I have to admit that I was a bit hesitant about watching this movie since it seems to have received quite a bit of flak. But then so did The Last Jedi and I liked that one a lot so a few days ago me and the kids sat down to watch Solo on my home cinema rig.
What I found was a quite enjoyable action adventure movie. Yes, the story is simple and quite predictable but that is fine by me. What I wanted was a simple and straightforward action roller coaster and that was pretty much what I got. I did not want some deep crap with a lot of social pointers all over the place. It is Star Wars, it is meant to just entertain. Action and special effects “über alles” plain and simple.
Portraying Han Solo when he was young is of course a quite tall order for any actor. Everyone is going to compare him with Harrison Ford and that is pretty much a recipe for failure. Personally I am happy that they picked an actor that was not especially well known from other movies, at least not to me. If they had not done that I would have compared him not only to Harrison Ford but also to whatever character he had played before. I think Alden Ehrenreich did a fairly good job of portraying a young Han Solo.
Actually, I think most of the actors was fairly okay. It’s not a Shakespeare play after all. It did sadden me that Woody turned out to be such an asshole in the end though. For most of the movie I quite liked the guy.
The story was, as I already wrote, simple and straightforward. Predictable as hell of course but then, in these kind of movies the story is more or less only a means to tie together the action. It worked for me. I am so glad that they actually did tie up a certain loose end at the end of the movie though. If Solo hadn’t been in that last game of cards with Lando and the outcome not been what it was I would have been seriously miffed about the entire movie. Probably one of the scenes I liked the most actually.
As I am writing this the movie has a rating of 7 out of 10 on IMDb and I think that is pretty much spot on. I have to say that I am quite sad about Disney’s knee-jerk reaction to pull the brakes on the Star Wars movies. This is so typical of the Hollywood bean counters nowadays. If a movie is not making an insane amount of money the first couple of weeks it is considered a failure and the standard response is to pull the franchise. That is essentially saying that there is something wrong with the audience. We made a good movie but you did not like it so we kill the franchise way of thinking. Well, news flash dumb asses, if the movie didn’t sell as well as you estimated either there is something wrong with your over-inflated estimates or with the movie you did. It’s your fault, not the audience. Make a better one or fix your estimates! Okay, as a Star Wars fan I am perhaps biased but I am so tired of dumbass bean counters, not just where movie making is concerned.