On the Town: Solo: A Star Wars Story

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On The Town with Lonnie Adams

What is the most important part of a film for you? Does it have to make you laugh? Does it need to touch your heart? Is there one thing that you need to enjoy it? Stop for a moment and really think about this. Surely, you’ve found yourself disagreeing with critics on certain movies. You may even have disagreed with me from time to time. Still, I doubt you rely solely on my opinion to decide if you watch a movie or not.

Seeing a Star Wars movie highlights this feeling of needing something specific. I saw it a little in The Last Jedi, and now I see it prevalently in Solo: a Star Wars Story. Seeing a movie labeled Star Wars carries a certain pedigree, an expectation. I really couldn’t list 1, 2, and 3 on that expectation, but I will say it slapped me in the face when I saw the standardized opening “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” that wasn’t immediately followed by the yellow scrolling text.

My automatic thought was, “Oh my, they changed it!?” Yes, I am a fanboy. No, you may not judge me for it.

I noticed my thought and asked myself if that really ruined the whole movie for me. Of course, I told myself it didn’t, it just surprised me not to see it. Though this thought struck me with the way I’ve viewed Star Wars movies, with expectation instead of anticipation. That said, I wholeheartedly subscribe to the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

I believe if you change too much, you lose what people loved about the series. But this is an anthology film, not a mainline story sequel. I should allow them to be different. After all, Rogue One had only a short scene of a single lightsaber in the whole film, and I daresay it’s one of the greatest Star Wars movies since the original trilogy. It kept what it needed to and created the rest.

I honestly found Solo: a Star Wars Story fun and entertaining. The catch is that that’s as far as I can go with it. It felt like a decent heist movie, but not like a Han Solo movie. It’s a repeating message I have heard from people about the films that try to build upon the legacy set forth from previous films years and years ago. Perhaps that’s why Rogue One did so well. It took a plot point from the old films, not a character.

Still, I hold true that I did have fun with this movie. I enjoyed the subtle humor and the blatant jokes. I enjoyed the always popular balance of sad laughter at a Woody Harrelson character. In a role so classicly “him,” Harrelson quips and meanders around the film as Tobias Beckett bringing you along with a constant giggle under your breath that is so natural, it’s like you just exhale chuckles. Right up to the point where his role drops the plot twist so hard that the “aww” escapes your mouth before you even realize what happened. He kept me so close to his character that I may have considered cheering for him at the wrong moment of the film … I admit nothing.

On the other side of Han Solo is his “frenemy” Lando Calrissian. I give great props to Donald Glover for his charisma and a suave demeanor so thick you could spread it on toast. He exuded the perfect air of con-man and friend to befit his character’s gambler/scoundrel persona. It mirrored well against the Solo I know from the original trilogy.

It actually becomes one of the biggest problems I had with the movie that turned against me in the end. I didn’t see any of the classic Han Solo in Alden Ehrenreich’s Han. I struggled with it for a while before I came to a justification that he shouldn’t be the same Han. I’m reminded of a saying, “You become the people you hang out with.”

When I look at the movie as a whole, I see the Han Solo I know, I see his charisma in Lando, I see his smuggler roots in Beckett, I even see the small spark of the goodness inside the anti-hero through Qi’ra, Emilia Clarke. The movie shows his roots in the people that make him who he is.

The downfall comes with a lack of subtlety in certain things. The entirety of the film seemed to be a linear progression of ticking fan-service and forcing it into a narrative. How did Han become a pilot, got it. Next, how did he meet Lando, there we go. Now, how did he get his blaster, check. Okay, how did he get the Falcon, point made?

It’s not a bad thing, I just wanted some newness to the plot instead of one throwback after another. I felt like Ehrenreich was so uncomfortable in the Han Solo skin, but he settles into in a few parts and fits better. While the plot seems regular, and sometimes pedantic, I can’t say it was a bad choice. I admit that I did enjoy seeing where all the little points of Solo’s past lead into his character in the original trilogy. I had fun with it.

That’s exactly my heart on the film. It was good, but not great. It was exciting, but not memorable. It was fun … but just fun. Was that enough? Well, I did have a pretty busy week, so fun was exactly what I needed. It didn’t have some things that I usually look for in films, but I didn’t care. So, it begged the question of me, is there ever one thing that a movie has to have for me to enjoy it? I guess not. I guess I just have to enjoy it.

 

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