Jack of Harts

I watched Solo this weekend and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more than any Star Wars movie I’ve seen in years in fact. It was an ensemble adventure movie slim on story and high on action, much like the original Star Wars movies. It was designed to be fun to watch, and that is what Solo provided.

The Star Wars Prequels were designed as grand story to explain how the Old Republic and the Jedi failed to survive and died on screen. The Disney Sequels were designed to show failed heroes living in a fallen universe where the death of most of the people they knew was the only certainty. Even Rogue One, for all its good story telling, was the Dirty Dozen in space, where everybody dies on a suicide mission and leaves the audience just as melancholy as every other movie in the expanded Star Wars franchise.

But Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi were adventure films, Saturday morning serials expanded out to two hours, where heroes stood up with courage and fought back against the enemy with more skill, panache, and wise cracking than anybody had a right to believe. And one where the bad guys fought with discipline, good planning, and defeated the heroes multiple times throughout the movie. They only failed due to the ability of the heroes to find and hit their glass jaw through some special item or trait shown since the first scene of the movie.

That was Solo in a nutshell. Han is the wise cracking, hot-wiring, ladies man who always has another idea in mind. Another con. Another plan. And the bad guys are smart, disciplined, conniving, and Solo goes from one defeat or semi-victory to another as he careens through the movie in search of a ship to take him home. It’s a Saturday morning adventure serial two hours long, and it’s exactly the kind of Star Wars movie I’ve been waiting for since I watched Jedi.

Negatives are that it didn’t conform to the Prime Star Wars universe, but I’ve grown to expect that of Disney’s Star Wars. We didn’t get to see Solo saving Chewbecca from Imperial slavers and getting drummed out of the Imperial officer corps because of it, but we did see him save Chewie’s life in another way. And Lando didn’t have a whole salvage lot full of spaceships when he and Solo played their Sabbacc game but Solo still wanted the Falcon. There are many small differences like that in the movie, but it is a serviceable retelling of the Star Wars legends we grew up loving for the Disneyverse.

I’ve watched six Star Wars movies filled with death, disappointment, and failure since the Star Wars Trilogy came out. I’ve now watched a movie that felt like Star Wars, and that makes me smile. I had unabashed fun watching Solo, and I will happily buy the movie when it comes out on DVD.

I give it two wise-cracking droids standing tall and proud.