'Prequelizing' spoils 'Solo' fun
A good movie exists somewhere inside “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” the second stand-alone adventure in Disney’s recalibrated cinematic galaxy. Finding it requires fans to endure a whole mess of referential pandering.
Tracing the origins of the lovable rogue Han Solo, the new film spends far too much time providing answers to questions that never needed answering. Some of the best aspects of Harrison Ford’s iconic performance relied on the lack of solid information about his past, leaving audiences to decide how much of Han’s boasting to believe. “Solo” provides hard answers, but then fails to deliver a compelling portrait of the character.
The “prequelizing” in “Solo” — meaning the constant stream of callbacks and the needless filling-in of unimportant details — dampens so much of what’s going right in the movie. Director Ron Howard and his creative team deliver a few excellent action set pieces, and much of the cast works to sell the derivative aspects of the screenplay by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan.
Howard, taking over production after the firing of original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, reportedly reshot as much as 70 percent of the movie. Like that other troubled “Star Wars” standalone, “Rogue One,” most everything in “Solo” feels competently stitched together (minus some third act business that fails to land its attempted emotional punch).
What Howard apparently delivered was consistency. Everything in “Solo” looks decent, the pacing never lags and the mix of practical and computer effects are as good as anything presented in the franchise.
That consistency works wonders during the heist genre elements of “Solo,” particularly in how Han (played by Alden Ehrenreich) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) fall in with a team of smugglers led by Woody Harrelson. A dynamic “space train” heist serves as the best of several energetic action scenes, and it also leads Han back to former flame Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), who is working for a ruthless crime boss (Paul Bettany).
The train heist also eventually leads to Donald Glover as a young Lando Calrissian, as well as his robot companion, L3-37 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge). They’re both terrific, but they’re also not in much of the movie.
Casting all around is a strength here with the exception of one important person: Ehrenreich. He’s doing a just fine spin on Han Solo, imitating Harrison Ford in a few key ways, but the actor (who has been excellent in other films, particularly “Hail, Caesar!”), never really pops in the role. Solo slips into the background of his own movie too often, even letting the Wookie upstage him at many turns.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” still manages to provide enough of the fanciful delights of the “Star Wars” sandbox, and some of the costumes and creature work rivals series high points. It just doesn’t do anything for the title character, and the movie stops its own fun too often to introduce some other needless aspect of the Han Solo backstory.
The movie doesn’t really attempt to establish the Han we see in “A New Hope” either, because the backstory provided doesn’t answer anything about the character’s core appeal. Instead, a few story nuggets remain dangling in an attempt to set up its own batch of sequels, where the “real” Han could potentially take shape.
Given its underperformance at the box office, “Solo” probably won’t garner the sequel it so badly wants. Given the breadcrumbs established here, few will mind avoiding another installment of “Over-explaining a Beloved Character.”
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.