![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraOk! Behind the first cut is my general reaction plus a couple of specific moments I liked. I wouldn't call these *big* spoilers but they're definitely spoilers.
Overall I liked it much more than I thought I was going to! Going in I was like "I am mostly seeing this movie for Lando and will try to tolerate this ugly ersatz Han" but in fact it was fast-paced and there was a train job and other hijinks and I laughed a lot and enjoyed the music, so yay. Fave bits include Han trying to pull the turn-sideways trick with the speeder early on, the Imperial recruiting video with the altered Imperial March, and the leg chain (I will always love the "handcuffed together" trope).
Now I'm going to leave a little space, and then behind my second cut I'm going to have some opinions about this movie through the particular lens of being interested in *women's* stories. I won't name any characters or specify any plot points but my general level of pissed-offed-ness or lack thereof is probably an information that could shape one's guesses about might or might not happen to various characters at certain points. I'll also mention whether or not it passes the Bechdel Test.
Space... the final fronnnnooo, that's not right here. :)
So I feel like Star Wars is trying so hard to have women in its universe now, and the problem is that this is ultimately a long-spear movie, and the women just don't have as much spear. Some of these dude characters have forty years of canon and paracanon and it-used-to-be-extended-canon haloed around them and it can't help but give their interactions some weight and excitement. The women, on the other hand... it's a little frustrating to think that Solo woman character x would have loved to meet other-movie woman character a, or wonder if Solo woman character y ever crossed paths with other-movie woman character b, but in fact none of those things ever happened, that we've seen, because back in the eras of a or b the universe didn't have so many women yet, and all the xs and ys have to be new, they aren't already sitting around to be picked up and expanded and tied into the way we have all these dudes around. I actually didn't think Solo did a terrible job by its women characters - I was braced at some points for it to be much worse and I appreciate some choices they made - but what I really want is for more women to feel like threads running through this whole cinematic universe, instead of sequins stitched on to bedazzle local bits of it, if that makes sense? (And maybe a Bechdel Test pass, sigh.)
Overall I liked it much more than I thought I was going to! Going in I was like "I am mostly seeing this movie for Lando and will try to tolerate this ugly ersatz Han" but in fact it was fast-paced and there was a train job and other hijinks and I laughed a lot and enjoyed the music, so yay. Fave bits include Han trying to pull the turn-sideways trick with the speeder early on, the Imperial recruiting video with the altered Imperial March, and the leg chain (I will always love the "handcuffed together" trope).
Now I'm going to leave a little space, and then behind my second cut I'm going to have some opinions about this movie through the particular lens of being interested in *women's* stories. I won't name any characters or specify any plot points but my general level of pissed-offed-ness or lack thereof is probably an information that could shape one's guesses about might or might not happen to various characters at certain points. I'll also mention whether or not it passes the Bechdel Test.
Space... the final fronnnnooo, that's not right here. :)
So I feel like Star Wars is trying so hard to have women in its universe now, and the problem is that this is ultimately a long-spear movie, and the women just don't have as much spear. Some of these dude characters have forty years of canon and paracanon and it-used-to-be-extended-canon haloed around them and it can't help but give their interactions some weight and excitement. The women, on the other hand... it's a little frustrating to think that Solo woman character x would have loved to meet other-movie woman character a, or wonder if Solo woman character y ever crossed paths with other-movie woman character b, but in fact none of those things ever happened, that we've seen, because back in the eras of a or b the universe didn't have so many women yet, and all the xs and ys have to be new, they aren't already sitting around to be picked up and expanded and tied into the way we have all these dudes around. I actually didn't think Solo did a terrible job by its women characters - I was braced at some points for it to be much worse and I appreciate some choices they made - but what I really want is for more women to feel like threads running through this whole cinematic universe, instead of sequins stitched on to bedazzle local bits of it, if that makes sense? (And maybe a Bechdel Test pass, sigh.)
