this is just about the merchandising aspect. Whether or not these are 'kids movies' is a whole other discussion.
And I'm with you on the enjoying well-executed kids' movies. Good storytelling is good storytelling and all that jazz.
I know some get into a massive deal with star wars vs Star Trek but for me they occupy different genres. One is all about plot action and adventure while the other is more episodic in nature and explores more ideas on diversity, challenging stereotypes.
I'm not assigning any priority, emphasis or value on one over the other, they are just different beasts. What is ironic however is that both franchises have tried to move toward each others stomping ground and have had patchy success in doing so. Maybe we need new franchises and that is where Marvel have succeeded , they have not just hammered the X-men franchise or Spiderman, but have developed newer franchise movies in GoTG etc.
Star wars' original success occurred in an era where science fiction was scarce, now it is a mainstream genre so it can't rely on holding the attention of all 8 year olds to the same degree my generation was. The modern audience is unlikely to be completely obsessed as we were with the original films, because they also have Minecraft....Fortnight....phone games etc etc that demand time and money.
Saw this yesterday. It must be the most bland Star Wars film yet. It didn't really do anything wrong, but the way it played everything so safe was concerning. I can't help but wonder what the previous directors were going to serve up, but surely it would have been more daring.
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Well done “real” Star Wars fans. Keep being the very worst people in the world.
And as for the idea Solo’s Box Office is all to do with some daft righteous reaction to another film you didn’t like...
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See this is why I don't care for the 'audience score' thing (previously mentioned by Revan) with regard to TLJ. It's almost a fact at this stage the film was brigaded on film review sites by right-wing, anti-SJW types who thought her character and Laura Dern's (and other matters) were meant to be some sort of leftist fantasy.
Think they were ready and organised this time after losing their shit over a black guy appearing in the Force Awakens.
Should've known after all the Mary Sue stuff from TFA. Presumably the same people forget the originals featured a diverse band of heroes of multiple species/genders etc while the baddies were Nazi white supremacists.
Speaking of "right-wing, anti-SJW types" did anyone else think that...
Also...
...Lando's "droidist" side-kick was created with them in mind? An on-screen representation of a shouty, militant feminist. The fecking thing was so damn annoying you could imagine a cinema full of neck-beards punching the air when she finally bit the bullet.
Also...
What was the craic with Darth Maul? I'm pretty vague on the timelines of all these movies but wasn't he chopped in half a long before this movie was supposedly set?
Re the 2nd one you need to read about the animated series where this was played out.
Hmmm... Any chance you could some it up in 12 words or less?
Light Saber cauterised wound vital organs intact goes insane gets cybertronic legs.
12 words, exactly. Nice work!
A movie like Inside Out has a pretty sophisticated concept to be targeted at children.
Which is exactly my point. Pixar movies are kids movies targeted at children, but they're also movies which can be enjoyed and appreciated by adults as well.
Isn’t the term ‘family movie’ the one that covers it? Not necessarily so childish that adults can’t get something from it and not so adult that it’s not advised to let kids view it.
I mean that’s what Star Wars is and was right from the start. A family adventure story.
Yeah, I'd say that gets it bang on.
I enjoyed it but I think they could have casted Han better. Woody Harrelson was best actor in it.
Star Trek Discovery (at least season 1) was almost nothing like Star Trek (TOS,TNG,DS9,VOY) despite being set in the same universe and even sharing a few characters. I think there is some scope for more stories in the SW background - Kotor is one way, the old Thrawn novels are another.
Of course constraints apply. It has to involve a action-heavy plot, probably a plot-driven movie (avoided in kotor 2), and I'm guessing some archetypal characters (the sarcastic smuggler crowd, the funny droid, the young-but-getting-wise Jedi, etc) - though again, Kotor 2 subverted most of these.
I’m not really a movie fan, and I’ve never watched a Star Wars movie before, but I watched this in IMAX / 3D at a brand new cinema and it was probably, maybe alongside Dunkirk, my most memorable cinema experience ever.
If there was a fan backlash, who could blame them?
After TLJ, why would they want anything to do with Disney Star Wars?
TLJ wasn't very good.
Not because Rey is super powered, or whatever, but because it's not a very good movie.
The plot is derivative. I feel like I'm watching a worse version of the original trilogy. How they treated Luke in TLJ was absurd. The way they dealt with the Big Bad, I was like "Wow, so you built up this guy as some mega baddie, and then you do him like that?"
Now, this isn't supposed to be a trilogy about Luke and company. Obviously. However, they took someone who is supposed to be one of, if not, the strongest force users in the SW Universes history, and made him an angry old man who shunned every personality trait he exuded in the original trilogy. Luke was also as much a Mary Sue as Rey is, so whatever, that doesn't bother me.
The only way they could redeem this trilogy in my eyes, is if Rey goes to the darkside, or if Revan turns out to be the bad guy behind the bad guy, and Disney embraces the best story line in all of SW from the extended Universe with the Revan character.
Not because Rey is super powered, or whatever, but because it's not a very good movie.
The plot is derivative. I feel like I'm watching a worse version of the original trilogy. How they treated Luke in TLJ was absurd. The way they dealt with the Big Bad, I was like "Wow, so you built up this guy as some mega baddie, and then you do him like that?"
Now, this isn't supposed to be a trilogy about Luke and company. Obviously. However, they took someone who is supposed to be one of, if not, the strongest force users in the SW Universes history, and made him an angry old man who shunned every personality trait he exuded in the original trilogy. Luke was also as much a Mary Sue as Rey is, so whatever, that doesn't bother me.
The only way they could redeem this trilogy in my eyes, is if Rey goes to the darkside, or if Revan turns out to be the bad guy behind the bad guy, and Disney embraces the best story line in all of SW from the extended Universe with the Revan character.
I had no issues with TLJ. Everybody is talking about how Luke was treated, but im kinda glad they are moving away from the original characters. I think Leia should have been done in TLJ too. And then it pushes all the focus for the last movie to the remaining three main characters. Luke had his journey / story during the original trilogy. Whilst its cool having a cameo from him in the first and be a mentor of sorts in the second, im glad / hoping he wont be in the third.
Its a weird one. The actor sorta grew on me but at the same time, I kept picturing HF and thinking, this dude growing up to be him was tough to imagine.
Exactly what I thought
Nah dude, I am not that bad.
But no, it wouldn't make sense. He's dead for like 4000 years, and even at his peak, he wasn't nowhere near a Palpatine level of force user. I hoped that Snoke was Darth Plagueis or failing that Vitiate (if some baddy from the EU has to be here, it should be Vitiate, not Revan), but then the director decided to just kill him without any explanation. Why Revan/Vitiate/Exar Kun/whatever doesn't make sense to be the baddy behind the baddy or Snoke, is cause you just cannot explain that in the movie, and viewers would find things confusing. Plagueis would have made sense cause he is the Emperor's old master, so that alone makes him intimidating and dangerous. However, someone who was good, turned bad, turned good, turned bad, turned good from a couple of videogames set 4000 years before the movies make no sense to be on the movie as the ultimate antagonist.
In the EU, I'm pretty sure 1) Revan is considered one of the strongest Sith/Jedi ever, and 2) He became some sort of force entity that could very well still be around. I could be mistaken, of course.
2) Nope, he finds peace after getting defeated from the combined Republic/Empire team.
1) Naaah. He was strong but certainly not Palps/Vitiate (and a few others) strong.
Still, it is irrelevant. 95% of people won't have a clue who is him and will just confuse them.
The issue isn't with him not being a central character to the trilogy.
In the original series he was a character who redeemed Darth Vader in the end by refusing to give up hope and seeing the good in him. The Last Jedi parks a turd right in the middle of that.
A few seconds after manically trying to kill him and lopping his robo hand off.
I was a preteen when the first one came out.
You mean getting the better of him in a lightsaber battle, while being taunted in an attempt to get him to 'fall to the darkside'.
Trying to kill someone in their sleep completely undoes the resolution of his character arc in the original trilogy, but whatever..
So what you’re saying is, he’s being potrayed as a more than just a two-dimensional, utterly predictable character?
I can see how that must annoy you and everybody else who wanted the plot to work out exactly the way they expected. Disney owes you all an apology.
As does...the OT?
Weirdly enough that's pretty much exactly what he does in the flashback in TLJ- he has a moment of anger, which he controls.
How dare they let a director do his own thing...
I’m tired of trying to understand people’s issues with how Luke is in the TLJ. It didn’t damage him at all - it was character development. Plus I thought his end was perfectly fine and fit the character.
I actually only have a passing interest- you're assuming that I'm a butthurt fanboy but I really don't care outside of correcting where I think people are being misrepresented. I find this kind of 'drama' interesting to watch for some reason. I guess I just like a good dumpster fire.
What I gather from seeing other people discuss their issues with the film was that his behaviour was completely out of character, not a nuanced piece of character development like you seem to be indicating.
There is a difference between getting angry in a confrontation and overcoming that (which was a major resolution to his character), and premeditating a murder and backing out. It changes how the character should be perceived even more than the 'Han shot first' situation.
The 1st pic was him choking some random guard when he wasn't in any real danger. The entire shot including his clothing is framed to show Luke ambiguous/dark side.
Why do grown people get so wound up about Star Wars?