Episode 1701 Talkback - Solo: A Star Wars Story Movie Review
Adam_Murdough
Posts: 506
Soaring from the Spice Mines of Kessel to the silver screen, it's Solo: A Star Wars Story, chronicling the early adventures of everyone's favorite spacefaring scoundrel, Han Solo! Thrill with the Geeks as they indulge in a digression-heavy discussion of the film, and how it scratched their Star Wars fan-itch in a Wookiee-sized way! (Warning: This episode is smuggling a heavy cargo of SPOILERS!) (1:23:21)
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While Solo was enjoyable enough as a popcorn flick, the movie is just about as deep as the shallow end of the pool. Most of what we learn throughout the entire story is inconsequential, or things we already knew but are now on screen to "fill in the gaps." I know that this is one of the complaints that people gave about Rogue One, but at least with that we were introduced to new characters that broadened the lore of the franchise. Instead, here we got Han, an old girlfriend, and the guy who taught him how to be a sneaky scoundrel.
Favorite parts were L3-37 (yet again a droid steals the show), anything involving Donald Glover's Lando, the train fight scene, Chewie getting to do things, and the staging on Kessel was really cool.
Loved the cameo near the end, legit didn't see that coming.
But overall, of the new crop of Star Wars movies, this falls right to the bottom, and the box office confirms that. It didn't help that the marketing for this film was awful. Every single scene they chose to show of Alden Ehrenreich made it look like he was stiff as a board, but he's actually not that bad in the role. But you'd never know from what they showed. The other part of this is definitely due to the rushed post-production, as they probably had much less lead time to work with footage for marketing.
As for the directing of Ron Howard, for a stand-in, he did the job okay enough. But very few bits of this felt kinetic. Instead, it was standard. I assume anything involving shaky cam were holdovers from Lord and Miller's version of the movie, because that felt way different than anything else.
I'd also love to see Michael Kenneth Williams' cut scenes as the villain, Dryden Vos. Paul Bettany does more than an adequate job in his stead, but I'm a big fan of Williams whenever he's anywhere.
In conclusion, I think I would have enjoyed Oceans 11 in space a lot more as a setting for a Solo film. I know @wildpigcomics mentioned this felt like that to him, but it wasn't enough of that for my liking. And the last name reveal, was so unnecessary and hitting you over the head with it. I doubt I'm...Solo...on that opinion.
I'm glad the fellas enjoyed the film, and I did like a lot of it. But I was simply looking for something much more than what I got. Mind you, The Last Jedi is quite possibly my favorite of the Star Wars films, right up there with Empire. So your mileage may vary, and I highly appreciate if it does.
After Empire, Revenge of the Sith takes my number two spot. Next to Solo (though I haven’t seen this movie), Palpatine became my second favorite Star Wars character. That’s actually what has kept the prequel trilogy ranked above the sequel trilogy for me.
I couldn't agree more about the film feeling "standard". I felt the story (except for the last 15 minutes) felt like an animated straight to DVD offering: all of the boxes were being checked off, but none of it was being done in an exciting or even new way to me.
The film also gave short shrift to important character moments esp with Han and Q'ira (and his love for Q'ira is Han's entire motivation through most of the film). First he has the love of his young life stolen from him and for some reason he does NOT decide to risk his own life to go back for her immediately (seriously, for all he knew they would torture or kill her as punishment and Han is certainly no scoundrel when it comes to Q'ira in this film), but instead he leaves her so he can learn how to become a pilot first and come back for her at some point once he's out of the military and gotten enough money for a ship, etc. Mind you, this impulsive and rash young man's whole reason for living is ostensibly to return to her, but he's sure taking his sweet time about it. Maid Marian was lucky Robin Hood didn't possess a similar sense of "urgency" and self-preservation. ( Again, Han is no scoundrel for Q'ira.) Fortunately fate takes a hand in speeding up Han's timetable and allows them to fortuitously run into each other and that moment of discovery, for me anyway, is just lacking.
I understand that they're both trying to maintain a facade of some kind, but what's most remarkable is how forgiving and trusting Q'ira is. She's totally on board with his "I was coming back for u!" 3 years later. She's apparently experienced unspeakable worlds of unpleasantness but there's not a trace of doubt, cynicism or resentment for the man who, by all appearances, forgot about her.
And then u have the film's other key storyline: how Han wins the Falcon from Lando. While I did like the sleight of hand at the end, Han's ability to win the first time is never explained. It's the most uninteresting ostensibly high stakes card game ever filmed. Han's gambling ability is not something the film needed to dwell on, but something that could have been easily established earlier back in Corellia. Why not have him running from a card game at the start of the film (he could be fleeing thugs who didn't take kindly to being hustled by a card sharp like himself) and then he can impress us when we realize he's only pretending to know nothing about Sabaac.
I can see that the filmmakers wanted us to be on pins and needles wondering if Han will win or not, but instead we get what amounts to an unsatisfying deus ex machina - an "Oh by the way, any tension u may have felt was based on the fact that we never gave you any indication that Han's a great gambler. I'm sure you were wondering 'Hmmm, how's Han going to win? Is he a good gambler and the filmmakers just never told us?' Well, that's exactly right." It's all so unnecessary because the point of the whole scene isn't for Han to win, but for Lando to cheat.