In the lead up to The Mandalorian and Grogu, Alasdair Stuart looks back at the stories that have brought us here, beginning with Han Solo’s earliest recorded adventure…

Written by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan

Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover. Thandiwe Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo and Paul Bettany.

Directed by Ron Howard

Years before the events of A New Hope, Han Solo starts his journey towards being the best pilot in the galaxy. With some stops along the way. And some bumps. And a crash or two.

A troubled production combined with the birth of the astonishing toxicity that dominates so much of modern fandom (and Star Wars fandom especially) all but killed Solo on release. In many ways it functions as the polar opposite of Rogue One – a false binary of modern classic and disaster whereas the truth, like Solo himself, is much more complicated.

To begin with the troubled production, Howard is the definition of a steady pair of hands, and he adapts to original directors Lord and Miller’s loose style very well. He’s got that almost undefinable expansiveness that suits Star Wars too, and everything here feels epic and huge and reassuringly lived in. Plus the Maelstrom sequence and the opening Corellia scenes are flat out gorgeous. The Star Destroyer reveal especially is incredible.

The cast are the other point where the troubles were most eagerly reported but there’s one example that really stands out. The reshoots meant the late great Michael C. Williams couldn’t return as crime lord Dryden Vos and Paul Bettany was cast to replace him. Bettany and Williams are both incredibly good but the disconnect between the script and the performance is one of the only noticeable flaws.

Elsewhere the cast is just hit after hit after hit. Emila Clarke’s Qi’ra is a great, hands-on co-lead who cleverly function as a dark(er) reflection of Leia Organa and occupies a fascinating position in the story. Han thinks he’s damning himself to save her. She’s already damned herself, not only to save him, but to get ahead. The idea that one of them is a criminal pretending to be respectable and the other is a hero pretending to be a criminal is great and their relationship sits neatly in formation with Han’s friendships with Chewie and Beckett. The former, played by regular modern Chewbacca actor Joonas Suotamo, has an instantly charming deadpan sense of timing with Ehrenreich. The latter, in one of Woody Harrelson’s best pieces of modern work, is half who Han thinks he is and half who Han should never ever be. Along with Donald Glover’s insanely charming Lando, these four characters help define and sharpen Han into the beginnings of the man we know in the original movies.

The movie’s forgotten character, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s cheerfully militant droid L3, plays what may be an even more vital role. The elegant way the movie folds her into Han’s past gives Waller-Bridge a chance to be very funny and gives the most important ship in the franchise a poignant new dimension. L3 is the soul of the Falcon, literally, and it breaks my heart that we didn’t get a reunion of sorts in The Rise of Skywalker, or even an acknowledgement that L3 is still in there, all these years later. She deserved better. So did everyone involved here.

Which brings us to Alden Ehrenreich. The only reason Ehrenreich doesn’t hold the dubious distinction of being the person Star Wars fandom have been cruellest to is because Kelly Marie Tran, Moses Ingram, Daisy Ridley, Erin Kellyman (also here, also excellent) and John Boyega among so many others got even more hate than he did and deserved it even less.

Ehrenreich’s great. Genuinely great. He embraces the spirit of the character completely and brings this impossibly sweet youthful exuberance to Han which is both fragile and clearly the core of Beskar the man we know is built around. He’s charming, funny, earnest, vulnerable, competent, so far out of his depth he can’t even see the surface. He’s Han Solo. He plays a song we all know in a new way and it all works. He, and this cast, deserved a half dozen sequels, not the abandonment Marvel and Disney have settled into as their default in the last decade.

Verdict: Solo works. If you wanted to be smart about it, and I do, you could even say Solo the movie works in the same way Solo the man does. Both start from an impossible position, both make mistakes along the way and both still do the impossible. If ever a Star Wars movie deserved reassessment it’s this one. Besides, how many other movies do you know that could do the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs? 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Solo is on disc and streaming now. Watch it, it’s great.