Solo: A Star Wars Story

Disney’s hot streak knows no bounds. If we take fixing Star Wars plot holes as a barometer of excellence then they’re two for two with Solo: A Star Wars Story, somehow finding a legitimate answer to the conundrum of The Kessel Run: a parsec is a unit of distance not time, yes, and this film explains how it’s done. Production issues (the much discussed creative differences that Lord and Miller had before relinquishing the reigns to safehands Ron Howard) and another prequel-story don’t diminish yet another top shelf Star Wars picture. The idea of character-led origin tales was an interesting one: not highly original given the plethora of superhero tales on the market and raising the question of how new actors could fill legendary shoes, but with their first foray into the experiment they find a winner. Let’s start with the casting issue and address the fact that Alden Ehrenreich was a superb hire: whilst not visually exact Ehrenreich’s charisma and patois instil this younger Han with nuance; we learn the origins of his name, the beginnings of his relationship with Chewie and, of course, the infamous gamble that won him the Millennium Falcon. We see his past but we don’t get too much; he’s still very much a mystery, the charming rogue. My only slight grievance comes with the timeline; Han is not meant to be a wizened, old hand in A New Hope and here we see a fairly large chunk of his ‘early life’ where he’s played by an actor nudging 30. We’re treated to a couple of bland opening cards rather than the traditional scrolling crawl but it would have been nice to pinpoint exactly where this film slots across the wider timeline. However, it does confirm a couple of quite incredible revelations as canon in the story which go beyond mere fan-baiting and reveal more of the wider universe hopefully to be explored more in coming ‘Stories’ or perhaps a Solo sequel. Donald Glover’s portrayal of Lando Calrissian is another which deserves to be singled out for particular praise: Glover keeps his inherent charm but embodies Billy Dee Williams; the mannerisms, the accent, it’s uncanny and, again, explores and fleshes out the character without over stretching the mark. It zips along too fitting very much with the ‘Star Wars Story’ tagline and Disney have done a good job thus far of making these standalones feel inherently different from their core trilogy bigger brothers. It works in the most part with the more intimate cinematography and less pressure on big beat plot moments and flash editing, instead sticking to action adventure set pieces and fan moments: the first glimpse of the golden dice, a game of Dejarik, a de facto Warwick Davis cameo, passing mentions of the Hutt clan and an-actually-quite-amusing Empire recruitment video set to the strains of the Imperial March. It does, again like Rogue One, feel a ‘lesser’ film though. Perhaps it’s the less bombastic score, which feels awfully quiet in the early chase scenes and doesn’t flutter into Star Wars notes until the first glimpse of the Falcon but the film has less of an epic feel; to be expected I suppose and not necessarily a negative, but there’s a whiff of Disney not quite wanting this to draw attention from the main, flagship franchise. Political machinations aside though and what we have here is another A-grade Star Wars movie, another that no one thought could be pulled off but no one told this scruffy-looking Nerf herder the odds. 4 stars ****