1 Long Essay: 'Solo' is the third best 'Star Wars' movie
I’m 100% correct about this
I am learning to forgive myself for being wrong. Here’s an example: when I first saw 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story in the theater, I dismissed it as a misfire, and I was not alone in that opinion. At the time, the critics weren’t seduced by the adventures of a young Han Solo, and there just wasn’t enough excitement for this would-be franchise. Solo became the first big-screen Star Wars flop.
There are all sorts of reasons why this came to be. The movie had a troubled production history: The original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, were fired, and Hollywood heavyweight Ron Howard was brought in to save the shoot. The gossip was that the former directors were trying to turn the Disney intellectual property into a sci-fi buddy comedy. (Thankfully, some of the humor remains. Solo is also the funniest Star Wars movie.)
And that wasn’t the only gossip: nasty rumors swirled around the press that Alden Ehrenreich, the actor cast to fill Harrison Ford’s boots, couldn’t act.
Another factor in the lack of enthusiasm for Solo was probably Star Wars overload. The previous two years saw the sequel to Star Wars: The Force Awakens and another standalone prequel, Rogue One. George Lucas’s space opera is one of the most popular and lucrative movie franchises in history, but there can indeed be too much of a good thing.
But back to forgiving myself. I was too caught up in the gossip and buzz when I first watched Solo because, actually, it is a very good movie. I italicized that ‘actually’ because I wanted to emphasize that word. I was wrong, you understand.
In my recently revised opinion, Solo is the third-best Star Wars movie. Why? Because it’s the Star Wars movie with the least franchise baggage, even though, in addition to Han, we get to meet original series favorites like Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. Yes, there’s also a cameo that references the original prequels. But other than those nostalgic call-outs, this is a fun, inventive, action-packed galactic western. That’s it.
Han is an outlaw with a heart of gold. He’s in love with Emilia Clark’s Qi’ra, the right hand of an evil gang leader. There’s a train heist, a double-cross, and a face-to-face laser gun quick-draw shootout. I had never planned on seeing this failed blockbuster again, but then, this weekend, I randomly put on Solo while scrolling through Disney +, as if guided by the Force. (Yes, I know it was an algorithm, but let me have some fun.)
And by the time we’re introduced to Lando’s closet of multi-colored capes on the Millennium Falcon, I realized that in 2018, I was younger. Less… wise. More impulsive. I’ve grown as a human being since then.
We were given Donald Glover as flamboyant flimflam man Lando Calrissian and didn’t know what to do with him. When I write ‘we’, I mean ‘society.’ His Lando is cocky and insecure, charming and selfish, all at once. A true charismatic rogue. His scenes with Han are tense and awkward, hinting at years of conflict ahead between the two uneasy friends.
I’d also add that there’s a natural chemistry between Han and Lando in Solo. Of course, Glover is a world-class talent, but chemistry is a two-way street. That isn’t the strongest metaphor, but I will forge ahead to my next point. The rumors of Alden Ehrenreich’s acting were unwarranted. He pulled the role off: he couldn’t impersonate Harrison Ford. Instead, Ehrenreich pays homage to Ford’s smirking world-weary smuggler while also imbuing twentysomething Han with a tenderness that Ford never gave the character.
Solo also features the kinkiest moment in the entire history of the franchise. It comes during a brief scene between Clark’s Qi’ra and Lando’s droid, the revolutionary L3, voiced by Fleabag creator and superstar-in-general Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The droid shares with Qi’ra that a romantic relationship with Lando is out of the question. The droid doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for the scoundrel. Qi’ra asks how that would even work in the first place, to which L3 responds, almost wistfully, “Oh, it works.”
Does it? I mean, it does? How? How does it work? I want to know how it works.
There's a slyly political droid rebellion — played for laughs and also subversive — alongside nonstop pew-pews, impossible escapes, and hyperspace jumps. Did I mention there's a Cthulhu? No? Did I mention there's a moment that explains where Han's iconic blaster comes from, and it's unnecessary but also awesome?
There you have it. I have forgiven myself.
The best Star Wars movie is The Empire Strikes Back. I don’t think that is a controversial opinion. In retrospect, the fifth chapter in the series is an oddly structured, truly bizarre adventure with a famously unhappy ending. I’m serious, the movie is admirably strange: in order to keep boy hero Luke Skywalker from freezing to death on a snowy planet, his bestie Han Solo slices open the belly of a giant woolly lizard-kangaroo with Luke’s lightsaber and stuffs him into the thing’s piping hot guts.
The Empire Strikes Back introduced audiences to Billy Dee Williams’ dashing Lando Calrissian and Ugnaughts, waist-high pig men who were finally given their due in Disney +’s hit Star Wars series The Mandalorian. There is one of the greatest plot reveals in The Empire Strikes Back, too, when, spoiler alert, you-know-who says that thing, and then whatshisname screams, “Nooo!”
The Empire Strikes Back is epic, but the second-best Star Wars film is The Last Jedi, and I look forward to overly negative comments from fans who hate this movie the way fanatics hate heretics or teenagers hate curfew. The movie is a still-smoldering battlefield in the culture war, which is like a war, only no one gets hurt unless we’re talking about feelings.
The Last Jedi is also oddly structured and bizarre. The ambition in The Last Jedi is staggering, especially for a massively profitable corporate entertainment. The movie features a planet full of fat cats who supply all the laser guns for all the wars in the stars! In a flash, The Last Jedi answers a question no one has ever asked: Where exactly does blue milk come from? And it also delivers one of my favorite lightsaber fights, as the twisted grandson of Darth Vader and a powerful nobody team up to take on a gang of Jedi killers. Director Rian Johnson understood Luke’s journey; he made Obi-Wan proud.
[Full transparency: I applauded during the General Leia Organa, Space-Proof Warrior Mary Poppins scene. I know there are dudes (and it’s mostly dudes) who laughed when Leia finally used her powers. I was not one.]
The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi are the first and second-best movies in the Star Wars saga because they’re the movies that want to surprise audiences the most, and both do. In their ways, they evolved the franchise formula.
Solo is the third-best because of the opposite reason. It doesn’t exist to break the rules; it plays by and with them. Solo is the platonic ideal of Lucas’ vision. It knows the secret beating heart of Star Wars is a simple story about a hero looking starward a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It is everything thrilling about Star Wars in a single two-hour package. It does not try to smash the formula; it honors the formula. Watch it if you haven’t, or rewatch it. Let me know what you think. But spare me The Last Jedi rants. I’ve heard ’em all.
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FINALLY someone clear-eyed enough to see the good in The Last Jedi.
Sure it's wild and uneven and messy but I was a fan on first pass and remain so today.
Give me a movie that takes a dozen risks and only converts on half of them over one that plays it safe any day.
There are dozens of us! Dozens, I say.
I have to say, I was nodding along with your opinions pretty much the whole way through. I said it at the time and maintain to this day that TLJ was BOLD, and wasn't trying for fan service first. Rian Johnson was going for what would've made the characters more interesting and I'm always surprised when I've heard Mark Hammil dump on it because I feel like this film allowed Luke to get back some of that self-doubt he had prior to becoming a jedi. Him living in regret was fascinating to watch and it would've been a bore if it was just some all-knowing character during those training montages like any other filmmaker would have treated it.