Solo: A solid and not really unnecessary Star Wars Story
It’s been five long months since our last Star Wars inspired space adventure. Holy Lord, how did we survive from January to April without the dumb knowledge of how Han got his last name! The mind reels. Whether we needed it or not, Solo: A Star Wars Story is a pretty good movie that definitely exists, and here I am with the honor and privilege of talking about it with you.
Alden Ehrenreich stars as Han, who we meet about a decade before he joins up with Luke and Leia in episode IV. The galaxy is a dismal place, corrupted by the ruling hand of the Empire and replete with slave labor, corruption and tyranny in every direction. Han’s bringing home loot for a terrible slug monster who hates the sun in an underground commune. He’s got a girlfriend named Qi’ra (Game of Throne’s dragon lady, Emilia Clarke) and the two of them have big plans to pocket a space vial of fuel to sell, in order to buy a ship and escape to freedom. Right away we are faced with the inevitable problem (or opportunity, depending on your outlook) of prequels. We are like Gods in the theater in that we already know Han’s destiny; he will escape Corellia, meet Chewbacca, reluctantly join the resistance, get into many adventures, have a child with Leia, the child will betray him on a bridge and he’ll die a hero. So who then is this non-Leia trollop, how will the movie get rid of her, why does she have a different accent if they grew up on the same planet together, and are we supposed to like her in the meantime? The short answer to these and other questions is don’t worry about it.
The picture’s second half follows Han through a series of desperate situations that pair him with a thieving couple, played by Woody Harrelson and Westworld’s Thandie Newton, plus a many-armed pilot voiced by Jon Favreau. All of them are indentured servants to the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn, led by a sleazy, stripe-faced man named Dryden (Paul Bettany). Basically, all of Solo’s adventures are motivated by digging choiceless characters out of debt, accrued as the result of an unfair, exploitative and racist universe wherein failure is tantamount to death. And did I mention the constant threat of genocide and human trafficking? Is this not the stuff of nightmares? Solo’s dark and murky landscape looks like Ridley Scott’s rare foray into PG-13 (It’s not: family filmmaker Ron Howard directs). Are these movies even for kids, or are they tailored to grown-up fan boys with their trigger fingers at the ready to complain about particulars of the plot on movie message boards is what I’m getting at.
We know that Han will meet Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) for the first time (disappointing meet-cute) and also Lando Calrissian (played by Donald Glover in an almost too precise Billy Dee Williams impression). They are accompanied by an inspired new robot character (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and here’s a clue about her fate: (skip to the end of the sentence if you hate spoilers) Anybody tasked with flying a ship during Han’s origin story better watch out. Han is the consummate reluctant hero; a chaotically good man who thinks he’s chaotic neutral, and all these woes creep us ever closer to his destiny as a brave pilot in the resistance. Too much winking to the main franchise? Not enough? Let’s face it; fans will bellyache either way. However harmless and arguably unnecessary, Solo is a solid and weirdly dark space adventure in its own right.