RageLite review - Solo: A Star Wars Story

So… Was anyone really asking for a Han Solo origin story?

The main crew of the Millennium Falcon are iconic characters. Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, even Lando Calrissian to a lesser extent, but the one with most potential history to explore is Han Solo. How did he become the man he was in the Star Wars films?

This project has been in development by Lucasfilm for some time, even pre-dating the Disney buyout. But production issues kept it from getting its feet off the ground in one form or another. Lawrence Kasdan was initially hired to write the story, he’d been involved in writing the original trilogy, but duties were passed to his son Jonathan as he was picked up to write the Force Awakens. Jonathan Kasdan had written a few episodes of Dawson’s Creek and wrote and directed In the Land of Women and The First Time, both of which are niche films that received mixed reviews and didn’t make much money.

Originally penned as directors were Phil Lord and Chris Miller, hot off the heals of the highly successful The Lego Movie, unfortunately creative differences with the studio caused them to leave and be replaced by Ron Howard. Lord and Miller would go on to be hired by Sony for Into the Spider-verse, so don’t feel too sorry for them. Ron Howard would go onto to reshoot most of the film, inflating the budget to nearly $300m

The film was released in a crowded May-slot with the likes of Deadpool 2 and barely off the heels of Avengers: Infinity War; it ended up making only $393.2m at the box office, the first and only Star Wars film to make a loss at the box office.

But let’s take a look at the story we ended up with and see if it’s a worthy addition to the Star Wars timeline

Han Solo is a thief on the planet of Corellia, he tries to make an escape with his girlfriend Qi’ra, but they’re separated and to avoid attracting attention, he signs up for the imperial Navy. Whilst in an intense battle, he joins up with a crew of thieves and meets long time ally Chewbacca, they attempt to pull a job but things go south quickly and they’re forced to dump the cargo, to the anger of their employer, Dryden Vos, who Qi’ra now works for.

Faced with having to make amends, it’s up to a small crew of thieves to carry out a daring heist and avoid the attention of the Empire and the wrath of Dryden Vos. 

I don’t really have a lot to say about the story, which given that that’s what I usually do is unusual. It’s a perfectly serviceable story. Not great but far from bad and can see the character of Han Solo in how he was written.

In terms of minor details, the reason why they named him Solo is dumb, Chewbacca being a monster in a pit makes no sense and the Darth Maul cameo only makes sense if you’ve seen The Clone Wars and/or Rebels, otherwise you might be wondering how he’s still alive. The Kessel run sequence is there to try and wave off a bit of scientific inaccuracy regarding what a parsec was in the original trilogy.

Alden Ehrenreich does a good job as Han Solo. The problem is that Harrison Ford is the definitive Han Solo and it’s difficult to appreciate a different actor in such an iconic role. He carries a decent amount of Charisma and has a few of his iconic lines thrown in. I hope he gets more work off the back of this, although looking at his Wikipedia page it’s looking less likely. Unfortunately, the problem is with the writers not wanting to veer too far from Han’s established personality, they don’t give him a lot to work with in terms of range.

Donald Glover also does a great job as Lando. Both him and Alden got advice from the main actors and Glover gives off the roguish charm I can imagine from someone like Lando. They also give him a bit more range with his kinda-sorta love interest L3-37. L3-37 is a droid activist and I’m just amazed nothing like this has ever happened before. It’s maybe a matter of taste but I didn’t find her annoying, that being said her shtick might’ve gotten old if she hadn’t died when she did.

Her death allowed for a few moments of morning and Donald Glover gets his time to shine. The biggest lesson Han is supposed to learn is not to trust everyone, even those he most cares about. This is a lesson that isn’t really carried forward into the original trilogy and unfortunately the way it’s handled is especially predictable. Everyone is double-crossing everyone and hence everyone is predictable, something the film itself even acknowledges.

Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) is a fine example of a predictable character. He serves as Han’s mentor for most of the film but gets very little of his own to chew on. He has no sign of regret when he betrays Han, nor is Han particularly moved when he shoots him (and yes, Han shot first, haha, this has been dug into the ground already)

Qi’ra is perhaps a little more interesting, Emilia Clarke gets to play a character torn between a roguish man who left her behind or an abusive man that she owes a debt to and will likely kill her if she leaves. Her betrayal doesn’t come out of left field because Beckett had constantly warned Han that this is exactly what she was going to do.

Drydan Vos is boring, my apologies to Paul Bettany but he’s about as far from interesting as you can get. You can tell he was added in reshoots, not because of the special effects but he spends his entire performance on one set, and does nothing of consequence. Oo, watch out for those knives, they’re definitely more dangerous than a blaster.

The action is pretty solid during the heist and a few bits in the finale. But one thing that holds this film is the special effects. Both of the first 2 planets we see are covered in smoke and I can’t help but feel this is a deliberate attempt to lower CG costs. Don’t need to create and render a background if it’s just smoke. The problem is it makes the action difficult to follow for those 2 scenes.

The problem is just as odd during the Kessel run sequence. The visuals effects are good but what we see isn’t that interesting and of course there’s some giant monster living there, that’s Star Wars 101 by now.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is serviceable; it’s not ranked up their with the greats but it’ll entertain you for 2 hours before you forget about it almost immediately after. The character beats are shallow with a predictable story that makes Han the least interesting character of the bunch and the special effects in places aren’t as great as we know Lucasfilm can do.

But by god is it better than Rise of Skywalker. We’ll be talking about that sh*tshow soon!

Rating 65/100