As your regular Generation X old creep, I can’t even tell you how many hundreds times us kids in the 80s talked about how great it would be to learn about Han Solo’s back story. How did he meet Chewbacca? What’s the Kessel Run and why does Han brag about doing it in so-many parsecs? How did he win the Millenium Falcon from Lando Calrissian? And did Lando have some kind of sassy droid that talks like an Oberlin College girl’s Twitter feed?
And, yes, dear reader, I am fucking with you.
As beloved as the character is, no one has ever wondered about Han Solo’s back story. Not then, not now and probably not in the future–and that’s why this film bombed.
Did it bomb because it’s bad? No. I don’t think so, at least. This is a terrific adventure flick with clever twists, frantic action scenes and nicely done moments of peril. It’s a film that hearkens back to those old cliffhanger serial vibes that were part of George Lucas’s early inspiration for Star Wars. Han Solo is always escaping within an inch of his life. He’s also refreshingly simple. He’s a man who dives into action and takes huge risks without being particularly tortured about it. I like the way that Aiden Ehrenreich smiles in the face of danger. There’s something very old-fashioned about this film that I dig.
I’m amazed that it’s as good as it is, considering that it was essentially made twice since Lucasfilm fired the original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and hired Ron Howard to reshoot most of it. (Something about Lord and Miller’s take being too much of a comedy? I don’t know.)
It’s not perfect. It fumbles here and there. I can see how one of those serious Star Wars fan dudes–and I am not one of those, at least by the standards of the maniacs you see on Youtube–could have a whole list of problems with it.
I mean, what’s the most intriguing thought about Han Solo’s early years? It’s that he was a lowdown smuggler. He didn’t care about the rebellion against The Empire. He was a mercenary, a criminal, however charismatic, who followed money rather than ideals. That he starts out as that and then becomes a revolutionary hero in the original trilogy is the meat of his arc. Along with Harrison Ford’s screen presence, it’s the thing that makes him interesting.
This film, meanwhile, tries to sell us on Han Solo as sweet and cuddly from the very beginning. Yes, it pays lip service to the idea that Solo THINKS that he’s a villain, but it jumps through hoops to let us know that he’s really a swell guy.
This is a “Greedo shot first” Han Solo, no doubt.
And don’t get me started on how this movie turns Lando Calrissian into a secret wimp who’s in love with his robot. Donald Glover does his best to emulate the old Billy Dee Williams swagger, but with a script that tries to make the character more relatable to modern-day nerds. It’s a bad idea.
This film also constantly nods and winks to the original trilogy in a way that didn’t bother me in the first few movies of the Great Disney Star Wars Resurrection. These are crowd-pleasers. You expect things like that. By this fourth go-round though, these references from forty years ago are a fully formed crutch and if they want to get people excited about what they’re doing, they’ve got to start moving forward.
They’ve got to make movies that expand on their new shit, not the old shit. That’s one of the reasons for Marvel’s success. Every Marvel movie has some new character or piece of foreshadowing that will pay off eventually as an important part of the actively moving saga.
They don’t make movies like THIS, movies that stop and pause and go back to tell you a story from the past for no other reason than just because. Marvel makes everything matter. This doesn’t. Even though this does set up an intriguing sequel that we’ll probably never see.
Other than that, pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE in this movie works for me. It’s a fast-paced laser-shooter with a likable hero, a pretty girl with secrets (Emilia Clarke) and a real nasty villain (Paul Bettany). It feels like it should have been one of the hits of the summer.
But it wasn’t. Lucasfilm got cocky, I think. However, I think the film will age well.
I’d even say that the best way to watch this is to put Star Wars out of your mind as much as you can. DON’T burden it with your fan baggage.
Look at it as JUST an action flick and nothing beyond that. That’s what I did about fifteen minutes in.
It’s better that way. You’ll like it more.