Solo: A Star Wars Story Review

It's time again to dive into another Star Wars review! This time we are here to discuss Lucasfilm's second modern spin-off movie and first one that feels like a real spin-off as "Rogue One" felt more like Episode 3.9, leading right into "A New Hope," as opposed to being a true side story. This is also the Star Wars movie that heads into theaters after a whole ton of well-publicized productions issues that led to a director switch in the late hours of production, but no delay in release date, meaning they chose to rush the production to meet the scheduled release date right in the middle of a crowded summer instead of delaying to December where there would've been a lot less competition. All this certainly didn't help the fact that a lot of people were skeptic about this project to begin with. A movie about a young Han Solo, which obviously forces them to recast this beloved character? And topping it all off, Rian Johnson's addition to the saga just five months ago in "The Last Jedi" caused all sorts of controversy. That bitter taste that some had is still fresh in the mouths of many fans as they've not yet had time to wash that out. Put this all together and it means millions of people have had their torches and pitchforks ready before the trailers even came out. No pressure, Ron Howard.

Before we dive in, let's do a recap of my Star Wars thoughts. I've already spammed my Facebook and Twitter friends with various Star Wars stuff in the last couple of weeks, but in case there's people from other places reading this review, or you are coming to this post from the future, I will repeat it again. I love the original trilogy. I always have for as long as I can remember given that all my family were also huge Star Wars fans. "Return of the Jedi" was my favorite growing up, but as an adult I don't think that one holds up quite as well and I've instead gravitated towards "The Empire Strikes Back" as my favorite. I enjoyed "The Phantom Menace" as a 10-year-old kid in theaters. As an adult, it's as boring as tar until Darth Maul shows up. I never liked "Attack of the Clones." I think "Revenge of the Sith" is the best of the prequels, but it's always felt extremely rushed and thus there's a lot of wasted potential. The special effects in the prequels don't hold up and the acting across the board is atrocious, minus perhaps Ewan McGregor. I loved "The Force Awakens" and I loved "The Last Jedi" even more. Didn't care for "Rogue One" much and it's only soured on me the more that time has passed. Those last three opinions apparently make me a horrible person, but who cares.

If you want more details on any of those nine films, just ask me and I can elaborate. Or you can use the little search bar on the top right of this blog, right under the logo, to search out my reviews for all of them because I have reviewed each one in great detail. If you know how to use Google to search specific websites, that might be even easier. As far as "Solo" goes, I was as nervous as the rest of the world when it was announced. It didn't seem like best idea. The production issues I mentioned made me more nervous, but I was crossing my fingers that things would all work out because there's plenty of examples of movies that went through production Hell that ended up being great movies. I still think they should've pushed this back to December. Not only would that have given them more time to work on the film and more time to advertise, but they would've made more money in a fairly open December as opposed to a crowded summer. But ultimately after the advertising started to kick in, I got more and more excited as the release date got closer and I made the decision that I didn't expect as much from this film. It didn't need to be an epic masterpiece in order to please me. I just wanted a fun side adventure and that's exactly what I got, so I left the theater pleased.

As far as this review goes, unlike my previous nine Star Wars reviews, this WON'T be a spoiler review. In those reviews, I felt like anything I said would be a spoiler, so I just threw up the banner and dove right in to all the juicy details. That didn't feel necessary this time around, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, feel free to move forward. Although I will say that if you're committed to seeing it, just go see it and come back and read this review afterwards, because I will talk about basic plot details. If you don't want to know any of that, then don't read. Another reason for doing a non-spoiler review is that there's a whole lot of skepticism this time around, so I'm going to try to convince you fence-sitters to jump on in and enjoy this ride. If Disney and Lucasfilm have offended you, your family, your dog and all of your ancestors all the way back to Adam and Eve with what they've done with the new movies and you've vowed to never see another Star Wars film ever again while also committing to spending the rest of your days violently attacking this franchise and everyone involved, then I'm going to be blunt and tell you that I have zero desire to talk to you about Star Wars because I think you're being dumb and ridiculous. 

Onto the movie. I want to say this movie takes place somewhere around 10 years before the events of "A New Hope." If you've figured out the exact timeline, then I would love to hear, but the specific time frame is not completely necessary. It's after "Revenge of the Sith" and before "A New Hope" and there's a significant gap of sorts as this doesn't do what "Rogue One" did by leading directly into "A New Hope," thus leaving some space in case they want to continue further down this story arc in the future. We begin this movie with a bit of romance between Han and Emilia Clarke's Qi'ra. There's a lot of strong chemistry between the two of them that really makes this work. Yet as they are running away from a certain group in this lawless environment, Han manages to escape while Qi'ra gets caught. Ridden with guilt and driven by love, Han's only goal in life at this point is to find a way to return to her so they can escape and live together in peace, but this turns out to be much easier said than done as we then jump three years forward into the future where the majority of our story takes place and still no luck. In order to get back to where he wants to be, Han accepts a certain job with Woody Harrelson's Beckett and his little gang, which leads him into this life of being a scoundrel.

I will be the first to admit that this isn't a great movie. But again, I wasn't expecting it be. The biggest thing that holds it back from being a great movie is that the narrative of the movie doesn't feel completely polished. If you look at the typical three-act structure that movies are supposed to follow, this does have a beginning, middle and end, but it's not very smooth as for the most part we are bouncing from scene to scene without much of a clear direction as to where we are going with the story. Scenes are just kinda happening as Han and company are thrown into various situations that they have to find a way to get out of. A lot of the individual sequences are extremely fun on their own, but I spent much of the movie confused as to the overall direction of the film. This is where I honestly think that seven additional months would've greatly helped this production. Instead of rushing to completion to make their own deadlines, they could've had more time to iron out the script and polish up the movie so that we could have a better story that would grab more people and give us a reason to care instead of throwing all the weight on the shoulders of our characters or hoping that the various moments are strong enough to please audiences and keep their attention throughout.

Speaking of characters, though, a lot of the weight is thrown on their shoulders and they all managed to pull through in glorious fashion. The biggest question of all is how does Alden Ehrenreich do as Han Solo? I've said for a long time that my enjoyment of this film might hinge on whether or not I am convinced that the man I'm seeing on screen is the same character that Harrison Ford has made us all fall in love with over the past 40 years. The answer is that Ehrenreich does a fantastic job. The only critique is that he doesn't have the same voice as Harrison Ford does so there are times in the film where he doesn't sound like Han Solo does in previous movies. But outside that, he nails this character. He has a similar facial structure as a young Harrison Ford in "A New Hope." Major props have to be given to the makeup and hairstyling people as well as the costume designers for making him look like Han Solo. But a lot of credit to Ehrenreich himself for capturing Han's personality and mannerisms. At the same time, you can tell that he's not trying to mimick Harrison Ford. He manages to make the character his own, helping us enjoy this incarnation of Han Solo who doesn't have all the experiences that the Han Solo we know already experienced.

In this sense, I feel that "Solo" mirrored "A New Hope" in a way as that movie was our introduction to young Luke Skywalker. By the end of the original trilogy, Luke is a completely different person, almost unrecognizable in comparison to when we initially saw the whiny, almost unlikable Luke at the very beginning. Young Han Solo in this movie reminded me a lot of young Luke in "A New Hope" and I'm glad that we have 10 years or so between "Solo" and "A New Hope" because that gives Han room to grow as a character before he becomes the person we knew at the beginning. Speaking of transitions from one actor to another, I feel it's appropriate to mention one transition that already happened that few are talking about, that being Chewbacca. Peter Mayhew returned to reprise his role in "The Force Awakens," but only partially because he's not in the best health. Joonas Suotamo played a Chewbacca double in that movie and has since completely taken over as he's been on his own in "The Last Jedi" and now "Solo." It's been such a seamless transition that I don't know if everyone knows a transition happened, which means Suotamo deserves a lot of praise for being able to perfectly recapture the magic of Chewie with his personality and language.

On that note, the introduction of Han and Chewie is a great moment, I think. Their chemistry throughout the movie is what helps make this movie so enjoyable, especially in sequences where I didn't know what was happening with the story itself. The fact that Suotamo and Ehrenreich are able to perfectly recapture the magic that Peter Mayhew and Harrison Ford had in the original trilogy speaks high praise to both of them. Rounding it out with our third old character being recast, we have the absolute gem that is Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian. One could argue Ehrenreich as Han, but there are zero arguments that I've heard when it comes to Glover as Lando. He looks like a young Lando. He sounds exactly like Lando does. The hairstyling and costume design people again do a great job of getting the appearance down. And Glover does a perfect job of capturing Lando's personality and mannerisms as a younger version of the character that we see introduced in "The Empire Strikes Back." And the fun part of this is that Donald Glover is also currently No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with his song "This is America," credited under his musical alter ego of Childish Gambino. I'm not sure when the last time we saw such a multi-faceted star like this.

In addition to our old characters that we've known and loved for years, played brilliantly by new actors, there's a whole host of new characters in this movie that are equally as likable and are thus arguably the glue that holds this thing together. For those of you who loved "Rogue One," sorry to throw more salt on the wound, but the biggest reason why I was unable to love that movie is that I felt no connection to the new characters outside Jyn Erso. Both "Rogue One" and "Solo" have different narrative flaws, in my opinion, but I put "Solo" ahead of "Rogue One" because I did care about the characters here. And not just the old ones, but all of the new characters I found fascinatingly developed and portrayed brilliantly by the respective actors. There's a handful of these new characters that have small roles. And I actually loved all of them, too. But specifically I enjoyed the new additions of Woody Harrelson as Beckett, Emilia Clarke as Qi'ra and Paul Bettany as Dryden Vos. All of them are fascinating new additions to the Star Wars saga and I would love to learn even more about them in terms of where they came from and what will happen next. I also loved not knowing how their characters would turn out in the movie.

That leads into the final main point I want to make in this review. There's a lot of mystery with what's going to happen with all of the characters. We obviously know that Han and Chewie are going to remain trustworthy best friends. We also know that Han and Lando are going to become friends, even though "Empire" suggests some drama in their backstory. But we have no idea how these new characters are going to play into Han Solo's life outside maybe knowing that the star-crossed lovers of Han and Qi'ra aren't going to have a happily ever after given the whole Han and Leia thing. The movie kinda sets up one character as the "villain" of the movie, but given that they're all outcasts and scoundrels in this lawless time period of the Galaxy, you have no idea who to trust and who to fear. The ambiguity of who is the one that is the real villain is one that I found fascinating. My mind also toyed with the idea that perhaps none of them are the villain or all of them are. Thus even though the journey felt a bit rocky with the unpolished story arc, it led to a finale that I genuinely loved as I had no idea what was going to happen, which is again in stark contrast to "Rogue One" where I knew exactly what was going to happen because the outline is in the crawl of "A New Hope." 

There's a lot of specific details regarding this story that I have not even touched, but I promised a spoiler-free review, so I'm going to leave it at that. I could do a separate review where I discuss all of the spoilers and potential theories of what's going to happen next if they continue this story arc, but I don't see that as necessary because I have given you enough to give you an idea of how I felt. I didn't go into this movie with high expectations. Yes, I was nervous for a long time, but after seeing the trailers, I became more and more excited, especially when I settled on the idea that I just want a fun adventure out of this film. I didn't need for it to be on the same level as the original trilogy or even what I personally feel about "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi." With Disney owning Lucasfilm, I envision that the eventual goal will be to have Star Wars on the same level as the MCU with two to three movies per year and several TV series also moving forward. In that case, much like with the MCU, not every movie needs to be a masterpiece. We can have simple, fun adventures like "Solo." In fact, I think that's the exact direction they should go with these side stories in this gigantic universe. It's a solid direction and I'm excited. Thus I will happily award "Solo" with an 8/10.