Solo: A Star Wars Story film review- by Captain Midnight

Full text transcript of Solo: a Star Wars Story film review

This video is brought to you by Skillshare, and it contains some major spoilers for Solo, a Star Wars movie is my favorite Star Wars movie that doesn’t really need to exist.

I’ll dig into that statement more in a bit. But first, I want to talk about Disney specifically how they kind of did this movie a disservice. It’s well publicized at this point. That solo is plagued by behind the scenes issues. And if you’re watching this, I probably don’t have to tell you about the firing of the original directors. Lord Miller, maybe Disney made a good choice by giving the film to Ron Howard. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. But there’s no denying that it lowered people’s expectations for the film. Then there was the hiring of an acting coach for Star Aldan Aaron Rike, something that literally happens all the time in the film industry. But because it happened when it did, it only added to the narrative that the movie was in big trouble. But I don’t think it was really the bad press that resulted in Solo’s lower than expected box office. 90 percent of the blame should be put squarely at the feet of Disney scheduling. I’ve never been more confused by a summer blockbuster season than I have been this year. Infinity War opened April 27th. It predictably did great and took the top spot for the biggest opening ever Deadpool to open two weeks later. For some reason, Fox had moved the movie up from June 1st and it resulted in a decent box office pull, but definitely lower than the first. Then there was so low. OK, so you have to remember that the average American only goes to the theater about five times per year and many of them had already just seen Infinity Ward, Deadpool two, or maybe even both.

So opening another blockbuster right after that just seemed like it wasn’t a great plan, not to mention the fact that the highly divisive last Jedi only came out six months ago. For a lot of people, I think the reaction to Solo was less, wow, a new Star Wars movie and more another one of these already Disney position. This movie terribly in my opinion. And mediocre reviews aside, I think Disney scheduling needs to take the brunt of the blame. It’s kind of crazy that and million dollars domestically is now considered a disappointment. But in the ridiculous current state of the film industry, where studios opt to bet big on a few movies rather than giving smaller budgets to a lot of middle tier movies, these things really do have to be huge every single time. In my opinion. If they had just moved this back to like November or December, where the stiffest competition it would face is Mary Poppins and that sequel to a Harry Potter prequel that people weren’t really that into, it probably would have done much better. It would have given people a little time to get excited about the franchise again. But it also worked out really well for Roeg One, which opened to a much stronger 155 million just a few years ago in December.

But enough box office stuff, let’s get to the movie itself first, let me say that I liked solo, plain and simple.

I’ve seen this movie twice now and I really enjoyed myself both times. This side of the Star Wars universe has been my favorite since I was a kid smuggler’s.

Bounty hunters won’t ever find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, all that good stuff.

I’ve always preferred it to the much more serious Jedi and Sith. And yes, as many people online have pointed out, the movie does get a bit too wonky with the audience, like the scene where Hahne gets his last name is not great. But other than that, I’m really going to stick up for the way that this movie uses the Star Wars universe. Episode seven was a very obsessed with mimicking the look and feel of the original trilogy to the point where The Force Awakens almost feels too indebted to it and afraid to do anything new. The last Jedi took the Star Wars mythos very seriously as well, but in a different way. It deconstructed it. Now you can love the way it did that or absolutely hate it. But either way, it’s hard to deny that it’s a movie fixated on the past. This may sound weird to say about Solo, a movie with far too many winks to past films in it, but it feels like it just takes a much looser approach to the Star Wars universe. Instead of being so invested in the lure of Star Wars, it just sets up a good old fashioned space Western and lets it play out. Now, it doesn’t have the beats that you’d expect to solo movie to hit, definitely. But I’d also argue that it never feels weighed down by them.

Karelia the castle run. It all feels pretty fun and effortless. I especially liked the gambling scenes with Donald Glover’s Landow. Honestly, one of my biggest complaints about this movie is there just wasn’t enough of him. His performance is interesting because in many ways it’s a lot more over-the-top than Billy Williams, but in a very believable way. This younger Landow has just as much style but doesn’t have the actual life experience or clout to back it up. Instead of being the leader of Cloud City, you get the impression that Landow is actually in a really tough spot and kind of trying to bluff his way out of it. And that’s a really fun take on the character to watch Glover play. I also really liked Woody Harrelson as Beckett. I feel like most coverage of the movie I’ve seen hasn’t mentioned just how good him and Paul Bettany as Dryden are in this movie. Harrison is interesting because he’s playing the guy that Horn could have so easily become if it wasn’t for meeting Luke and Obi Wan even after shooting him. You can tell that he respects Beckett a lot. And Dryden, I honestly don’t get how people aren’t talking about this guy is a legitimately great villain. What makes him so fun to watch is that I don’t think he’s faking the niceness on some level.

He actually does care about the people he does business with. He’s just also a psycho that flies off the handle at the drop of a hat. And that contrast made for a really good one off bad guy comparing him to someone like Captain Pasma or the generic empire guys of rogue one. And there’s just no contest. Darth Maul was well, he was there, which just feels like a strange decision, considering that his entire arc on rebels is already over. I’m not really sure what they could do with him. That’s both interesting and doesn’t violate the continuity of that show. Maybe they’ll just throw out his entire arc from the cartoon, whatever. Ultimately, that scene just worked to conclude Kara’s character arc. And that wasn’t bad. Exactly. I know a lot of people hate Amelia Clark’s acting, but I think she’s perfectly fine here. The problem isn’t so much in Clark’s acting. It’s that her character’s motivations just don’t quite gel. They keep alluding to how much he’s changed and all the things she’s had to do to survive. But we don’t get any deeper than characters just reminding us of that fact every half hour or so.

Her being a secret Darth Maul ally is fun, but there’s almost no background for how she got there.

So it was kind of hard to connect with.

But let’s get back to the very first thing I said in this video. The idea that maybe this movie doesn’t need to exist, I realize how harsh that sounds. So I should probably explain what I mean. One of the things that I’ve always liked about Han Solo is that he’s just kind of a guy, a cool guy with the confidence and looks of 70s Harrison Ford. Sure. But still just the guy. Unlike Luke, he wasn’t preordained to be important. Like no force. Ghosts are ever going to pop in to chat with John about his destiny. He was just a scuzzy dude in a bar that found that if he could just find it within himself to stick out his neck for others a little bit, he could be something more than a smuggler. But the effects that prequels have just intrinsically, I think, is that they can’t help but mythologize their lead. And I don’t really like that. It’s OK if he didn’t have an interesting life before his run in with Luke and Obi Wan. And if he had just been kind of a small time, self aggrandizing smuggler, that’s part of what makes his character arc in the original trilogy so good. Go back and re watch that cantina scene and pay close attention to allergenicity Obi Wan. And he’s clearly looking at Hahne and thinking, yeah, this guy is full of crap but he’s probably the best we’re going to do. The Millennium Falcon in New Hope isn’t some legendary ship that he was always destined to have. It was a piece of junk. Now, those aren’t reasons that Hana’s lame, the reasons that he’s awesome. He’s not the important hero destined to win the day from his first appearance. He’s the guy off to the side making fun of that very idea. And that’s what makes him so beloved.

So even though I really liked Solo, a Star Wars story taken on its own terms, I really hope that Disney stops digging up the past and starts leaning into new creations in the Star Wars mythos. It’s a big galaxy, after all, and there’s no need to keep having to tie into the same three movies over and over again. So Solo may not be taking off like Disney wanted. And that kind of bums me out because I really enjoyed a lot about the film. But hopefully this will make them steer the ship in a more interesting direction. I’m obviously a lifelong Star Wars fan, so digging into a topic like this is a lot of fun. But conveying my thoughts visually can be pretty tricky. I learn a lot through trial and error, but I also really loved this amazing course on producing video essays from Wendover Productions over on Skillshare. Skillshare is a massive online learning community with over like 20000 classes on business tech writing and a lot more seriously, browsing through this, it’s kind of insane just how many classes you can get with a premium membership.

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