Archive for May 27th, 2018
Solo: A Star Wars Story is a film that is worth watching
by Doc on May.27, 2018, under Movies
Spoiler free…
Way back when (well, just over 11 months ago) when we learned that Ron Howard was taking over as director for the upcoming Star Wars anthology film featuring a young Han Solo, with just a couple weeks left in filming and the ouster of the previous co-directors, we were filled with trepidation. We weren’t sure how we felt about doing the “Young Solo” film in the first place. And a late director change is never a good sign. There would be reshoots, rewrites, etc. Additional actors were being brought in late in the game. All things pointed to a mediocre film at best. The one bright spark? Ron Howard. The man is a genius.
As the film neared release, our hopes began to rise. We were only hearing good things about it. Even from sources we would expect to be more pessimistic. We went last night to see it. And this movie is GOOD.
One of the things we heard before the changes was that it was aiming to be more slapstick, or at least have a lot more humor than any previous Star Wars film. I was afraid we were going to get a “buddy smuggler” film. The end result still had humor, but the amount you’d expect from a film with Han, Chewie, and Lando, along with a few new enjoyable characters thrown in. And it adds some background to characters that you only heard about, or even didn’t have any idea of. But everything made sense in the context of what we already knew about the characters.
Alden Ehrenreich was pretty much unknown to me. At first I didn’t think I could buy him as Han. But as the film went on I started to see it…he does look like a young Han…and at one point even gave this very intense look that really reminded me of Harrison Ford.
This film is really worth seeing for all Star Wars fans. You can even play “spot the reference” when they name various other characters from the canon.
Sadly, the movie is tracking lower than expectations on the holiday weekend, looking at about $114.5 million for the 4-day total. However, increasing good buzz might lead to the film performing well over a longer period similar to what The Greatest Showman did at the beginning of the year.
Now we just need them to announce a sequel such that the final twist at the end can be explained… 🙂