A hundred million disappointments!

Look, I'm not an economist or a movie industry person, but how is a hundred million dollars not a shit ton of money? Becuase Disney is reportedly disappointed that the film has only made a hundred million so far, which is like fifty million less then they'd anticipated, and sure, they probably could have taken their time and made a better movie, but they could have also had more realistic expectations.

Pictured: Disney's expectations.

What? I don't know how else
to convince you. It wasn't great.

Let me start by saying that I liked the movie. I mean, it wasn't the best Star Wars movie, but it was far from the worst. In fact, I'd say there are at least three non-animated, non-Holiday Special, not made for TV Ewok nonsense movies in the series that are objectively inferior to Solo. Ok, it wasn't the most financially successful St'Wars (it's like, an abbreve for Star Wars-no? Ok...) but how much a movie makes has little relation to how good it is...yes, that's a dig about Infinity War.

Also, it wasn't helping Solo's chances that there was a ton of negative news surrounding the troubled production. Like, the directors getting fired, the star needing an acting coach, Ron Howard having to come in and re-shoot the whole thing. It was a super-public mess so we all went in with an attitude of 'how bad can it be?'

Above: how bad it could have been.

Hollis, seen here pilloried in the town
square answered questions and endured
rotten vegetables throw by the crowd.

With that in mind, I think it was better than anyone expected and certainly better than Disney seems to think it is. Here's a statement a Disney executive released today:

"We are all over it and will spend a lot of time digging into why things happened the way they did in various markets."

-Dave Hollis, Disney President 

of Worldwide Distribution, and chief 

executive in charge of mea culpas

He went on to suggest that maybe a movie-a-year isn't the best strategy and I think he's right there. I mean, they churn out two or three Marvel movies a year, and they usually make money, but are they all great? For every Black Panther or Thor: Ragnarok isn't there an Iron Man 3 or a Captain America? They need to take a break...unless they're going to make a Lando Calrissian movie, then by all means do that, and then take a break.

My harshest criticism of Solo is that it wasn't Lando.

"Solo: It's ok. See it, don't, whatever."

-Disney's marketing people

But really, I don't think this is about Star Wars-sorry, St'Wars (yes, I'm still trying to make St'Wars happen) wearing out it's welcome yet. Again, I'm not like a business analyst or anything, but I kind of think this is on Disney's marketing people. Solo is a decent summer mindless popcorn movie and that's cool but Disney spent like months marketing it that way. They put it out there that it would be an inconsequential, one-off, stand-alone, just for fun, fill in the gaps side-story, so why get excited? Of course it's not Episode IX, but they could have made it feel a little more like something to look forward to. Instead it felt like they just chucked it out to hold us over for the next real entry in the series. And that's not how you get the nerds to bring plastic lightsabers to opening night, that's how you tell us it's ok to wait for it to come out on Netflix.

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I don't really do movie reviews on this blog unless I want to nitpick plot holes (again: this), so I'll just say Solo was fun and you should see it if St'Wars is your thing. But go to a matinee, Disney's got enough money.

"Take that back you will. Right. Goddamn. Now."

-Disney Spokesmuppet 

Yoda, not screwing around