Did we need a standalone Han Solo movie in the Star
Wars universe? No, no we didn’t. But no one asked me, and in the
grand scheme of things, unnecessary as it is, we could have done much worse
than Solo: A Star Wars Story. Granted, we also could have done
much better. It’s a wildly mixed bag, but with the utter chaos behind the
scenes—the ousting of directors Chris Lord and Phil Miller 2/3 of the way
through production, the recasting, the rewrites, the reshoots—worse was always
on the table as a very real possibility.
When Lucasfilm first announced the Star WarsStory movies, I was down with the idea of standalone films that
examine heretofore unexplored corners of that far, far away galaxy. There’s so
much room to move and so many stories to tell, not just the tale of the
Skywalker clan, their crew, and the Jedi. I’m not as into the idea of using
them to rehash characters we already know (I sure as hell don’t want a Boba
Fett movie). But despite what I want, we’re getting Solo: A Star Wars
Story next month. And there’s another new trailer.
In a summer of rehashed franchises, I quite enjoyed
Jurassic World (it isn’t a great movie,
but it’s a damn lot of fun), and Mad Max: Fury Road is one
of best, most eyebrow-scorching action films in years. If you were hoping that
Terminator Genisys, the fifth installment in the
killer-robots-from-the-future saga, was going to fall somewhere in this realm,
you will be disappointed. Lazy storytelling, messy CGI, and bland action
combine to form a movie that the most natural reaction to is a slump-shouldered
sigh and a muttered, “I wish that was better.” Intended to launch a new
trilogy, it doesn’t bring enough, or any, new ideas to the table to warrant
more.
This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. We’ve heard
that Terminator Genisys rewrites the franchise timeline, and
that one scene features Arnold Schwarzenegger’s older, grizzled T-800 throwing
down with his original 1984 self. There have been glimpses, and we don’t get to
see much in this new clip, but we get the beginning, and that’s enough to pique
my interest. Check it out after the jump.
