Solo: A Star Wars Story

I came into the Star Wars game late. My dad never liked them, and when I was growing up, he had pretty much a monopoly on what we watched on Saturday and Sunday mornings (prime catching up time for impressionable youths to see pop cultural touchstones from the past 20 years). I caught bits and pieces throughout childhood, but I never saw the entire original trilogy until I was 28. I’m a late SW bloomer, and the franchise has never felt like mine, not in the way that say, Harry Potter or the MCU does. I just want to be transparent about the background here so that everyone knows where I stand when I talk about Solo. Was this a quality, universe-expanding story that stays true to the spirit of the original films? Or was it a surface-level, unnecessary cash grab with nothing more to offer than “I understood that reference” jolts of dopamine? Well...

A bit of both, really. I liked a lot of things about this movie - it was, more than any other adjective I can think of, FUN. After the heavier tone of Rogue One and even The Last Jedi, it does feel like a welcome lightening of the Star Wars universe. However, some moments felt so obvious, to the point of pandering, that it took me out of the narrative and almost made me wince. Case in point - the cringe-worthy scene in which Han is trying to get off the slave planet he was born on and barters his way into joining the Imperial Navy. When the recruiter asks him his surname, Han shrugs - he doesn’t have one. “Who are your people?” the recruiter asks, and Han says, “I have no people.” After a pause, the recruiter types into the computer, “Han...Solo.” And the audience is supposed to go OMG GET IT BECAUSE THAT’S WHY HE’S HAN SOLO FUCK THIS IS A GREAT MOVIE I NEED MORE POPCORN. It’s so blatantly awful, and the real poignant moment - Han’s I-don’t-care-because-I’m-tough-but-really-I-care-a-lot delivery of the line “I have no people” - is completely brushed aside. So basically when the movie is doing things right, it’s fun, frothy entertainment through-and-through. When it’s trying to shove all the story beats of “origin story, this is an origin story, see what happened just then? It’s because of stuff we know you know happens later, do you get it, do you get it, DO YOU G E T  I T” it becomes a slog to get through.

Some thoughts:

Alden Ehrenreich (or, as I like to call him, the kid brother from the second episode of Supernatural) is having a blast, clearly, and he does a good job of letting Han’s almost naive goodness shine through his devil-may-care outer exterior. I think some people think that his take on the character is too nice, too safe, not gruff ‘n tumble enough to live up to Harrison Ford’s iconic role, but I appreciate the softer, more innocent Han we see here. 

But honestly the movie belongs to Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, which was 97.9% of why I wanted to see this movie in the first place (the other 2.1% was seeing Thandie Newton as a space cowboy type person loading her gun and rocking that afro - and honestly fuck this movie for wasting her and her talent in about 15 minutes of glorified extra workv). I would watch Donald Glover do literally anything. I would watch a 3.5 hour movie just about Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian shopping for capes. He’s having so much fun here, and the film’s most emotionally resonant scene is his too, and I’m just so proud of him I can barely handle it. 

That emotionally resonant scene I mentioned belongs to Lando and his copilot, the droid L3-37, voiced beautifully by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. L3-37 is hilarious but mostly she is a force to be reckoned with, a droid who is Woke AF and is fighting for the rights of droids everywhere. My favorite line in the film is probably when she’s piloting the Millenium Falcon and Lando asks her, “What do you need?” and she replies lightning-quick, “Equal rights.” She’s played for laughs as a sassy sidekick until she’s not - then shit gets real, and her struggle for equal rights is made deeply, immediately personal. It’s an affecting choice, and Waller-Bridge’s voicework, as well as Donald Glover’s performance, make her big scene one of the standouts of the movie. I wish she had more screentime, because she was one of my favorite characters I’ve ever seen in the SW universe.

My biggest bone to pick is the inclusion of Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). I get the bind the screenwriters are in - because if there’s no compulsive heterosexual romance at the center of a major blockbuster movie, there will be rioting in the streets, obviously. So they gotta put a girl in here. But this is a prequel so like...we already know she’s not gonna show up again...so um, why should we care? It’s a tricky position to be in because you want audiences to invest in this relationship, but not too much because there’s a princess General out there who we know is going to steal Han’s heart later in life, and you want that to stay as the series’ OTP 5ever. So what do you do? You get Emilia Clarke, the universally beloved, to be as compelling as possible and then disappear forever. I like Emilia Clarke as much as the next guy, and her performance here is good - not great, but definitely GOOD - but I just did not care at all about this relationship because she’s no fucking Princess Leia, y’know?

Seriously give me a movie about Lando and his capes. I’d go every day.

Also props to Donald Glover for flirting with everyone and everything, including Alden Erenreich. I’d watch a 3.5 hour movie about that too.

This is a fun flight of fancy, not a lot more, not a lot less. There are obviously some highlights that elevate parts of this to greatness, but for the most part, this is a light and airy way to spend 2 hours. It does not leave the lasting impression of pretty much any of the other SW movies, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. 

I still haven’t seen this movie but I’ve rarely read anything that speaks so directly to my id