A Review of Solo: A Star Wars Story
Everyone knows Star Wars fans tend to be very vocal, overly so at times, about the new movies, especially when it involves something they didn’t like about a new film. It drove me crazy in the days after The Last Jedi was released how many people were criticizing the movie and not only calling it the worst Star Wars movie ever, but the movie that retroactively ruined the original trilogy. I loved The Last Jedi when I first saw it, though I must confess that love has worn off with multiple viewings, and I’m hoping Episode IX will correct much of the problems I have with TLJ.
Personally, I hate criticizing Star Wars. The Skywalker Saga still blows me away. But I’m finding more and more to criticize as the Disney-owned Lucasfilm continues to build on Lucas’s original story.
Case in point: Solo. I wanted to love this movie. I was excited about it. Rogue One had its issues, but it was a fun movie and an interesting exploration of how the Rebels got the Death Star plans.
Before I outline my primary complaint about Solo, here’s what I was most excited about seeing in a Han Solo origin film:
Han learning how to fly in the Imperial Academy.
In fact, I wanted to see at least half of the movie take place during Han’s time at the Imperial Academy.
How much time did we see Han in the Academy?
None.
He joins the Academy, and then the movie skips to three years later, after he’s been kicked out. We learn from some exposition-heavy dialogue that he was trained in aerial combat, but got kicked out of the Academy for having an opinion of his own.
Why skip that? That’s what I wanted to see, and I was rewarded with a three years later caption announcing that I would never get to see it. Solo doesn’t even show us how Han learned to fly. It just asks us to buy the Kessel Run without seeing Han fly previously.
Of course, there was a story reason to skip that time, which leads to my second complaint about the movie: the cliche love story. I’d argue that the last thing we needed to see was a love story from Han’s past. We already have a Han love story, the one with Leia, and it’s iconic. The relationship with Qi’ra did nothing to explain why the Han we meet in A New Hope is the way he is. In fact, it’s another relationship in the film that does explain why Han is the way he is: his relationship with his mentor, Tobias Beckett.
The Han/Qi’ra love story took the focus off of Han’s development as an Empire-trained pilot turned smuggler. Qi’ra’s appearance at Dryden Vos’s place felt more than a little convenient to the story, and we’re told over and over in some more exposition-heavy dialogue that Qi’ra did some terrible things to get there, but we’re never told what. Sure, we’ll probably learn more of her story in a later movie, book, or comic series, but it still felt like lazy storytelling in the context of Solo.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty to love about Solo. Lando’s great. The way Han and Chewbacca meet is compelling. The Millennium Falcon is impressive.
Unfortunately, however, I found the story disappointing, and there’s no way to fix it.
