I said back in February when I saw the first trailer that Solo: A Star Wars Story had train wreck written all over it. Sadly, I underestimated the magnitude of the disaster. This thing got nothing right.
To start with, the casting was a fiasco. Alden Ehrenreich brought none of Harrison Ford’s overconfident yet charming swagger to his portrayal of young Han Solo. Han, in this film, was nothing but an annoying kid. Then there was Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra, Han’s love interest. We all know she can’t act, so no surprise there, but she had a painfully large amount of screen time. Han’s love for Qi’ra was supposedly his driving motivation for much of the film, but you wouldn’t have known it if they hadn’t explicitly stated it every so often because Ehrenreich and Clarke had zero chemistry. The emotional bond and sexual tension between Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) and his social justice spewing droid (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) was considerably more convincing. Beyond his profound love for his sex bot, however, Lando was little more than a smarmy douche. If Billy Dee Williams’ Lando is Frank Sinatra in a fedora, Glover’s Lando is a sad copycat in a trilby. The rest of the supporting cast were boring, clichéd, and largely forgettable.
Emilia Clarke in Solo: A Star Wars Story. IMDb.com
The script was no better. The story plodded from one excuse for an action sequence to another, and the sequences themselves were uninspired and devoid of tension. Sad attempts at humor were poorly timed and forced. It was nearly impossible to care about any of the characters, so the fatalities elicited little more than a shrug, with the exception of one extremely satisfying death. It was pretty clear, however, that we were not supposed to enjoy watching that particular character die.
Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. IMDb.com
The theater where I saw Solo was about two-thirds full of people of all ages, some of them clearly Star Wars fans. The entire 135-minute run time passed in complete silence. No one laughed at the places where we were clearly supposed to laugh, and no one cheered when we were clearly expected to cheer. The room was dead. A half dozen or so made a half-hearted attempt to clap at the end, but that was it. The film simply didn’t connect with the audience.
Alden Ehrenreich and Joonas Suotamo. IMDb.com
It should be expected that various events of Han’s life referred to in the original trilogy would be explored, but Solo insists on cramming a staggering number of them into the film. Han gets his blaster, Han meets Chewbacca, Han meets Lando, Han makes the Kessel Run, Han wins the Millennium Falcon, all within a few weeks, at most, of Han’s life. And what should be epic moments are presented as painfully ordinary. Instead of “Oh my God, the Kessel Run!” it’s “Really? That’s it? How lame.” And the less said about the appallingly stupid way Han got his name, the better. Presenting what are supposed to be defining moments in Han’s life as just so many boxes to be checked off by the screenwriters in workmanlike fashion severely diminishes the character.
Which is probably the worst failing of the film. Like The Last Jedi before it, Solo is not only a bad movie in its own right, it debases one of the most iconic characters of the Star Wars canon. Because of this film, even the original trilogy Han Solo is much weaker and far less interesting. If Disney’s intent was to systematically destroy the original trilogy to make way for whatever they have planned for the future, this movie furthers that aim.
Overall rating: 3/10