Fraught with production issues, Solo: A Star Wars Story is the second Star Wars film outside the Skywalker Saga, and the first film since the prequels to re-cast a beloved character with a younger actor. For those reasons, the anticipation for the film has been rather muted, at least by standard Star Wars standards. There are a few things everyone seems to be fully hyped for: Donald Glover as Lando…and I guess, Donald Glover as Lando. But there are more good parts of this film than just Glover, though it is an imperfect film and, undoubtedly, the least essential Star Wars film yet.
Keep reading for our spoiler-free review.
The biggest fear going into Solo was that it would feel like the work of two separate creative forces: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller started the film and, with three weeks remaining on principal photography, left the production and were replaced by Ron Howard. Depending on who you listen to, Howard either reshot 80% of the film, or seriously changed many aspects in editing, or both. The good news is that the film does not feel like a stitched together attempt at cohesion. There is a tone, a vibe, that runs through the entire film, and doesn’t waver too much from scene to scene.
Howard is an accomplished director, who has facility with a number of genres, and that works well for him here. In many ways, Solo, in the broadest strokes, resembles Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It is about a heist with some morally ambiguous characters and a wise-talking droid at the forefront. But the film also leans further into comedy – perhaps Lord and Miller’s lasting influence – as well as some of the more ambitious space sequences in Star Wars history. Howard’s even touch helps the film which, at times, tends to pull a little too far in one direction or another. Howard helps rein that in, and gives a film that is as smooth as Lando’s cape.
And therein lies one of the problems with the film. The Han Solo we met in A New Hope, set some ten or so years after Solo, is a loner, a scoundrel, and someone who is looking out for himself above all else. The Han of Solo is more compassionate and caring than any Han we see until, maybe, Return of the Jedi, if not The Force Awakens. I know that to make a film based around a character you want people to like, you need to add a little sugar sometimes, but there’s a real issue with the Han here and the Han we meet “later.” Perhaps, if sequels happen, it will help fill that in a bit more.
But Han, even though by the time the film really gets cooking he’s been through a lot, feels a little too green. If anything, Han’s journey is one from cynicism to belief, and this film somewhat bucks that. Very little of that has to do with Alden Ehrenreich’s performance, which does a nice job in being recognizably Solo most of the time, without doing a Harrison Ford impression. Ehrenreich is trying to both stay true to the character and offer something new, because otherwise, why watch this film? Because he has to carry the film and not just be a fun side-character, has to somewhat remain an empty vessel, allowing the filmmakers and audience alike to fill in the missing pieces that will lead him to his A New Hope persona.
The character who is fully formed, a perfect distillation of his original appearance, is Lando Calrissian. Donald Glover absolutely nails his performance, sounding like a younger Billy Dee Williams without slipping too often into imitation, though a few scenes may come pretty close. Glover is confident, flashy, and fully embracing the role. The movie gets much, much better once Lando joins it. And that’s not even because it is when the plot kicks into high gear, or the Millennium Falcon shows up; Glover is just that good.
The pre-Lando segments suffer from one major flaw, which is that this is a film that feels the need to tell you instead of show you in parts. Han has to say things like “I got kicked out of the Academy for having a mind of my own.” A more well crafted script might have found a less clunky way of saying that, and there are a dozen or so instances in the first third of the film that are similar. This is even reflected in the film’s opening moments, after “A long time ago…” The characters, especially Han and Tobias Beckett’s crew, come just shy of doing narration for their backstories. I don’t know if the fact that so much of this is new ground made the filmmakers nervous about people being left in the dark, but clearly they felt the exposition was needed.
Continued belowRon Howard Narrator Voice: It wasn’t.
But Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan have got the broad strokes about Han, Lando, and Chewbacca more or less down pat. There are a lot of really fine character moments that hint at, but never quite reference, classic moments in the original trilogy, as well as some surprises for the characters that feel earned and true to who they are. The early expository stuff is unfortunate, but it doesn’t bog the movie down too much. Once the heist begins, the rest of the movie flies by, and each character gets a chance to shine, even though the movie is barreling along at a faster pace than it was in the beginning.
That is another way that Rogue One is a natural comparison. Rogue One becomes something totally different once Jedha falls, and characters that may seem broad or undefined begin to reveal their complexities. Something similar happens here, especially with Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), who goes from a somewhat one-note companion to something far more interesting and multi-faceted by film’s end.
The other clear Rogue One analogue is L3-37, who is most similar to K-2SO. Neither strays too far from the classic droid, but both do so with a little more sass – at least sass that isn’t bleeps and bloops – than we’ve seen before. Elthree got some of the biggest laughs in the film, and plays an integral part in an unexpected way late in the second act. She works far better as a CGI tagalong than Jon Favreau’s Rio, who gets some of the film’s clunkiest dialogue and whose purpose seems to be just spitting out cliches that have life lessons attached to them.
I’m afraid to say too much more about the plot, because there are a few key characters and organizations that really work better without any prior knowledge, but I do want to follow up on what I said earlier about this being the least essential Star Wars film. While the prequels are guilty of this too, often to a greater degree, Solo answers questions that really didn’t need to be answered, or didn’t need to be answered this overtly. There is nothing as myopic as midichlorians, but I would have been far happier just spending time with these characters than having to check off various bits of Star Wars miscellany.
But overall, this is a fun, if slight, addition to the Star Wars pantheon. My wife teases me about how I tend to cry at Star Wars films, and she texted me as I was on the way into the theater “Have fun crying into your popcorn.” This isn’t that type of Star Wars film to me. Though loss is an indescribably huge piece of the film, there’s little here that tugs on the heartstrings, at least for me, like Rey returning Luke’s lightsaber, or a well placed Force Ghost. But it was fun, and it the action was intense, and there were a few big surprises – one huge surprise at the end of the third act.
I think Solo will be a success, but will remain a somewhat qualified one, due to the behind the scenes drama and relatively slight ambitions of the film. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Strap in and enjoy the jump the lightspeed.
