Solo: A Star Wars Story

Dir: Ron Howard

2018

***

At this point of the Star Wars franchise, film number ten no less, I am starting to loose enthusiasm. It turns out I didn’t really want what I thought I did for all these years. Solo isn’t a bad film but it’s not a Star Wars film and when they call it ‘A Star Wars Story’ what they really mean is that it is Star Wars-ish. Not Star Wars enough in my opinion, although Solo is actually at its best when it’s not being Star Warsy. If that doesn’t make any sense to you then I hope the film does, because I left the cinema baffled but not too bothered by it, indeed, after the last few Star Wars films I’m getting used to the feeling. It is now well known that original director Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (of The Lego Movie fame) were kicked off the project by producer Kathleen Kennedy and scriptwriter Lawrence Kasdan for shifting the story off-course. Lord and Miller stated that they believe that they were making a comedy, where Kennedy pointed out that they were really hired to add a comedic touch to the space fantasy. I feel the film could have done with far more comedy but I actually think Lucasfilm made the right decision because the sound of Star Wars: The improvisation comedy sounds cack and I never thought Lord and Miller were the right directors for the job in the first place. Ron Howard is a hit and miss director but he is a friend of Lucas and he did train under the bearded one back in the day. Plus, he had already directed half the cast in previous films, so it’s not as if everyone would need big introductions for the rest of the film and re-shoots, they mostly all new what to expect. The fact remains though that 70% of the film was re-shot and I’m afraid it really shows. The fact that Alden Ehrenreich doesn’t really look like young Harrison Ford never really bothered me, I didn’t see the two Solos as being the same person but I went with it. I liked him very much. Joonas Suotamo did Peter Mayhew proud, Emilia Clarke sparkled as only Emilia Clarke can and Paul Bettany played the likable but dastardly villain rather well. Christian Bale was up for the role of Han's mentor Tobias Beckett, and I would have liked to have seen that version, but Woody Harrelson was fine. My only criticism was that he has played a few too many similar characters in the past and he was clearly loving being in Star Wars – a bit too much. Two of my very favorite characters of the film were Jon Favreau’s multi-limbed alien Rio Durant and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s liberated droid L3-37 but neither had nearly enough screen time. However, the undisputed stand-out performance came from Childish Gambino himself, Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian. Glover met with Billy Dee Williams before filming to go over the character which clearly worked as he basically steals every scene he’s in and lifts the film every time he’s on screen. He is the most Star Warsy thing about the whole film, as only he convinced me he was the Lando Calrissian. It was nice to see Warwick Davis again but even nicer to see him unmasked and with lines this time. It was good to have Anthony Daniels on board too, making him the only actor to star in every single Star Wars film, although this time as a Wookie and not C3-PO. This actually the first Star Wars film not to feature R2-D2 and C3-PO and I have to say, it didn’t feel right but then this is the Star Wars Anthology series and not the core canon – as Kathleen Kennedy put it: "George Lucas was so clear as to how that works. The canon that he created was the Star Wars saga. Right now, Episode VII falls within that canon. The spin-off movies, the Star Wars Anthology series, exist within that vast universe that he created. There is no attempt being made to carry characters (from the standalone films) in and out of the saga episodes. Consequently, from the creative standpoint, it's a road map that George made pretty clear.” After Rouge One however, what she has said no longer rings true. Rouge One was great, it was a darker Star Wars film but it felt every bit as Star Warsy as the original films and I still rate it as being the third best Star Wars film of the lot so far. It worked because it dealt with a separate issue that we knew about but never saw. The only thing we really knew about (and were interested in) from Solo was the part about Han winning the Millennium Falcon from Lando over a game of cards, and as it happens it is the best bit of the film. The rest just didn’t work for me. Han meeting Chewie should have been a great scene too but it was anything but. I would argue that a Lando origin story would have been much better and I would bet my house that Lucasfilm probably think the same right about now. Solo was original canon and should have been left alone. Overall the film had a couple of decent action scenes but nothing that really stands out. The cast is a likable bunch but it wasn’t quite enough to convince me that all this really did happen ten years before the events of A New Hope. I’ve never seen The Clone Wars or have read the novels or comics because I was always led to believe none of it was canon and to be frank, I was never that interested. So when Darth Maul turned up towards the end I was a little surprised. I’m thrilled Ray Park was back (I met him once and had a wonderfully animated conversation with him where he nearly threw me on the floor while showing me some of his Maul moves) but I’m pretty sure he was cut in half at the end of Phantom Menace but apparently in Clone Wars he survived. He supposedly left all that Sith nonsense behind him and, with the aid of brand new robot legs, became a successful overlord of some crime organisation – or something along those lines. Apparently you can see his robot legs in the film but I certainly didn’t and besides, we saw him as a fuzzy hologram and he had a long cloak on. Me and my wife spend the journey home from the cinema trying to work out the timeline, coming to the conclusion that Han Solo was somehow twenty years older than Darth Vader and thus close to fifty years old in A New Hope. It didn’t make sense to me but more unfortunate than that, I don’t think I care anymore. They’ve already ruined Star Trek and it looks as though Star Wars is next. There are elements of Solo that I did enjoy but overall, it’s real problem is that it claims to be a true Star Wars film and it really isn’t. At this point I think I’d actually welcome a Jar jar binks origin story because at least it wouldn’t mess with the story and in all honesty, he isn’t looking so bad in retrospect.