As difficult as it can be with a legacy that has informed culture for forty years, it is important to step back and look at the original Star Wars as a standalone film. Essentially a low-budget exploitation flick made under the direction of the visionary George Lucas and his young and hungry team, Star Wars took 20th Century Fox — and, eventually, audiences — by surprise in 1977. Throwback cinema before throwback cinema was a term, the film was Lucas’ love letter to the stories that he enjoyed growing up. He was simply doing it bigger and better, while retaining the core elements of those pulpy Saturday morning serials.
Solo: A Star Wars Story is the sequel audiences probably would have expected in 1980: a simpler, much smaller story far removed from the deeper, darker The Empire Strikes Back. Eight theatrical films later, Solo is the closest the Star Wars series has come in tone and style to the 1977 original, eschewing the grand space opera and epic tragedy of the Skywalker saga for a slam-bang swashbuckling adventure flick featuring a car chase, a train heist, and a series of narrow escapes.
Upon its release in May of 2018, Solo received fair reviews, a tepid response from audiences, and ultimately flopped at the box office — as much as film that ultimately grossed $392,924,808 worldwide could be considered a flop. It simply didn’t make as much money as the other Star Wars releases from the past forty years.
Was it Star Wars fatigue? This was the shortest period of time between the release of Star Wars films in the franchise’s history. Was Solo simply (and ironically) up against impossible odds, taking on the juggernaut that was Avengers: Infinity War?
Was it the Boycott Solo “movement”? Maybe, but it is ironic that those who pledged to boycott Solo as a reaction to The Last Jedi featuring a diverse cast of women and people of color missed out on what is essentially Cool Straight White Guy: The Movie. (A movie that, at the same time, featured one of the most diverse casts of the franchise to date.)
Some fans called the movie unnecessary, but what movie really is necessary? Star Wars would have been perfect as a standalone film. Isn’t it enough to see one of your favorite characters in a new big screen adventure? Fans ate up the extended universe from Brian Daley’s Han Solo trilogy of the ’70s and beyond. There’s the argument that there’s no stakes since we know Han Solo survives, but they must not have seen The Force Awakens.
He dead.(Also, there are more to “stakes” than who lives and who dies.)
Or perhaps, it was due to the behind the scenes shake ups that shut down production on Solo in the summer of 2017. Kathleen Kennedy is no dummy. She’s been cranking out hits for over three decades. Very little of the footage that Phil Lord and Chris Miller shot has been seen — it’s been rumored that over 70% of the film was remade during reshoots — but if it wasn’t working for Kennedy, it more than likely simply was not working. It also appears the production wasn’t jiving well with Empire Strikes Back scribe and Solo co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, for whom Solo was obviously a passion project (Kasdan has always stated that Han Solo is his favorite character in the franchise.)
orman has admitted in interviews that upon seeing the original Star Wars in 1977, that he recognized the game had been indefinitely changed: the B pictures were now becoming the A pictures.
That time crunch, along with a budget depleted by multiple shoots, lent a low-budget vibe to Solo that hadn’t been present in the franchise since the making of the original. The rough edges offer up a cobbled together look akin to the original film — which, don’t forget, featured a laser sword that was built out of old camera parts. The humanoid aliens made up with plastic and hooded capes, the sets that look spray painted and dingy; this is the lived-in universe that the original Star Wars introduced to audiences. It also nods to 1977, costuming Alden Ehrenreich’s young Han Solo like a member of the Clash crossed with Steve McQueen and Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian like the coolest cat at Studio 54. The behind the scene shake-ups — and a knowingness of what feels like Star Wars — add to the delightfulness of this film.
Solo recalls the original film while giving audiences something different, making good on what was teased with Rogue One and The Last Jedi. While notable entries in the Star Wars franchise, both promised something different in terms of vision and storytelling, but ultimately fell into many of the same tropes that populate the series: the Rebellion versus the Empire, the dysfunctional Skywalker family, and lightsaber showdowns in throne rooms.
The first Star Wars film not to open up in space — and almost the first one not to feature a lightsaber — instead beginning with a stolen hot rod speeding down a city street, Solo gives the audience a better look at a part of the Star Wars galaxy that has only been glimpsed in previous films: the criminal underworld. The Empire exists on the periphery of this world: They are in control of the galaxy, and the climax teases the birth of the Rebellion, but the focus is the gangsters and thieves who have been teased throughout the franchise’s run from Mos Eisley Cantina to Jabba’s Palace. Solo is one part heist film and one part Western, and this is the corner of the Star Wars universe that Michael Mann or Walter Hill would have thrived in, featuring hitmen, crime bosses, gangsters, and duplicit thieves with their own code.
In exploring the underworld, Bradford Young’s cinematography eschews the flat, well l-lit style of most big-budget action fare — including the Star Wars prequels, sequels, and Marvel films — for something darker and more experimental. The criminal underworld of the Star Wars universe lives in the shadow of the Empire and the Skywalker saga, and Young wisely uses that darkness to create a world full of mystery and danger around every corner. Solo doesn’t look like any Star Wars movie that came before it, and while The Last Jedi usually gets the credit for changing the way Star Wars can look, Solo deserves credit, too. The film’s visual language has more in common with the foggy McCabe & Mrs. Miller and the rain slicked, Chicago streets of Thief than The Phantom Menace, or even Return Of The Jedi.
Of course, for all its deviations, Solo is still a Star Wars story. From Revenge Of The Sith to The Last Jedi, the mirroring of adventure from generation to generation has informed the Star Wars story for decades. While Solo certainly deviates from storytelling tropes and visual style of the franchise, it still has one foot in the saga: Han Solo’s story slyly mirrors that of Luke Skywalker. Both are young men craving adventure and excitement, bored with their bleak, desolate homes, longing to escape. Along the way — essentially over the course of a long weekend — they meet a slightly older, much cooler guy who becomes their best friend, meet new alien and robot companions, find their signature ship, and meet an older mentor who helps shape the trajectory for the rest of their lives — albeit in different ways. Whereas Obi-Wan Kenobi puts Luke on the righteous path to become a guardian of all that is good as a Jedi Knight, Han is betrayed by Woody Harrelson’s Tobias Beckett — as well the woman he loves- — taking a wide-eyed, optimistic kid and turning him into the cynical man audiences will meet in Mos Eisley Cantina. In a film loaded with terrific performances, Harrelson truly steals the show. An A-list character actor, Harrelson simply does Harrison and disappears into the role of the older criminal who takes Han under his wing.
Harlesson’s Tobias Beckett is just one of the memorable new characters that father-son screenwriting team Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan introduce in the film. From the foul Lady Proxima to Beckett’s crew, the characters are admittedly sometimes dispatched as quickly as they are introduced, but that has always been done in the Star Wars. Fans tend to forget that long before Timothy Zahn’s Heir To The Empire and the introduction of the expanded universe, some of the coolest characters in Star Wars had very little backstory explained away in the films. Most times, they had none at all. From the space werewolves and Bo Shek in the Mos Eisley cantina to Boba Fett, they are simply archetypes in cool costumes. And so audiences pieced together what they could from the back of Kenner toy boxes, the occasional novelization, and most importantly their own imaginations to create a mythology for these characters, who were cool looking designs with personalities told in broad strokes.
A misstep of Star Wars films since the prequel trilogy was not focusing on the interpersonal relationships of the characters. The original Star Wars features strangers on and adventure who become friends and then Empire splits them up. The prequels and the more recent sequel films don’t give the characters enough time with each other, just hanging out. Solo delivers this right in the middle, allowing the driving adventure to slow down and allow the characters to get to know each other as a respite to the action. Han and Lando quietly discuss their parents, Beckett imparts wisdom to Han, and Han and the otherworldy Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra have a truly romantic moment in Lando’s cape closet, and Star Wars has been almost devoid of romance since Return Of The Jedi. It’s broad strokes, but that’s a tenant of the franchise. Let your imagination fill in the gaps.
A masterwork of effortless world building, the Cantina sequence left an indelible mark on pop culture. It was parodied and copied for years afterwards, even by the creative team at Lucasfilm, but no one was never able to quite recapture that magic. Drydon Vos’ pleasure barge recaptures a little bit of it, giving the audience something that’s both familiar and out there. It feels like a crime lord’s hangout from an ’80s Cannon film: slick, chrome, with the cocktails flowing and Imperials mingling with aliens. Vos’ hangout feels gangster.
John Powell is the soul of Solo: A Star Wars Story, delivering the most memorable Star Wars score since 1983. John Williams’ “The Adventures Of Han” features the composer at his most swashbuckling, playing on the audience’s knowledge that the characters of Han Solo and Indiana Jones have the same D.N.A., to create one of the most memorable film themes in recent years. Powell blends military style drums and soaring notes, creating a track that at once recalls Moriconne’s overlooked Disclosure score & ’90s Bruckheimer/Simpson productions. The diegetic use of the “Imperial March” at the recruitment center on Corellia is one of the film’s most memorable moments, implying that everyone from Luke Skywalker to Dengar have at one point in their life heard Darth Vader’s theme music. With “The Han Solo Megamix” that is “Reminiscence Therapy” , Powell effortlessly blends Han Solo’s new theme with elements “Death Star Theme,” “The Asteroid Field,” and other classic bits of Star Wars music. That isn’t fan service, that is leitmotif.
Solo: A Star Wars Story deserved better, and perhaps audiences simply weren’t ready for it. I do predict that upon its tenth anniversary of the film’s release, on whatever social media has devolved into by then, there will be countless hologram think pieces about how it was underappreciated in its own time. I’ve been on board since day one. Solo was for all intents and purposes the Star Wars sequel that I have been wanting to see since 1983. There so many things to adore about Solo: A Star Wars Story: brandy exists in space. Humans can have sex with robots. It’s a welcome return to romance, a return to fun…a return to the galaxy far, far, away that I have always — and will always — love. Also, Solo is the only Star Wars movie to feature Clint Howard, and that should really say it all.
