Solo – A Late Movie Review

I’d been meaning to see Solo: A Star Wars Story on release, or at least a week after with my brother Terroxy. Somehow my Star Wars-hating sister Nommy saw it first, and it MUST have been a good movie because she enjoyed it. “It’s not a Star Wars movie!” Nommy protests. Yeah no, you like a Star Wars movie. Don’t lie to us. But me and Terroxy saw it late, the 7:45pm showing on Saturday 16th of June. And we had the WHOLE SCREEN to ourselves. Literally just the two of us in the cinema. That was cool.

So yeah, right from the start, I’m going to say that this is a good movie. It might be a bit late to actually go and see Solo: A Star Wars Story in cinemas or whatever but it’s worth seeing, especially if you like Star Wars. Actually, even if you’re a Star Wars nerd, you should go and see it. I say that because Terroxy is a MASSIVE Star Wars nerd and he enjoyed it.

But at the same time, I’d say that the trailers for Solo: A Star Wars Story actually kinda drag the real movie down a bit. The trailers suggested that this was a simple swash-buckling adventure. Okay, it kinda was but it was a bit more than that. The trailer made the movie look as deep as a puddle when at the very least Solo was as deep as a small pond.

Speaking of story, it was a pretty good one. Definitely not as predictable as it could have been. I mean sure you have a big heist sort of thing, you’ve got the side characters and the introductions of Lando and all that, you’ve got Han and Chewie’s initial meeting… But it’s not completely in your face or anything like that.

Casting was excellent as well. I wasn’t 100% sure on Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo at first but he totally grew on me. A lot of it was because you start off with an insanely optimistic and wide-eyed Han, a much younger Han Solo, and that cynicism needed time to grow. That’s what the story was, Han Solo slowly growing into what we see in A New Hope. You’re not going to magically find a younger version of Harrison Ford, but Alden Ehrenreich does a perfectly good job in the mean time. Donald Glover was an excellent Lando Calrissian though, I really have to give that to him, and 99% of the cast was all excellent. Paul Bettany (who I will admit I do very much like) was also nicely scary as
Dryden Vos as well. I think the only person I didn’t like was Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra (a name which, coincidentally, doesn’t work in Greek because there’s no letter Q in Greek – she was just called Kira according to subtitles). Both brother and sister mentioned this, she just seemed like Emilia Clarke in a Star Wars movie.

I think the best thing though was the world-building and traveling. Okay, yes, you don’t visit that many places, but there was a nice collection of places visited and a lot more mentioned. According to Terroxy, there were a lot of references – just references – to other movies and shows and extended universe stuff. It was nice, actually. I mean the landscapes weren’t that impressive anything – you had a city, an ice world, a desert world, a rocky world, you know – but it was nice seeing places that had been mentioned in old lore.

Everything else was pretty alright too. The music was plenty Star Wars-y. Maybe it was a bit heavy on the lens flares but the movie was plenty enjoyable and it looked very nice. The biggest and most understandable complaint is that Solo: A Star Wars Story is probably very cliche and somewhat predictable. And I get that. It probably was. But there were some very nice twists at the end, something that both threw us off a bit. I’d say that Solo follows the same sort of thing that the Last Jedi does, trying to avoid cliches, but I think Solo does a better job of it.

There was something in Solo: A Star Wars Story for everyone, from people who have never seen Star Wars before – seeing a fun action movie, to casual viewers just learning a bit more to Han Solo to Star Wars fans who are willing to sit through imperfections and not scream that it’s perfect.

Solo: A Star Wars Story definitely isn’t perfect, but it’s a bunch of fun, set in a cool universe, with some cool characters. What more can you ask for?