SOLO: A Star Wars Story

Boy, if you were to do a search on YouTube today you would find quite a bit of hate about Solo and a little bit of jubilation.  And that jubilation would be directed at how spectacularly Solo flopped at the box office.  Because if there one thing the internet loves it’s watching the hard work of hundreds of people fall on its face.  Especially if its Star Wars.  It always strikes me odd at how much everyone can unanimously love Star Wars yet wait with baited breath and anxious glee to watch it fail and then revel in its demise as we sacrifice a Ewok to our blood god and gorge ourselves on Wicket’s flesh.  We get perverse joy out of hating Star Wars with as much ferocity as we love it.  We are Gollum and Star Wars is our one ring.

Now arguably, there are few people as beloved in the entirety of the Star Wars universe as Han Solo.  You get within striking distance with Leia, Boba Fett, and Yoda.  Luke is a front runner and Darth Vader is intimidatingly tough to top.  But Han Solo clearly and literally soars above them all.  He’s everyone favorite for a plethora of reasons.  He plays by his own rules, he’s devastatingly charming, he owns (stole) his own ship, he’s constantly on the run, he’s funny, yadda yadda yadda.  Even when he’s a curmudgeonly old man he’s still enjoyable to be around.

I attribute a lot of what makes Han, Han to Harrison Ford.  As a child, teenager, and adult I really can’t think of a time in my life when I haven’t wished to be Harrison Ford.  Can you honestly say the same?  From Han Solo to Indiana Jones, to Rick Deckard, they are all undeniably infused with the coolness of Harrison.  The characters and the actor are essentially the same person.  You can’t say Han, or Indy without thinking of all the best of Harrison.  So is it any wonder why people have been waiting over 40 years for Han Solo to have a movie of his own?  We love Han Solo because we love Harrison Ford.  So when it was announced  that Han Solo would have his origin story told to us, we as a collective audience ran the gamut of emotions.  We were finally excited to have Han have a movie of his own, but who…WHO would have the seemingly insurmountable task of being a non-Harrison Ford, Han Solo?  Who would have the audacity to attempt something so difficult?  The call went wide and far spanning the ever reaching corners of the internet.  Personally my favorite choice at the time was Dave Franco.  Ultimately, the die were cast and the role went to Alden Ehrenreich.  And the world went…

You mean the kid who played the terrible actor in Hail, Caesar!?  Well, I mean, I guess that could work.  He kind of resembles Harrison Ford.  Okay, sure.  But as news of production began to leak and the ever increasing turmoil the movie seemed to face; the confidence of the fans were legitimately shaken.  Original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were let go of the film due to creative differences with Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy.  Ron Howard fresh from two mega flops, In the Heart of the Sea, and Rush was brought on to not only continue filming but re-shoot a large portion of what was already in the can.  And then, one of Ron’s first orders of business was to hire Alden Ehrenreich an acting coach.  All this info did not fill the active Star Wars community with new hope.  Things began to perk up when we learned that Woody Harrelson would be involved and then when Donald Glover was cast as Lando, and that Emilia Clarke who is still riding high on her success in GOT (and truth be told I really enjoyed her in the last Terminator movie) was set to co-star things were optimistic.  However; Ron Howard joining the band and re-filming scenes as well as the amount of bloat a Star Wars movie generally requires, with things like CGI set pieces, costumes, editing, sound, etc. reports began coming out about the ever-expanding budget for a movie that is technically a spin off.  Suddenly the little movie that should have just been a fun romp with our favorite Star Wars character became an overbudgeted sci-fi epic that parent company Disney absolutely needed to be a gigantic smash hit.  Which, it failed at achieving.  With too many changes of the guard and re-shoots the budget quickly ballooned to approximately $275 million and that’s not including the advertising for the movie, which was everywhere.  I don’t know how it was in the rest of the country but in Los Angeles you couldn’t look at a bus, order fast food, or turn on TV without SOLO blazing a trail across your corneas.  Worldwide during its run in the box office, it pulled in an impressing $393 million dollars.  Not quite enough to break even.  Estimates put that SOLO needed to attract at least $500 million to cover the cost of what was spent.  Falling $100 million short of its base, means that SOLO is a box office flop.  And boy was the internet alive with that news.  You’d never seen people happier to see something they love, fail so hard.  A lot of that ire is pointed directly at Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and her alleged SJW agenda.  Now I am certainly not attracted to anyone who attacks their fans openly.  Its why I have stopped being a Rian Johnson fan, even though I still enjoy LAST JEDI quite a bit.  His assault on Star Wars fans is breathtakingly stupid and perhaps it’s that ire that has transported itself over to SOLO. 

Maybe fans were finally doing what I’ve been telling people to do for years.  Vote with your wallet.  Maybe people were overloaded with STAR WARS.  After all, LAST JEDI opened only 6 months before SOLO.  Box office fatigue could be a factor for the failings.  The problem I see with STAR WARS now that it has fallen under Disney’s watchful, Sauron-esque eye, is that it’s trying to answer questions nobody was asking.  Just like Lucas did with episode 1, we don’t really care about Anakin as a little, adorable kid.  Or Boba Fett, we don’t care about his youth.  As comedian Patton Oswalt puts it in his stand-up routine, “I don’t need to know where the stuff I love comes from.”

The hardest hurdle I think this movie had, was getting over the fact that Han wasn’t Harrison Ford.  As previously discussed it is nearly impossible to separate the two (Even though I’m sure Harrison Ford wishes you would, considering his sheer contempt of being Han Solo)  People the world over were not ready to even entertain the idea of someone being the beloved character.  I know I sure wasn’t.  I couldn’t stand the fact that someone they didn’t know what going to be their beloved Han.  When I saw this movie, I wasn’t prepared to give Alden the chance.  I was ready to hate, hate, hate.  And you know what…I didn’t.  Quite the opposite, I enjoyed Alden and this movie quite a bit.  To me, Alden was a lot of fun to watch.  His interpretation of Han Solo was interesting.  Instead of doing his impression of Harrison Ford, which could only have ended in disaster, he did his best to play the role precisely where this character was at this point in his life.  You could see the shades of what he would become as his fate would soon tie him to The Battle of Yavin.  This Han had the charisma, the swagger, and the confidence of the Solo he would become but it never worked out for him.  As if he knew he could pull off these cons and talk his way out of situations and was profusely astounded whenever it just would not work.  Like he couldn’t believe the magic of Han wouldn’t turn events in his favor.  Like when I would watch a movie with a confidence man like Han or say Danny Ocean, and then try to apply these tactics in real life only to watch it blow up in my face.  I would ponder, going “I know this would work.  In this situation I know these words and this response should be swaying the discussion in my favor, but it isn’t.  Did I say the magic words wrong?  What happened?”

This Han knows he can make miracles happen.  He can make the impossible, possible.  And when it doesn’t turn out the way he knows it should, it frustrates him.  Its incredibly fun to watch, if you can disassociate the role away from Harrison Ford.  Emilia Clarke is always fun to watch, and I really liked her as Qi’ra.  Qi’ra, like the role Emilia is most famous for, Daenerys, is more than what she seems.  Quiet, but watchful.  Humble, but calculating.  Meek, but dangerous.  She always knows more about what’s going on than she reveals and is constantly plotting.  She has a larger picture for her life in mind and she is a force to be reckoned with because you do not see her coming at you until it’s too late.   The more time we spend with her, the more we learn about her true nature.  Especially when she reveals her mastery of Teras-Kasi, which was the unfortunate Star Wars fighting game released on the first Playstation system.  We’ll…we’ll speak less of that, but still, nice to see some continuity in the Star Wars universe.  Her character reveal and open ambition comes as a satisfying wrap up to her character by the end of the movie.  Judging this movie by the outcome of the box office however, chances are we’re not going to following her story any further than the end of this.

Now, the two characters surrounded by the largest of controversies, Lando and his companion L3-37, or just L3.  Lando played, quite brilliantly, by Donald Glover.  It’s mentioned that he’s “pansexual” to be honest I really have no idea what that means but a lot of people are upset by that.  And I get it.  I think everyone getting tired of identity politics in any form.  It would be nice to escape such things for at least two hours but in terms of this movie I really didn’t feel as if this was the case.  It’s not like Lando was sitting around going, “Hey Han baby, you know what it means to be woke?”  Apparently, Lando will make sweet sweet love to just about anything.  L3, the ship, his capes; and honestly if I looked like Donald Glover, I would too.  His attractions were more of an implication in the movie and didn’t really go much further than that.  I honestly really enjoyed Donald Glover’s performance.  He was the confident that Han is striving to be.  And it looks like Donald Glover had a great time in this role.  I would love to see this Lando return, even though I am anxiously and nervously waiting for the original Lando to return in Episode 9.  Fun side note, Billy Dee, THE Lando gave my wife the once over at a Hollywood Collector’s Show where he was signing autographs.  You know you’ve got a hottie when Billy Dee’s eyes start down, go up, and back down again.  The newspapers in Glendale, CA the next morning should have read “local boy marries good.”

L3 was an okay character.  I found L3 humorous in that she had some funny lines.  But I didn’t see too much of a social agenda as is being claimed all over the place.  Yeah there were some lines about equality and freedom, and stuff like that.  But who cares, it was funny.  The twist at the end where she becomes incorporated into the Millennium Falcon was interesting.  The Falcon is regarded as one of the fastest ships in the SW universe.  Not because its particularly sleek, or especially aerodynamic, or that it even has an impressive engine or thrusters.  Its because the computer on the Falcon can chart light speed quickly.  Actually, its L3 that can chart the fastest light speed route and when circumstances arise that require her to be integrated into the computer of the Falcon it establishes the known lore and roots the origins of the legendary ship.  There is a lot to unpack from this movie.  The action is pretty fantastic per the standard SW norm; the fight scenes are intense; and the ultimate question of “who shot first” never has to be asked by the time we reach the film’s conclusion.  Even my favorite Howard brother, CLINT, shows up for a scene.  If you can’t appreciate a movie that has Clint Howard in it, what can you appreciate?

In conclusion this movie is not as bad as the other reviewers would like you to believe.  I certainly understand the ire, nobody likes being told we’re stupid by movie makers and then expect us to go out and buy tickets; that only proves their point.  For that, SW as a whole has lost points with me.  And for crying out loud please stop using SW for political agendas.  The whole reason we go to the movies in the first place is to escape things like that.  We want to be taken to a galaxy far, far away, not reminded of how terrible the humans in our real life can behave towards each other.  If you do desire to say something about the times we’re living in study closely the writing of Rod Serling or Richard Matheson.  Masters of the craft and brilliantly blending social commentary with entertainment.  They didn’t beat you over the head with it, they used it to their story telling advantage.

If you haven’t seen SOLO, you owe it to yourself.  It’s fun.  The characters are interesting, the story compelling, and as long as your not going in with a negative attitude already in place I’m sure you’ll find that it would make an enjoyable addition to your SW movie collection.