Solo wasn't good. World building doesn't make a good movie. A good movie, first and foremost, needs to feel like an experience, not a summary of events. Solo utterly failed in this regard. All the dialogue was meant to tell the audience something. Nothing was set up in the first two acts with the movie rushing from "moment" to "moment" without he sort of meainingful development that would give these moments weight.
We never see the characters act like actual people so we never have any reason to give a shit. There's no narrative buildup for al the "dramatic" moments, so we still don't give a shit.
Solo is the only star wars movie which is guilty of this.
Rogue One had it's own issues, completely lifeless acting, terrile dialogue dilvery, ect. But at least it set up the moments in the third act. Solo was just an extended highlights reel, it wasn't a movie.
Solo felt like an experience to me. Isn't the purpose of dialogue to tell the audience things? What about Han needing to go back and get Qi'ra? Was that not set up in the first act?
And imo, worldbuilding, in a franchise as big as Star Wars, can't MAKE a good movie, but it certainly can get it closer to being one, and in this case, it did.
All the characters have realistic motivations, actions to achieve their goals, and good dialogue/acting which shows what type of person they are. How else do you act like real people?
Rogue One had lifeless acting, and terrible dilevery? Well, then I must disagree with your definition of the words "lifeless" and "terrible"!
No. The purpose of dialogue is to have the character act in a way from which the movie watcher can infer info. Dialogue has to be natural, otherwise the character soeaking is no longer a character, but an exposition device. If a character is an exposition device, we have no reason to care what happens to them.
In the first two acts of solo, almost all the dialogue is exposition that you wouldn't otherwise expect of the characters to say. Solo sees his bae in the opening of th emovie but instead of a typical greeting or comment, Solo explicitly tells her
-> that they wanna get off world
-> he now has what they need to get off world
-> that they're doing jobs for a crime gang
This isn't what people would realistically say in this situation. And they certainly wouldn't say all this with a couple lines of dialogue.
We get another example of this in the campfire scene where, the mercs, having just met solo, start giving him explicit advice on love before kissing each other. This si constantly reinforced throughout the movie with different characters explicitly pointing out he likes her multiple times. At the firecamp, the son to die woman, randomly assumes the reason he needs to go back is a woman, when again, there's no reason for the character to think that based on what solo's actions.
We see this again with the characters constantly keep saying "you're good solo". Again, that's not legit characterization. Characterization is base don actions, not other characters going out of their way to tell the audience something.
Again, lazy storytelling.
Good stories let us see what the character experiences without trying to shove a message or info down our throat. Solo does the opposite.
This is actually a perfect example of what's wrong with this movie. As Solo sees her being taken away, he yells "I'LL COME BACK FOR YOU!" rather than something a human would realistically like, "NOOO!"
Then, Solo tells other characters, multiple times, "I HAVE TO GO BACK TO MY HOME PLANET FOR A GIRL!".
That's lazy storytelling and doesn't actually justify Solo's need to go back. It would be one thing if we saw Solo and his girl naturally and warmly communicating. We might give a **** if the movie ever bothered to characterize her in some sort of manner in it's first act. But that's not what happened. Solo kisses her once, telling us she likes her, and then they run away. There's no reason to find these characters or their relationship compelling, because the movie hasn't given us a reason to care. If you don't have a reason to care, then the "big moments", like the girl being on the plane solo was on, have no weight and our hence pointless.
Solo uses all it's dialogue to tell us we should care about something, and then doing something "dramatic" regarding what we are told to care about. That's what ads do, not what stories do.
The what is not important, it's the how. Actual people don't explicitly dump out all their goals and all the info people need to understand their character arc. A good story shows us what their goals and motivations are by having the characters act like who they are.
A character arc can start at a and end at b, but if you're not gonna show us how a gets to b and leave us with "he was at a, but now he's at b", that's lazy writing.
I don't know, felt pretty natural to me. Yeah, there was obvious plot reasons why the characters said what they said, but it's too easy to think "it's because plot" if you think of the film as a film. But I can see why you'd have a problem with that.
I'll admit, I wasn't a big fan of that, either, but I don't think that was meant to be just be characterization. Solo's view of himself and the world was being brought into question so that some necessary development could happen. And when Qi'ra said "you're the good guy", it was her understanding parts of him that he didn't understand and also representing her influence on his mindset.
It's strange to me that you pick this piece of dialogue, because to me, this was one of the more natural exposition moments. He did yell "no" at first, but he wanted her to know he wasn't going to leave her behind. Him doing that makes perfect sense.
I mean, sometimes, he loves her is enough of a reason to care. And then there's the completion principle side of things.
Point taken, I guess. It didn't bother me that much but I get why it bothers you.