"Solo" Discussion

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Khas
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"Solo" Discussion

Post by Khas » Sun Nov 04, 2018 9:26 pm

Alright, having re-watched "Solo: A Star Wars Story", I thought I'd talk about what this movie added to the Star Wars canon. Or in some cases, brought back in.

Much like in Legends, in Solo....

- Han was a former Imperial Navy cadet who got kicked out for being too independent - though in this case, he got sent into the Imperial Army first.

- The Imperial Naval Academy is on Carida.

- The early years of the Empire were ones when crime syndicates ran rampant.

- The Maw is also canon again - though in this case, it's a mysterious "gravity well" as opposed to a cluster of black holes.

Solo also confirms that most starships in SW are powered by fusion reactors.

Now, as for things Solo adds...

- Kessel is surrounded by something called "The Maelstrom" - which is what you'd get if the Mutara Nebula and the Hoth Asteroid Field somehow had a lovechild.

- Coaxium is a form of hypermatter that's extracted from planets, is used as hyperdrive fuel, and is volatile as hell. 100 kilograms of the stuff is said to be enough to power a fleet of 12 ISDs. Putting a single drop of it into the Millennium Falcon's fusion reactor was enough to give the Falcon enough energy to break free of the Maw's gravity.

- Coaxium has to be refined, or it will eventually explode. And when a case of 100 kilograms of coaxium DOES explode fairly early in the movie, they produce what looks like a low-kiloton explosion - that is, before sucking a lot of the surrounding matter into hyperspace, and causing the mountain that it detonated on to collapse.

- The main crime syndicate of the movie - "Crimson Dawn" - is led by Darth Maul.

I think that's it for now, regarding tech and lore...

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2046
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Re: "Solo" Discussion

Post by 2046 » Mon Nov 05, 2018 3:17 pm

So it sounds like Disney canon reactor tech is a totally new combo thing, different than both Lucas canon reactor tech ("diesel starships") and the EU's whatever-someone-wrote-today stuff of old. It's a gas engine that can be boosted with a shot of nitrous, basically, yet all the parts are perfectly happy about it.

More importantly, if a nebula and an asteroid field made whoopie, would anyone even know if the nebula smoked afterward?

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Re: "Solo" Discussion

Post by Khas » Tue Nov 06, 2018 4:09 am

Well, I wouldn't say that the Falcon was "happy" about it, as the energy released from putting the coaxium in the fusion reactor shook things up pretty badly.

But basically, what Disney has established is this: the Death Star was the first thing to actually use a hypermatter reactor, and it wasn't until shortly before the events of TFA that hypermatter reactors became small enough to put on starships - and the only faction which has figured THAT out is... the First Order.

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Re: "Solo" Discussion

Post by 2046 » Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 pm

They have hypermattered up the Death Star? Oy. So, in the Disney SW3U, the Death Star superlaser power is fusion, boosted by hypermatter, and then boosted by kyber crystals. C'mon, they aren't tossing in any other boosty things?

Boost boost boost boost, boost boost boost.

What a messy new canon.

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Re: "Solo" Discussion

Post by Darth Spock » Fri Nov 23, 2018 1:18 pm

2046 wrote:
Mon Nov 05, 2018 3:17 pm
More importantly, if a nebula and an asteroid field made whoopie, would anyone even know if the nebula smoked afterward?
I’m more worried about the tentacle monster hiding in the vape cloud. Speaking of which, I’m accustomed to space critters in SW, and naturally occurring FTL in ST, but that giant space kraken must have had one heckuva fusion fart drive to stay out of the gravity well as long as it did. I haven’t seen such an unusual 2D black hole since ST 2009 either.
Khas wrote:
Tue Nov 06, 2018 4:09 am
But basically, what Disney has established is this: the Death Star was the first thing to actually use a hypermatter reactor, and it wasn't until shortly before the events of TFA that hypermatter reactors became small enough to put on starships - and the only faction which has figured THAT out is... the First Order.
This whole coaxium/hypermatter thing is a bit confusing. At one point someone said Kessel was the only source of the stuff. Whut? I’m guessing they meant the only place that wasn’t under heavy Imperial control. Maybe they didn’t want to bother messing with the Maelstrom so they left it for the local crime bosses. I don’t know about hyper reactors, but I did get the impression that this is the same stuff they’d been using in the FTL hyperdrives all along, just crazy expensive, especially if the Empire is hoarding the stuff. It does make me wonder what that glowing green goop from Malastare was used for. That brings the fuel variety count up to 3.

Oh, we also get to see the DL-44 in full rifle configuration before being broken down into a sidearm for Han.

As for the movie itself, I thought it was actually pretty good overall. If it weren’t for the direction being taken in general, the main trilogy in particular, this would have been an adequate successor to Rogue One. Very weird in places, but fun overall. It did do one thing perfectly:
**SPOILERS**
showing that you can very clearly communicate to the audience that Han can shoot his would be killer first without being a murderer himself. Although, the rest of that scene…. What exactly was Beckett’s plan, wandering off down the beach? Was he hoping that whoever won the standoff he left behind would just lose interest and forget about him? L3-37 wasn’t overdone as an SJW droid either, heck that doors been left cracked open since ’77 anyway. I do have to wonder what they were thinking with her fate however. It almost looks as though they are trying to ruin one of sci-fi’s most iconic vessels. Despite the very first two films pretty clearly showing that droids are basically immortal as long you scrounge up some spare parts, they still try to play up its “death,” and then what do they do? Oh, here’s a good idea, let’s take a highly individualistic droid who takes major issue with the rights of droids as sentient, aaaaaaaand then put her in a robot coma, and haphazardly plop the remaining semiconsciousness into a starship’s computer where it has no mobility, no decision making capacity, and can only analyze star charts on demand between being parked, lost in a bet, stolen and shot at. Thanks Disney, that’s not sadistic or creepy at all. On that point, I’ll go ahead and say it, they’re either ramping up to something, or they really are morons. I wonder how that is supposed to factor in with the peculiar dialect from ESB, or the TLJ novelization’s passing reference to the Falcon having a cantankerous AI, operating with no less than three droid brains, one of which has “a fondness for both romantic gossip and dirty jokes.” (I keep putting off posting my thoughts on TLJ, but I will say that particular novelization is one of the least organized jumbles of words I’ve yet seen in Star Wars, not to mention a major source of nerf material.)
Beyond that, the sexual implications between Lando and Ms. Droid served no purpose, I’m surprised Disney even hinted at it, but it did give me a chuckle remembering a scene from KOTOR. I remember thinking that they were originally going for a kind of KOTOR vibe when the Rebels cartoon first came out. On that note, besides cranking out films too fast and without enough thought being put into them, this is another thing I think Disney is doing wrong with the franchise, trying too hard to incorporate what would have been EU material.

In SOLO it was the inclusion of Darth Maul. It served no purpose within the film, and just how many theater goers do they think were avid followers of the animated shows? If the idea is to throw in surprising details like that out of the blue with the hope that your average cinema goer is going to transform into a fanboy and start reading/watching all that extra crap, well that’s a bad move. I noticed something similar with comments I saw criticizing the sequel trilogy, regarding how the First Order came out of nowhere, and wondering why Leia is still leading “rebels” outside of the New Republic. Well, the novel Bloodines actually did a pretty good job setting the stage for how everyone ended up where they did. Having combined continuity is nice for fleshing out the universe, but needing to have it clean up sloppy writing in the main series is terrible. Most people aren’t chomping at the bit to consume every scrap they throw out, the only reason I read it myself was because it was on sale for $1, and with the generally good reviews, I figured “why not?” I’ll probably get around to reading the SOLO novelization eventually, but at this rate I’m beginning to lose interest, even as an old Star Wars fan. I liked the SOLO movie fine, but a new film every year is too much. They’re on a fast track for franchise fatigue, even without alienating fans with unpopular products and policy.

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