So Long: A Star Wars Mistake.

Original Poster

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan
Cinematography by Bradford Young
Music by John Powell, featuring themes written by John Williams
Edited by Pietro Scalia
Staring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo and Paul Bettany


Originally released May 25th, 2018.


     Alright so first thing's first. I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor do I think I will ever be a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise. In fact, while I don't think it's totally void of merit and value, I think the franchise as a whole doesn't really offer much to our collective cinematic landscape (wow do you ever write a sentence and realize what a longwinded piece of shit you are? Happens to me all the time). My father actively disliked the original trilogy from the first time he saw it. In 1977, he was a 12 year old boy who loved space, and even he was not taken in by A New Hope's impressive special effects and unimpressive main character (I'm gonna say it right now, and I want it on the record, Luke Skywalker is an annoying little bitch). So I have no nostalgic connection to these movies. I can only judge them as I judge all other movies. On technical merit, ethical implications and cultural impact. If you want to hear about how this fits into the franchise, I am not your gal. I really enjoyed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). It was a compelling story, concisely written and very competently put together. The result is a fun, and at times genuinely moving 2 hours where I never felt like taking a nap or rolling my eyes so hard I lose them in the back of my head forever. I was hoping that the movies Disney had announced that narratively fell outside of the original trilogy, like Rogue One, would follow that example. With Solo, I have been promptly let down.

Am I the only one who finds Chewbacca distractingly ridiculous looking?

     I'll give you the broad strokes of this erratic, overly complex plot now so we can get that out of the way. I will reiterate that I do not care for the story at large, so forgive me if I don't lavish in all the minute connections this movie makes to the episodic storyline. So Han (Ehrenreich) is an orphan living on the planet Corellia, that appears to be populated exclusively by youthful street urchins who are constantly stealing from one another (I found out it's a ship building planet with a large population of poor orphans, but only after I googled the plot for this review). He and his lover, Qi'ra (Clarke), attempt to escape the giant, angry, light sensitive worm creature they owe money to by stealing valuable refined fuel that they stole for her in order to flee the planet and sell it. Han gets out, Qi'ra does not. Han joins the Imperial Navy in order to become a pilot and one day return to rescue his lady love. We pick up with him again 3 years later, and now he's a foot soldier in the army. He got kicked out of the flight academy for being too disobedient or sexy or something. He's now stationed on a mud planet? where he meets Chewbacca, who has been chained in a pit eating people for at least as long as it takes a skeleton to rot clean. Which is horrifying. While there he also encounters Tobias and Val Beckett (Harrelson and Newton, respectively), a couple of high profile thieves there to steal weapons or something for Dryden Vos (Bettany). Vos is a high ranking member of the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn (why a group that is supposedly trying to keep a low profile would give it self such a flashy name that is very reminiscent of menstruation is beyond me). Han discovers that Qi'ra is working for/schtuping Vos (what the FUCK are the odds) and becomes invested in whatever needlessly cryptic bullshit is going on with them. So that's roughly the first 45 minutes. There's another entire hour and 15 minutes of shit I don't care to rehash here. Christ, what a long fucking movie.

A man and his giant dog thing. Classic.

     One of the very first lines uttered in Solo made me want to stand up, scream into the dark theater full of innocent moviegoers and rip out my cerebral cortex, showering those moviegoers with my hot, angry disappointed blood. Screenwriting. Is. So. Important. And I generally like Lawrence Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Big Chill (1983), Grand Canyon (1991) and Dreamcatcher (2003), just to name a few), so I don't know what the heck happened here. Maybe it was the addition of his son Jonathan (whose IMDB page is only slightly longer than mine). I take with issue with both the structure of this screenplay and the dialogue in that structure. For one thing, this damn movie is 2 hours long, and it very much doesn't need to be. I wish I could say it would be easy to cut that run time down! It would not be! The important stuff is so inseparably woven into boring garbage that I can't really figure out what I would remove. So in order to understand it's asinine plot you have to deal with a bunch of technical jargon that gets the audience and the story nowhere. There are so many 'hero in peril' scenes that none of them really carry any weight, because by the third one you know instinctively that there will be another, so the peril is never real. This movie is essentially just a bunch of cool space vehicle chance scenes strung together with utterly forgettable moments of weak dialogue and forced character connections. I didn't give one shit about any of these characters. Probably because everything they say is a very thinly veiled effort to either advance the plot or give us information they already have that we need. There's nothing I hate more than characters exchanging information to each other that they both already know so that audience can hear it. No one in real life talks like that. It feels like the screenwriter has reached into the audience, grabbed you by your shirt collar and yelled "YOU'RE WATCHING A MOVIE". This was just an ungraceful, clunky, and at times cringy, attempt at writing a movie. I blame the younger Kasdan. Nice going, Jonathan.

We're on a real life green screen! Oh Boy!

     While I grew up not giving a shit about Star Wars, I am a human with eyes, so of course I thought Han was sexy. Harrison Ford, at any age, can fucking get it. In this movie, I was looking forward to seeing him be all young and reckless and cool. But, as contrary as it may sound, he wasn't the main character of Solo. The bonkers plot drowns out any opportunity to get to know this character better. I still don't really feel like I know anything about Han's youth or formative experiences. This film does the same thing that first trilogy did, in the sense that it alludes to much more compelling stories than the one it's telling. Han got kicked out of flight school? Well shit that sounds cool lets hear about that! Anyway, because it has so many characters all vying for the top spot in this narrative (like, look at the size of that freaking cast), it relies waaaayyyy too heavily on audience nostalgia to help centre it. I'm totally fine with an acknowledgement of why we all showed up. But if you're relying solely on peoples previous experiences to connect your movie to it's audience, it will surely fade into obscurity (much the same way George Lucas's chin faded into his neck years ago). The first time Han and Chewie sit down together behind the wheel of the Millennium Falcon, there's a big musical flourish and they give each other this little knowing glance. Like hell they'd know this was some important moment! In the context of the story, it's out of necessity that they end up flying together. Because no one else is able to in that moment. Give me a fucking break. This is another choice that removes the viewer from the experience of the film. It says, "Hey, remember that thing you already love? Well here's a less impressive, secondhand version of that!". Like, we get it, you're the most financially successful franchise ever. Stop jerking yourself off and show us something new and special.

That god damn smile. Jesus.

     So as much as I had a hard time sifting through all the narrative tripe in Solo, I at least enjoyed what I was looking at while I was doing so. The production design is absolutely outstanding. There's a definite 70's influence, which is an interesting choice. Because the original visual content was all designed in the 70's, but to look futuristic. So they sort of take that 70's space vibe and walk it back into a 70's earth vibe...in space. It works really well. Han's hair cut is super 70's, right down to the side burns. Most of the elegant dresses in one specific party scene are long, loose and low cut. The colour scheme for a lot of the movie is very heavily based in reds and yellows and browns. And I've always appreciated the design of the tech in these movies. From the swooshy space doors to Han's quintessential blaster (again a heck of a lot of reverence for a weapon that, in the context of the movie, is not important), everything is designed, ya know? There was thought and care taken with every prop, every set piece, every prosthetic alien scalp. I have a lot of respect for a movie that is visually so thoroughly realized. And one that so seamlessly connects a decade of style we're all familiar with to a new galactic setting. Even the poster is very 70's in it's design. There's lots of clean, symmetrical lines and a definite circle motif. Maybe I'm giving it too much credit, but a circle is an appropriate choice for a movie that's trying to bring our experience of a preexisting character, well, full circle. I have one more nice thing to say about this movie. Donald Glover is a damn masterpiece of a human artist generally, but he particularly crushes the game as a young Lando Calrissian. He looks perfect in the togs, he's got a legendary haircut, and he carries himself with just the right amount of friendly confidence with a 'fuck you\ attitude. He comes off exceptionally appealing, and I really hope they don't fuck up his dedicated bio pic the way they did this one.



     I don't recommend spending your hard earned cash on Solo. Watch it on Netflix in two months when you're trying to avoid doing your laundry. While there are some beautiful looking scenes, and Donald Glover's performance is not to be missed, it's ultimately underwhelming; A frantically written, hard to follow snooze fest with not nearly enough pew pew noises. Oh, did I say not enough? I'm sorry I meant too much. Absolutely too many pew pew noises. Cut those down by half and maybe you've got something here, Mr. Howard.



***


So that's another installment of me spending money on movies I know I won't like just to get the page views on here. This better work. All you opinionated nerds out there better be scraping the bottom of the internet and find this shit. I want enough page views to monetize this sucker so I don't keep wasting money on crappy movies like this one.

Ciao for now. See you next week!