Movie Review: ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’
The fastest ship in the galaxy stays the same old course
Quick disclaimer: There are some spoilers in this review, if I’ve actually remembered the movie correctly.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” just nearly manages to pull off its harrowing escape from the Maw nebula unscathed because somewhere deep within Solo’s dark morass of unadulterated fan service lies a halfway decent action-heist-caper-western film.
For our favorite scruffy-looking scoundrel, Han Solo, there are lots of first in this one. Let’s see: a first love, the first time meeting Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), a first smuggling crew, first blaster, first heist, the first time meeting his sometimes “frenemy” Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), first time flying the Millennium Falcon, first Kessel Run (in under 12 parsecs, the old record was 20), etc. Listen, laying out all of these “firsts” isn’t that untypical of the cinematic telling of a beloved character’s origin these days. You’d think that this is the stuff that Star Wars fans dreams are made of. All of the storied lore that has been hinted on since the original trilogy also covered in a slew of novels over the decades. We get to see it all unfold right before our very eyes and it’s just all… too much. “Solo” has an obsession with hitting fabled markers at the expense of any real invention.
Alden Ehrenreich plays the titular character in “Solo.” It’s a nearly impossible task for anyone to follow in the footsteps of Harrison Ford, even more so when it comes to one of his most iconic roles. Thankfully, for all of us, Ehrenreich doesn’t really try to. While he certainly has some Ford-ian moments, Ehrenreich’s Solo lacks the same intensity and self-deprecation of the original interpretation. He’s a subtler and more optimistic presence, rather than the more broad emotionality and world-weariness of Ford.
As we follow Han Solo on his transformation from Corellian street urchin to wannabe Imperial pilot to big-time smuggler, we are introduced to some friends, both old and new, along the way. Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) is the girl Han left behind; they were suppose to leave their home planet of Corellia together but things just didn’t work out as they planned. She got out, eventually, but only by indebting herself to a crime syndicate and the movie’s baddie, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). Vos, a volatile personality, has contracted an old hand smuggler Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) to boost a shipment of Coaxium, a rare and unstable ship fuel. Beckett becomes a mentor to Han — he sees the potential in him and probably his younger self as well. Beckett presence also serves as an example to Han of where this life leads. Beckett is a broken man, always chasing the next big score.
There aren’t many characters more synonymous with Han Solo than that of Chewbacca or Lando Calrissian. After a very precarious “meet cute” while chained together in a muddy Imperial cage, Chewie and Han become quick friends and partners-in-crime. Their interactions with one another is one of the things this movie gets right. “Solo” gets Lando right as well; there just isn’t enough of him. We witness Han and Lando’s meeting at the Sabacc table, a high-stakes poker like game. Qi’ra brought Han and the crew in an attempt to recruit Lando to their cause because they’re in need of a fast ship — Lando’s pride and joy, the Millennium Falcon. Glover hits all the right notes as Lando. The same suave style, swagger, and smoothness as Billy Dee Williams’ original. Lando’s sidekick, L3–37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), is one of the more interesting takes on a droid in one of these movies, liberated and self-aware.
Those who would pretend that the film’s original directorial pairing, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, would have been capable of completing an better film than their replacement, director Ron Howard, are mistaken. While I’ve enjoyed their previous works (“21 Jump Street”, “The Lego Movie”) and believed it was an inspired choice at the time, their improvisational style seems to have been ill-suited to a big-budget, high stakes movie such as this. I’m sure their mark is still on this movie, many of the production decisions were theirs, and they should be given some of the credit for any of the movie’s successes as well as held to account for its shortcomings. But let’s be honest, Lord and Miller’s mistake from the start was not casting Jonah Hill as Han Solo and Channing Tatum as Chewbacca and then calling the movie, “Solo: A 21 Jump Street Story.”
Certainly the father and son writing duo of Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan bear their fair share of the responsibility for the misfires of the movie too. Instead of them attempting to tread any new territory like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” the movie was more than just a bit heavy on wish fulfillment.
The previous “A Star Wars Story” slammed the blast door shut on any future film, “Solo” certainly leaves that possibility wide open. And while we might get see the further adventures of Han Solo, do we really need to? What’s left? I’m not sure that I’m willing to take another movie-length exercise that’s custom built to excite the small cross-section of people who might have poured over these films frame-by-frame or other such ancillary materials like the most ardent of Snoke’s not actually dead truthers. “Solo” really is a good time, but it should have been so much more than just the sum of its cinematic Easter eggs.
