Considering the drama of getting the movie to the screen, it turned out A LOT better than it could have been.
Let us get through the back-story of Solo: A Star Wars Story at light-speed. Not the movie’s story, but the story of the movie itself.
As part of the prequels that would be told in between the “bigger” stories, Solo is to be stacked alongside Rogue One, the “Previously On…” interludes that are released while audiences are waiting for the next Episode to arrive.
Initially, Phil Lord and Chris Miller were hired to direct the movie, but after months and months of production, they suddenly left the project, citing “creative differences”.
There was more than a smack of Edgar-Wright-fired-from-Ant-Man about it; a fan-favourite director replaced by a safer pair of hands. The rumours went back and forth than the directors of The LEGO Movie and 21/22 Jump Street had gone way too zany, or waaaay too dark for Disney’s liking.
Whatever the real reason – and it is doubtful we’ll ever find out the truth, save for a deathbed confession decades from now – they were replaced by Ron Howard, the guy behind the likes of Apollo 13, The Grinch and Rush. An old-hand in director’s terms, and a sore thumb sticking out from the pile of fresh talent that Disney have previously been assigning to their Star Wars and Marvel movies.
Word was that Howard found himself having to reshoot as much as 70% of the movie, and there was a possibility that the result would be a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster of a movie, mish-mashed from hugely contrasting styles, and the finished product being a bit of a hot mess.
Which is why it is not just a relief that the movie works, but that it works this well, and the reason for that is primarily because it doesn’t actually feel like a Star Wars movie.
Sure, it is in there in the title – this is A Star Wars Story, after all – and we know that Han Solo does end up being wrapped up in the Skywalker saga, but unlike Rogue One, which couldn’t move from under the shadow of imminent New and Hope-ful events, if you were completely oblivious to the existence of the Star Wars universe, you’d be hard pressed to find any connections to it in Solo… for the most part.
There was always something about the Episode entries in the Star Wars movies that have felt a little bit imposing to non-Star Wars fans. The Force and the light-sabres and the space-nazis and the very obvious good-and-bad, light-and-dark of it all. It felt like sitting in church, mid-sermon, with everyone spouting rules of their religion that you didn’t quite understand. But with explosions and sister-kissing and stuff.
Pretty much all of that falls away with Solo (Alden Ehrenreich), as we’re introduced to the hero of our movie, but one who isn’t a hero in a Rey or Luke kind of way. He is the hero of his own story, which usually involves him doing some very un-heroic things.
He joins the army, but for what we ultimately understand to be the wrong side (i.e. the Space Nazi side), and not because of his beliefs, but because it suits his needs at the time. He joins a group of thieves, to steal some stuff and kill some people, all for the sake of getting a bit more money. Pretty much everything he does is “bad”, but he does it for a “good” reason – to get back the woman he loves (Emilia Clarke) and save her from the bad life he managed to escape from.
However, in the years that have passed, she has found herself in the orbit of some much worse people (including arguably the series’ best villain outside of Vader himself, played by Paul Bettany), and has had to change in order to survive in their company. How deep that change goes, and how permanent the change is, is known only to her.
Additionally, Woody Harrelson and Donald Glover and Thandie Newton all add shading to big picture, creating a sense that any of them could kill the other if it meant their lives being a tad less troublesome, which definitely adds a previously untapped vein of untrustworthiness to this universe. The bad guys aren’t all wearing big black cloaks and armed with big red laser-swords. Here the bad guys (and bad gals) look exactly like the heroes, who may or may not be bad guys and gals themselves.
It is a shot of vitality that is otherwise missing from the entry level plot of Good VS Evil elsewhere in Star Wars, all set against a series of ever-growing-in-scale heists (special mention to the train sequence, which is in with a shout for best action scene of 2018), which are themselves set against a great romance between a scoundrel and a survivor.
Blurred lines between the heroes and villains, grounded action, and a believable romance… are we sure this is a Star Wars movie?
Which isn’t to say that die-hard Star Wars fans aren’t catered for, for better or worse: we’re shown the Kessel Run, which actually does resolve the long-standing issue of parsecs being a unit of distance, not time, which is kind of great. We’re also told how Han Solo got his name, which… did anyone need to know that? No. And then there’s a few more nods which feel entirely superfluous, nothing more than pure fan-service.
It is when Solo tries to tie itself to the bigger picture, that it ends up tying itself in knots. Plus it is about 20 minutes too long, but that isn’t a Star Wars problem, that is a blockbuster-in-general problem.
Despite that, there is perhaps more new here for non-Star Wars fans to enjoy, and even though we know where we end up with Harrison Ford, for now we’re more than happy to stick with Alden Ehrenreich to see how we get there.
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