Solo: A Star Wars Story Review - A Setback For Disney's Star Wars?

What went wrong?

Solo: A Star Wars Story is the fourth Star Wars movie by Disney, and the 10th Star Wars movie in total (not counting the 2008's Clone Wars movie). Considering how Disney never failed to impress with their other Star Wars products, which at least had made USD1 billion mark in the worldwide release, sadly, Solo is far from reaching this minimum threshold.

After a month of release, Solo made only $344 million, worldwide. That was a major setback and downfall for Disney. Their non-stop success with their products, especially the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and Star Wars movies, should ensure their non stop money-raking movies trend. But Solo fell far from the 1 billion mark. It could not even rake $500 million. So, what went wrong?

When Solo was announced, I was curious on how would they tackle the movie as fans would only relate the legendary character Han Solo to Harrison Ford and we know that Ford, already decided to stop appearing in any Star Wars movies after The Force Awakens in 2015. The logical route is to make the movie as sort of a spin-off prequel that takes place during the age of Empire, and when Han was a lot younger. I agree with this route taken and I think it makes sense. However, the final product is sadly disappointing.

Coming into the theater to watch Solo, I was aware of the behind the scenes problems that this movie went through in its production; the fact that this movie was supposedly be directed by the duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo that made 21 Jump Streeet and The Lego Movie in which were very good comedy and fun movies. The reason for their departure was "creative differences". Ah, typical Disney antics - as what happened to Thor: The Dark World and Ant-Man before. But hey, Disney always pulled it off. Rogue One had massive reshoots and the movie did well, critically and commercially. But who did Disney put in replacement of Lord-Miller? Ron Howard. I then started to be a strong skeptic of this project when they replaced Lord-Miller with him. Ron made decent movies lately, with his recent movie that I watched was Inferno which was super mediocre.

Emilia Clarke was lovely in this and she did her best for this film

Still, having watched Solo and now I had wrapped my mind around it. I am going to review it and give my thoughts as to why it failed so bad. First of all, let me say this - Solo is not a bad movie. It was not a disaster, it was enjoyable, decent, and a popcorn movie. It did not disappoints me like Justice League did. I will give the pros first. 

Solo was a decent space adventure movie with western vibe set in the Star Wars universe. We got to see younger Han Solo, Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. We also get to know Beckett, the guy Woody Harrelson played, as well as Qi'ra, the one Emilia Clarke played. Oh, there was Paul Bettany too. The story was not complicated, it was simple and enjoyable. There are a lot of scenes that finally explained certain references that were made in the original trilogy (Kessel Run, how Han got Millenium Falcon from Lando, etc). Surprisingly, Alden Ehrenreich did well as Han Solo. His potrayal was convincing enough to make you believe that the guy on screen was a younger and naiver Han Solo. Alden proved that he did not have to imitate Harrison Ford or rely on his acting style to be Han. He made Han Solo as his own character. Donald Glover did well too as a younger Lando Calrissian. His swag and suave might be a little too on-your-face, but it was understandable as this Lando we were seeing was a younger Lando. I personally like the villain character Dryden Voss played by Paul Bettany. He did not feels as bland and the typical "evil Empire general" guy like Director Krennic in Rogue One. His character had personality and was interesting.

Now, let's move to the downsides of this movie.

First of all, the main problem that I got with Solo was that it does not feel purely like a Star Wars movie. I could not figure out why but maybe due to the overall mediocrity of the movie. Even when I watched Rogue One, I can feel that it takes place in the main story but as I am watching Star Wars, it felt as if it was just a movie that pretends to be in the Star Wars universe but it was actually not. Just because the movie has Star Destroyers, Stormtroopers and a bunch of aliens, it do not make the movie a Star Wars movie if they are not utilised right. The movie's ending and outcome did not impact universe in any larger scale. Sure it can be argued that this movie is meant to be a personal backstory for Han but even when I think in that way, by the end of the movie, Han's character was still far from what we know him as in the original trilogy. It seems like they were playing safe with the story to make a sequel for Solo in order to continue young Han's story but that is not how a good movie should be. A story should be contained within the movie itself. In other words, Solo felt hollow; the story did not seems to give any big impact to Han in which this just halted his character development; and it did not felt like it belongs in the Star Wars universe.

Wasted talent.

Another issue with Solo was that it had too many characters, and some of them could just being removed from the beginning. Thandie Newton was marketed heavily but she was in it only for like 15 minutes (?!) Her character's death did not seems to cause Beckett any heavy grief or impact so what was the point of her character? The monkey alien that Jon Favreau voice-acted can be removed to, and yes, the one character I found to be extremely annoying, unnecessary, and straight SJW-agenda-shoved-in-your-face-character, the feminist droid L3. Okay look, let me be clear here. I don't care at all if the character is a man or woman as long as the character is being used with relevance. People claim that Rey is a feminist agenda, I totally disagree because if we could have Anakin as a "born strong with the Force and destined for great stuff" character, then why not Rey? L3 was annoying because her dialogues explicitly shove you the SJW-agenda unnecessarily, and it do not contribute anything to the movie at all. There was one scene when Lando asked it "Do you want anything?", in which it replied. "Equal rights." Jesus man my cringe-handling shield explodes on that scene. It can be argued that in context of the movie, L3 was fighting for equal rights of droids, but why should that be a thing in this movie at all? We got 9 Star Wars movies in the past and there was no mention of such a thing like "equal droids rights movement". Plus, this thing did not contribute to the plot in any way and even L3 itself, did not contribute anything besides wasting screentime in the movie.

The cinematography for Solo was dull, decent and too dark. It was understandable that for a space gangster movie to take place in dark locations, but sometimes it just became too dark that you wish they could light it up a little. Sure, the Kessel Run scene looked fun though.

It's a mistake to release Solo close to Deadpool

I believe Disney's decision to release Solo five months after the divisive The Last Jedi as well as two weeks after Avengers: Infinity War and heck, the same week as Deadpool 2 as a big mistake. Star Wars brand is big, but not that big as Marvel. Regular moviegoers would had their movie going hobby filled after watching Infinity War and Deadpool and if they are not into Star Wars, surely they would not be too eager to watch it. The fact that the last Star Wars movie was divisive and divided the fandom into two also played a factor considering it had been only a few months and the bitter fans still need more time before going to watch or even supporting another Star Wars movie by Disney. The best time to release Solo is at the end of this year, just as with other Star Wars movies before.

Solo is an enjoyable space western movie, and while it may attract Star Wars fans to like it, it would have a problem to attract both regular moviegoers and fans, to love it.

5/10