Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
US 135m, Colour, IMAX, 3-D
Director: Ron Howard; Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, Paul Bettany
The Han Solo story is an entertaining addition to the Star Wars universe that holds few surprises. Like Rogue One (2016), this back story serves to deepen character development and perhaps introduce new story leads to further the expansion of the film franchise. Notably, Ehrenreich proves less interesting than I expected, while Glover’s portrayal of Lando Calrissian is easily the most memorable in the film. Despite the production problems, Solo is a solid film, so long as you discount the dark focus-challenged 3-D version, which I invariably suffered through at our local IMAX theatre (Klaus Ming May 2018).
5 comments on “Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)”
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ming movie reviews 
Back after a lengthy break from the movies!
Welcome back!
I don’t think I’ll rush out to see this. I have a lot of resistance to recasting classic characters, and one of the things I liked about The Last Jedi (which I just saw yesterday) was seeing the real Luke and the real Leia again. I haven’t taken to the new Star Trek movies either.
Also, contrary to the opinion of people who make superhero movies, not everybody needs an origin story. Han Solo was just fine without knowing how he got there.
While I probably would have seen it in theatres eventually, it was more of an evening out with a group of friends. You’re right about origin stories, and with this one, we really didn’t learn all that much (that was very interesting). I suspect that I would have liked the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller-directed better than what we got with Ron Howard.
Solo was OK. Emilia Clarke made the movie for me. But the most exciting part of my movie experience that day was the trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Solo was really slow in the first half. Once Emilia was In the movie again, it was quite a bit better. But overall, it was too long to be as silly as it is.
Revisiting this post and thinking about Solo, I don’t recall much about the film (after only 3 months) – which means i’m either suffering from memory loss and should see a doctor – or that there wasn’t much about the film that was truly memorable! I’ll go with the latter 🙂