A Few Words About A few words about...™ Solo: A Star Wars Story -- in 4k UHD Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[dpippel]

I agree with Tino. If Solo had been something that people wanted to see and it was good, it would have done better business no matter when it opened. It's Star Wars, with Han Solo and Chewbacca. And if it was a good film, word of mouth would have given it legs and it would have performed much better than it did beyond opening weekend.

The TLJ uber-hater fanboys are a drop in the box office bucket and I don't think either they or the reported turmoil surrounding the production had any major impact on Solo's numbers. Most of the general public is blissfully unaware of such things. I just don't think that people really wanted to see a movie about Han Solo without Harrison Ford in it. It's that simple as far as I'm concerned. Disney miscalculated.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

To a certain extent I agree with that too.

I think no matter what, Solo was going to be the lowest grossing SW film. But I think it did worse than it could have due to marketing and release date choices by Disney which doubled down on their miscalculation of demand.

 

[TravisR]

How does that theory explain Solo's 65% drop off the weekend after Memorial Day?

By the next weekend, the entire conversation about the movie was "Solo is a bomb" and that gets people into theaters about as much as saying that watching it will give you crabs.

 

[Mark Booth]

Personally, I think the lack of widespread audience interest in SOLO had a little bit to do with the fact that

Spoiler

Disney killed off Solo in The Force Awakens.

Some fans got pissed about that and not going to see SOLO was payback.

Mark

 

[TravisR]

Presumably people had barbecues back when the first six Star Wars films were released over Memorial Day weekend to great success.

That was then and this is now.

Now that the studios have moved up summer, first to early May and now late April, the Memorial Day releases are now the second-tier releases or smaller counter-programming titles.

Exactly. They don't put their biggest movies out on Memorial Day any more because things have changed. And now after Solo, the few studios that didn't already know it have finally gotten the message that Memorial Day is deader than disco and there won't be a BIG movie released on that date for years and years.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Personally, I think the lack of widespread audience interest in SOLO had a little bit to do with the fact that

Spoiler

Disney killed off Solo in The Force Awakens.

Some fans got pissed about that and not going to see SOLO was payback.

I don’t think I agree with that. I wouldn’t be surprised if a small number of people avoided it for that reason, but I don’t think it made a measurable difference in the grosses.

I think it mattered more that it wasn’t connected to the sequel trilogy storyline that the mass audience is currently invested in. If “Solo” had been structured in a way with Harrison Ford playing Han in bookend sequences, perhaps telling Rey how he got his start, and with his story of his younger self on a caper yielding vital information that would have been useful to resolving the conflict in the sequel trilogy, then it becomes essential viewing.

Instead, it was a throwaway story that added little to our understanding of Han and added nothing to our understanding of the sequel trilogy characters or story.

There was some pent up demand for a Death Star/Darth Vader story because the sequel trilogy hadn’t really addressed either. But any pent up demand for a new Han Solo adventure was met by TFA, so the urgency wasn’t there for the audience.

I would be willing to bet that when all is said and done, thanks to home video/streaming/cable, Solo will end up being seen by about as many people that saw Rogue One. They just didn’t feel the need to pay top dollar to see it on a weekend when they had other plans.

 

[dpippel]

By the next weekend, the entire conversation about the movie was "Solo is a bomb" and that gets people into theaters about as much as saying that watching it will give you crabs.

Which means it wasn't getting good word of mouth because it wasn't reaching a large audience. Chicken and egg. I'll throw It out there again, which opened on the no-man's land weekend of September 8 and went on to do almost 3/4 of a billion dollars worldwide.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Which means it wasn't getting good word of mouth because it wasn't reaching a large audience. Chicken and egg.

I know this is probably splitting hairs, but I think it was two different things.

A smaller than expected number of people saw the film, and of those, most liked it and had positive things to say.

A larger than expected number of people chose not to see the film, and then cited that choice as evidence that the film wasn’t actually good.

The story became that people didn’t go the first weekend, and that story drowned out word of mouth from people who did go.

 

[dpippel]

That's logical Josh, but I agree it's probably splitting hairs a bit. Also, be aware that I'm arguing my points from the position of someone who didn't think this film needed to be made in the first place. Then I saw it, was pretty much bored with it, and didn't care for Ehrenreich at all. The experience only cemented my initial thoughts. I'll give it another chance, but I thought that Rogue One was far more enjoyable and "Star Warsy" than Solo, even though it shared similar production troubles.

 

[Tino]

I’ll throw this out there. I think word of mouth was actually good on Solo but it still wasn’t enough to get people interested enough to go see it.

 

[TravisR]

I'll throw It out there again, which opened on the no-man's land weekend of September 8 and went on to do almost 3/4 of a billion dollars worldwide.

I didn't mention it before but I don't see how It is even remotely comparable to Solo's situation. Yes, It was a huge hit on a normally dead weekend but it's like It came out on a weekend like Memorial Day or even Labor Day where a movie is competing for an audience that has more to do than watch a movie that will be on Netflix in well under a year.

 

[dpippel]

Sorry Travis, I just don't buy the supposition that people have better things to do on Memorial Day weekend that go to a Star Wars movie. It seems like a perfect time to me. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.

 

[TravisR]

Sorry Travis, I just don't buy the supposition that people have better things to do on Memorial Day weekend that go to a movie.

Then, with all of the summer blockbuster hopefuls that come out at a nearly week to week basis, why have those movies all not opened on Memorial Day for years now? It's because studios know that they'll be leaving literally tens of millions of dollars on the table if they open then. Disney thought that Star Wars was untouchable & could overcome anything and if it had worked, they'd have probably seriously considered sticking to Memorial Day releases for SW movies but as it stands, they learned an incredibly expensive lesson that won't be repeated.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying that Solo would have been as big of a hit as the rest of the SW movies if it had opened in, say, December. It was always going to be the lowest grossing (adjusting for inflation) of the entire series.

 

[Craig Beam]

If “Solo” had been structured in a way with Harrison Ford playing Han in bookend sequences, perhaps telling Rey how he got his start, and with his story of his younger self on a caper yielding vital information that would have been useful to resolving the conflict in the sequel trilogy, then it becomes essential viewing.

The YOUNG INDIANA JONES approach, eh? Damn, that's brilliant, Josh! I haven't seen SOLO yet (the first time in my life I haven't seen a Star Wars film immediately upon release), but if they'd taken that approach I would've raced out to see it. After the devastating blow of watching my childhood hero die in THE FORCE AWAKENS, seeing Harrison Ford as Han again would've made SOLO a must-see.

 

[Dave H]

I really haven't liked much of Disney Star Wars up to this point. I didn't see this in the theater, but will give the UHD BD a rental and keep my expectations low.

 

[TJPC]

For those of us not in the States, when is “Memorial Day” weekend?

Ah! You mean Victoria Day!

 

[ArnoldLayne]

The whole 'Star Wars Thing' is waaay over. The stories are rehashed and simplistic. Not a fan.

 

[Rob W]

Ah! You mean Victoria Day!

That's always the Monday before Memorial Day - this year was May 21 vs May 27.

 

[Mark Mayes]

Maybe the negative and apathetic reactions were because SWs fans are not the easy marks the studio thought they were and didn't want to bother with a different illustration of a character already perfectly etched in their minds for 41 years now.

 

[TJPC]

I have a stack of movies in 3D from Britain and North America (Black Panther, Avengers IW, Jurassic Park FC) that I haven’t had a chance to watch yet. I enjoyed Solo immensely in the theatre. It will be the first one I watch when it arrives next month!