Film Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
It has finally happened. The Star Wars film not only underperformed but, judging by its commercial results, represented an undeniable and undisputed flop. That failure was quite significant, considering Disney, today’s most powerful global studio, had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into it, which cinema audiences failed to recoup. Such an outcome would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier, thanks to Star Wars being, perhaps not the longest-running, but undoubtedly the largest media franchise, having transformed over less than half a century into an institution of global popular culture with the most extensive and fanatical fanbase, which turned even the otherwise disappointing prequel trilogy into a major triumph. Solo’s failure, however, is not particularly surprising today. The greatest credit for this goes to The Last Jedi, the final film of the official trilogy, which represented the series’ most profound disappointment for fans and prompted many of them to become critics who would tear apart new Star Wars instalments with the fervour of recent religious converts. To this must naturally be added the now rather justified fears that George Lucas, creator of the original series, by selling the rights to Disney, had placed his magnum opus in the hands of a greedy yet soulless corporation that neither understands nor respects it, and which, in its ruthless pursuit of profit, is prepared to transform it beyond recognition. Among the symptoms of these “new” Star Wars films were plans for prequels or spin-offs dedicated to individual characters or minor events from the original trilogy. After the acclaimed Rogue One, it was time for Solo, focusing on Han Solo, likely the most popular character across the entire franchise, depicting his youthful years in a film simply titled Solo.
Harrison Ford, at seventy-five, was definitively too old to portray this role, and CGI technology was insufficiently advanced to “de-age” him convincingly. Thus, the part was entrusted to Ford’s forty-seven-years-younger counterpart, Alden Ehrenreich. The plot begins on Corellia, an industrial planet renowned for shipbuilding but whose dark streets are ruled by a criminal underworld often forcing even children into its service. Among them was the now-adult Solo, who decides to rob his employers and flee with his girlfriend Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) to start a new life. He fails, however, and Qi’ra remains stranded on Corellia while Solo is forced to join the Imperial fleet as a pilot trainee. Three years later, expelled from the Academy for insubordination and reassigned to the infantry, he stumbles upon a gang of criminals led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), who have assumed the identities of Imperial shock troopers intending to exploit them for a heist targeting coaxium, a legendary valuable spacecraft fuel. Solo joins them and meets a Wookiee named Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo). The first heist attempt fails, leaving the gang in trouble since the entire operation was on behalf of Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), head of the powerful criminal organisation Crimson Dawn. Vos, in whose company Solo is greatly surprised to find Qi’ra, agrees to an alternative plan: extracting unrefined and highly volatile coaxium from the planet Kessel and transporting it along a perilous asteroid route to a refinery on Savareen. For this, a spacecraft resembling the Millennium Falcon is required, owned by Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover).
Much like Rogue One, Solo had, months before its premiere, become the subject of alarming production difficulties. This included Disney producers uncomfortably enlisting a special acting coach for Ehrenreich, reportedly struggling intensely to capture Ford’s mannerisms. Worse still was the decision to dismiss directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from the set following fierce clashes with the screenwriting duo of Lawrence Kasdan (renowned for The Empire Strikes Back, the franchise’s finest film) and his son Jake. Ron Howard, a reliable Hollywood veteran, was brought in as a replacement and ultimately had to reshoot numerous scenes. All this boded poorly, and fears largely proved justified, though Solo is actually not as bad a film as its commercial failure or the bile fanatical Star Wars fans spill online might suggest.
The main issue with Solo, of course, lies in its very concept—the expectation that an audience devoted for decades to Harrison Ford’s incarnation of the character would accept it embodied by the young Ehrenreich, who, regardless of what anyone may refuse to admit, lacks Ford’s charm and charisma. Star Trek successfully weathered the transition to a younger cast because its foundation lay in the concept rather than an iconically cultural character. Solo could not overcome this hurdle from the outset and was doomed to become merely a curiosity—or a kind of fan film backed by hundreds of millions of dollars. The Kasdans’ screenwriting duo manages the ungrateful task of crafting an exciting story from apocryphal, casually mentioned details of Solo’s youth with some degree of competence, though not always successfully. Particularly disappointing is the explanation of how Han Solo acquired his name, and his character undergoes no convincing transformation from naive youth to charming antihero. On the other hand, Solo features several engaging action sequences, and its finale refreshingly avoids succumbing to unnecessary spectacle and CGI excess, offering the audience several intriguing plot twists. Unlike the pale performance of Ehrenreich, the rest of the cast proves lively enough to carry the film, breathing life into characters that might otherwise have been quickly forgotten—this applies both to Harrelson and Bettany, who delivers one of the franchise’s most impressive villains. Direction, however, remains problematic throughout much of the film, particularly regarding cinematography, which is frequently too dark.
The film is often saved by scenes or characters that unintentionally provoke laughter. An interesting detail is the Mimban battle sequence, whose atmosphere may remind some viewers of World War One. Nevertheless, the most striking aspect of Solo is undoubtedly the character of the socially engaged droid L3-37, who seizes every opportunity to voice dissent against the oppression of marginalised groups, whose revolutionary act inadvertently triggers a series of spectacular yet perilous events for the other characters. Some critics considered L3-37 a reflection of producer Kathleen Kennedy’s publicly stated efforts to align Star Wars with contemporary moral, political, and other standards of Hollywood’s salon left-wingers, but in reality, this character became a parody of everything nowadays encapsulated by the acronym SJW. That Solo will be remembered for its fanatical droid rather than its main character is one of many explanations for why the film failed and why the future of Star Wars seems far darker than anyone could have imagined just a few years earlier.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
(Note: The text in the original Croatian version is available here.)
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