I got around to watching Solo the other week now that it’s streaming on Netflix. Mostly, I was really fascinated to see a film that had come together so rapidly — what does a movie look like when a director jumps in last minute, with a tighter than intended budget, and little say over the actors, script, and basically every other detail?
For the most part, it means making a fairly generic Star Wars movie, without the splash or personality of the any of the last three films. But at the same time, I actually enjoyed it more than Rogue One, which tried to do far too much. Solo can never achieve the swagger that it desires, but it feels like a film put together by a group of fans having a good time. And that’s at least a fun world to spend two hours in.
I’m kind of surprised that Solo was seen as such a misfire as to throw off all of Disney’s plans for Star Wars spinoffs. But at the same time, it may be a blessing. Solo gives Han and Chewie a respectable origin story, but it’s limited — quite literally in the case of Alden Ehrenreich’s acting — by its adherence to canon. Looking elsewhere, to new characters in similar situations, could infuse it with more life than a not-quite impression of Harrison Ford ever could.
Check out nine trailers from this week below.
Game of Thrones
HBO made fans wait through teaser after teaser, but now it’s finally put out a real trailer with actual footage in it for Game of Thrones’ final season. The trailer plays like one long, swelling, emotional buildup toward a conclusion — I’m sure there’s plenty hidden in here, but the consequential details all seem to be tucked away for the show’s concluding episodes. It starts up again on April 14th.
Shazam!
Shazam! continues to look like the most fun anyone has had yet in the DC cinematic universe. The film is about a teenager who magically gets superpowers, then has a bunch of goofy fun figuring out what he can do and how hard it is to actually be a hero, which makes for plenty of comedic mishaps. The film comes out April 5th.
Killing Eve
BBC America put out a new teaser for Killing Eve season two this week. Unfortunately for fans, it’s packed with as many quotes praising the show as it is new footage, but it’s still a fun look at what’s to come for one of last year’s breakout hits. The new season starts April 7th.
Late Night
Mindy Kaling’s Late Night was one of the big hits of this year’s Sundance, selling for $13 million. The comedy has Kaling (who also wrote the film), starring as a writer in an all white, all male late night show’s writing room, as she struggles to get comfortable and shake the place up. It comes to theaters June 7th.
Midsommar
The director of Hereditary is back with a new horror movie. This time, it’s a lot more on the slow and eerie side than the “Oh God, stop with all the creepy children” side of things. But yeah, even with the bright saturated colors, there’s still plenty of scary-looking stuff in here. It comes out August 9th.
Good Omens
Every nerdy person seems to love Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s jovial novel about an angel and a demon joining together to stop the world from ending. And I guess, who wouldn’t enjoy a story that has the Four Horsemen on motorcycles, and Jon Hamm as a seemingly burned-out angel? The show comes out on May 31st.
Aniara
This Swedish sci-fi film is about what happens when a spaceship escaping Earth for Mars ends up going irreparably off course, leaving the humans to fall apart in what is essentially a giant floating hotel. Things end up getting pretty weird. It comes out May 17th.
Tolkien
Here’s the first full-length trailer for Tolkien, Fox’s upcoming biopic of author J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s about how he comes to create Middle-earth, and how its creation is tied in with the outbreak of World War I. The film looks a little generic as far as biopics go, but the way it intersperses the real world with the world Tolkien imagines could make it a bit more interesting. It comes out May 10th.
Brightburn
This James Gunn-produced film puts a neat twist on the Superman story: what if he ended up being super evil? It sounds a little dumb as a pitch, but the film looks like it does a very good job of following that idea through to an appropriately freaky conclusion. It comes out May 24th.
