Holy Fuck, Ron Howard Just Made The Best Star Wars Movie Since Return Of The Jedi

Solo: A Star Warz Joint:  Ummm… I loved this movie.  And I’m a cynical fuck when it comes to this overexposed galaxy far, far whatever.  The new trilogy is pretty good so far, but kind of uneven, the prequels were trash, and Rogue One is a joyless fan service mess with no emotional depth whatsoever.  Therefore I was firmly entrenched in the “there is no need for an origin story about everyone’s favorite character” camp, and I was ready to hate, hate, hate it.  But then I saw a trailer a few weeks back that actually made me grin.  I did remain skeptical, though- after all, trailers are merely commercials, doing their best to sell a product that, in the end, may or may not resemble what is being hyped.  Still, against my better judgement, I allowed a modicum of hope to remain.

And despite all the Lord & Miller/Lucasdisney dissonance, the unproven guy playing the most iconic role in all of Starwarsdom, the last-minute refilming of almost the entire flick by Opie, and the simple fact that, yeah, this is a backstory that doesn’t need to be told, the finished product was a total blast that felt more like OG Star Wars than literally ANYTHING that has come out since Endor hosted The Great Teddy Bear Rave of ’83.

Alden Ehrenreich: fantastic.  Didn’t even try to do a Harrison Ford impression.  Just smirked, strutted, and seat-of-his-pantsed his way through the flick, letting the screenplay do the work.  When I heard about that whole “they had to hire an acting coach” thing a while back during filming, I was confused- dude stole every scene he was in in Hail, Caesar!   In retrospect, I imagine this was due to the apparent off-the-rails (read: script), improv approach that got Phil Lord and Chris Miller fired from the thing.  Like, they probably wanted Ehrenreich to be better at not delivering his lines (which were written by the fucking Kasdans, so why would you want to do that?).  Seriously, he was solid.  His on-screen relationship with Joonas Suotamo’s Chewbacca (Newbacca?) was as good as the Ford/Mayhew connection, with the added bonus of seeing the genesis of their friendship.  This is all in retrospect, of course- while watching the movie it didn’t stand out with a wink-wink and an exclamation point.  It just… was.

…which, I think, is the thing that Ron Howard did right- he didn’t treat the source material like it was ancient, holy text to be revered and worshipped.  He just made a movie.  Yeah, there were some references and callbacks (call-forwards?) in there, but that’s pretty unavoidable.  And anyway, they weren’t clumsily broadcast from a mile away, they were just naturally part of the story.  There wasn’t any nonsense like Boring McWhatserface and Bland von Forgettable in Rogue One randomly bumping into Ponda Baba and pignose-guy in the street.  No scenes like the one in… oh, I dunno, whichever fucking prequel abortion it was where a room full of kids mini-saberblock electric bolts from little flying zap-droids while wearing the same blast-shield helmet that Luke wore on the Falcon in Star Wars.  And, hallelujah, there wasn’t a single Death Star in sight.  Like, ANYWHERE.  Really, the only thing that was a little bit much was the overemphasis on Han’s lucky rearview dice.  But seriously, although they were always there in the original movies, they weren’t a thing until The Last Jedi, so I’m going to just write that off as some weird 3rd Generation Star Wars Film Synergy™ concept, or whatever.

Childish Gambino’s Lando was as awesome as you assumed it could be, Paul Bettany’s baddie was a nice, quietly menacing character, Woody was appropriately shady… really, I don’t have many complaints about the cast.  They were mostly solid.

They threw the “Kessel Run” in there, but managed to not embarrass themselves by making it like a podrace, or something.  It was all part of this near-impossible heist and had some real dramatic tension.  And the whole extended sequence had its own clear three-act structure.  I dug it.

The music was good.  I mean, in that it did its job and didn’t stick out like a sore thumb.  And there were situation-appropriate callbacks to Williams’ score, most notably the bits borrowed from “The Asteroid Field” from Empire.  Good stuff.

So, was there anything not-so-good about it?

Sure.  Emilia Clarke could have used a little more… well, anything, really.  Maybe that was a script issue?  Dunno.  I’m starting to think that Game Of Thrones is the only thing she’s in where she’s truly interesting.  She has her moments in Solo, but not that many.  I’d love to have seen her role swapped with Thandie Newton’s because she was awesome.  What else, what else… uh… I’ve heard a lot of grumblings about all the stuff at the start of the movie on Corellia?  Is that the planet?  Whatever.  Anyway, I’m not sure I agree.  I guess it was a little choppy, visually, but it was fine.  Oh, but speaking of “visually,” the real issue with this movie is the cinematography.  It is truly bad.  I think they were going for a “dark underbelly of the galaxy” thing, but man was it hard to see anybody.  Seriously, 75% of the movie is backlit, severely muted in its color grading, or just plain shot in shadows, and it’s ugly.  Whatever.  It doesn’t break the movie, it just gets distracting.  I thought for a minute the theater was maybe doing that cheap-ass lower-lumens projector thing, but this was IMAX, so I’ve got to just write it off as a bad filmmaking decision.

Anyway…

Solo reminds us that a movie can still be made for pure entertainment and tell a story with absolutely no agenda.  I mean, that won’t stop people from behaving badly in its wake- after all, Star Wars fandom has become an all-encompassing juggernaut of annoying rhetoric and misplaced entitlement.  Butthurt Star Wars Fanboys start petitions when the flick that comes out isn’t identical to that superawesome movie that’s been playing in their heads for years.  Manbaby Star Wars Neckbeards rejoice at every new movie-related cartoon, console game, or comic book, because now they can wait in line again to stock up on the latest tie-in merch before the kids can buy them.  Sniffling Star Wars Hipsters don’t give a fuck what the movie is about as long as they can ejaculate thinkpieces on stuff like the implications of a female-voiced robot’s untimely death and what that means for feminism, or whatever…

Sorry.  I hate people.

Anyway, thank the maker for Ron Howard.   He really Made Star Wars Great Again (#MSWGA).*

*Oh, one more thing… that character reveal at the end.  I’m calling it a negative, if for no other reason than it legitimizes the prequels, which is a thing I wish they’d just stop doing.  Yeah, they exist, and that’s unavoidable, but let’s not bestow any more importance on them, OK?  I mean, I know you’ve got to tease your Obi-Wan movie, and all, buuut…