Hello out there in Star Wars land. I loved this film. It was “a ride” to say the least. I don’t have any major complaints at all, but maybe a few things that were relatively minor. I’ll mention those here, but suffice to say I sat there with a big smile on my face this whole film. Spoilers below for the film! Let’s get to the review!
First off, let me say I loved the movie. I think the common phrase people are using is “fun”, and this movie was definitely fun. For me, it was fast-paced, and rarely slowed down. Let me remind you, this is a spoiler-laden review, so proceed with that in mind.
The First Act
There are some complaints out there about “parts of the first act” and I’m not even sure what that they are referring to. I can only assume it was part of it with Mother Proxima? I didn’t fully understand who or what she was, but I didn’t mind that scene at all. Mother Proxima reminded me of Ogra from The Dark Crystal, at least in terms of voice. I was stuck on that, and didn’t notice anything I didn’t like with her. She was weird in the best way.
In the First Act we get a scene of Han stealing a speeder. He gets caught and joins up with his friend Qi’ra. Han and Qi’ra manage to escape Corellia, but get separated. Out of desparation, Han joins the Empire.
In the trenches of a battle, Han meets Becket and Val, who are also apparently posing as Imperial soldiers. Becket’s introduction is so cool. He’s an excellent shot, and knows how to use a blaster.
Becket frames Han as a deserter, and Han gets thrown in a pit with “the beast”. Of course, the beast turns out to be Chewbacca. Two things shocked me about this scene. First, it is implied that Chewie has eaten humans! Other prisoners have been thrown in that pit, and their armor remains. The soldier is like “He hasn’t eaten in three days” or something like that, implying that Chewie gets fed by other deserters or criminals. The second thing that shocks me is that Han speaks Shryiiwook to Chewie to gain his trust. This sort of makes you wonder why Han never spoke it again in the movies? My answer to that is, Chewie understands Basic, and Han understands Chewie, so there is no need. Han only did it to gain Chewie’s trust, but after that just spoke Basic. It certainly makes me wonder where Han learned Shryiwook, but I can only assume it was from being in the Empire for three years he has encountered other Wookiees that were held captive.
— ILM Visual Effects (@ILMVFX) May 4, 2018
The Second Act
After Han joins the crew, they plan a heist on to obtain a load of coaxium–a fuel that is highly valuable and explosive. They succeed in stealing it, but Han was forced to dump it in a conflict with the swoop bike gang led by Enfys Nest. This is a shame, and it means that Val died, and they didn’t achieve their mission. I was also surprised by the fact that Becket quickly forgot about Val. He told Han that this means they are in hot water with Dryden Vos, their boss, but didn’t mention that Han’s choice to drop the cargo made the deaths of Rio and Val for nothing. In the end, it wasn’t a huge deal, but I felt that both of them had very little remembrance from the others after their passing.
The good thing is that the action was excellent. This heist had a “western meets space” vibe all the way, and it worked great.
The Third Act
The third act had the crew planning a big score, a heist of unprocessed coaxium that required them to transport the material to a planet not controlled by the Empire really fast.
Part of the space action before the Kessel run was like the asteroid scene in Empire, but with zero visibility. At first, I was worried about the “maelstrom”, the clouds surrounding the ships in this region, being unbelievable or seeming fake. It was explained on screen satisfactorily well. Planets crashing together, and vacuum-breathing lifeforms creating this danerous cloud of space dust. The giant octopus creature was a bit strange. It’s as big as a black hole? This required a little suspension of disbelief, but in a world of spaceslugs and purgills, is it really that weird? In the end, making the Kessel run in 12 pasecs wasn’t as eventful as I anticipated, and was due to Han taking a risk and L3-37 (or what was left of her) calculating a path out. That and a quick jump to hyperspace at the right moment when two huge structures were colliding.
The high-speed action in space was great, and quickly followed by landing on a planet that could refine the coaxium (forgot the name!), and a conflict with Dryden. Han, Becket and Qi’ra formed plot, but I’m unclear on what part of what happened was planned, and what was improvisation. It seemed like Becket double-crossed them at first, but part of that could have been planned? The acting for some of these scenes seemed almost “jokey”, as if the actors were playing their characters as if they were pretending, so it came off kind of disingenuous. Not sure if that was unintentional, but may take me a second viewing to process what happened.
Easter egg: I love the mention of “Needles” as a racer that Han mentioned. Is this a Back to the Future reference? My money is on Jon Kasdan adding this one. Somehow I think he is a pop culture buff that probably added a lot of awesome easter eggs that will take a long time to find. By the way, I never saw “Tag and Bink”…if you spotted them let me know.
I absolutely loved that Maul was the big baddie behind the scenes. He was a guy that early on Dryden Vos warned about when he talked about who he was working for. We know from The Clone Wars that Maul had a history of leading groups of crime syndicates in the Star Wars galaxy, so it makes perfect sense that he would be a big player behind the scenes at this point. He wasn’t just hanging out on Malachor all those years. Check out my article about Maul in Solo.
Sequel Possibility
The Solo movie was dripping with sequel potential. To me, the inclusion of Maul, and the mention of past bounty hunters has such awesome potential to expand the Solo story. The recently rumored Boba Fett film, and the “confirmed” future Lando film, all have a chance to expand on all these characters. For example, it is briefly stated that Becket killed Aurra Sing. This would be a fantastic scene to have in the Boba Fett film, considering that Boba is known to have worked with Aurra (as has Maul). The various crime syndicates that have been mentioned such as the Pykes all have a great opportunity for expansion. I can’t wait. This movie was brilliantly cast, brilliantly written, and superbly shot and directed. I’ll watch it again 100%, and many more times after that.
How do I rank this film? I am tempted to give it 5 out of 5 stars. I don’t know what that means, but it will probably take more viewings to really sink in. This movie was a trip. It may actually have greater rewatch potential than almost any Star Wars film! That’s a bold statement. But I think the only thing is that it kept things simple story-wise. It didn’t expand on much, but if you consider the sequel potential of this flick, and that it is the first of a series (trilogy?), then it makes sense that the first film introduces the characters, and future films will expand. I’ll be there with you in line for the next! Talk to you soon, Star Wars fans!
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