The touching story of how those dice showed up on the Millennium Falcon.
Solo is kinda fun at first.
When Han is a scrappy kid with a chip on his shoulder, running through the back alleys of Corellia.
We get a bunch of unique creatures - the alien singers duetting in the villain’s space yacht are a unique touch.
But the movie never gets going.
I remember thinking it was pointless when it came out, and those feelings did not change on this viewing.
After the fun opening, you start to realise that the movie is never going to shift up a gear.
The biggest issue with the film is how stilted and flat the characters are.
I have not read the script, but the film as executed seems to shave off any rough edges of its characters.
Woody Harrelson’s Becket is meant to be a mentor and ultimately an antagonist.
I found it hard to track any shift in his character - he loses his lover but does not seem to maintain any kind of remorse, or resentment toward Han.
He does not even seem that mercenary.
Qi’ra is set up as a survivor who does not share Han’s infatuation. Emilia Clarke is fine, but there is nothing interesting about their dynamic, no underlying tension or sense of ulterior motive.
An easy highlight is Donald Glover.
So easily charismatic, he manages to evoke the character without feeling too much like an impersonation.
Alden Ehrenreich is a fine actor, but his Han never really grows beyond being a cocksure young con artist.
It is hard to tell the difference between how he is at the beginning and at the ending of the movie.
One wishes the movie was more defined in terms of its characters and their dynamics.
As an adventure flick, Solo feels strangely small. It never escalates in terms of stakes, and the characters are never confronted with major decisions.
The movie just kind of chronicles a series of events and that is it.
Not a terrible movie, and perhaps with time and more movies, it will gain its own profile. But Solo never steps out of the shadow of the series or the star the character is associated with.
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