Hello there blog fans. I hope the day finds you in good spirits.
So…Solo. What can I say? It wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t love it. I should warn, there will be spoilers.
I have to admit that I’m a little bit of a huge hypocrite here. When Disney announced that they were putting aside the established expanded universe, I was in favour of the decision because for the most part, there was little in there that I thought NEEDED to be kept in. The one big exception is the Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley. Those three books: Han Solo at Stars’ End, Han Solo’s Revenge and Han Solo and the Lost Legacy are three of my favorite books of all time. They define Han Solo for me. The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin was alright too, I suppose, but Daley’s books are better. They’re quick reads and they are awesome. Choosing to tell a story that doesn’t fit with what I know of those books? Yeah, that’s just not gonna work for me.
My biggest problem with the movie is that they reduced Han from a bright, elite cadet in the Imperial Navy who gets discharged for doing the right thing, to a street rat who bungles his way into the Imperial Army and who gets sentenced to death for trying to desert. That jacket he wears on Bespin in the Empire Strikes Back? I’ve always thought of it as his officer’s jacket. Guess not. The Bloodstripe on his pants leg? Nope. You don’t get one of those for being a useless grunt.
The movie has a pacing problem too. There is none. It’s a breakneck ride. Some might enjoy that, but I wanted to feel that the progress Han makes in the galaxy was earned. Not that everything just falls in his lap. Han deserts the Imperial Army, gets wrapped back up in criminal life and wins the Falcon in about two weeks’ time.
And it tries to be too cute in places. Han’s mentor Beckett tosses Han a blaster to use on their heist. Close-up shot of the gun. Hey look kids! It’s the blaster Han uses in the original trilogy. This is how he got it! Cool huh? Han’s got lucky dice. They’re shown several times. Oh wow look! They’re the dice we see dangling in the Falcon’s cockpit in A New Hope. Cool huh? His last name? Oh, there’s a story for that too, because of course there is. It’s like the first act in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade only it’s the whole movie.
The most eye-rolling part of the whole movie. The one thing I cannot believe made it through the script-writing process. No wait, there was a second one, but I’ll get to that later. The most ridiculous thing in the movie is when Han meets Chewie in the slave pit. Han’s been thrown down there so the Imperial officers can enjoy watching him get torn apart by the Wookiee slave they haven’t fed (who for some reason they bring with them on the battlefront). How does Han get out of this mess? By talking to Chewbacca…in Wookiee (Shyriiwook). It was hard to take that bit seriously. It’s bad enough he already understands Wookiee, but that he can speak it? Uggh. It’s played for laughs in the movie, and it just falls flat for me.
It’s not all bad though. There are some fun easter eggs. Qi’ra turns out to be adept at Teras Kasi, the martial art made ‘famous’ in the Playstation fighting game, Masters of Teras Kasi. Lando makes a passing reference to the Sharu (a bit from HIS trilogy of books). I’ve read of some other neat background stuff that I apparently missed as well, like the crystal skull from Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (not the Indiana Jones crystal skull).
If the movie had been called BoShek: A Star Wars Story, I would have loved it. See, I don’t have any expectations about THAT smuggler we see in the Cantina on Tatooine (he’s the guy Obi-Wan talks to before he meets Chewbacca). The movie IS entertaining. It does feel like it fits into the Star Wars universe, just not the part that they were aiming for. Ron Howard did a fine job of salvaging a movie that by all accounts was going to be absolutely horrible the way it was going before he climbed aboard.
The truth is, Solo is a movie that didn’t need to be told. Really, you can say that about just about any movie, but it’s especially true when you decide to tell a story that people feel they already know and then change everything just because you can and it’s “cool”. It’s the same problem I had with Rogue One but at least Solo didn’t leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve given the sequel trilogy a break because it’s at least trying to tell new stories (no matter how familiar some parts may seem to some). These side stories are the basest of cash grabs. Well-made cash grabs I’ll grant you, but cash grabs all the same.
So that’s it. If you temper your expectations (like don’t go in expecting to see anything you think you know about Han Solo) you’ll likely have a good time watching Solo: A Star Wars Movie.
Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Let me know what YOU thought of Solo in the comments.
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Oh. I almost forgot. The second eye-roller. The one that’s the BIG reveal at the end of the movie. The head of the Crimson Dawn organization is…yeah, it’s really stupid. I don’t want to spoil it here though (plenty of other sites have done that already). You need to see it for yourself. It’s something the writer thought would be the coolest thing ever but didn’t think about how it fits into the greater narrative. It’s gratuitous fan service of the lowest order. It rivals Darth Vader tearing down that corridor at the end of Rogue One in its level of fanboyism. It’s the main reason I ultimately call this movie, well made fanfic.