Solo: A Star Wars Story

Apologies for not posting anything last week. I know my regular readers (hello to you both) will have been disappointed. Last weekend was pretty busy (I had a dentist appointment and tickets to Hamilton), and also we discovered a leaking pipe in our house. So things were a bit crazy, and time to sit and write simply wasn’t to be found.

I also am pushing back the post about our third cat, Morticia, by a week. This week, what I really feel like talking about is Solo: A Star Wars Story.

(Spoilers after the jump.)

I’ve talked about my Star Wars fandom before. I feel like the franchise’s revival by Disney has completely revitalized my passion for Star Wars. I enjoyed the prequels enough to see them all in the theaters, but now, I not only find myself really looking forward to each new movie, but also excitedly reading the books and comics and even watching fan shows on YouTube. For any number of reasons (but mainly one, dating back to November 2016) I’ve been feeling down. Star Wars is my happy place, and my wife and I eagerly went to see Solo: A Star Wars Story on the morning of opening day.

Short version: I loved it. To be clear, this is not a review. (For more on why I don’t write reviews on this blog, see my welcome message.) This is me, talking about having a really fun time watching a movie. 

From the first moment we saw Alden Ehrenreich jumping into the speeder and looking anxiously over his shoulder, I thought, “That’s Han Solo.” He really held his own in a movie full of great performances. I never believed I was watching Harrison Ford, which is fine; the movie is called Solo, not Ford. I did believe I was watching a younger version of Han Solo, at the beginning of the process of having the galaxy beat the crap and the idealism out of him on a regular basis, until he reaches the point we see in A New Hope. 

As much as I enjoyed Ehrenreich, I think I was maybe even more impressed by the other performers. For maybe the first time, Chewbacca really had a lot to do in a Star Wars movie. I felt that new Chewbacca performer Joonas Suotamo conveyed a great deal of character and emotion through his makeup. I watched him as a character, not as a guy in a Wookie suit.

I only knew Emilia Clarke from her work in Game of Thrones (in fact, I jokingly call her character Mother of Porgs). Here, she plays Qi’ra, young Han’s love interest, at two very different points in her life. We first meet her as a young woman on Corellia. While not necessarily an innocent—she and Han are part of a gang of thieves, and the implication is that she pulled herself up to that level from even more dire circumstances—she’s still a young woman who believes she can change her life by running away with the man she loves. Only it doesn’t work out that way, and while Han gets away from their old life and their planet, it’s only through her sacrifice of herself.

When we meet her again years later in story time, she’s the same woman, and yet different. It’s clear that she has seen and done some stuff in the meantime, stuff that was maybe necessary for her to escape her old life, but also stuff that maybe she wouldn’t have chosen to do. It’s also clear that while she’s no longer a thief on the streets of Corellia, she isn’t really any more free working for gangster Dryden Vos. And you can see that on her face and in her body and in her eyes, even though the only real physical change is in her hairstyle.

Woody Harrelson really surprised me with his performance, too. I guess I went into this movie thinking that he’s not the kind of actor who does Star Wars movies, and I kind of assumed he wouldn’t be playing it straight. I was wrong. His character, Tobias Beckett, fits completely into the movie and the Star Wars universe. As a criminal mentor for Han, he brings so much charm and personality to the character that even though you know he’s never going to be up to any good, you kind of end up hoping you’re wrong.

In fact, all the characters bring a great deal of charm and honesty to their roles. While I’ve seen Qi’ra described as a femme fatale, she is never less than 100% honest with Han. Beckett is less so, but he makes everything seem so cool. Beckett’s original team—Val, played by Thandie Newton, and Rio Durrant, a four-armed alien voiced by Jon Favreau—make it instantly clear why Han would want to desert from the Imperial army and join up with them. In a lot of ways, while Alden Ehrenreich brings the swagger and bravado to the role of Han, he also makes it clear that this is still a young guy who has a lot more attitude than experience. Consequently, you totally buy that he’d want to hang out with these other guys, who all seem to be the sort of people he’s trying to pretend to be.

And then there’s Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian. Like Erenreich, he has the difficult task of taking over a role best known for being played by someone else. Glover somehow manages to make this Lando feel completely like Billy Dee Williams’ character, without doing any sort of imitation. He brings so much confidence and smoothness to the role, it’s like he was born to play this character. Let’s hope this isn’t the last we see of him as Lando. 

In fact, I’d love a prequel featuring him and his droid co-pilot, L3-37, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. L3 is maybe the first female droid to be featured in a Star Wars movie. She really brings home the notion that if droids are sentient and treated like property, then it’s basically slavery. Previously, Star Wars has either tiptoed around or ignored this subject altogether. Certainly, droids in Episodes 7 and 8 and Rogue One are treated as friends, not property, although there is the notion that K2-SO is a rebel droid, not by choice, but because he was reprogrammed. With L3, though, a Star Wars movie finally addresses the issue head on, as does Solo companion novel Last Shot. I’m curious whether this is something that will be explored any further.

Obviously, the script gives us a lot of early Han Solo moments, whether it’s how he ended up joining the Empire, how he ended up leaving and finding himself a part of the galactic underworld, how he met Chewbacca, and how they acquired the Millennium Falcon. Written by Lawrence Kasdan and Jon Kasdan, those pieces all feel organically like part of the story being told, rather than a story being wrenched and bent out of shape to incorporate those beats. So, to me, this felt like an entertaining story being told that also illuminated Solo’s past, rather than a fan-service checklist.

I genuinely enjoyed this film. With the exception of one friend who writes movie reviews for a newspaper, every person I know who saw it, and every comment from writers and artists and others I follow on social media have liked it. Unfortunately, the overwhelming story being reported is that it isn’t making money, and is therefore a failure. Since those headlines started appearing literally the afternoon it opened, it doesn’t surprise me that people might have chosen not to go see it. I mean, if you have a movie that is the number one movie in the country, but the headlines are “Solo is Star Wars’ Biggest Failure Ever!” that’s going to influence the audiences.

I had originally thought I would rant about the injustice of the movie’s low box office receipts, but I don’t think I will. Because that’s not the story for me. For me, the story is that I saw Solo, and I thought it was great. I want to see it again, and I want to see what happens next to some of the characters who we met here. (Or see what happened to them before, in the case of the ones who didn’t make it out of this story alive.) 

And that’s it for this week! Come back next week, when you will—hopefully—meet our cat, Moticia. See you then!