“I Don’t Care, I Love It”: Solo: A Star Wars Story
In case you missed the first entry in the "I Don't Care, I Love It" series, we're highlighting movies that aren't going to be in the bracket for their particular decade. Here's a movie that didn't make it through to the second cut.
How do you feel about Star Wars? I think everyone has an opinion at this point. I mean, the series started 43 years ago, and every few years since 1999, Hollywood has churned out a trilogy or a spin-off or some type of Star Wars content and enlarged its pockets even further.
Whether you're a die hard Star Wars fan who dissects everything from Coruscant to the Outer Rim, someone who doesn't like the movies because they have "too much sand" (like a certain co-creator of this blog), or you fall somewhere in between, one thing is for sure: Solo: A Star Wars Story was a box office bomb. In fact, it's the only Star Wars movie to flop at the box office. Combined with a lukewarm critical reception (70% on Rotten Tomatoes, the 4th worst of any live-action Star Wars film), the movie seemed like a "whatever" entry into the storied franchise.
I, like many others, did not see Solo while it was in theaters. I caught it on Netflix like a month or two ago and tried to go in without expectations. And guess what - I had a great time! First off, check out that cast - Donald Glover is dream casting as Lando Calrissian, Woody Harrelson gets to be Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke tries to figure out a way to transition away from Game of Thrones (aren't we all), Thandie Newton fresh off whatever nonsensical timeline she'd just filmed in Westworld, and Paul Bettany gets to chew on some scenery after years of basically being the Good Guy Robot in the Avengers movies. Oh, and a flirty droid played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge? Count me in.
But what about the guy playing Han Solo himself, Alden Ehrenreich? *shrug* I hadn't seen him in anything else (though I now know he's been in stuff like Blue Jasmine and Hail, Caesar!). And I think that was probably for the better. With a blank slate in my mind, I wasn't really able to compare prior roles to poke holes in his Han Solo performance. And for all intents and purposes, he did a pretty good Harrison Ford impression! No one is that guy, because he's like, the coolestdudeintheworld, but for a prequel, I can imagine Han hasn't fully developed the cocky, charming coolness that he would become known for.
With all this being said, I thought Solo was a really fun caper movie and provided a good backstory for how young, precocious Han went from wanting to take on the entire Empire to rescue Emilia Clarke to eventually uttering the iconic roguish response to Leia's "I love you": "I know." We get a really cool scene that forges the lifelong friendship between Han and Chewbacca, we get backstories behind Han's classic pistol and the dice and voice of the Millennium Falcon, and we get indications that Lando is probably into men, women...and droids. Cool, whatever flies your Falcon, Lando. Not only that, but we get an awesome cameo at the end that seven-year-old me would have been absolutely pumped for.
Overall, Solo is a really fun movie that probably suffered from Star Wars fatigue. It came out just six months after The Last Jedi. Among Star Wars fanatics, it's probably a forgettable entry. As noted, it did not make the second cut for our 2010-2019 bracket. But I don't care, I love it.