This was originally a capsule review that made up one section of the next post, “Closing the Book on Star Wars in Japan.” Solo: A Star Wars Story opened in Japanese theaters on June 29, 2018. Three and a half years later, on December 29, 2021, The Book of Boba Fett streamed its series premiere on Disney+. That week, I rewatched Solo and added in some more thoughts and screenshots to this review, expanding it into its own breakout post.
Written by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan and directed by Ron Howard, Solo: A Star Wars Story was the first Star Wars movie ever where I didn’t feel the need to rush out and see it on opening night. It was the first Star Wars movie where I sat back in the theater and thought, “It’s just a movie,” and was able to enjoy it that way, free of baggage. The biggest concern I had — that Alden Ehrenreich wouldn’t be able to fill Harrison Ford’s shoes — was laid mostly to rest, though it took time to relax into his young Solo the way I did with River Phoenix’s young Indy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The first part of the movie is a rough ride, but by the end, it redeems itself on the strength of its character work. As it cycles through speeder chases and train heists early on, Solo pounds out the sort of dialogue you’d expect for a movie hero who is quick on his feet. Yet it’s like it tries too hard, initially, to show it’s having a good time, only to come off as hollow, corporate-mandated fun.
The movie places undue significance on Han Solo’s dice and the business of other, more obvious callbacks. At one point, Han strolls up to an Imperial recruiter and says, “I’m gonna be a pilot. Best in the galaxy.” We then get an on-the-nose moment leaning into the loneliness of his last name and explaining how the recruiter chose it for him at random because he had no family.
Later, there’s another winking moment where Han asks Chewie, “Hey, what’s your name, anyway?” Chewie growls in the Wookie language, and Han says, “Chewbacca?! Heh. Alright, well, you’re gonna need a nickname, cuz I ain’t saying that every time.”
These moments play on our knowledge of the original trilogy and are meant to be cute, but for me as a fan, they had the reverse effect of fostering little stabs of resentment. More than anything, I just found them distracting.
The same goes for the film’s lighting. Maybe projection issues have botched Bradford Young’s cinematography and it’s purely the result of that, but at times, Solo seems so murky and underlit that it’s as if the movie itself is as much of a mud monster as Chewie is when he first comes onscreen. Fortunately, the film brightens as it goes on and ventures outdoors more, so we’re not stuck in the mud forever.
Another distracting element is the appearance of various actors who are maybe a bit too famous or at least visible right now in other big franchises. There were times when Solo’s star-studded cast interfered with my suspension of disbelief as an audience member. Suddenly, Woody Harrelson was in the gunner’s turret of the Millennium Falcon and Jon Favreau was voicing a bubbly alien and Thandie Newton had wandered out of Westworld into Star Wars World.
Emilia Clarke brings enough emotional believability to the character of Qi’ra to separate her from any Game of Thrones associations, while Paul Bettany imports a decidedly un-Vision-like menace to the role of the scarred-up crime lord, Dryden Vos. Solo finds its footing better when Qi’ra shows back up on Vos’s yacht and the narrative settles on a more stable ensemble, one that can challenge young Han and help him mature so that the movie isn’t just trying to get by on his winning smile and a string of set pieces. It’s the central love triangle between Han, Q’ira, and Vos, and Qi’ra’s character arc overall, that really powers this movie through its climax.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a highlight as L3-37, who has a lot of spunk and is bent on liberating other droids. With his “This Is America” music video still fresh in mind, Donald Glover’s arrival as Lando Calrissian had me on the fence, though. By the end, I was fully on board with it, but when we first sit down at that card game with him, it felt like he was doing a Billy Dee Williams impersonation and we were entering a Saturday Night Live sketch.
My main issue with prequels like Solo: A Star Wars Story is that they leave nothing to the imagination. There’s something to be said for a movie alluding to bits of backstory and then letting the viewer’s mind fill in the rest. The original Star Wars trilogy did that well.
In Solo, an old throwaway line of technobabble — likely written because George Lucas was busy world-building and didn’t know or care what a parsec was in real life — suddenly becomes the basis for an entire action sequence that is fait accompli. We witness firsthand how the Millennium Falcon “made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs,” but even with a cargo hold full of unrefined coaxium (basically, nitroglycerine), there are no real stakes. We know that Han, Lando, and Chewie survive to the original trilogy, so the ship’s not going to blow up with them in it. The end result is never in doubt.
Lucasfilm and Disney poured all of this money into a fifth live-action Star Wars prequel, but judging from the box office numbers, the backlash against The Last Jedi was still too fresh and they overestimated the demand for another Star Wars movie so soon. All the coaxium in the world couldn’t coax enough butts out of their homes and into the multiplex for Solo on opening weekend.
All in all, the theatrical experience of Solo was akin to watching the Ant-Man of the Star Wars franchise. The movie’s obligatory alien music lounge scene actually made me feel like Star Wars was headed down the same repetitive road as the James Bond series, with its formulaic plots and requisite tag lines like “Shaken, not stirred.” At what point does chasing the old Cantina scene become perfunctory (if it hasn’t already)?
I had the final cameo spoiled for me beforehand, so maybe that was why it seemed ham-fisted and I rolled my eyes as you-know-who wielded his you-know-what in the middle of a holographic Skype call. As critical as all of this might sound, the innocence-to-experience aspect of Solo: A Star Wars Story did win me over and I came away liking the movie despite its flaws. However, I’m still not sure it ever completely justifies its own Muppet Baby existence or delivers A Star Wars Story that it was necessary for anyone to tell.