Solo Act

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) was definitely a fun movie. It’s faults all seemed to be related to the fact that it is “A Star Wars Story”.

It starts on Corellia, the factory planet Solo famously came from (“famously” = it was mentioned once maybe, and the super fans latched on to it). Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) and his girlfriend Qi’ra (Emilia Clark, not Keira Knightley as I guessed) anger a mob boss/giant armored worm (Linda Hunt) and have to get off the planet. Solo makes it, but Qi’ra gets left behind. So Solo joins the Imperial Armed Forces, and promises to come back for her.

Three years later, he’s fighting in some kind of WWI battlefield and meets up with roguish Woody Harrelson as Tobias Beckett. They spar a little, then he gets thrown into a Wookiee pit to be eaten. But he talks Wookiee, and convinces the monster down there (guess who) to escape with him. Harrelson’s crew let him come along. So now we get a kind of Guardians of the Galaxy section - they even have a talking four-armed monkey (Jon Favreau).

The criminal Crimson Dawn organization, run by Paul Bettany, hires them to steal some starship fuel. But he wants them to take along his girlfriend - ta-dah! - Qi’ra. She’s been through some stuff, doesn’t want to talk about it. But she’s happy to see Han.

To get a ship, they go to meet Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). Him and Solo play a high-stakes game of Sabac for the ship, known as (SPOILER) the Millenium Falcon. Solo loses, but Lando lends them the ship for a cut.

So, it’s off to a mining planet with Calrissian’s sassy sexdroid (OK, maybe just a protocol droid) - Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays her as a feisty android-rights activist, but her CGI body has some great big chicken legs. First, they need to make the Kessler run, taking a shortcut that will let them do it in 25 parsnips. Then they have to rob a train. And we’re only about a third of the way in.

This is a great space adventure, with nice touches of humor and pathos. I’m not sure I cared for Solo having a great love affair, but I liked the way it kind of fizzled out - and she wasn’t in any of the lore, as far as I know. Because the whole thing of explaining or referencing everything we know about Solo from the other movies gets tedious. We even see him shoot first.

I wonder - would this be as enjoyable if it weren’t tied into a beloved franchise? It’s pedigree is impeccable: director Ron Howard, always competent, taking over from Lord and Miller (The LEGO Movie), who were judged to be too jokey. The script is by Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, and several Star Wars movies, along with his son Jonathan. It could have been a fun new franchise or even a one-off.

Of course, it probably couldn’t have been made outside the Star Wars Universe. Never mind.