--Han Solo, Solo
At first, I wasn't going to review Solo. This is not because I did not love the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it! But its lackluster box office performance has motivated me to praise the positive aspects of the movie to show my support. Solo, though it comes slightly over five months after one of the most divisive Star Wars movies thus far, is not a bad movie. On the contrary, it is by far the most unique offering in the series, merging Star Wars with the crime/gangster genre. This is exactly what Disney's Star Wars films need to do to maintain variety: assign new movies their own subgenres, with some focusing on mystery, some on politics, some on direct warfare, and so on.
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Production Values
Despite some moments of dialogue near the beginning that might seem cringey to some viewers, the acting in Solo is largely on point. Alden Ehrenreich, someone I had never even heard of before it was announced that he would play a young Han Solo, is surprisingly effective in his role. His Han is not the one Harrison Ford portrays in the original trilogy. His is more inexperienced, idealistic, and overtly passionate, leaving plenty of room for character development in potential sequels. After all, I hear Alden might reprise his role in two subsequent films.
As Qi'ra, Emilia Clarke plays a character who is very well-realized considering that so much about her is left unknown. Without ever actually explaining Qi'ra's past directly, Emilia offers a splendid performance, and her character turns out to be involved in one of the film's biggest surprises. Donald Glover could probably take the lead in a stand-alone film about Lando quite easily. His personality here is extravagant, pompous, and charming--all things one might expect from a young Lando Calrissian. Viewers even get to see him lose the Millennium Falcon to Han in a game of sabacc (a card game)--finally. Woody Harrelson plays a bounty hunter-type character named Tobias Beckett, and his character, along with that of some affiliated characters, help reinforce the fact that this is a movie about something no prior series film has had at its center. Solo is ultimately a gangster movie, and characters like Harrelson's Beckett and Paul Bettany's Dryden Vos communicate that to the audience clearly.
There is a great amount of environmental diversity here. The crime-ridden streets of Correllia, a fortified train beside a snowy series of mountains, coaxium mines, and a gravity well are just some of the varied places the characters venture to. The gravity well scene is gorgeous, just as some other scenes or shots are, especially ones of cosmic phenomena. A heist trip that Han, Chewbacca, Qi'ra, and Lando embark on allows viewers to see planets that have never been shown onscreen before. Some people might not like the very different tone of Solo, but they cannot legitimately argue that the visuals are not potent and that the acting is incompetent.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
A native of the planet Correllia, Han works for a manipulative crime leader named Lady Proxima, an alien who employs children and young adults for her illegal activities in exchange for food and living quarters. He and his girlfriend Qi'ra yearn to leave Correllia using their own space vessel, but are separated in an attempt to flee Lady Proxima's forces. Eager to leave the planet and return when he has sufficient funds to find Qi'ra, Han enlists in the Imperial Navy, but ends up fighting as an Imperial infantryman on a foreign planet.
Han ends up getting entangled with a criminal organization when he needs to produce a large amount of a valuable substance called coaxium for a crime boss named Dryden Vos. Meeting Qir'a by accident, the two of them, along with another ally, recruit Lando Calrissian for the use of his ship, the Millennium Falcon, for their heist. From there onward, the story introduces multiple revelations about various characters, even bringing in a character from another Star Wars movie that I definitely did not expect to see. Though the story is very much a self-contained plot, it also does connect with other movies very nicely. For instance, a character turns out to be acquiring funds for the Rebel Alliance, and multiple franchise figures are mentioned.
Intellectual Content
Several scenes in Solo briefly touch upon an issue that has never been explored in other Star Wars movies or in, to my recollection, the show The Clone Wars (I haven't yet watched Rebels): droid rights. Lando's quasi-humanoid droid L3 condemns humans who have droids fight each other for their amusement or use droids as robotic mine slaves. Ironically, the subject of android rights is something I wrote about recently after watching Westworld, and an actress from Westworld even appears in Solo too. Sometimes the issue is only used for gratuitous comedy (perhaps reflecting how some people view certain individuals who loudly protest racism and sexism, things that really do need to be shut down wherever they appear), but the topic is actually very important within both the Star Wars universe and our own. If a droid is conscious, and if there are certain ways that conscious beings--be they humans, animals, or robots--should and should not be treated, then that droid has moral rights simply by nature of being a sentient being. Since I just wrote about the morality of the treatment of sentient machines two days ago, I will enclose a link about the matter below [1]. Those who wish to read more about the issue can follow the link.
Conclusion
The polarizing nature of The Last Jedi seems to have deterred quite a few people from giving Solo a chance--which is unfortunate, because it is the most unique Star Wars film to date. At the very least, it illuminates a period between Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One that had not been cinematically explored previously, shows Han win the Falcon from Lando, deviates from franchise norms, and has a surprise cameo from a certain character . . . but I won't spoil the identity of this person for those who haven't watched the movie. Solo contains well-placed acknowledgments of past Star Wars movies and events, including references to the bounty hunters Bosk and Aura Sing. Knowledgeable fans might be very pleased by some of them!
I wish the box office performance was better, because I want to see more Star Wars films like Solo. Despite the lack of financial success, Ron Howard presented a wonderfully distinct and self-contained movie that still is clearly a part of the established Star Wars universe.
Content:
1. Violence: As usual in a Star Wars movie, the fighting does not yield gore.
2. Profanity: There is occasional use of mild expletives.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/06/forgotten-evil-ethics-of-westworld.html
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