With that out of the way, let’s see if the critics are being kind to Solo: A Star Wars Story. “Star Wars” spawned sequel after sequel after sequel, and then started spinning off stand-alone pictures.
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Solo: A Star Wars Story is set to release in theaters on May 25 but it’s already making waves among fans online. Even the new score by John Powell (Jason Bourne) only soars when it samples the original John Williams theme.
One reviewer, New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski, was far more cutting: “Solo, sadly should be frozen forever in carbonite”.
Solo takes a solid 30 minutes or so to find its footing, but once it does – right around the time Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian comes into play – this adventure makes the jump to lightspeed and doesn’t slow down.
Variety clears the air from the start, no doubt to the great relief of everyone who’s followed Solo’s lengthy and tortuous development, including the now-infamous swap-out of Howard to replace original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Despite behind-the-scenes drama, the combination of Howard and the elder Kasdan brings a sense of nostalgic warmth to this space western-inspired heist flick. Alden Ehrenreich overcomes a lot of skepticism to make this incarnation of Han Solo both recognizable and also his own. “Solo” is the first victim of that madcap pace – a movie so un-fun you should get college credit for watching it. Combine that with the fact that Lando is one of the most likable and iconic Star Wars characters in the galaxy and we have a flawless recipe for a spinoff.
Her first big break was on HBO’s wildly successful Game of Thrones – about to enter its 8th and final series – where she says she has always been paid the same as her co-stars.
The most recent (English language) trailer for the film landed in mid-April, and looks like this.
“Solo” traces the title character’s rise from a reckless street thief to an intergalactic smuggler and reveals how he befriended his sidekick Chewbacca (whose surprise introduction is one of the film’s high points) and first encountered his frenemy Lando Calrissian. “‘We would love to tell a story about Lando Calrissian one day, but it’s not relevant, it would be fun to tell the story of Han and Chewie, ‘” is the corrected quote. (Some of these things happen, some don’t).
Directed by reliable studio hand Howard, Solo isn’t likely to become anybody’s favourite chapter of this ever-expanding franchise, but it gets the job done and offers more than a few good laughs and plot twists.
Director Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”, “Apollo 13”) is known for being a workmanlike deliverer of flawless adequacy through his four decades as a filmmaker.
The most positive review came from The Guardian, with critic Peter Bradshaw giving it four stars.
Business Insider Solo is not an terrible movie, it just has a few very bad parts that feel uninspired.
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Yes, anyone who has studied English and Irish poetry and theatre will be as distracted as I was by the fact that one character is Beckett, another is Dryden, and during one scene they namecheck each other about 20 times. We’ll dive into spoilers after release, as there is plenty to unpack. It’s awesome how much just playing Star Wars music can make nearly any roughly assembled scene work on a visceral and emotional level – and Solo seems to know that, relying on sentimentality and a shorthand understanding of this universe and its legacy characters to paper over its narrative defects.
