Solo Reveiw

What I liked: The architecture of a heist movie has 4 stages: stage 1 explain how hard the job is, stage 2 come up with a ridiculously elaborate plan to accomplish the job and acquire hard to find equipment, stage 3 execute the plan but something goes terribly wrong, stage 4 sneaky twist and huge pay off. The Solo movie takes the bold move of streamlining the first two and a half steps, picking up with stage 3.5 "Something goes terribly wrong". This saves everyone the slow wind up to the actual action. This saved time translates into a movie with not one but all the heists. We have grand theft, customs evasion, train robbery, vault robbery, the classic hustle, and of course smuggling. I guess they may have tried to crowd too a little much in because they also almost always skip stage 4. This stage skipping also means that we don't know if the things they are doing are actually hard or they are just incompetent. I'm surprised more heist movies don't explore this condensed plot line. Similarly, there is very low stakes gambling because we don't really know how the game works or how much any of the chips are worth. We do have some fun characters Lando is fun and we could have seen more of him, the space octopus I think must exist as the primary predator of the space slugs that live in asteroids, and the original heist pilot (he's the chattiest). I also liked the robot revolution. It was predictable but entertaining. I want to know more about the blow dryer that succeeded in giving Chewy such nice voluminous hair. We never see it but it must work really well. It is fun to see the Millennium Falcon all nice and shiny, Lando clearly took better care of it than Han did. I liked the "thermal detonator".

What I didn't: How hard is it to do a screen crawl really? If you are going to start the movie by flashing words at us anyway is there any reason not to do the yellow crawly words? I can't really say any of the plans were terrible because they mostly skipped the plan making steps but the pirates really should have been more invested in the cargo they were trying to steal. Like they probably should have been willing to drive the mile to pick it up. I remain as ever mystified by the empire's uniform choices. It seems like a very muddy planet would be an ideal place for the storm trooper full face coverage and water repellent design and less ideal for no eye protection and mostly fabric which will get wet, dirty, and heavy. This movie is as much a back story for a rear view mirror decoration and an opportunity to name drop from the extended Star Wars universe as it is a Han Solo backstory. The movie also works to officially canonize some concepts that started off as kind of wacky fan theories. It offers to fill in backstory holes but I found their choice of spackle generally disappointing. I didn't like how Han got his name, I was unimpressed with the Kessel run, and Chewy with goggles is not as great as predicted. Overall it seemed more like a way to further lever open space for a whole slew of spin off movies than a biopic of our favorite scruffy looking nerf herder.

Who should watch this? People who love Star Wars, especially people who are hoping for a unified canon tying in all three trilogies and both cartoon series.

Would I watch it again? Not in the theaters, solid Redbox material.