A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away... there was a farm kid. That farm kid found a couple robots and an
old peacekeeper, got in way more trouble than he bargained for, and ducked into
a bar. In that bar he found a cowboy and a walking carpet, and they agreed to
give him a ride off his dustball in their own special, piece of junk transport—
And the rest is history.
Nine movies, three animated series,
a few one-offs and a billion and a half toys later, Star Wars is a global phenomenon that shows no signs of slowing
down; in fact, it has a good chance of being one of the things scholars study a
millennium hence to attempt to understand late-period Western culture, the same
way we study the Greek myths, Canterbury
Tales or Beowulf. The latest
entry in that corpus? Solo, the
spin-off that tells us exactly how that cowboy and walking carpet met.
I went into this movie freshly
scarred from The Last Jedi and not
expecting much (having, you might say, a bad feeling about this.) Rian Johnson’s
take on the saga did what I thought was impossible and turned in some
moviemaking that was as bad, or worse, than Episode III. Spectacle at the
expense of coherence, politically-correct characters jammed into the plot,
and a deliberate abandonment of all the story and saga that came before left me
feeling betrayed that it made as much money as it did. Poe Dameron and one cool
dogfight with the Millennium Falcon
were not enough to salvage all that dross.
So I was three-quarters expecting
more of the same. That’s not what I got. If The
Last Jedi was a movie written by a PC Disney bureaucrat, Solo is a loving nod to all those
sixteen-year old boys who wanted to strap on a DL-44 blaster, jump into the
left-side pilot’s seat of a YT1300 Corellian freighter, and yell “Chewie, punch
it!” (My nerd is showing. I know.) We get to see Han’s steampunk-meets-Detroit-slums
homeworld, Han saving Chewbacca’s life and earning the famous “life debt,” and
the Kessel Run. And most of it is pure fun.
 |
| "What a piece of junk..." |
This movie runs strongest when it’s
bringing to life what fans already know happened. We’ve always known Han won
the Millennium Falcon from Lando in a
game of Sabacc, but now we get to watch him do it (although that may not happen
quite the way you’d expect.) We’ve known that it made the Kessel Run in less
than twelve parsecs, but we didn’t know how good that was (twenty-plus is
normal!) or why he had to do it (so his ship wouldn’t explode.) We’ve known Han
saved Chewie’s life, but him doing it on the side of a snowy mountain monorail
during a crazy heist is perfect. And we get to see why the Falcon looks quite so junky when we meet it again five or so years
later. There’s just a lot of good, old fashioned shoot-em-up thrills.
Not that it doesn’t have a few weak
spots. This is no Rogue One, (the
very late change in directors probably being to blame) and it shows the most
when Solo is trying to connect all
the preordained dots. Han’s love interest is supposed to be a femme fatale “survivor,”
for instance, but comes off far too heavy on the femme and way too light on the fatale.
We enter the movie knowing she’s going to betray him and leave him the cynical
smuggler we find on Tatooine, but when she does it mostly fails to land—whether
from lack of on-screen emphasis or poor acting, I don’t know. Part of the fault
lies with Alden Ehrenreich, who tries his best but just can’t quite capture
Harrison Ford’s ability to be scared out of his wits and way out of his depth, and still be gruffly charming. He mostly just
comes off as lovable, and this movie never quite completes his journey to the
grouchy side. Part of that may have been mandated to save room for a possible
sequel, but if so, it was a bad move. Paul Bettany tries his best as a scarred
crime lord but is never quite up to the looming threat of Jabba the Hutt. There’s
also some brief weirdness with Lando Calrissian and his droid that I shall
simply choose to ignore when this movie is mentioned. Like midichlorians. Also,
I never heard a Wilhelm scream. And that is just sad. But moving on...
My favorite single moment was a
cameo that probably utterly bemused and puzzled those who have only watched the
movies, but filled in a huge lingering question for lovers of the Clone Wars animated series. Well done,
Disney.
The final ranking? I’d own it and
watch it again. A good 7/10 or so, above the prequels (and waaaaaay above The Last Jedi) but below Rogue One, Clone Wars/Rebels, and the OT.
Hope that’s helpful, Star Wars
fans. Here’s to better times ahead for the franchise. Chewie—punch it.
