I Enjoyed Solo: A Star Wars Story

People have been down on Disney’s latest addition to the Star Wars franchise. I went out recently to the cinema and finally got to see it. Let’s see if they’re right. Many spoilers are spilled.

I’m going to say something people might not like. It was good. Yeah, that’s right. Good. I enjoyed it all the way through. It made me laugh, made me feel nostalgic and gave me references and cool cameos to excite my fanboy soul. It had flaws, the story was messy, some characters weren’t fully explored. People are expecting each and every new Star Wars film to be a massive hit and fulfill the legacy of Empire, but what these people aren’t getting is that there’s a film every year. Given to different directors with different visions and a different past with Star Wars. When this happens, not every film needs to be a massive success, not every film needs to be moving the franchise forward and doing something different or artistically brilliant. All they need to be is an entertaining Star Wars picture. And I use the word entertaining on purpose (as I would love to see some kind of Star Wars horror or tragedy film that doesn’t need to be ‘fun’). But Solo is fun, and that’s all it needs to be. This was released between The Last Jedi, a film that heavily divided the fan base through its forward thinking, and IX, which will be the concluding chapter of the sequel trilogy. Heck, the original trilogy were released with three years apart from each other and they were the only films being worked on at the time. Disney, or Kathleen Kennedy, has done what they do and increase the production of a franchise massively. This gives the franchise room to experiment, or more appropriately in this case, it gives the the franchise a licence to make a fun, non-serious picture to allow people to relax between to two films considered the ‘big boys’ of the current run of Star Wars films.

Story wise, the film fits my previous description perfectly. It’s fun, it makes cool and unnecessary references but ends up looking messy. They start off with a couple of scenes before Han goes off to the imperial military, showing his life in the streets of Corellia with Qi’ra. Although Emilia Clarke gives a good performance, the character of Qi’ra was quite unnecessary. Or rather the romance between her and Han was quite unnecessary. The Han and Leia love story in the original trilogy, and Force Awakens, is near-perfect enough and gives the cynical smuggler a way to open up and show his young side that we see in this film. But adding in the Qi’ra character as a lover from his youth detracts from his later blossoming relationship with Leia. I agree the with the creative decision to make Han very optimistic in his youth. It gives adds to the fun of the film and shows how innocent people can get thrown into cynicism from traumatic events in there life. But I think all this could have been achieved through the already tragic storyline between Han and his mentor, Beckett, and a friendship with someone from the streets same as him. I suspect it was made into a romantic relationship because of the ‘Hollywood standard’ that end up plaguing big company films. One thing in the story that bugged me a lot more than it should have was the origin of Han’s surname. It was cheesy and didn’t give any satisfaction. I’m sure no one would have complained if he appeared in the film and stated his name was Han Solo. It wouldn’t have detracted anything from the film. After the scene where Han joins up with the imperial military, there is a three year time skip and we join him in the middle of a battle. There were some rumblings that the film would focus on the primary storyline but then flashback to Han’s past throughout the film to provide context to different scenes. I’m fine with how they ended up structuring the film, but I think this move would have increased the overall quality. Adding flashbacks to what is already a kind of flashback film would have added to the purpose of showing Han’s past. We get a scene of the horrors of war which is a pretty rare thing in a Star Wars film. There were small parts in Rogue One but this is where we see a proper full on battle. After finding out that Beckett and his chums are not imperial, he tries to join them but they refuse. So when Han threatens to expose them, they pretend he’s a deserter and Han gets locked up with our favourite wooly giant, Chewbacca. This is a change from the typical story of Han being in the imperial military and then refusing to transport Wookie slaves and freeing them instead, but the whole scene is nearly as good. It starts their relationship off in a nice direction, especially since they start off chained up together. My only gripe is the fact that Han actually speaks some Shyriiwook. For me, it plays off quite dumb. It would have been okay if Chewie couldn’t speak any Basic and Han was slowly starting to teach him some over the film, but immediately we find out he can easily understand Han when he isn’t speaking Shyriiwook. If they committed one way or the other, it would have been less of a sore thumb. After working out a plan and escaping, Beckett and his crew give in and let them join for a job. The film then goes into what I thought, from the trailers, would be the final part of the film. This was nicely played out, setting up an initial antagonist and killing off some characters for some space for the rest of the main cast to join them later. The action was awesome, getting Han with his iconic blaster pistol (previously Beckett’s) and another kind of heist we haven’t seen in Star Wars yet. After a setback, the main plot sets in. Beckett reveals they were doing the job for the Crimson Dawn, a crime syndicate. As they visit the base of the syndicate, we see Qi’ra has survived being split up from Han and is now a lieutenant of the Crimson Dawn. This is weird as it ties up Han’s main reason for doing these jobs, but he plots through the rest of the film with no direction and goes along with what everyone else is doing. They end up being forced by Crimson Dawn’s leader, Dryden Vos to pay what they owe by doing another job. Qi’ra joins them to make sure they do the job and they go to pick up Lando and his robot partner, L3–37. These scenes are dull, but Donald Glover easily carries them. With style in hand, they go off to the famous Kessel Run. L3 inadvertently sets off a rebellion at the mine they are heisting that actually ends up helping their escape. They end up on another planet to stabilise their loot before it explodes. The Cloud Riders that helped sabotage their initial heist our now here again but it gets revealed that they are only trying to stop crime syndicates, like the Crimson Dawn, and the empire from gaining too much power. Han agrees that he’s going to try and trick Dryden with fake materials so the Cloud Riders can have the real materials. During the meeting with Dryden it is revealed that Beckett has always been directly working for Dryden and that Beckett told him about the plan. In a nice twist Han reveals that he had predicted this and that the real material is in the room with them and the Cloud Riders were prepared to be jumped on, meaning a part of Crimson Dawn’s army gets killed by them. Beckett, with the only gun in the room, takes Chewie hostage (which is hilarious in itself) as he escapes with the material. An awesome fight breaks out between Han and Qi’ra against Dryden. Han tries to get to his gun but before he can kill Dryden, Qi’ra stops him. At first, I thought she might betray him but she kills Dryden for Han. A callback to a scene earlier when Qi’ra tells Han he is a good guy and that the crime world isn’t for him, though it would have been better to show this instead of outright telling the audience. She protects his by killing Dryden so he doesn’t have to. Though this protection is quickly broken down when, after leaving the yacht, Han shoots down Beckett before he can draw his blaster. Qi’ra drives off with the yacht after receiving new orders from an interesting cameo I’ll talk about later, and Han finishes off the film with a second game of Sabacc finally winning the Millenium Falcon from Lando. The ending lasts a few minutes too long, with a few plot points that could have either been cleaned up or even cut entirely. There’s certainly a few bumps along the road when it comes to story, but it was enjoyable.

With characters, we are obviously going to start with the titular character. Alden Ehrenreich does a reasonable Han Solo. It’s not distracting, nor is it too much an imitation of Harrison Ford. But surprisingly in a film about him, Han Solo is probably the least impressive member of the main cast. Han is a hard character to play after Harrison Ford’s excellent run, but since Alden is contracted for potential future films, if he does end up playing Han again he might get the room to develop his style further and show his acting talent. Qi’ra was a good character but I feel she was forced into the film, probably due to the need in a Hollywood picture to have a leading man and a leading lady. However, her development was interesting and with a modern great like Emilia Clarke playing the character, it can take these ‘unnecessary’ characters and bring them up to a good standard or at least to the same standard of the rest of the cast. Chewie is Chewie. He’s solid and easily the same as he is in any film, which points to how Joonas Suotamo is living up to the amazing standard set by Peter Mayhew. Beckett, played by Woody Harrelson, gives a great mentor for Han. Taking the bright and sunny kid and showing him Beckett’s cynical world view that shapes Han into the smuggler we know him as in A New Hope. His betrayal later on in the film reinforces this for Han and helps him conclude his struggle between cynicism and optimism. He’s primarily in the film for Han, so Harrelson doesn’t have enough room to explore the character too much. Thandie Newton as Val Beckett and Jon Favreau as Rio Durant were heavily underused, both being killed before the main part of the plot even sets in. They had a lot of potential but they never amounted to too much. I’m not even sure if they were given more of the film to explore their characters whether they would actually develop much more. Erin Kellyman as Enfys Nest set up a interesting antagonist but then destroyed that by turning her into a hero towards the end of the film. I feel the character would have been so much cooler if they kept her masked and had the character in some more badass action scenes. Her whole setup was awesome but it gets thrown away for a dumb plot line that sours the end of the film, only by a small amount. Dryden Vos wasn’t too great, which is disappointing due to both the quality of the writers and an actor like Paul Bettany. To be fair to Bettany, he put as much in to save the character as possible but in the end Dryden was incredibly boring and didn’t provide much overall. One other thing to talk about in the cameo towards the end of the film. Maul appears on a hologram talking with Qi’ra, showing that he was the true leader of Crimson Dawn and that Qi’ra has taken Dryden’s place. Some people were shocked at the cameo since he was sliced into two at the end of The Phantom Menace, but in numerous Expanded Universe materials, plus the Rebels television show, he has already been shown to have lived. It’s definitely a set-up for something later down the road and the fact that Alden is contracted for potential future films means they may pick this story up in another Han Solo film, or maybe even a Maul film, but most likely it will be confined to a novel or comic.

Saving the best till last, Lando Calrissian and L3–37 prop up the rest of the characters the most. It’s been said many times before and I hate to repeat something so commonly said but what can’t Donald Glover do? He brings out a Lando that is younger, more self-centred and contains all the charm and style that he had in Empire with ease. In all of Lando’s scenes I was constantly smiling and basking in his sophisticated glory. I hope if they ever want to do another film involving Lando that Glover would be up for portraying him again. Him and Billy Dee Williams are the only people who can pull off that character. L3 was another surprise. My initial thoughts were that they were trying to pull off another K2 from Rogue One. But the character is very different and is used in a unique way. L3 brings up the topic of Droid rights, which have been in a lot of Expanded Universe material in the past but haven’t been seen much in the theatrical films. The interesting relationship she has with Lando feels strong but we didn’t get to see too much of that develop. If they end up doing a Lando film, it would be nice to see it take place before Solo to see that relationship start and fully blossom so that it has more meaning in this picture.

The cinematography in this was hit and miss. There were some cool shots including Han undoing his holster in a great Western homage and a star destroyer flying through Kessel, but the other half of the film was bland in its shots. This may be down to the change in direction the film took. The directors of comedy hits like the Lego Movies, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, were fired and Ron Howard took over after a good portion of the film had been done. This change not only mixed up the cinematography to the point where we have no idea what director did the bad shots or the good shots (or whether it was a mix) but also shows why some characters, plot points and storylines were all over the place with seemingly no direction solidly in place.

Music was also hit and miss. The sound design was great as usual but then it’s hard to mess that up with the library of sounds you have available to you as well as great foley artists at Lucasfilm. The soundtrack was alright, most of the tracks being references to other tracks in other Star Wars films. This is why John Williams cannot be beaten when it comes to Star Wars soundtracks. He knows perfectly how to take his old scores and when to use them and/or incorporate them into brand new tracks. The one, technically two, standout tracks are to do with the Cloud Riders. It was the first time since watching the original trilogy that I’ve actually been in awe of new Star Wars music. It brings out some mysticism in the film that it desperately needed.

Solo was indeed enjoyable, but probably the worst of what we have seen of the new Star Wars films. I’ve debated with myself whether I prefer this to Force Awakens but ultimately I think Force Awakens has more personality and actually stands out. But don’t get me wrong, this is a fun film. It could have been so much more, but I’m not worried for future Star Wars films.

I’ve got a really good feeling about this.

-Boad

Originally published at bodaciousboad.wordpress.com on June 1, 2018.