Solo: A Star Wars Story (Movie Review)

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Lawrence and John Kasdan

Ok, just to make things clear, I planned on boycotting this movie. But I tried to attend a special showing of the new Fate/Stay Night anime movie last Tuesday and they could never get the movie started. So I got two free movie passes. I decided to use one for Solo. That way Disney is making zero money off me seeing it. I would not have accepted someone paying for me or renting it once it comes out on video. If nothing else, I would have either pirated it or waited for it to be free online somewhere. So, anyway, I did go to see it today.

Solo IS a origin story and it rips its beginning off from a master storyteller, namely one Mr. Charles Dickens, and more specifically, Oliver Twist. Han (minus Solo) is a common thief and troublemaker with aspirations to be a pilot even though he's never flown a ship before. He wants to fly away with his girlfriend Qi'ra (Daenerys the Artful Dodger) and get from under the slime of the local equivalent of Fagin from the Dickens tale. They almost DO get away but get separated and Han promises to come back for her....someday. For lack of a better idea he joins the Imperial navy hoping to be a pilot where he first meets a veteran smuggler named Tobias Beckett  (Woody from Cheers) who introduces him to the world of his true career. What follows is his apprenticeship and how he meets up with Chewie (Penned Lion) and Lando (Pan the Sexual).

When this movie first started, I thought it was going to be AWFUL, and it IS for like the first 20 minutes on Corellia. Low speed speeder chases that make the ship chase suspense of Last Jedi seem faster than light and an infamous scene where Han tries to con his boss into thinking a rock is a thermal detonator. I've heard that Ron Howard had to reshoot 75% of the movie. I would like to think that the first 25% of Solo IS the only part retained from the original directors so it would be easy to say why it's so bad. Another corny scene is where Woody is introduced spinning his pistols on his fingers as he's shooting. Like a totally useless motion that in reality would get someone killed real fast.

The rest of the movie was pretty good...except for one glaring elephant in the room: Allin Lavarock's portrayal of Han Solo. The thing about Harrison Ford is that no matter what movie he's in, he looks and acts BORED. He has a very low key and deadpan delivery usually. But he also has enough charisma and presence to get away with it. Alden's problem is not visual. He's a good looking guy that could pass for a younger Han Solo. My problem with him was when he opened his mouth and started talking. For some reason, he thought that playing Han Solo meant speaking in a bored monotone with very little emotion. And that's it. That's all that was called for. Unfortunately, he has ZERO screen presence. He's not a star. To me, it was almost like Harrison Ford playing Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker playing Han Solo. At least Hayden could whine and cry a little. So yeah, Allin provided a good visual. Maybe if this had been a silent movie I could have bought in.

If you could ignore Lavarock's bad performance, the rest of the cast did a great job. The SJW robot rights robot with child bearing hips was a bit creepy and annoying. For some reason when she said her and Lando could be in a sexual relationship I pictured her giving Lando a......ok, let's not think about that. But it just kept coming up over and over that the main protagonist was just someone I didn't care about.

Another thing I did not like about Solo was the lighting. Almost every scene except towards the end was REALLY dark, I mean almost bordering on you can't tell what's happening here and there. I don't know why so much of it was filmed through murky soup. It was even darker than Rogue One or Batman vs. Superman. Don't know what kind of look they were going for but it gave the film a very depressing tone.

I don't really like most of Ron Howard's films but for what he had to work with here, he did a GREAT job. He minimalized a DISASTER. I had never seen him work on such a big special effects film (Willow was a long time ago). I would like to see him make more Star Wars movies! To see what he could do with a GOOD lead actor/actress. He has the action sequences down. They FELT Star Warsy.  This movie's box office would have been a LOT worse without him.

Yeah, this movie is probably going to lose $100 million but that's not Ron Howard's fault. It's Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson's. I AM a reason why this movie has done so poorly. I did not pay to see it. I refused. And that trend will continue as long as the current leadership at Lucasfilm is in place. Ever since Last Jedi came out, the media and Lucasfilm have been saying that people are mad at Kennedy because they are white, racist, misogynistic, hateful, unprogressive, etc. Some of them ARE, but not ALL of them. It's the fact that she is not being true to the universe George Lucas created. She is NOT keeping the characters true as they were written by him. She and her ilk are injecting the stories with their own SJW values and political views. And it just might drag down the entire franchise if she's not fired. So please don't listen to the media who are drinking Disney's Kool-Aid. Solo is underperforming not because of franchise fatigue or a troubled production. It's because fans are REJECTING what they're trying to make Star Wars become.

My Grade: C (with Allin Lavarock)
My Grade: A (with a good actor as Han Soylo)