Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) Director: Ron Howard, a.k.a. "Not Lord & Miller" Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover Genres: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure IMDb Synopsis: "During an adventure into the criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his future copilot Chewbacca and encounters Lando Calrissian years before joining the Rebellion." |
Spoiler-Free THoughts
While Han Solo is truly an amazing character, four movies of him have already given us a pretty complete character arc for the guy. He's a rough-around-the-edges, self-interested scoundrel who slowly but surely chooses the path of a hero and becomes more than what he was before. So if you want to give me a prequel for this character - before that first introduction we get to him in the Mos Eisley Cantina - you'd better have a reason for it. On a fundamental level, what any good prequel must try to do is show you how a character became the way that they are. They've gotta be dynamic; you start them in one place and move them to another. X-Men: First Class, while by no means a perfect movie, is a great example of a prequel done right. Both Professor X & Magneto start with one set of ideologies, and over the course of the story a rift forms between them that drives them towards where we see them at the start of the original X-Men.
In Solo, however, we're presented with a younger version of Han who is more or less the same that we get in A New Hope. Sure, he's a little more naive and idealistic, and he does pick up a few things from Beckett along the way, but he doesn't really change all that much. Apart from the obvious differences in Han's age and appearance, I could see the events of Solo taking place something like one week before we meet him at Mos Eisley. So what Disney's done here is made a prequel that gives us a bunch of backstory we didn't really need in a way that isn't super compelling; this is what makes me ask whether or not we ever really needed Solo: A Star Wars Story.
This film, as the legendary sci-fi author Douglas Adams would say, can be summed up as "Mostly Harmless." It isn't going to ruin Star Wars for anybody, like some fans think The Last Jedi did (You're wrong, by the way). If anything, this movie is a pretty fine way to spend two hours; see it if you have the time, but if not, just don't bother. Now let's get to spoilers because I've got a lot to say about how this thing ends.
Spoiler Thoughts
EXTRA CREDIT: The war sequence where Han is fighting with the Imperial Infantry is pretty cool, but there's not enough of it to really stand out.
LATE WORK: I did not care for the giant alien worm-creature that Han apparently worked for on Corellia. Just . . . nope.
Image & Info Sources
Solo: A Star Wars Story Poster:
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Han, Chewie, Beckett image:
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Millennium Falcon image:
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Han, Lando, L3 image:
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Spoiler meme: i.imgur.com/NfkJ1KR.png
Train heist image:
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Han Falcon image:
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Goodbye meme: memegenerator.net/img/instances/500x/75870546/i-guess-its-time-to-say-goodbye.jpg