Once upon a time there was a Han Solo spinoff movie being directed by two filmmakers largely known for making comedies. These men are known as Phil Miller and Chris Lord. They previously helmed The Lego Movie, 21/22 Jump Street, and several episodes of The Last Man on Earth. It's not uncommon for low key directors to take over big budget productions because they bring something different to the table-- I mean, hell, the guys who did Avengers: Infinity War were coming off of Arrested Development episodes and You, Me & Dupree. The reason, I imagine, Miller and Lord were selected for this project is their sense of humor aligned perfectly with who Han Solo the character is and was. The two had yet to make a bad project and their way of making movies, though apparently unorthodox, worked when it came to the final product. However, Star Wars has never been a franchise for the unorthodox filmmaker. The producers don't like anyone messing with their structure any longer. And when it came out that Miller and Lord were encouraging improvisation in nearly every take, this did not sit well with Disney. After filming over 75% of the movie, Miller and Lord were fired and replaced with one of the SAFEST directors in Hollywood-- Ron Howard. It's not that I think Howard is a bad director, he's made some great films in the past. But Howard is more paint-by-numbers than staring at a blank canvas and creating something beautiful. Howard knows how to adhere to what the Studio heads want instead of what makes a compelling film. Howard knows how to listen. And so... we get Solo: A Star Wars Story... a tame, lame, and uninspired paint-by-numbers film that fails to live up to any expectations. As I walked out of the theater I could only think one thing-- I really wish I could see the Miller/Lord version of this movie because it couldn't be as lousy as the one I just watched.
Let's throw this out there right off the bat-- Solo is not a good movie. I didn't have super high expectations for it to begin with due to the number of problems it had during production (which is never a good sign), but it failed to even live up to those shallow expectations. First off, and this may be an unpopular opinion-- but Alden Ehrenreich is WRONG for the role of Han Solo. I didn't buy him for a single second in the film. And it's not like he was really even doing his best "Harrison Ford impression" and failed, he really did try to make the Solo character his own-- but it wasn't Han Solo. I don't know who I watched a movie about, but it wasn't Han Solo. His cockiness seemed forced, his "toughness" counterfeit, and his stupid grin looked like something the real Han Solo would've punched. Trying to portray the younger version of an American legend is no easy feat, but Ehrenreich was more like Jake Lloyd's Anakin Skywalker than he was anything resembling Han Solo. So, when your star and title character don't work from the get-go, your movie is going to suffer some. And when you try to give us a love interest with said character-- it's not going to go well either.
Apparently, Solo was in love once. And love was all that mattered. Her name was Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) and she had zero and I mean ZERO chemistry with Han (as he has zero with her as well). The plot hinges upon us caring about these two's relationship, when we really, really don't. It's hard for us to accept the fact that everything Solo does in the film is in service of getting to Qi'ra when we know the two don't end up together, Solo winds up a hardened, flirty, reprobate, and, you know, the whole kinda-important Leia thing. So, the initial mistake (and the mistake most prequels make) is if we know the outcome of the character, don't give us disingenuous stakes for the character's motivations when we're aware they won't mean a damn thing. Clarke's character will also get on your nerves. She's not great as a standalone character and because she and Solo have, I repeat, Z E R O chemistry together, she's not exactly someone you genuinely care about or root for in the film. It also doesn't help that she gets the worst and most clunky dialogue of any character, but I'm not sure cleaning that up a little bit would help the character as a whole. For some reason, Solo thought that the last few Star Wars films (whether on the main timeline or the spinoffs) were written too well and had dialogue that didn't make you want to bash your own face with a rubber mallet, because a lot of the dialogue, especially in the first hour, is BAD. It's filled with on-the-nose explanations of things we definitely didn't need and none of it feels natural or organic. The opening scene with Han and Qi'ra has them explaining their relationship and their future plans... to each other. That's like you going to your mother and being like: "Hello, my mother. It's great that you've been my mother for thirty-one years. I love the fact that after carrying me in your womb for nine months, you gave birth to me. And that's what makes you my mother." What's even better-- is there is a bit of textual information given to us before the film starts. It's on title cards instead of the classic Star Wars scroll-- but the info given there DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL FOR THE SET-UP OF THE FILM! Had I walked into the movie two minutes late and missed the words on the screen-- I would've been able to understand EVERYTHING. So, why did they not use that time to give us the info that Han and Qi'ra apparently had to spill out to one another???
It doesn't get much better from there in terms of a lot of characters just not sounding authentic. Jokes are written for some of the characters and I'd say 1 in 10 pay off because they're clearly pre-planned jokes. None feel natural and off-the-cuff (because remember... improvisation isn't what anyone wants in a Star Wars film). There's even a moment in the film that felt like a big F**K YOU to Miller/Lord (and it could legitimately be coincidence) but when Han and his team are about to enact one of their plans-- Han's mentor Beckett (Woody Harrelson) specifically yells, almost to the camera, "stick to the plan. No improvising!" Like this is what makes a plan (*cough* movie) work. When you improvise and deviate from the set plan-- everything goes to shit. Then, of course, they do improvise and the plan only works BECAUSE they deviated, but whatever. Miller/Lord clearly got the shit end of the stick. Or maybe the audience did? Let's call it 50/50. I don't know how the film looked when Miller/Lord were in the directors chairs, but I seriously hated how it looks now. The film is so dark and grainy it was difficult to tell what was going on. The beauty of the Star Wars movies is that we're given worlds and creatures and ships and space that we've never seen before. It's all new for us and it is generally visually stunning-- that is... when you can actually SEE what it is you're watching. Solo was filmed so dark and cloudy, it was like watching the movie through six layers of cigarette smoke. You can tell people are doing stuff, it's just difficult to tell what they're actually doing and it's actually very frustrating. There's a moment when Chewbacca actually rips a guy's arms off. Yeah! How awesome does that sound? I know. However, I didn't get a chance to laugh at it because it took me until the shot was basically over to realize what Chewy had done and that he was holding arms. Not because I was in shock of it, but because I visually couldn't tell what he was holding, the movie is so dark. I don't know who thought this particular aesthetic was the best choice for Solo, but have fun enjoying a movie that looks like you're watching it while sitting in a Vegas casino full of 80-year-old chain smokers.
I think the heart of the problem with Solo comes down to the fact that we really didn't need this movie. I don't know anyone who even wanted this movie. Yes, Star Wars fans are going to see it, but when Disney sat down to figure out how they're going to Marvel-up the Star Wars franchise and give us an infinite amount of spinoffs-- I doubt anyone was clamoring for Han Solo. He's one of the few untouchable characters from an actor whose portrayal is maybe more iconic than the original trilogy themselves. It suffers from the same problems the prequels (Episode I-III) do, including bad dialogue. I didn't need to know how Han actually got the name Solo (in fact, I'm kind of annoyed that's not actually his birth surname). I don't need to know the backstory of the "dice". I really didn't need to know the details of how he and Chewy met (because it kinda sucks-- but it's too dark to really see anyway, so who cares). And I sure as shit didn't want to know any of the details about the Kessel Run. Ever since Episode IV, the Kessel Run has been a running joke in Star Wars and it works because we, as an audience, don't know what any of it means. What would the Kessel Run entail? What is a parsec? It's funny because we don't know anything about it, but it's such a big deal to everyone else in the movies. It's got its own mythos that was better when we all had to imagine what it could possibly be. Showing it to us was never going to live up to our own imaginations-- and while the run was better than I expected it to be-- it was still somewhat of a letdown.
I do believe the one area of Han's past that I did want to know about was the backstory his him and Lando. Donald Glover is one of the few shining stars in the movie that make it not a complete loss. It's clear that the film should've been about Lando and his adventures and his misdeeds because they got his character right. Sure, it helps that the casting for it is perfect, but Glover IS Lando both in look, speak, and swagger. He's perfect in the movie and I would see any number of Lando movies. Solo... I wish I could tell you this was going to be a one-off like Rogue One (which is still a far superior film). But, of course, this film has been set up for a sequel, so we really don't get any of the answers we want (especially those surrounding three years of Qi'ra's life that's pretty important for us to understand). And, without spoiling anything, there's a cameo of a past character to set up a sequel that makes legitimately NO SENSE. It's a dumb as balls moment that's only really in the film so Ron Howard could see the stunned look on all our jerk faces (probably).
Look, Solo does have a few redemptive moments here and there. Usually when Lando is around or Woody Harrelson's character is around, but as the film goes on, it does tend to get a little better, but for the most part there's nothing that exciting to latch onto and actually care about. Let me put it to you this way-- in the middle of the movie, during a pretty important-to-the-plot action sequence, the sound cut out in my theater for a solid five minutes. The audience was yelling "rewind it!" Several people left their seats to get someone to fix the film. When the sound came back on, everyone was shocked that they just continued the movie, and there were several mutterings that "they better give us passes", which I assumed they would. When the film was over, and my sold-out screening walked out of the theater, there was no one waiting to apologize or hand over any passes. Some people were downright pissed and some people just kinda shrugged it off and left. This is how Solo feels. The studio has given you a movie in the way they feel they needed to give it to you. Whether that's in line with how you actually enjoy films or not, that's the way it is and they're not going to apologize for it. You can get mad or you can shrug it off and realize that this is the just a drop in the ocean of Star Wars spinoffs to come and there's no sense of expending any further energy feeling much else toward it. I just hope the studios see that in order to keep the franchise exciting and fresh and new... they need to start taking risks with their filmmakers and, for the love of God, stop making PREQUELS.
D
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