Theatrical Review: Solo- A Star Wars Story

Date: Sunday June 3 2018
Location: Cinemark Theater at Stroud Mall
Time: 11:35am
Party: 3 (my mom, sister and I)

Director: Ron Howard
Writers: Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan
Composer: John Williams

Notable Cast:
Han Solo- Alden Ehrenreich
Kira (ok, it's spelled Qi'ra officially, but I don't care)- Emilia Clarke
Chewbacca- Joonas Suotomo
Tobias Beckett- Woody Harrelson
Lando Calrissian- Donald Glover
Dryden Vos- Paul Bettany
L3-37- Phoebe Waller-Bridge (she'd never forgive me if I left her out- you'll see why later)


Duration: 135 minutes (+ 7 trailers... that seems to be a common thing now, 7 trailers at this place..)

Opening Remarks:

Two weeks after this movie came out (and the day after we saw it), the local DJ rejoiced "Star Wars is dead!"... stating how poorly this movie did at the box office and drawing attention in particular to the sharp decline from the first to the second weekend... The first weekend it only made around 90 million and the following week, it was closer to 30.

I'll start in saying this movie wasn't THAT BAD. And box office numbers aren't everything. It's just that not as many people are going to the movies anymore, whether they'd rather just stream or wait for it come on cable or they're just sick of movies in general... unless of course they're from the Marvel universe or Deadpool :P

It was the second week and there weren't many people in the theater. Maybe a dozen... and we were there early enough to get good choice of seats.

Trailers:

:sigh: almost all of these were the same trailers at the Avengers movie... so that annoyed me from the get-go. It's hard to be excited about new movies if it's the same trailers all the time.

Venom, Jurassic World, The Incredibles 2 and Ant-Man I'd already commented so, so I won't add anything more to that.

Mile 22 was a Mark Wahlberg movie and I think it's about a deadly weapon that gets stolen and needs to be retrieved... I don't remember much about it, but it's not my type of movie anyway

Mowgli, I don't know if it connects to the Jungle Book live action movie. Although they do have Cate Blanchett voicing the snake again, so I think they are connected. And he's living with man, but is also trying to figure out his identity and place in the world. It looks kind of intense for something based on an animated Disney film, but it also looks impressive.

Then there's a Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic called (what else) "Bohemian Rhapsody"... now that looks impressive. I've already heard some good things about it in passing and how the guy playing Freddie Mercury really nailed it.
...it also makes me hope that they never do this with Prince... he already did a biopic, it's called "Purple Rain"... ok, it's semi-autobiographical and the people in it are only one side of the personalities of those people in real life. Even Prince is playing a version of himself, but not being completely himself. The story itself has some truth to it, but the actual events that happened in the movie didn't actually happen in real life... yeah it's complicated, just no biopics for Prince, please, he deserves better...

The Main Event:

As one could expect, this is a prequel and origin story of sorts.
We find out how Han Solo got his name (well, his last name anyway), we get early glimpses of himself inability to follow orders and so on. Pretty much everything we know and love about our favorite scruffy looking nerfherder.
There's also a love story arc, but it doesn't go quite the way we expect. Like with a lot of this movie, I don't want to go into full details because you should probably experience it for yourself.
We also find out how Han met Chewbecca... and it's not the way I personally pictured it. I think my mom said in the book series that talks about the characters that Han rescued Chewbecca when he was young. I'm not entirely sure about this, I'm sure she'll correct me once she reads this.

As a whole, the movie started out as very relaxing for me. Which is a weird thing to say about an adventure film. But the fact is that we know Han Solo would survive this no matter what happens had me just hanging back and enjoying everything at face value.
The highlight is Han Solo himself. I'm not as in love with Harrison Ford or the character like my mom is, but I do like the guy. And there was no mistaking this was the same character. It's hard to explain, but this guy just has a certain swagger and self-assuredness that was very easy to like... even when he goes against the flow no matter who he's working with. That guy is just such a natural leader that it's difficult for him to follow anyone's orders other than his own. Heck, he even says to Leia in the first movie "I only take orders from one person: me"

His childhood friend/love interest Kira is an interesting piece of work herself... you never really know what's going on with her. They're both on this planet at the start where runaways are forced into slavery and they're trying to get off the planet. He gets off and she doesn't and he's trying to get back to her. But in the midst of his newest gig, working with Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson pretty much being the typical Woody- but he instills early on how you can never trust anyone and if you expect everyone you know to betray you, you'll never be disappointed... and boy does that become true later on...), he finds her in the quarters of their employer, Dryden Vos (his voice sounded so familiar that it took me a while to figure out it was Jarvis from the Iron-Man movies... of course I also know he was in movies like A Knight's Tale and A Beautiful Mind).
So Kira did get off that planet, but she doesn't seem to be completely free either. And she also comes with Han and Beckett to complete a job. They need to find some valuable raw material and make the Kessel Run in fewer than 20 parsecs to get it somewhere to be refined so it doesn't explode. In order to do that, they need a fast ship and Lando is the one who has it.

Then there's the end of the movie where you don't know where anyone stands... everyone is betraying everyone and all of it seems to be self-motivated... there's also a cameo in the movie and Kira is talking to him via intercom...  this movie is supposed to take place 10 years before A New Hope and this guy died at the end of the Phantom Menace... so I'm a little confused about that... reading the trivia, it sounds like he survived the Phantom Menace.
Maybe this will come to fruition in some sequel in the future, but based on this movie's box office numbers, I'm not sure how much of a possibility that is now.

This movie also dwells into some social commentary... almost a little too much for my tastes...
there's a story arc with this droid L3-37 that works with Lando and she's very into droid rights... there's a scene where she's decrying droid fighting and it made me think about Battle Bots and what it'd be like if these robots actually had thoughts and feelings of their own. She also talks about Lando having feelings for her that she could never return, but also subtly hints that sex is possible between humans and droids... the Internet lost its mind when the people on the movie announced that Lando was pansexual. I'm not saying that I don't want different sexualities explored in movies, but I don't like it when they're doing it to fulfill an agenda.
I will say, though, that the scene where she frees all of the droids, that was pretty epic.

There's also a heavy theme about slavery. How runaways are enslaved on that planet Han and Kira are from. The thing with the droids. But Wookies as well. Chewbecca was a prisoner when Han met him and the two of them escape together and their lifelong friendship formed from that.

As for the Kessel Run... there was talk about it in passing in the first Star Wars movie where Han is asked if his ship is fast and he says "it's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs"... it was kinda cool seeing how that claim came to light.
And also how the Millennium Falcon got to be called a piece of junk by everyone to lay eyes on it throughout the series :P there was actually a point where it looked gorgeous. Then Han got to drive it and he did kinda ding it up a bit.
And true to form as well, Han won the ship from Lando in a card game... but it isn't necessarily the first game the two of them play. Let's just say that Han learns a thing or two from the scoundrels he hangs out with.

Also- it took me until the credits to find that Kira was played by Daenerys from Game of Thrones... I just don't recognize her without that wig :P I'd also only seen Game of Thrones a handful of times... my whole family is really into it, even my dad who isn't really into this stuff... I think I've seen 3 episodes EVER...

Grade: B