For those of you who haven’t seen “Solo: A Star Wars Story” – and based on it’s box office, that’s a fair number of people – here’s my review: wait till it hits HBO. Star Wars movies have been all over the place, from the excellent original trilogy and “Rogue One” to the not-so-great prequel trilogy to those miserable fan films, “TFA” and “TLJ.” But “Solo” is the first one that’s just utterly forgettable, devoid of substance or a reason to be.
Each and every SW movie up till now, no matter how good or bad, had at least a few scenes that pretty much everybody could look at and go, “hey, neato.” Everyone rips on “Phantom Menace.” But I defy you to say that the light saber fight with Maul at the end wasn’t just plain spectacular. The podracing bit seemed like “why is this here” in terms of storytelling, but it was fun as hell to watch. “Last Jedi” was atrocious, but Poe Dameron taking on the dreadnaught, the hyperspace ram and the throne room battle were all really spiffy. But Solo had *none* of those. There were scenes that I think were *supposed* to be like that… but they weren’t.
“Solo” also had the problem that Harrison Ford *is* Han Solo. Anyone else taking on the role had better be damned good. And Alden Ehrenreich… meh. At no point did I look at the appearance or performance and go, “hey, that’s Han Solo.” Woody Harrelson’s performance as Beckett was good, and Beckett was an interesting character. The droid L3 was at times amusing, and the whole notion of a droid who wants “equal rights” for droids is something that has been curiously lacking in the prior movies. There were *moments* when I saw – or at least heard – Lando Calrissian in Donald Glovers performance. But other than that, everyone else was forgettable.
That said, the movie was not without a few moments of modest interest. A minor detail that was created for “Rogue One,” but which was cut from the movie, was included here: perhaps the most disturbing notion in the Star Wars cinematic universe, the “decraniated.” These are humans (or humanoids, at least) who have had their heads chopped just at the bridge of the nose, the eyes and brains scooped out and replaced with a simple computer, and then used as non-sentient slaves, basically meat-based droids. Bleurg.
And then there’s the celebrated cameo near the end of the movie, a holographic appearance by the head of a crime syndicate. If a view has not seen the “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” animated series, this cameo will be startling, confusing and downright WTF-worthy… but if you *have* seen those shows, this was actually pretty neat.
“Solo” was intended to be the first of it’s own trilogy, and it very clearly set up sequels. But with a budget probably in the range of $250 million, and having so far taken in only $165M domestically and $116M overseas, it is *nowhere* close to breaking even, and I’d have to guess that the odds of a sequel are pretty slim at this point.