Ron Howard's Solo: A Star Wars Story follows a young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as he attempts to escape from the slum life he was born into on a planet called Correlia, ruled over by a vicious creature known as Lady Proxima. Upon escaping, he then then sets out to steal enough money to return to Correlia and rescue his childhood friend and love-interest, Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke). He journeys through the Empire meeting a wealth of characters; the fresh mentor and father figure Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), the charming Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), the always well-spoken Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and the fearsome leader of the mafia group Crimson Dawn, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).
The first thing I'd like to make clear about Solo is that, in my belief, it was a gap in the lore of the original trilogy that really didn't need to be filled. Han Solo was introduced to the world as a scumbag who only operates out of interest in financial gain, who then reforms his morally questionable ways to help Luke and the gang overcome the Death Star and, temporarily, defeat Darth Vader. A fantastic little side arc beside the main story of Star Wars: A New Hope that gave us a loveable rogue side-kick. If you remove all the questionable motives from Han in A New Hope, he simply becomes another "Good guy" which, unfortunately, is very boring. Solo send Han on an adventure that doesn't even make him question his morality, he's just constantly risking his objective to save the lives of people that he's only just met and have reminded the audience that they wouldn't do the same for him.
This leads me to one of the only non-stereotyped characters in the film, Beckett, very well performed, in the character's limited space, by Woody Harrelson. Throughout the film, Beckett is shown to be the wiser, more experienced smuggler/thief/lowlife and he is constantly reminding Han to follow his advice and the instructions he gives him in order to get the job done. Han of course doesn't do this, decides to improvise and proceeds to balls up every plan Beckett puts in place, because it'd be cooler to see Han fly the spaceship in a weird way or try to save everyone than actually succeed in his objective. Beckett was so under-utilised in this film; there was potential for him to be Han's father figure, wasted, he came into the film with an already established crew, whoops, now they're dead and most offensively, the only time Han follows his advice is when he kills him! In an unnecessary and obvious reference to the Greedo "Who shot first?" incident.
Another perfect example of under-utilising potential was throwing Paul Bettany, a phenomenal actor, into the stereotype role that was Dryden Vos. Dryden Vos was your basic, slightly mad, classy mob boss character who amounted to as much as someone saying "If Han doesn't complete this mission, I'll kill him". His relationship with Qi'ra was hinted at but never explored, he attempted to fight lasers and Sci-Fi weaponry with some off brand, light-saber knuckledusters and then spent his last 10 minutes flicking his head back and forth between people claiming they were trustworthy, like the audience at a tennis match.
Aside from the performance and character aspects of the film, I was impressed with the visuals, which was bound to be a given for a Star Wars film. The ships, settings and costumes were all very reflective of the original trilogy, in the sense that there were a lot of surprising, practical aliens all being integrated into the scenes to feel natural. Alongside that is the sound design, which was fantastically executed to surround you with a wide variety of planets and settings. You're completely encapsulated by the visuals and the sound creating a sublime environment, the potential for complete immersion is right there.
In summary, I think Solo had the potential to be a really in depth look into the more seedy side of the Star Wars universe; all the bounty hunters and scumbags we heard about but hardly saw. Instead we get someone pretending to be Han Solo through 2 extensively lengthy, failed space heists and a 20 minute sequence of double-bluffing and betrayal.
2/5 - Some parts of the universe don't need exploring.
No comments:
Post a Comment