Vigilante is a classic comic-relief sidekick. He is actually unusually fleshed out and has his own moments, but nonetheless a big part of his purpose in the show is to keep the comedy beat steady.

I desperately wanted to like the movie. I feel that way about all big budget scifi and fantasy, I want it to be really good so I will enjoy it, and so it will be popular and people will make even more.

I mean we knew it was the same universe from the helmet!

I think all Star Wars movies are intended to be entertaining and popular. Rogue One is definitely a bit more serious in tone than most other Star Wars, but only in the same sense big budget Hollywood war movies were more serious in tone. And the idea was still for lots and lots of people to be entertained by the…

Again, it is possible I am being influence by the EU and maybe prequels, but it really never occurred to me Vader would completely avoid melee combat. I think early on I more or less saw “Lord Vader” as sort of like a medieval knight, and later on I also understood the samurai references. But I always saw those as…

I’ll admit I don’t get the slasher film references. Vader in Rogue One was operating in a military capacity, serving the role of something like a tank rolling through infantry.  Or like a knight in full plate armor on an armored horse charging through a bunch of lightly armed farmers.  Something like that.

Although this goes against my normal instincts, I would not mind if there was an “official” edit of Rogue One using the “deep fake” technology from Book of Boba Fett to improve on Grand Moff Tarkin and Leia.  I know unofficial edits like that exist, but for whatever reason it matters to me that they are not official.

I would agree the fairest comparison for Solo is Rogue One, and Rogue One was way more successful at building an audience.

I’m beginning to wonder if I now just don’t like movies. It is rare for me to be watching a movie these days and not be feeling like I wish it would end so I can get to the next streaming show on my list instead.

Sounds like you will only need around 10 hours to find out!

Of course she kinda forgot the SECOND part of the Robin Hood thing . . . .

Absolutely! It also has the inherent drama of the Rebels just barely getting away with the plans, this time, and setting up the idea they were going to be pursued hotly by Vader/the Empire.

I guess that never occurred to me as a kid, that Vader was above using his lightsaber on nobodies. Because he sure wasn’t above picking up nobodies with his hands and crushing their throats!

Darth Vader equals Kenobi in a light saber fight in the first movie. OK, sure, in retrospect it was filmed a little clunky. But in my child’s mind, seeing it first run in the theater, that was totally awesome (“You should NOT have come back.”—still gives me chills!).

As an aside, I am not sure The Last Jedi “backlash” really explains Solo’s poor performance. For all the whining online, The Last Jedi basically did comparably to The Empire Strikes Back (adjusting for inflation and such), and much better than Attack of the Clones. In that sense it was a pretty successful second-movie.

The cost overrun certainly hurt, but it also grossed under 40% of Rogue One.

So Solo had some fans, but it is objectively by far the least successful Star Wars movie. Rogue One was way more successful, The Force Awakens was arguably the second most successful after the original Star Wars, and even The Rise of Skywalker, which I would argue was a way worse movie on the inherent merits, was much…

Yeah, what would it even mean in practice for the article or the series to “examine” the undoubtedly true premise that a woman of color could not have pulled off the same scam with the same level of success, and would likely have been punished more harshly for trying? Were they supposed to show a woman of color trying…

Solo got very meh audience reaction scores, and is by far the least successful Star Wars movie in terms of inflation-adjusted box office. The way these things work, that is indicative of a lack of repeat viewings and weak word of mouth.

So I think Rogue One was a success because it was also a pretty faithful adaptation of a classic type of movie, the “rag-tag group goes on a suicide mission” war movie. Interestingly, that was a popular type of movie in the same period as the Westerns that inspired a lot of other Star Wars content were at their peak…