I'll believe this once their is an official word from Disney or Lucasfilm.  I just read an article previous to this that there are/were currently nine Star Wars films in some sort of production phase.  The thinking was the Episode IX, the Obi-wan film, the Boba Fett film, the Rain Johnson trilogy (hopefully not the saga of Broom boy on Canto Bight), and a possible trilogy from the Game of Thrones people who were rumored to be doing something.  Now just a few days later we see they are putting the breaks on everything.

Solo "failed" for two reasons primarily.  There was extreme bad press throughout the entire production which included the firing of the original directors for supposedly trying to make it a slap stick comedy.  Second is the insistence of the May release date.  When the Disney purchase came about, I admit I was annoyed when TFA was set to be released in December instead of May.  Now, with all the Marvel movies, I much rather have Star Wars in December.  It worked well for Disney for three movies, but they had to change it.  I don't buy the whole "we want Star Wars back in May" rationale either since there was never even a hint of a May release date for Episode IX.  They really should have moved Solo to December.  It was too close to TLJ and maybe they could have used the extra time on it for post production and advertising.

I'm not sure that Star Wars can support multiple movies a year like Marvel can.  You don't have the Avengers equivalent in Star Wars.  All the story films are focusing on existing characters from one of the trilogies.  There isn't a "get the team together to battle the big bad guy" type plot that can fit into Star Wars.

The one thing that I keep seeing is the thought to go somewhere else, namely the Old Republic.  That is a pretty open time period considering the new canon.  I wonder how a movie set in the Star Wars universe would work without any ties to the saga films.  I also keep hearing a desire for a Yoda film.  I'm not sure that would work.  I thought about a series of Sith films to show the lineage from Darth Bane to Darth Sidious, but I doubt that could work on the big screen.  If they were hidden for 1,000 years, not sure how you could play a Jedi vs. Sith plot without stomping on the thought that the Sith were extinct by TPM.  It might be able to work in the novels or comics.

The box office numbers have been disheartening.  Which is a disappointment, because despite everything that transpired with changing directors midstream I think think movie was better than a lot of fans expected.  I'm still hopeful that maybe we can explore the Imperial era underworld of Star Wars.  A Boba Fett project seems like it's going to exist within that timeframe.  And frankly?  I hope that this isn't the last we see of Han, Chewbacca, Lando, and even Qi'ra.  The prospects of further exploring the Star Wars underworld is intriguing, especially Han's work for Jabba the Hutt.

And on the topic of Qi'ra...  She does conjur up some interesting notions after seeing her in SOLO.  How so? 

*THEORY*
There seem to be some interesting potential links between Qi'ra and Rey.  First of all?  There is a remarkable resemblance between Emilia Clark and Daisy Ridley.  And their accents in the films are similar.  I have heard Daisy Ridley say that was a deliberate choice for the role and that something might come of that at a later date.  Now while the question of Rey's parents SEEMS to have been answered by the events of THE LAST JEDI, was it really?  The mirror test didn't tell us anything other than Rey essentially raised herself.  And Kylo Ren might have been lying to Rey in order to hurt and control her.  Why?  My theory brings us to one of the unanswered questions of the Sequel Trilogy:  what drove apart Han and Leia's marriage?  Was it really Ben Solo's fall?  Or could it have been something else?

What if Qi'ra came back into the mix.  In the events of Bloodline it seemed that Han and Leia were very much living separate lives as she was a Senator.  Could Han have fallen back in with his old flame?  And could that relationship have yielded a child in Rey?  Han seemed to get a sense of who Rey was very quickly during the trip to Takodana.  And Maz Kanata asked Han quite pointedly "who's the girl"?  The added family conflict of a marriage broken by infidelity may have driven Ben Solo that much more into the influence of Snoke.

As for Qi'ra?  She's working for a former Sith Lord.  And since she would now be answering directly to Maul in her capacity in Crimson Dawn, would she have come close enough to him to potentially learn to use the Force?  There's also the matter of some production code names.  For TFA the code name for Rey was Kira.  And in Episode 9 there is a new female character code named Mara.  Could this E9 "Mara" in fact be an older Qi'ra?

*/END THEORY*

It's a theory,  but I think it could be one that might tie up some loose ends.

That would be an interesting theory if it pans out.  However, so far, it doesn't seem like Disney has an overall plan for Star Wars.  Your theory would require more coordination that what has been shown to exist so far.  The events of TLJ seem to have been completely up to Johnson with no links to any plans laid out by Abrams from TFA.  However, Abrams is now back for Episode IX and Johnson has said Abrams is free to change anything from TLJ.

Honestly, Lucasfilm needs to take a page out of Marvel's book and layout a road map similar to what Marvel did with Phase 1, 2, and 3.

I think the May release date more than any "fan" boycott is what hurt Solo.  We just had TLJ this past December.  They should have pushed Solo to December.  I think Disney had some "fear" of Avatar when it was supposed to come out this winter.  They shouldn't have messed with their formula.

I certainly like the sequels better than the prequels.  The only problem is that it seems they are making this up as they go and don't have an overall vision for the three movies.  I would bet that things in TLJ would have been quite different if JJ was doing all three movies.  I can understand the hate for Rose, not because she is Asian, but because she is a bad character.  She really wasn't needed.  I really didn't like the forced psuedo love triangle that was put into the movie.  The numbered films are supposed to the Skywalker's story.  I can understand the whole "let it go" thing and moving on, but who knows if we will see an Episode X and beyond.  Really, the easy and obvious storyline would have been to make Rey Luke's daughter and continue the story through her.  You can still kill off the big three and pass the torch, but you still make the story of the Skywalker family.  I think Rian Johnson was a bit hamfisted with the "anyone can be a Jedi" thing.  I think we already knew that since the prequels had maybe one or two non-Skywalker Jedi in them.

As for the anthology films, most of the prequels should have been the Clone Wars equivalent of the Battle of Scariff.  For those of us who grew up with the OT, we always wanted to know about the Clone Wars that Obi-wan spoke about.  In the PT, we get one movie of little Anakin that has little to do with the Clone Wars.  Essentially, that movie could have been 10-15 mins.  Then when we finally get to see the Clone army come into existence, we get about 10 minutes of the Clone Wars, and only the opening battle.  When we get to the final prequel, the Clone Wars are essentially over.  I'm fine with the Clone Wars cartoon, but I would have rather seen that type of action on the big screen instead of the boredom of TPM and AOTC.

The militant Legends fans are going to lose their minds.

What I expected to see in this movie is pretty much in the synopsis.  How Han and Chewie meet and how Han wins the Falcon from Lando.

In the old EU, we had the whole concept of the life debt as Han saved Chewie from Imperial slavery.  I doubt they are going to go that route, and I really won't be surprised if they dump the whole life debt concept.

I would hope to see the Kessel run to tie this into ANH a bit and how Han came into debt with Jabba.

I really don't have the highest of expectations for this one.  I do hope it gets pushed back to December.  I think it has a better chance than it would in May.  I can't understand why Disney didn't put it there in the first place.

Quote from: GrandMoffNick on December 19, 2017, 05:36 PM

Perfect movie? Not close. Terrible garbage? Calm down

I don't know if I would call the movie garbage.  It's certainly not the worst of the 9 made thus far, but Rotten Tomatoes has an audience score of 55%.  In contrast, TFA holds a score of 88%.  That's a big difference.  There were some cool scenes and I even like a lot of the concepts they were going after, but the final product itself is something of a hot mess in my opinion.  Here's how I'd rank the 9:

#1 - Empire Strikes Back
#2 - New Hope
#3 - Rogue One
#4 - Force Awakens
#5 - Return of the Jedi
#6 - Revenge of the Sith
#7 - Last Jedi
#8 - Attack of the Clones
#9 - Phantom Menace

Maybe my expectations are too high for a SW film, and maybe I'll like it more in a second viewing, but slotting it behind ROTS should give you some indication of what I thought of it as a whole.  I think its fair to also call out that a lot of big SW fans (like most of us on this site) are going to defend the movie to their last breath just because its Star Wars.  I recall someone once saying that Hasbro could release a Poop-on-a-stick carded figure and it would still sell...I think there's some of that going on here as well, where people are willing to overlook or ignore the flaws of the movie because they just want to like it.  I really want to like it, but I'm not there yet.

The rotten tomatoes score has been shown to be largely due to bots spamming the site with negative reviews.

I am still waiting for clone Luke and clone Vader to show in the sequel trilogy like he promised.  He IS a close personal friend of George Lucas.