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[hector13]

I will be seeing Solo.

I know nothing about it, except (probable) “Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs” clarification, Woody Harrelson is in it, Emelia Clark is in it, and people seemed upset about Donald Glover, maybe?

I expect to be fed afterward.

[Dunamisdeos]

I am specifically keeping my knowledge of it low so as to avoid expectations.

I read the old Han Solo prequel book trilogy wayyyyyy back when, and I enjoyed that, and I don't want to be able to make any comparisons because it was so long ago that I forget most of it.

[MrRoboto75]

Does it resolve the age old question of who shot first?

[hector13]

It resolves what he meant by "under 12 parsecs", unless that's a different book.

Probably a different book.

Maybe it resolves what he did to Lando to make him upset at him in Empire.

[scriver]

and people seemed upset about Donald Glover, maybe?

What? I've seen nothing but praise over the casting of him as Lando.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Glover is like the only redeeming performance noted in the reviews I've read.

[Egan_BW]

It resolves what he meant by "under 12 parsecs", unless that's a different book.

Probably a different book.

Maybe it resolves what he did to Lando to make him upset at him in Empire.

Pretty sure it's stated in Empire that Lando is pissed because Han stole his ship.

[scriver]

He won it fairly, honestly he did!

[hector13]

I saw it. It was alright. Made a number of references to things (including Masters of Teras Kasi, of all things) but didn’t shove ‘em down your throat. Made room for a sequel, as you might expect.

Also, not entirely sure how it’s a feminist movie.

Donald Glover’s Billy Dee Williams impression drops off a few times.

[Dunamisdeos]

Well they have a female protagonist in the main movies, so it's all feminist now. That's what feminism is, you know.

[IcyTea31]

I saw it. It was alright. --

Also, not entirely sure how it’s a feminist movie.

Pretty much my thoughts. The storyline with L3 and her droid liberation was pretty much pointless pandering, but luckily didn't get in the way of the actually pretty decent and intriguing heist storyline. It wasn't a great movie, but it was alright and had some nice action.

[Reelya]

Appliance liberation: "you go, grill!"

The main problem with throwaway "justice" side-plots or adding things like that in a prequel is that you're constrained by the fact that it's never again referenced in the main story. e.g. if there's some "droid liberation" class warfare thing in Solo, then it's pretty clear that it failed to grain traction due to not being a thing in any of episodes IV to VIII. So while that one movie might have that narrative,  the implications are that it's going exactly nowhere and was ultimately futile. There's also the problem that droids are tools created used and owned by people. If sentient droids have equal rights, people stop buying sentient droids at all, meaning no more droids at all. Imagine if refrigerators became sentient then demand equal rights to the humans in the house.

Also, the "letting the racing animals run free" thing is a token gesture at best, since the high-tech owners will chased down and perhaps shoot the poor animals now. e.g. it's like busting open a racing stable and giving the horses a whack so they run out, and saying "you're free! you're free!" then getting the hell out of there and going on with your life, after high-fiving your accomplices. feral race horses aren't native to the environment and will bust up the soil with their heavy hooves, while living short disease-ridden lives.

[Putnam]

EDIT: ill-advised

[Reelya]

You have a sample size of exactly two films, and the first film was when basically everyone in the world was talking about that. you couldn't google the previous Star Wars movie at all, without coming across those TLJ/SJW articles going on about Rotten Tomatoes scores or whatever, and how anyone who didn't like the movie was some sort of closet Nazi.

It's not like TLJ came out then I suddenly *decided* to look for feminist star wars articles, because that wouldn't have occurred to me as a thing to even think about, before it happened. I noticed, basically because when TLJ came out the story was everywhere, complete media saturation. And I'm not someone who actually reads that many "geek" journals or anything. Just news.com.au for mainstream news and slashdot to skim over some tech news, that's basically it. So it's not like I delved deep looking for SJW - Star Wars related links, myself. Basically all the links I provided were a couple of basic google searches then picking from at most the first 2-3 links on the first page of results. e.g. if you google "alt right star wars" there are countless pages of articles across both mainstream newspapers and online journals all saying the exact same thing. Of course, if the fans of the movie are portraying haters as all alt-right neo-nazis then the assumption has to be made that haters are all against specific things in the movie e.g. it's too "progressive" or some bullshit like that, rather than focusing on what actual criticisms exist. Point is: the movie isn't really all that "progressive" anyway, but the media wanted to make it out that that was the sticking point, as a means of defaming the haters and sidelining legitimate criticism.

The point being, a lot of people out there were trying to drag politics into the discussion surrounding the movie. It seemed to be legit to bring that up as a discussion point, here, because that's an important part of how the fandom itself is going to be shaped in the future. The point of noting mainstream sources trying to do the same labeling with Solo is that they're doing it as an echo of the social commentary that surrounded TLJ, basically trying to glue their politics to the franchise (with some pretty tenuous logic), but they're also trying to shape the discussion into one about who's "worthy" to be a fan. e.g. note how they guy in the UK paper The Independent (a mainsteam publication, which makes it more relevant) tries to suggest that non-sjws are in fact Sith.

[Madman198237]

How and why are people confused about the 12 parsecs thing?

The parsec is a unit of astronomical distance (several light-years long, in fact), and Han took a bunch of risks and close shaves with stars and the Maw (a giant cluster of black holes) to make it happen, compared to the safer routes that are longer (and thus slower).

And no matter what Disney says in Solo (I'll see it soon, probably), that is the story, and I'm sticking to it