Solo: A Star Wars Story
Never tell him the odds
Plagued with public production woes, including the dismissal of original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller just six months into principal photography, it’s a minor miracle Solo turned out as well as it did – even if it remains a largely unnecessary chapter in the Star Wars saga.
Recasting Harrison Ford was always going to be a fool’s errand, but Alden Ehrenreich gives it his best Nerf Herder as the young Han. In a tale that dutifully hits every origin story beat, the nascent Solo meets walking carpet Chewbacca and cool customer Lando Calrissian, and gets behind the wheel of that magnificent hunk of junk, the Millennium Falcon, all while on a mission that will turn him into the rogue smuggler we (and, later, a certain Princess) know and love.
After stepping into the fold at the 11th hour, Ron Howard (an old friend of Star Wars creator George Lucas) proves a remarkably safe pair of hands with the material, assembling a fast-paced, old-fashioned romp. And it’s hard to fault the casting – prepare to fall hard for Glover’s Lando. But when held against the mythic grandeur of the Skywalker Saga, or even Rogue One, it feels incredibly lightweight. And there’s no getting around the fact Han Solo’s backstory simply didn’t need to be told on screen. We knew everything we needed to already. The film’s relatively poor performance at the box office has already put future spin-offs in jeopardy. If that means no more redundant origin stories, everyone wins. Jordan Farley