Whenever "Star Wars" tries to develop one of the franchise's key characters, it whiffs. "Solo" is no exception, a disappointment on par with "The Last Jedi" and the prequels.
That said, this movie underperforms for different reasons than those counterparts. To understand exactly what is wrong with "Solo: A Star Wars Story," it helps to take a look at the other "Star Wars" movies that have also tried to add new stories to old characters.
The problems with the prequels were myriad: The dialogue was wooden, the pacing sluggish, the stories nonsensical. These problems would have ruined the movies even if they hadn't centered around filling in a backstory for Darth Vader, but their inability to make Anakin Skywalker into a compelling protagonist is what sunk them. From Hayden Christensen's whining and the contrived plot twists to the infamous closing howl in "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" ("Nooooooooooo!"), the prequels failed by turning one of cinema's most iconic and menacing villains into a character who alternated between being annoying, forgettable and laughably corny.
As for "Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi," I turn to the words of Mark Hamill himself regarding how Luke Skywalker wound up betraying the principles that defined him in the original trilogy:
I said to Rian [Johnson, the director], I said, 'Jedis don't give up.' I mean, even if he had a problem he would maybe take a year to try and regroup. But if he made a mistake he would try to right that wrong. So right there we had a fundamental difference.
After seeming to reassure himself that Johnson made the right call (or at least saying that because it was his job to do so), Hamill repeeated: "That's the crux of my problem. Luke would never say that! I'm sorry! Well, in this version, see... I'm talking about the George Lucas 'Star Wars.' This is the next generation of 'Star Wars.' So I almost had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he's Jake Skywalker. He's not my Luke Skywalker! But I had to do what Rian wanted me to do because it serves the story well."
And why does "Solo" fail? Five words: Alden Ehrenreich and the writing.
Ehrenreich is simply no match for either Harrison Ford, the actor he's supposed to channel, or Donald Glover, his "Solo" co-star who actually does channel the spirit of his counterpart from the original trilogy. While the latter nails the swagger, charm and cunning that Billy Dee Williams imbued into Lando Calrissian, Ehrenreich never gives off any kind of energy. It almost pains me to write this because you can tell that he's trying; indeed, that's precisely the problem. When playing a character who we know is supposed to grow into someone else — not a reinterpretation of an existing character in a new narrative canon (like the different iterations of The Joker in "Batman," "The Dark Knight" and "Suicide Squad"), but someone we need to believe is the same person as one also played by a different actor — you must balance emulating the other who played that role while bringing something new to the table.
Ehrenreich does neither. At no point does one intuit that this person will eventually become the Han Solo played by Harrison Ford, and he doesn't really come across as interesting on his own terms either. He plays his rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold like he's read the script and is struggling to live up to his assigned trope, denying his character any feeling of humanity in the process.
To be fair, not all of the blame should be placed at Ehrenreich's feet. On the one hand, it was clever of director Ron Howard (and, who knows, maybe also original directors writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) and writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan to make Han Solo's origin story into a heist movie. With every other "Star Wars" flick involving the fate of the galaxy, the smaller scale could have been a refreshing change of pace for the series, while setting it in the "Star Wars" universe could have given that genre an interesting twist.
"Solo" exists more to serve a function than tell a story. As its plot proceeds, it informs us how the titular character evolved from a "scrumrat" (basically a poor street kid) into an ace pilot with Chewbacca at his side, the Millennium Falcon in his possession and all the other accoutrements that we associate with him from the original trilogy. Along the way Solo needs to pull off a series of cons and heists with the aid of other criminals including master thief Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), his wife and fellow criminal Val Beckett (Thandie Newton), a wisecracking android (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and of course the inimitable Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). His main goal is to return to his home planet and rescue his beloved and fellow scrumrat Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), from whom he was separated during their attempt to escape a life of brutal servitude. When Qi'ra shows up again in the orbit of Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), the crime lord commanding Han and his ragtag crew on their mission, she too is no longer a scrumrat in need of rescue.
The problem here, though, is that Han's heists aren't particularly interesting. They have none of the wit, panache or flair that you see in great heist films, like "Jackie Brown" or "The Score." As a result, the action scenes in which they take place are numbing and boring rather than fun, with the characters left seeming like pawns being moved around a chess board even when we're supposed to be developing connections with them.
This is the problem when instead of transcending a formula, you simply mash two of them together.
Oddly enough, the only "Star Wars" movie that succeeded in filling in a backstory did so not for a character, but for a line from the text crawl of the original 1977 "Star Wars" movie (now known as "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope"). This would be "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," the brainchild of a visual effects supervisor for the "Star Wars" universe (who co-wrote with Photoshop with his brother) named John Knoll. It was one that he conceived roughly a decade before it was actually turned into a film and because he simply wondered how the spies mentioned in that film's prologue were able to ferret the Death Star's plans to the rebels. Maybe it was the authenticity of his curiosity that made that movie work, or maybe it was the fact that director Gareth Edwards and screenwriters Tony Gilroy and Chris Weitz knew how to direct it as a war film that pulled no punches and could hold up as its own standalone entity. Either way, it says something that the "Star Wars" franchise does a better job at fleshing out ideas than people.
The low quality of "Solo" creates a larger problem for the "Star Wars" brand. Prior to the premiere of "Solo," there had been ten theatrically released "Star Wars" films. Five of them can unequivocally be referred to as good movies — the original trilogy (yes, even "Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi"), "Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens" (it may have a ripoff of the original, but it was still a quality facsimile) and "Rogue One." The prequel trilogy is a dull slog that ruined the series' premiere villain and sullied George Lucas' legacy as a filmmaker, while "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" is kiddie-oriented piffle that barely counts as an actual movie. "The Last Jedi" has a lot of great moments in it — particularly those involving side characters like Finn, Rose Tico, Poe Dameron and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo — but its disrespectful and logically ludicrous treatment of Luke Skywalker's character makes it a bitter pill to swallow.
In case you weren't counting, that's five in the plus column and five in the minus column. I'm afraid that "Solo" tips the scales against this once-venerable series and places the onus on Disney to explain why, oh why, we the fans should keep coming back to the house that Lucas built.
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