Solo: A Star Wars Story Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, just for a change I thought I would do a new film review instead of a revisited one and the film this time will be Solo: a Star Wars Story, which is a space western that gives the backstory of Han Solo as a younger man.

So, is Solo any good? Well, let's dive in and take a look...

And the usual warning is coming...

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

STORY

So, I will summarise a bit of the story from Wikipedia just to save a bit of time below.

"On the planet Corellia, orphans Han (Alden Ehrenreich) and Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) escape a local gang. They bribe an Imperial officer with stolen starship fuel, known as coaxium, for passage on a transport, but Qi'ra is captured before she can board. Han vows to return for her and joins the Imperial Navy as a flight cadet, being given the surname "Solo"."

"Three years later, Han is serving as an infantryman on Mimban following his expulsion from the Imperial Flight Academy for insubordination. He encounters a group of criminals posing as Imperial soldiers, led by Tobias Beckett. Han attempts to blackmail Beckett into letting him join the gang, but Beckett has him arrested and thrown into a pit to be fed to a Wookiee prisoner named Chewbacca. Able to understand Chewbacca's language, Han persuades him to cooperate to escape. Beckett, aware of the usefulness of a Wookiee's strength, rescues and enlists them in the gang to embark on a dangerous hijack mission...".

THOUGHTS

As a backstory film, Solo for the most part does a pretty decent job overall and its good to see some sort of fill-in-the-blanks movie for a character as renowned and likeable as Han Solo. Of course the film does have some issues but I will get to them later but it does do its job well enough in showing how Han became the guy he well...became! 

Of course on a more unfortunate note despite the film being fairly well received by critics, it was a box office disappointment and that in itself seems to have stopped the possibility of a sequel happening in the near future.

PERFORMANCES (Warning: this section may contain the odd spoiler!)

As for the performances they are pretty good overall.

Starting with Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, who does a pretty good job in the titular role and he plays Han with a mix of sly charm and cynicism aswell as the odd dab of heroism too. Alden himself actually spoke with Harrison Ford to gain some advice on how to play the part and on the basis of what we see here, he does a good job. 

Emilia Clarke is also very good in her role as Qi'ra, Han's girlfriend who he is separated from at the start of the film and Han basically vows to go back for her but things later on take a bit of twist as the story develops. Qi'ra's character was rumoured to be used as a Disney+ series that looked into the criminal organisation she works for. 

Donald Glover is excellent as a younger Lando Calrissian, who ends up working briefly with Han and the two of them of course gamble over the Millenium Falcon, which at this stage, Lando owns. Glover too manages to get down Lando's sly charm too and he enjoys a good rapport with Alden and the rest of the cast members. 

Woody Harrelson does very well also as Tobias Beckett, who is a gang leader and mentor to Han as the two of them work together to hijack precious fuel for the gangster boss, Dryden Vos and Woody does his usual mix of charm and world weary cynicism. The character of Beckett was said to have been based on Long John Silver from Treasure Island.

Paul Bettany is also pretty good as the sinister main villain, Dryden Vos, who Han is forced into doing a job for along with Beckett's gang and he for some reason has some pretty nasty facial scars and Bettany does his best to be fairly menacing although not quite as much as he was in Gangster No.1! Bettany himself was a replacement for Michael K.Williams who was unable to return to do reshoots for the film.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is also not too bad in her voice-role as L3-37, Lando's droid companion and navigator, who acts a something of social justice warrior for other droids as she is determined to fight for the freedom. 

And last of all is Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca and he's fine in the part although of course all he has to do is just move around beating up enemies or shooting them and we get to hear Chewie's familar growls over it. 

DIRECTOR

As for the direction, Ron Howard does a fairly good job overall with the film although the pacing is a bit off a times here as the film goes from being fast to slowing down throughout at different stages. This kind of makes the film a bit frustrating to watch as its 2 hour 15 minute run time actually does feel a bit flabby. That aside, Howard does what he can with the action, which is fairly solid and he get's some good performances from his cast.

MUSIC

Music wise this time round we get John Powell doing the main score but John Williams also contributes a couple of pieces and he composed Han's main theme for the film. To be honest, alot of the Star Wars scores at this point kind of all blend in together, so I can't this one is anymore special than the others and I still think that the original trilogy and the Phantom Menace's scores are the best. Despite this, the score is still decent enough even if it isn't overly memorable, it still that Star Wars John Williams-esque sound to it.

FLAWS (Warning: this section may contain spoilers!)

As for the flaws...yes Solo has some.

For starters, I think the pacing of the film is a bit slow at times and uneven as there are some good action sequences but in between some slower scenes that could have been cut down to reduce is somewhat lengthy-ish run time of 2 hrs and 15 mins. There are of course longer Star Wars films out there but this one could have been better paced.

I also thought that Han's sudden given surname of "Solo" was a bit cringeworthy as he escapes a local gang and joins the imperial navy as a flight cadet and the officer that enlists him basically makes the name for him as Han couldn't give him an actual surname of his own (persumably as he is an orphan). So, yep its a pretty daft moment in the film that is very similar to alot of other backstory films we get where some lame exposition is thrown in.   

Another daft moment was to do with what appeared to be the idea of Lando being "in love" with his droid co-pilot of the falcon, L3-37 as she put it herself but that she didn't feel the same way. I think its almost like the film wants to paint Lando as having a thing for robots like in the same way that Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek films has a thing for green-skinned alien females!

Another thing that is a bit bothersome is that at the end its left clearly open ended for a sequel but with the lacklustre financial performance of the film, it seems uncertain if there will be a sequel, so it feels that the film's end regarding Qi'ra is a bit rushed. Not to mention that, we suddenly also get to see the appearance of Darth Maul! So, obviously the film must have been set before the events of the Phantom Menace, either that or Maul somehow managed to stitched himself back together again after Obi Wan sliced him in half! ;-)

And last of all I felt that the whole idea of Han wanting to become an imperial navy pilot so he could fly back to Corellia for Qi'ra was pretty silly. It seems a pretty cheesy plan not to mention a rather lengthy one given that it would take him a few years to complete. I mean why didn't he just try and steal a ship somewhere and fly back in for Qi'ra rather than wait and go through a whole rigmarole to do so! 

Anyway that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So, to sum up, Solo: a Star Wars Story is an enjoyable, light hearted film that tells a reasonable backstory of Han Solo and it features good performances particularly from Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover as Han and Lando aswell as Emilia Clarke as Qi'ra. The film does have some drawbacks of course with its uneven pacing and somewhat lengthy run-time and some plot issues but that aside its still a fairly fun Star Wars flicks that's worth a look.

Right, that's it for now and I will be back hopefully with another post before the end of the month.

Till then, keep safe and bye for now!