Donald Glover’s Lando, above, would be a better subject for a prequel.
‘Star Wars’ prequel is a squishy bore for fanboys only
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com
Legacies are precarious things — just ask Bill Cosby. You can build up good will over decades, but all it takes is one false move to erase it. Alien3 undercut the prior two films in its opening scene; and remember midi-chlorians? Yeah, I bet you wish you could forget them.
And so it goes with the new Star Wars prequel Solo. Over four prior films (Episodes 4 through 7), Han Solo, as played by Harrison Ford, progressed from an unrepentant scoundrel to a reluctant hero to a guilt-ridden father and unwilling martyr. But truth be told, we didn’t know much about Han’s backstory: He did the Kessel run in 12 parsecs (don’t get me started). He cheated Jabba and murdered Greedo (Han did shoot first — end of story). Oh, and he also sired a supervillain. What more do you need to know?
As it turns out, we don’t need to know much more, which is a serious downside for the entire raison d’etre of Solo. We learn more about Han (played by Alden Ehrenreich) in the first 15 minutes of this film than we ever learned before … or wanted to know. And what we learn ain’t pretty.
Well, “pretty” isn’t the problem exactly; it’s that what the screenwriters (amazingly, Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan, who should know better) choose to focus on and what they don’t that derails the film almost before it begins. We don’t know anything, for instance, about Han’s parentage, and are then blessed with the knowledge that his last name Solo was assigned, Ellis Island-style, by a functionary of the Empire. We learn he’s a great pilot, but not how he got his training. We learn he’s a lovesick puppy over sweetheart Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), and that he’s kind of a scaredy-cat. Not everyone starts out as a rascal — you work your way there. But much of the backstory for Han feels entirely unrelated to the Star Wars universe, but cribbed from discarded Dickens chapters: Orphan, Fagin-like mentor, broken heart, betrayal on all sides. How does this add to his myth? It doesn’t, nor does it flesh out what we love about the character.
Even worse, the opportunities to develop what we do know about Han are missed. Never once does he say, “It’s not my fault!” — his refrain from A New Hope. A perfect opportunity for him to say “I love you” to Qi’ra, and her to respond, “I know” — setting up a classic exchange from The Empire Strikes Back — is overlooked. We do get a sense for his relationship with Lando (Donald Glover), but when Lando is not around — which is often — the action lacks momentum. (I think I’d prefer a prequel dedicated to him.)
We certainly don’t get a sense of the stakes from Paul Bettany, playing the putative villain — a generic Blofeld-esque bureaucrat with a heated knife he wields only once for a few seconds, but which apparently is meant to establish his shtick. Meh. Other characters come and go so quickly — even those played/voiced by Thandie Newton, Jon Favreau and Linda Hunt — that you sense they would have been better off excised from the script entirely.
The McGuffin that drives the plot is the smuggling of “hyperfuel” — a power source that, so far as I can tell, was invented singularly for this film and does not arise elsewhere in countless hours of Star Warsiana. Why come up with such blah motives when the entire universe is out there waiting for Han to conquer?
Ehrenreich appears to be a head shorter than his descendant, and while he does have a smugness to him, it’s the wrong brand of smugness — he’s more Bruce Willis than Harrison Ford. Glover is the shining light among the cast, but acting isn’t the selling point here. Solo is meant as a fanboy Valentine, but with sluggish pacing by replacement director Ron Howard (I drifted off once or twice for a few seconds) and complex but uninteresting plotting, Solo appeals only to die-hards who can’t see the forests of Endor for the trees.
