{"id":481,"date":"2018-05-29T00:07:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T07:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/?p=481"},"modified":"2018-09-20T12:33:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T19:33:24","slug":"assassination-and-disneyfication-of-heroes-continues-in-solo-a-star-wars-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/2018\/05\/29\/assassination-and-disneyfication-of-heroes-continues-in-solo-a-star-wars-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Assassination and Disneyfication of Heroes Continues in Solo: A Star Wars Story<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I said\u00a0back in February when I saw the first trailer<\/a>\u00a0that Solo: A Star Wars Story<\/em> had train wreck written all over it. Sadly, I underestimated the magnitude of the disaster. This thing got nothing right.<\/p>\n

To start with, the casting was a fiasco. Alden Ehrenreich brought none of Harrison Ford\u2019s 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\u2019ra, Han\u2019s love interest. We all know she can\u2019t act, so no surprise there, but she had a painfully large amount of screen time. Han\u2019s love for Qi\u2019ra was supposedly his driving motivation for much of the film, but you wouldn\u2019t have known it if they hadn\u2019t 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\u2019 Lando is Frank Sinatra in a fedora, Glover\u2019s Lando is a sad copycat in a trilby. The rest of the supporting cast were boring, clich\u00e9d, and largely forgettable.<\/p>\n

\"Emilia

Emilia Clarke in Solo: A Star Wars Story. IMDb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Donald

Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. IMDb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

The theater where I saw Solo<\/em> 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\u2019t connect with the audience.<\/p>\n

\"Alden

Alden Ehrenreich and Joonas Suotamo. IMDb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

It should be expected that various events of Han\u2019s life referred to in the original trilogy would be explored, but Solo<\/em> 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\u2019s life. And what should be epic moments are presented as painfully ordinary. Instead of \u201cOh my God, the Kessel Run!\u201d it’s \u201cReally? That\u2019s it? How lame.\u201d 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\u2019s life as just so many boxes to be checked off by the screenwriters in workmanlike fashion severely diminishes the character.<\/p>\n

Which is probably the worst failing of the film. Like The Last Jedi<\/em><\/a> before it, Solo<\/em> 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\u2019s intent was to systematically destroy the original trilogy to make way for whatever they have planned for the future, this movie furthers that aim.<\/p>\n

Overall rating: 3\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said\u00a0back in February when I saw the first trailer\u00a0that 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\u2019s overconfident yet charming swagger to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[182,211,184,180,212,210,181,4],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-alden-ehrenreich","tag-donald-glover","tag-emilia-clarke","tag-han-solo","tag-phoebe-waller-bridge","tag-solo","tag-solo-a-star-wars-story","tag-star-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":568,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}