Of all the space scamps in all the space movies, none has captivated more hearts than Han Solo.
Han was the smuggler that every young boy dreamed of being, and the hero that every young girl dreamed of being saved by. He was the cocky rogue with the crooked grin who shot first and said "I know." He flew the coolest ship and he had the best co-pilot and friend ever in Chewbacca.
So, why would you want to diminish his legacy by trotting out an origin story that completely fails to capture the essence of what made Han Solo so special? The easy answer is money. The longer answer is a bit more complicated.
Suffice to say, Solo: A Star Wars Story is a textbook example of how good ideas can go so very wrong when you tell too much and don’t show nearly enough.
First things first, with all due respect to young Alden Ehrenreich, they picked the wrong guy to play a young Harrison Ford. He’s just not Han Solo, and that fact nags throughout Solo’s unnecessarily long prequel adventure.
Han Solo was a lot of things (and yes, I’m speaking of the character in past tense because he’s dead, killed by his lame, millennially-pouty son in The Force Awakens) but he was never over-eager to fit in with a crew, over-zealous in his efforts to get the girl or so overly-pompous to the point of being unlikeable.
Second, and this is a big one — the brain trust at Lucasfilm (cough, Kathleen Kennedy, cough) is so afraid of taking a risk, any risk, when it comes to this cinematic universe that they’ve fallen into the DCEU trap of trying to please all ticket buyers instead of just telling a good story.
There’s some deep canon Star Wars mythology that’s casually sprinkled throughout conversations in Solo, as well as a late-late-third act cameo, that only serves to confuse the series timeline and confound viewers who haven’t read every comic or fiction book or watched every animated series in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
For example, when viewers are re-introduced to Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), the love interest of young Han, who gets left behind on the planet Corellia in the film’s uneven opening section, it has been three years since she last saw Solo, yet she’s somehow managed to master the discipline of Teräs Käsi under the tutelage of evil Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). It would have been a lot cooler to see some of her story to provide the proper context instead of someone just saying, 'Oh, you know Teräs Käsi? That's cool!'
My third issue with Solo: A Star Wars Story is a familiar refrain for any fan who gets frustrated when their favorite film series attempts a prequel.
Whenever Hollywood goes back in time, it fails to consider that simple things like technology can’t be more advanced than it was in the original properties. Case in point, in the Alien universe, the scientific vessel Prometheus is far more advanced in the year 2091 than the Nostromo was in the year 2122. That’s a huge no-no.
Now, take L3-37, the sassy fembot sidekick to Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) in Solo. As voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, L3-37 is an android unlike any others we’ve seen in the Star Wars universe to date. She walks with a decidedly female sway in her robotic hips. She is prone to rousing speeches for equality and freedom. And she’s far, far advanced from the simple pleasures of C-3PO’s fussy etiquette. In other words, L3-37 should not exist yet in this timeline because she outshines many other fan-favorite droids and astromechs who won’t appear for several years (depending on exactly where in the timeline Solo falls).
Speaking of Glover/Calrissian, he is absolutely fantastic in this role, and he effortlessly channels the suave cool of Billy Dee Williams in a way that Ehrenreich fails to match in mimicking Ford. Also great are Woody Harrelson as space bandit Tobias Beckett and Joonas Suotamo as a younger Chewbacca. And what would a Star Wars movie be without an appearance by Warwick Davis?
Between Harrelson and Samuel L. Jackson, we have two actors who appear to be on a breakneck quest to star in every possible iconic pop culture franchise in the history of cinema.
Sadly, the opposite is true of Clarke. While her Qi’ra is an OK character, whose story arc is teased to have a possibly sinister turn by the end of Solo, this is the second subpar franchise prequel she’s starred in, following Terminator: Genisys.
The main problem with Solo: A Star Wars Story is that it tries to do too much without taking the time to focus on the finer details. Han’s entry and subsequent expulsion from the Imperial Academy is glossed over. Even the origin of his last name gets a lame, lazy explanation.
There are three extended fights and/or smuggler missions that eat up much of the first two acts yet have little to do with how a young boy became Han Solo. Only one of those sequences, a daring theft from a speeding gravity train, has any oomph to it.
This film should have focused almost exclusively on Han’s infamous Kessel Run, which was the lynchpin of his mythology as introduced in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. And while Solo does spend some time showcasing Han’s navigation of the Millennium Falcon in the titular Kessel Run, it’s almost an afterthought instead of the main reason why he’s Han-freaking-Solo.
So as not to sound like a complete naysayer, there are two reasons that fans will champion Solo, and both of them center around Sabacc, the Star Wars version of poker.
In the first, an over-confident Han tries to best Calrissian in order to steal the Millennium Falcon, and in the second, they have a rematch. These two, too-brief moments spotlight what makes this universe so much fun. You’ve got aliens, androids and roguish adventurers all trying to one-up each other, and it’s a blast to watch.
If only Solo: A Star Wars Story was as much fun throughout, instead of just in small doses, then this would be a much easier experience to recommend as must-see in the theater.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
This article appears in May 24-31, 2018.
