One other issue I had with the movie was all the callbacks/references/winks to the fans/fan service/whatever you want to call it.
It’s not that I dislike that kind of thing (I actually enjoy it if it’s clever or subtle or funny and used sparringly). The problem I had was the sheer volume of it in this movie. It was CONSTANTLY putting stuff in there going, “Hey! Remember when Han said moof milker in TFA? Remember when 3PO complained about the falcon dialect? Remember that crappy PlayStation game? Remember that novel? Remember that other adventure movie starring the actor who used to play Han? Remember this? Remember that?” It was just really distracting and kept pulling me out of the movie over and over. It didn’t help that many of them weren’t subtle or particularly clever
I have hope that it won’t bother me on subsequent viewings, but man was it distracting the first time through which made it harder to just enjoy the new movie in its own right.
And Darth Maul SUCKED. I’m still not over that piece of garbage ripping me out of the film right at the finale.
I thought they kept the fan service to an acceptable level in SOLO. I really enjoyed ROGUE ONE, but I felt the fan service in that film was 10x more prevalent than SOLO. Hopefully you’re right and it gets better with subsequent viewings.