Han Solo movie review
May. 25th, 2018 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynSo, it’s now morning and I’ve slept on it and I’ve decided to try and pin down a little more why exactly the Solo film left me so completed unmoved. As ever, there are some spoilers within, and you may wish to skip.
Issue one – it didn’t add anything to the existing story.
As a note – I’m going to be comparing this film quite a bit with Rogue One, mostly as Rogue One was a prequel which I personally felt got everything right. It dovetailed tightly with A New Hope, it added hugely to the original trilogy by placing the Rebellion in a context of loss and sacrifice that had been spoken of but never shown in the original trilogy and it also worked very well as a stand alone film where I came out really caring about all the characters. The Han Solo story did none of those things. And, looking back on it, I’m not sure it had much chance to, because I don’t think Han Solo’s back story essentially mattered at all. Let’s be honest here – Han Solo is not cool because he’s a vulnerable brooding loner with a backstory that speaks of pain and loss. That’s not the point of him. Han Solo was cool (and is cool) because he’s Harrison Ford with a swagger. Yeah, he’s got a few stories about him (won his ship at cards, flew the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) but let’s face it, those facts were only ever relevant to give him the material for his dialogue. They weren’t, in and of themselves, cool or relevant. The film showed us the stuff that was relevant – he shot first, he got in an argument with Jabba the Hutt, he walked out on the Rebellion because he got paid and that’s what mattered, he wore tight trousers and had an awesome smirk. He was a dodgy space smuggler, who was played at the start as cynical and selfish, and that was kind of cool, and then he formed new and significant relationships with the other characters and went on a journey of redemption to hero and that was extra cool. He was cool when bantering with Leia or coming to Luke’s rescue. And he was extra cool because (and I know I’ve mentioned this before) he was played by Harrison Ford who carries more charisma in his wallet than most people carry in their whole bodies. But here, he wasn’t a swaggering space smuggler. He wasn’t played by Harrison Ford and wasn’t really very charismatic or interesting. He was more like Luke than Han, and without the patter and the bravado, what is the point of Han Solo? I rapidly realized that for me the answer is ‘not very much really’.
Issue two – it didn’t dovetail with the existing story.
So, one of the things I loved about Rogue One is how tightly it dovetailed with A New Hope. It explained things we’d never understood, like ‘why is there a giant vulnerable spot in the middle of the death star that means the whole thing can be blown up by a farm boy in a bi-plane’. It showed us the start of the battle that we tag into the end of in the first Star Wars film. It explains how Leia got the plans that we knew were vitally important and where they came from and we already knew that a lot of spies died to get those plans. It fits. This film…not so much. I mean, yeah, it gave us the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs (and neatly explained why that was cool) and Han getting the Millennium Falcon but the rest of it? I actually really struggled to care about any of the new characters, mostly because if we take the later films as canon, Han didn’t care about them that much either. There’s never even a hint in the dialogue that these people existed. He never says to Leia ‘well, I’ve trusted women before and got burned’. He never mentions to Luke ‘yeah, I knew a guy like me when I was your age. Taught me a lot’. And of course, he couldn’t because no one had thought up this film then. But it did rather imply that either we have to assume that we never really knew the Han of the other four films he’s in at all, because he was carrying his secret angsty past hidden all along (which detracts from those films) or we have to assume that he basically got over all this stuff years before the film started and what we’re really seeing is the film story of the equivalent to ‘oh yeah, I dated that girl in high school – can’t remember her name – nice lass – I’d totally buy her a drink at reunion’. Which isn’t really something I’m going to want to invest a lot of my time in. And did no one in the Rebellion ever notice that the smuggler who gave them the dilithium unobtainium crystals to start their revolution was Han Solo all along? Or did all those rebels he helped just die? What was the point? Really?
Issue three – it detracted from the existing story.
Let me go back to my first point, where I was summing up Han’s story arc. And, by the way, I love that story arc. Han’s arc I always read as ‘selfish space smuggler realizes there are some things in life worth fighting for. He comes back to join Luke and help him make his death star run. Also, womanizing fly boy meets a smart, independent kick ass woman. She doesn’t fall for him because he rescues her. Instead they banter, spar, argue. They grow to be friends, and respect each other for their competence. This turns into a long lasting love which will endure for the rest of their lives (even if they suck as parents, but to be fair, it’s hard to predict your kid will be screwed up totally by his uncle trying to murder him at school)’. This arc is painfully undercut by the new bolted on back story. Now we have ‘Han was always an idealist, who had been helping the Rebellion before. In fact, he kick started the Rebellion with a load of dilithium unobtainium crystals back at the start. Then he went off to be angsty and a rogue with a heart of gold somewhere else. This is just what he does – he drifts in and out of being a hero of the Rebellion. Luke and co were just the latest bunch he joined in with. Also, he has a bunch of white knight saviour tendencies, loved another woman but it went wrong and needed someone else to mend his wounded heart’. I like the latter narrative a lot less.
Issue four – the love story was stupid.
It just was. I mean, it was partly stupid because Emillia Clarke makes the least convincing Correllian street rat ever, unless you can buy the idea that Correllia has a really good lacrosse team. It was partly stupid because the script writers decided to follow every single well-worn path they could find and glued the entire plot together from ‘stuff we wrote earlier’. It was stupid because the two romantic leads had all the chemistry of cold rice pudding. But it was also stupid because it made no sense in the context of any of Han’s later actions and romantic choices. Han Solo never said or did anything that suggested he had a major love before Leia. Ever. I’ve said this above, but I feel it needs reiterating. It was never in the narrative. I get they wanted to add a love story in to this film, because virgin Han Solo would be unconvincing, but I feel as if they made a bad move by going down the most cliché route and insisting on a childhood sweetheart/one true love/reason for being gone wrong. Because that gave us the choice of believing ‘Han got over his great reason for living quite thoroughly’, or ‘the Han we knew was secretly yearning for a nice girl from the home counties all this time’, or ‘Han just wasn’t very honest with his wife’. I also, vaguely, felt as if she was not Han’s type, but that might be because I didn’t read her as being nearly as smart, independent, or kick ass as Leia, and instead as a damsel in distress with a bit of femme fatale bolted on to try and justify her existence. This might just be bad writing, however. I could have lived with ‘a girl who Han kind of liked but walked off to be an assassin’ a la the most recent Mission Impossible film, or even a girl he picked up but couldn’t save and who died a la Pitch Black. Or a childhood friend who died or went bad (but not a lover). Maybe a combination thereof. But the Grand Love That Drives Me On thing seemed to make no sense for cheerful flooze Solo later, and didn’t fit into the way his later relationship would be presented at all. The film also did the thing that several films have done lately and which always annoys me, which is never really showing why the romantic leads are madly in love and just opening with a scene in which they snog and say firmly ‘we are totes in love forever’ and leaving it at that, despite the complete lack of real evidence for said devotion. Did I mention they had the chemistry of linoleum?
Issue five – why was Darth Maul’s long lost twin brother that at all?
Darth Maul died in Episode One. No one like him shows up in any of the other films. So why did his likealike appear as a hologram at the end of this film? It was pointless. Unless, heaven help us, they are going to try and shove in more films between this and a New Hope. They are, aren’t they? This is the prequel trilogy all over again. Heaven have mercy on us all.
Issue one – it didn’t add anything to the existing story.
As a note – I’m going to be comparing this film quite a bit with Rogue One, mostly as Rogue One was a prequel which I personally felt got everything right. It dovetailed tightly with A New Hope, it added hugely to the original trilogy by placing the Rebellion in a context of loss and sacrifice that had been spoken of but never shown in the original trilogy and it also worked very well as a stand alone film where I came out really caring about all the characters. The Han Solo story did none of those things. And, looking back on it, I’m not sure it had much chance to, because I don’t think Han Solo’s back story essentially mattered at all. Let’s be honest here – Han Solo is not cool because he’s a vulnerable brooding loner with a backstory that speaks of pain and loss. That’s not the point of him. Han Solo was cool (and is cool) because he’s Harrison Ford with a swagger. Yeah, he’s got a few stories about him (won his ship at cards, flew the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) but let’s face it, those facts were only ever relevant to give him the material for his dialogue. They weren’t, in and of themselves, cool or relevant. The film showed us the stuff that was relevant – he shot first, he got in an argument with Jabba the Hutt, he walked out on the Rebellion because he got paid and that’s what mattered, he wore tight trousers and had an awesome smirk. He was a dodgy space smuggler, who was played at the start as cynical and selfish, and that was kind of cool, and then he formed new and significant relationships with the other characters and went on a journey of redemption to hero and that was extra cool. He was cool when bantering with Leia or coming to Luke’s rescue. And he was extra cool because (and I know I’ve mentioned this before) he was played by Harrison Ford who carries more charisma in his wallet than most people carry in their whole bodies. But here, he wasn’t a swaggering space smuggler. He wasn’t played by Harrison Ford and wasn’t really very charismatic or interesting. He was more like Luke than Han, and without the patter and the bravado, what is the point of Han Solo? I rapidly realized that for me the answer is ‘not very much really’.
Issue two – it didn’t dovetail with the existing story.
So, one of the things I loved about Rogue One is how tightly it dovetailed with A New Hope. It explained things we’d never understood, like ‘why is there a giant vulnerable spot in the middle of the death star that means the whole thing can be blown up by a farm boy in a bi-plane’. It showed us the start of the battle that we tag into the end of in the first Star Wars film. It explains how Leia got the plans that we knew were vitally important and where they came from and we already knew that a lot of spies died to get those plans. It fits. This film…not so much. I mean, yeah, it gave us the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs (and neatly explained why that was cool) and Han getting the Millennium Falcon but the rest of it? I actually really struggled to care about any of the new characters, mostly because if we take the later films as canon, Han didn’t care about them that much either. There’s never even a hint in the dialogue that these people existed. He never says to Leia ‘well, I’ve trusted women before and got burned’. He never mentions to Luke ‘yeah, I knew a guy like me when I was your age. Taught me a lot’. And of course, he couldn’t because no one had thought up this film then. But it did rather imply that either we have to assume that we never really knew the Han of the other four films he’s in at all, because he was carrying his secret angsty past hidden all along (which detracts from those films) or we have to assume that he basically got over all this stuff years before the film started and what we’re really seeing is the film story of the equivalent to ‘oh yeah, I dated that girl in high school – can’t remember her name – nice lass – I’d totally buy her a drink at reunion’. Which isn’t really something I’m going to want to invest a lot of my time in. And did no one in the Rebellion ever notice that the smuggler who gave them the dilithium unobtainium crystals to start their revolution was Han Solo all along? Or did all those rebels he helped just die? What was the point? Really?
Issue three – it detracted from the existing story.
Let me go back to my first point, where I was summing up Han’s story arc. And, by the way, I love that story arc. Han’s arc I always read as ‘selfish space smuggler realizes there are some things in life worth fighting for. He comes back to join Luke and help him make his death star run. Also, womanizing fly boy meets a smart, independent kick ass woman. She doesn’t fall for him because he rescues her. Instead they banter, spar, argue. They grow to be friends, and respect each other for their competence. This turns into a long lasting love which will endure for the rest of their lives (even if they suck as parents, but to be fair, it’s hard to predict your kid will be screwed up totally by his uncle trying to murder him at school)’. This arc is painfully undercut by the new bolted on back story. Now we have ‘Han was always an idealist, who had been helping the Rebellion before. In fact, he kick started the Rebellion with a load of dilithium unobtainium crystals back at the start. Then he went off to be angsty and a rogue with a heart of gold somewhere else. This is just what he does – he drifts in and out of being a hero of the Rebellion. Luke and co were just the latest bunch he joined in with. Also, he has a bunch of white knight saviour tendencies, loved another woman but it went wrong and needed someone else to mend his wounded heart’. I like the latter narrative a lot less.
Issue four – the love story was stupid.
It just was. I mean, it was partly stupid because Emillia Clarke makes the least convincing Correllian street rat ever, unless you can buy the idea that Correllia has a really good lacrosse team. It was partly stupid because the script writers decided to follow every single well-worn path they could find and glued the entire plot together from ‘stuff we wrote earlier’. It was stupid because the two romantic leads had all the chemistry of cold rice pudding. But it was also stupid because it made no sense in the context of any of Han’s later actions and romantic choices. Han Solo never said or did anything that suggested he had a major love before Leia. Ever. I’ve said this above, but I feel it needs reiterating. It was never in the narrative. I get they wanted to add a love story in to this film, because virgin Han Solo would be unconvincing, but I feel as if they made a bad move by going down the most cliché route and insisting on a childhood sweetheart/one true love/reason for being gone wrong. Because that gave us the choice of believing ‘Han got over his great reason for living quite thoroughly’, or ‘the Han we knew was secretly yearning for a nice girl from the home counties all this time’, or ‘Han just wasn’t very honest with his wife’. I also, vaguely, felt as if she was not Han’s type, but that might be because I didn’t read her as being nearly as smart, independent, or kick ass as Leia, and instead as a damsel in distress with a bit of femme fatale bolted on to try and justify her existence. This might just be bad writing, however. I could have lived with ‘a girl who Han kind of liked but walked off to be an assassin’ a la the most recent Mission Impossible film, or even a girl he picked up but couldn’t save and who died a la Pitch Black. Or a childhood friend who died or went bad (but not a lover). Maybe a combination thereof. But the Grand Love That Drives Me On thing seemed to make no sense for cheerful flooze Solo later, and didn’t fit into the way his later relationship would be presented at all. The film also did the thing that several films have done lately and which always annoys me, which is never really showing why the romantic leads are madly in love and just opening with a scene in which they snog and say firmly ‘we are totes in love forever’ and leaving it at that, despite the complete lack of real evidence for said devotion. Did I mention they had the chemistry of linoleum?
Issue five – why was Darth Maul’s long lost twin brother that at all?
Darth Maul died in Episode One. No one like him shows up in any of the other films. So why did his likealike appear as a hologram at the end of this film? It was pointless. Unless, heaven help us, they are going to try and shove in more films between this and a New Hope. They are, aren’t they? This is the prequel trilogy all over again. Heaven have mercy on us all.
