Directed by Ron Howard

Written by Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan

Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Paul Bettany

To my surprise, Solo: A Star Wars Movie is not the disaster I thought it would be. It is, in fact, a better made movie than the miserable Rogue One (but more on that in a bit). I walked into Solo expecting one of the worst experiences of the year. Because of the troubled production, because of firing of the original directors deep into production, because of all the reshoots, because of the poor marketing, and because of the casting of Alden Ehrenreich. Everything just seemed wrong about it. Did we really need a Han Solo origin prequel? Not really, but since when was any prequel ever necessary. The surprise here is that the movie ended up being pretty entertaining.

Generally when you hear about things like reshoots, or directors being replaced far into production they are generally giant red flags of the movie’s final outcome. They’re death sentences really, and you can expect nothing but a confusing final cut. That’s what happened with Rogue One and Suicide Squad anyway, although those movies weren’t too hot to begin with.

What’s incredible here is that the two original directors of Solo were Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the guys who made the hilarious 21 and 22 Jump Street films. They ended up getting fired by the studio deep, deeeeppp into filming. For what reason exactly I couldn’t tell you, but I strongly suspect their comedic goofy tone of humor wasn’t to Disney’s liking. Not for a Han Solo movie anyway. They got replaced by Ron Howard, who has made great films before like Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, but lately has made moviegoing drek like those race and sea movies that nobody saw. I don’t need to type their titles because if I named them you still wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

It’s kind of a miracle, I think, that Solo didn’t end up being a 0/10 just from these kind of setbacks. The marketing also was not kind to this movie, as it showcased Alden Ehrenreich as Han, and he did not look so hot. I thought he looked and sounded all wrong in the trailers, and his delivery was somewhere in between deadpan and excitement. It worried me. I couldn’t unsee Alden from his brief role in Hail Caeser, which he was hilarious in, but no way could I buy him as a classic Star Wars character. The strange thing here is once the movie got going, he sorta grew on me and I liked him. So let’s talk about it.

The opening shots of the film are pretty slick, I thought it was a good place to start a Han Solo movie with a chase scene, as Han is the one being chased. He’s on the run from stealing Coaxium, which is the hyper fuel so very valued in this world. Alden isn’t onscreen for long before he runs into Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra, and we learn they already have an established romantic relationship and are trying to escape their world of Corellia together. Whether or not the movie’s decision to pick up here rather than a much younger Han’s upbringing and meeting of Qi’ra bothers you will depend on what you like to see in these movies. But it was just fine with me, I like movies when they hit the ground running, especially in spinoff prequels that we didn’t necessarily need.

Han and Qi’ra escape the criminal gang underground together, but get separated. Han makes it off the planet, Qi’ra is captured and taken back. But we know Han wants to be a pilot, or that he is destined to be one, and so how the movie goes about it is interesting. He enlists in the Imperial army to train as a pilot, so he can come back later on and rescue Qi’ra. There’s an extremely brief moment when he is signing up where his name Solo is given to him by the enlisting Imperial guard. I dunno, it was silly but it worked for me. He was just “Han” before, but since he has no allegiance or family, the guard puts him down as “Solo”. Again, how you see these kinds of things depends on what you’re looking for. I didn’t need some amazing explanation of his full name, so the easiness of it did not bother me at all.

Flash forward 3 years later, and an AWESOME transition to Han being with the Imperial infantry, in the frontlines, with guns. Turns out he was kicked out of Flight academy for “having a mind of his own” he explains later on. But here, in the trenches of war, we meet Woody Harrelson’s gun flipping Tobias Beckett, who is hands down the best part of the entire film. Notice the hilarious and great way he wields his blasters. Immediately we know Han will learn from him. I think it’s pretty cool how the story gets here.

Han recognizes that Beckett and his crew look out of place, and deduces easily that they are actually criminals posing as Imperial soldiers. Han grew up around criminals, so it makes sense that that shit wouldn’t be rocket science for him. He calls them out on their identities, cause he wants to join them, but Beckett refuses and has him tossed in jail.

It is the movie’s brilliance that Han and Chewy weren’t already together when this story started. It is brilliant because we get to see how they meet and how their friendship is formed. Chewy is the monster that is chained down with Han in that same cell. And his appearance, and this whole scene actually, is a highlight of the film.

Chewy comes out of the shadows and beats Han down, and just as he’s about to drown him in the mud, the amazingly wonderful moment of Han’s understanding of the language of the Wookies is revealed. I thought this was kind of incredible. Han speaks to him in Wookie and they break out together. Eventually they end up with Beckett and his crew escaping on a ship together since he decides he needs more people for the job they’re about to do. All of this worked for me.

On the crew are Thandie Newton and a four armed creature who speaks pretty fast. Together they execute a heist to rob a train that has a whole lot of Coaxium on it. This whole sequence is pretty cool, although it does go on a little too long. A couple of crew members die, and it’s important to note that their deaths after being onscreen for minimal time are more effective than all the deaths of the main characters in Rogue One, which was so poorly told that it did not work one bit. Hey, look at that, Solo did in 20 minutes more effectively than what took all of Rogue One’s entire runtime. Fuck Rogue One. More on that movie’s shortcomings later.

The deaths happen because a gang of marauders interferes. But the point is our crew walks away with nothing. And that is bad because the job Beckett was assigned was assigned by Dryden Vos, a frightening crime overlord played awesomely by Paul Bettany.

Bettany’s performance is just great here, I bought him instantly and yeah, I was scared of his Dryden. I loved the red marks on his face and his signature weapon that is used to introduce him (and what a funny intro that is).

You may think it’s contrived that while meeting up with Dryden, Han runs into Qi’ra. And it turns out she works for Dryden. Convenient? Sure, but again it didn’t bother me in the slightest. Emilia Clarke’s existence in the movie is alright, she’s really just given the thankless role of being Han’s love interest before Leia. So we know ahead of time it isn’t going to work out. But why it doesn’t work out is….well it’s bizarre. But let’s continue with the story.

Dryden is terrifying. He wants that Coaxium. Han and Beckett and Chewy must come up with a plan to steal more before he kills them all in that room. I think it’s really fun how they form that plan, and how Dryden sends Qi’ra with them to make sure the job gets done (like we don’t know what’s going to end up happening). The plan is to steal Coaxium from Kessel (sound familiar?).

But they need a ship! And guess who has one? I think we all knew Qi’ra was going to take us to a young Lando, who of course has the Millennium Falcon. Donald Glover is good in this role, the first line he has he sounds EXACTLY like Billy Dee Williams. Han and him engage in a ludicrous card game, the rules of I still don’t understand.

But it’s fine, and it’s fun. We also meet Lando’s droid L3, who has one of the strangest roles in Star Wars I have ever seen. Her relationship with Lando is beyond weird, and maybe even a sexual one, the movie hints at. “It works” she tells Qi’ra who can’t believe what she’s hearing. I dunno, that same line was used in Infinity War between Vision and Scarlett Witch, and that was romantic and sweet. Here it is a bit offsetting. Is it strange that my mind wandered to Donald Glover having sex with a talking robot?

L3 is fucking weird, there’s a whole thing with her and stopping robot slavery. It hits some nearly offensive notes, but it’s alright I guess because of what happens later on. I’ll get there in a second, cause Lando and L3 join them in their mission to steal the unrefined Coaxium. They all are onboard the Falcon now.

But I loved that the movie took a little time to go into lightspeed. And I loved seeing the Falcon flying around a maelstrom, and eventually in one, but we’re getting there in a second.

The crew gets to the mines, and L3 insights a great robot riot after she frees a little droid, who then begins thinking for himself and starts freeing everyone else. Amazing. Chewy finds enslaved Wookies and starts kicking ass to free them. This entire  riot and revolt scene is shockingly effective. The action is in this film is filmed well and it works wonderfully. The fate of L3 causes her to become a part of the Falcon, and it’s what allows Han his chance to pilot the iconic ship at last. Their flight from the mines with the coaxium is great. They are forced to fly through the dangerous maelstrom, and I felt the scale of how tiny the Falcon was in all this. The shots are just right, and their escape is cool, the movie has a lot of fun with this sequence.

And how great is it that Han tells a random guy refueling their ship when they land, “I made the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs” and the guy just walks away? Solo has a few callbacks like these that are treated with clever winks rather than offensive shouting. These kinds of things work for me, because I am tired of offensive trash like Rogue One. Just remember what that film did to Donnie Yen. The legend, DONNIE YEN, reduced to a blind guy whacking stormtroopers with a stick, in some of the worst filmed action I have ever seen. How anyone walked out of the movie not livid is beyond me.

When it comes to anthology spinoffs in this universe, Rogue One is bad, and Solo is alright. I will take Solo any day of the week over Rogue One.

YOU HEAR ME DISNEY

ANY DAY OF THE FUCKING WEEK

The degree to which you enjoy these films will depend on how you process movies. Does objectively bad filmmaking and storytelling bother you? No? Then you’ll like Rogue One. You’ll like a lot of bad movies too, and I envy you. I wish I could be so forgiving. But I just can’t. I saw Rogue One just one time, and one time was too many. I cringe thinking about it as I write this. It had objectively bad music, and bad musical cues, and bad camera work, and laughable pacing, and no characters aside from the robot, and always always it was boring and dumb. And ALL the action fucking sucked. All except Vader’s second appearance in that hallway scene, which was amazing. Too bad the rest of the movie sucked so much I just wanted to leave the theater. Take a note here how I cried my eyes out at Infinity War’s conclusion, but walked out with a bad taste in my mouth when Rogue One ended. I shoulda been crying but instead I just wanted it to be over. Because that movie had an ending it did not deserve, and was not earned in the slightest. And people still praised it just because it had Star Wars in the title. I hated that movie even with my buried expectations. It really says something that I walked into Solo with similar thoughts and the film ended up winning me over.

Is Solo a great movie? Nah, but it’s alright, and it’s kinda good even. And since Rogue One’s very existence hurts me, this was maybe the best I could have gotten. The reshoots are not as noticeable here, and do not damage the storytelling as much as Rogue One’s did. Solo is well shot and well edited. And the action is cool and awesome at times. What an amazing fight scene between Dryden and Han at the end! And the music is really good, John Powell delivers here, and we even get some great new themes in the Star Wars universe. Rogue One had NO such thing going on.

But I think it’s important to ask what we learn about beloved icons from their origin stories. I felt Solo did a good job teaching us things about Han we didn’t know. I think it’s cool that he learns his staple morals from Beckett, and that he gets his gunslinging this way as well. What happens between these two characters really worked for me, I’m completely still surprised at this. It’s thanks to Alden and Woody’s performances. Especially Woody. He’s so good in this role that there’s some twists and turns in the story that I genuinely did not see coming at all. And Alden won me over, he really did. I can’t explain it, but I like him as Han now. What the hell is happening to me?

Solo is a movie I wouldn’t mind seeing twice, but I’d sooner walk into oncoming traffic than watch Rogue One again. That film is indefensible, and listen to anyone that tries, their arguments will always boil down to “cause it’s Star Wars”, which I’m afraid is not good enough. I think since we are destined to have an infinite number of Star Wars movies being made, I don’t mind Solo’s existence as canon. Sure it plays it safe and doesn’t really take any risks, but it has a decent head on its shoulders. And I’ll take it over harmful bleakness like Rogue One.