Hello and welcome back to the discussion of Star Wars media in the order of which time is determined by earlier events followed by current events and events yet to come.
The discussion today is about Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), which takes place about 4 years after the events in the Jedi Fallen Order video game.
Solo is about the adventures and semi-origin of Han Solo, a rogue scoundrel and smuggler who is famous for piloting the ship the Millennium Falcon.
He grew up on a factory planet called Corellia with a lifelong love, Qi’ra. They both were in a crime family looking for a big score to leave the planet. They found a way out, escaped, and ran to the docks to find a ship away from the planet. Qi’ra was captured with the crime syndicate in pursuit of Han, but Han quickly found an enlistment table for the Empire, and signed up to train, taking him far away from his former life.
He never got promoted to be a pilot, but during one planet raid he questioned orders, and he also found some contract smugglers in disguise as imperials. They threw him in a cell where he met Chewbacca in chains, and they worked together to break out and catch up to the smugglers and join them on their job.
Their job was to steal some fuel cells on a train, but the job failed and some people on the team were lost. Han, Chewbacca, and the crew’s leader Tobias Beckett went to meet the person who hired them, and Qi’ra happens to be second in command to their boss.
The rest of the film’s happen really quickly after each other. They work together to find Lando and hire him and his ship to collect raw coaxium, the highly combustible fuel source for spaceships.
They make it to a mining planet named Kessel, and they eventually steal some coaxium, and then escape the planet just past a black hole. It was a shortcut through the Kessel path that nobody has attempted before.
They make it back to refine the fuel before it goes bad, and they encounter the group who stole their last mission: a rebel group disguised as raiders gathering supplies to fight the Empire.
Han secretly gives them the fuel and kills Beckett.
Qi’ra killers her boss and takes over the crime syndicate, relaying that information to Darth Maul, who is now her boss (?)
Han plays Lando in cards and wins the Millennium Falcon.
The end.
Thoughts on the film:
The movie is okay. I don’t think it’s great though. It seems like all of Han’s notable achievements happen within a week of each other, and between now and when we see him next there is nothing new about him.
I think maybe if they made the movie more about smuggling or being stealthy within the Empire I would’ve liked it better. A Star Wars Oceans 11 perhaps.
The film just feels empty in parts, and Han was being mostly reactive instead of proactive, so he seemed to just be lucky and fall into success instead of skill.
He won at cards though! I’d call that skill, but that and piloting seems to be the only thing he’s skilled at intentionally.
The acting and design/visuals are great and I enjoyed them. The story is just lacking something to make it more entertaining to me.
The Kessel run itself is very visually entertaining. There’s some kind of gigantic space squid monster living near a black hole, and they trick the thing into falling into it, and it peels its skin off first. It looks really neat.
We won’t be seeing Han Solo for a while after this, but stay tuned for next time when we talk about Star Wars!
Kristopher K. Online 