Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018, Dir. Ron Howard):
Creating an origin story for an already-existent pop culture icon is tricky business. Most of the time what stands out isn’t the creative impulse but dollar signs dancing in investors’ heads as they dream of franchises renewed and regurgitated. And maybe audiences are finally getting a mite fatigued of stories that explain why a character became so cool, given Solo‘s lackluster opening weekend receipts. As Patton Oswalt puts it in one of his most famous rants, “I don’t give a a shit where the stuff I love comes from! I just love the stuff I love!” Of course, any self-respecting geek like Oswalt would also recognize that fans can never leave a beloved character’s backstory to just the imagination. It all must be dissected and explained, and movie studios are all too willing to oblige those impulses with prequels, origins and reboots.
Still, recent franchise restarts such as Casino Royale and Batman Begins have proven it’s possible to fashion origin movies that both honor and deepen our connection with familiar heroes, while still being cracking pieces of entertainment. Disney/Lucasfilm was surely hoping for a similar result when they green-lit Solo: A Star Wars Story. Written by old hand Lawrence Kasdan (The Empire Strikes Back, The Force Awakens) along with his son Jonathan, and initially helmed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the same folks who made a bunch of kids’ toys frenetic, lovable and touching in The Lego Movie, the stage seemed set for a fun dive into the Han Solo mythos — irreverent thrills presented with a smirk. Or as the original Han Solo (Harrison Ford) once said, “Scoundrel… I like the sound of that.”
Whatever Solo might have been in its original conception, it arrives in theaters as a different animal, after Lord and Miller were ousted mid-production and replaced by Ron Howard, who is as wholesome and straightforward as Lord and Miller are twisty and twisted. As has become par for the course for the latest generation of Star Wars movies, the story is mainly about checking boxes on audience expectations. Want to know how Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) got pulled into the thieving and smuggling business? Want to see a younger, hairier, unrulier Chewbacca (Joonas Suotomo) pull someone’s arms out of his sockets, so Han can refer back to it in the original Star Wars movie? Want to see Han take his first spin with the Millennium Falcon? Want to see how he got his first pistol, and how he learned the most important life lesson of all about shooting first? Rest assured, you will get all that, along with a bunch of easter eggs that will be catnip for diehard fans. John Williams’ piratical theme for Solo suggests anarchic, swashbuckling delights, but the film is too focused on fan service to veer off in unexpected directions.
Which is not to say that Solo is pleasure-free. The film’s opening scenes, in which young street-rat Han and his lady love Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) attempt to break free from the influence of dastardly Lady Proxima (an armored centipede voiced by Linda Hunt) are a reasonably entertaining throwback to classic Hollywood escapism, and there’s even a jolt of genuine emotion when our smitten hero is forced to abandon Qi’ra during his flight. Even though the film’s look is over-graded with blue filters and mired in grungy settings, the production has the appropriate lived-in look as Han mixes it up with the scuzzy underbelly of the universe. The cast is game, if not exactly challenged: old pros like Woody Harrelson (Han’s first mentor in the ways of scoundrel-dom), Thandie Newton (as Woody’s ball-busting partner) and Paul Bettany (as an intergalactic gangster with temper and facial scar issues) could play these parts in their sleep. Best of the lot is Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, a supreme mack who’s not quite as boss as he thinks he is. Glover finds the perfect balance between his stoner affect and Billy Dee Williams’ Colt .45-smooth smugness in the original role, and every time he saunters onto the scene, the film’s energy level kicks up a notch or two.
All in all, Solo is a professional product, calibrated to satisfy audience expectations, which is both its strength and its weakness. Every so often a snarky line reading (“What are you doing with Hairy and the Boy?” Lando queries Qi’ra at one point, sneering at Chewie and Han) or deadpan absurdity (Han and Chewie sharing a close-quarters shower) sneaks in, suggesting the flippancy that Lord and Miller would have brought to the project. For the most part, though, Howard is content to hit his marks and roll from one setpiece to the next without much flair. The best passage turns out to be an attempted raid on a moving train that takes place early in the narrative, and generates decent suspense by land and air; later scenes with blaster shoot em-ups and chases through asteroid fields are recapitulations of scenes from earlier Star Wars movies (right down to the cribbed soundtrack motifs), only less coherent. The characters similarly lack a sense of surprise. Clarke’s Q’ira is winsome enough but a cipher to the end, and Newton isn’t in the picture long enough to stake out dramatic territory for herself (those who feel like the latest Star Wars films lean far too much towards lionizing women over men will find Solo a pleasantly retrograde experience). The toughest “female” in the movie turns out to be Lando’s woke, confrontational droid co-pilot L3-37 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who demands empowerment and equality with her “organic overlords” when she’s not carrying a yen for Lando. (“We’re just not compatible,” she concludes gravely — the sexual innuendo remains on that level of coyness.) The film plays around with every genre you can think of — western, heist flick, romantic tragedy, war movie, buddy comedy — without committing to anything.
And what of our favorite scoundrel? Han’s character arc in the original Star Wars films was simple and clean, as he evolved from being a stick-my-neck-out-for-nobody cynic to a believer in rebellions and friends. The Han in Solo is pretty much the same throughout: an earnest, callow, good-hearted rogue, who actually sticks his neck out for others at every opportunity. Squint hard enough and you can visually accept Ehrenreich as a younger version of Ford’s Solo, flying by the seat of his pants, waiting to be taken down a peg or two by life. “I’ve got a good feeling about this!” he grins at one point, a clear reversal of the older Han’s standard line in the face of danger. How to square that outlook, and his performance (caffeinated and sometimes squeaky) with Ford’s laconic, swaggery Han? “Assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed,” Harrelson warns Ehrenreich in a line that becomes the backbone for the movie, but with all the betrayals and twists Han faces throughout, he certainly doesn’t seem any more chastened or wiser for it by the end. For a film that answers all the questions we didn’t really need answers to, Solo fails to answer the biggest one of all: how did this youth filled with vim and vigor become the hardened, amoral crook we meet in A New Hope? The film concludes with a clear path to a sequel, where the true answer may lie, but given Disney’s aversion to a true sense of play and consequence, no doubt we’ll get more of the same. Too dutiful and plodding to surprise and too slight to reveal any special insights, Solo is adventure without stakes, a character portrait that qualifies as the merest sketch.
