In order to earn enough money to rescue Qiâra (Emilia Clarke), the girl he left behind, Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) teams up with Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and they join a gang of bandits led by Beckett (Woody Harrelson). When the job goes south, they are forced to take on a more dangerous heist for mob boss Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), this time with the aid of Qiâra, who now works for Vos, and Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover).
By the time I post this, the world has formed its opinion on Solo: A Star Wars Story, and that opinion is âMeh,â Which is too bad as it deserves better. Not a lot better, but better. It is a fun actioner, with plenty of scenes of mayhem and explosions and shootouts, putting it far ahead of any recent Bond film. And it doesnât make any big mistakes. It has far fewer flaws than most of the previous franchise films. Specifically, the acting is solid, which is something that a majority of Star Wars films canât claim.
Still, it is hard to get passed how unnecessary the film is. It exists to answer questions I wasnât interested in having answered or specifically wanted to remain unanswered. Where did Han and Chewbacca meet? Where did Han get his trademark gun? What was the Kessel run like? How did the card game that got him the Milenum Falcon play out? How did Han get his last name (I didnât even know that was a question I wasnât interested in until it was answered). If you were curious about any of these, then Solo is intended for you. I was not curious.
But then the Star Wars franchise is filled with films that are either unnecessary or damage previous films, or both. Only the original and The Last Jedi seem to avoid this, and I wouldnât bet money on The Last Jedi. And Solo does little damage to the world, and only a bit more of Han (reducing his mystique and screwing with his arc in the first trilogy), and as this film is so easy to ignore, those end up having little effect, so we’re back at it being unnecessary.
But I get the âMehâ response. Solo avoids the lows of previous installments, but also never hits the highs. Theyâll be no compulsion to fast forward through sections once Solo is available for home releaseâthe way I assume everyone who still watches it does with The Phantom Menaceâbut also less of a drive to watch it at all. The words that keep coming to mind are âfineâ and âsatisfactory.â So, call it âMeh +.â
The basic story of a failed heist leading to a bigger heist and people and groups not being what they originally appeared is a workable foundation for a film. It isnât novel, but is the stuff of a good old fashioned western. The characters arenât terribly strong or interesting, but they arenât (with the exception of an android that suffered under the rewrites) annoying either. Vos is a nasty villain, exactly the kind of part Bettany eats up, and Lando is goofy in a good way. My only complaint with the movie they made is that it is too dark. Gritty does not equal low light. Perhaps when they run the conversions for Blu-Ray someone will turn up the brightness a tad.
Of course the real problem is that this isnât the movie they should have made. If Disney had to make a Han Solo movie, it should have been a comedy, and apparently that was the plan when Phil Lord and Chris Miller were directing. Han and space pirates lend themselves to comedy and you could have had a memorable film that found its own place in the Star Wars franchise. But executives got scared, and brought in workman director Ron Howard to make a safer film. It doesnât look like much is left of the Lord/Miller take, except a few jokes (too few) here and there that are the best part of the movie. The failure of Solo is in imagination. Solo is a good movie and better than most action films, but it isnât special. It takes no risks. It sits comfortably within the Star Wars canon, bringing in nothing new. Star Wars (A New Hope to you kids) was fresh and exciting. Solo is pleasant and predictable. It was tailor-made for the fanboys who were upset that The Last Jedi wasnât exactly what they imagined when they were six. You should never give the fans what they want, and more often than not, they will decide they didnât really want it after all.