Not content to produce a set of trilogies, Star Wars mastermind George Lucas has encouraged the proliferation of side stories and back stories—a virtual universe of space age myth. The latest addition to the saga, Solo: A Star Wars Story, counts as a prequel to the original 1977 film. It’s the origin story of Han Solo with a glance at the rebellion’s origins.
A lover of golden age Hollywood, Lucas almost certainly molded Harrison Ford’s Han Solo after the Humphrey Bogart of Casablanca. Like Bogie, Han’s tough skin concealed an idealist’s heart but he was no one’s fool. He stuck his neck out for no one and traveled in the company of a faithful if sometimes willful sidekick, Chewbacca. In Solo we meet the boy who becomes the man. The Bogart connection even comes out in the cadence of one of Han’s final lines. “Don’t hold your breath, kid,” Han tells the rebel leader when she asks him to join the cause.
Alden Ehrenreich plays Han as cocky and dauntless, fast with his fists, his wits and his mouth. He lives on a planet whose rat-infested concrete slums suggest a bad Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1970s. Love blossoms amid the squalor of those mean streets between Han, a petty criminal, and beautiful Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). They vow to escape from a world with no hope but are tragically separated at the space port. Promising to return and dreaming of flying, Han enlists in the only option, the Imperial Navy. Han tells the recruiting officer that he has no family name. The officer bestows a surname fit for a man alone, Solo.
Han doesn’t remain alone for long—nor is his naming the only formative piece of the person that will become the Han Solo of A New Hope. He escapes a torture chamber with a shaggy creature, the beloved Chewbacca, and throws in with a gang of thieves led by the resourceful Tobias Beckett, infused with grizzled determination by Woody Harrelson. Beckett is employed by a sociopathic crime lord with sophisticated tastes, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). And there Han reencounters the reason he has endured dangerous odds on many planets, the love of his life he left behind, Qi’ra. Only Qi’ra is no longer a street urchin but a woman of the world (make that many worlds) with a survivor’s mentality. The brand on her wrist signifies that she belongs to Vos, who sends them on an impossible mission. They are reluctantly assisted by the owner of the Millennium Falcon, Lando Calrissian, played smooth as silk and just as slippery by Donald Glover.
Solo does everything a Star Wars story ought to do, and better than some recent chapters in the saga. It moves swiftly yet steadily through flying car chases, trench warfare, a train robbery, an elaborate heist from an impenetrable facility, a dogfight with Ty fighters. Although written by Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan and directed by—we’ll get there in a minute—Lucas’ spirit is embodied in most scenes. Solo is a convergence of all the B pictures the producer grew up watching and loving as a kid—the exotic thrillers, the hard-riding westerns, the war movies, the crime dramas with their dubious vixens and sneering kingpins. It’s all here, wrapped in a 21st-century techno gauze and set in a galaxy a long time ago and far away.
The original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie), were fired over creative differences and replaced months into the shoot by Lucas’ old protégé Ron Howard. As a result, there appear to be some loose ends along the way but nothing that interrupts the flow of the picture from one cliff hanger through the next. In the original trilogy the Evil Empire was something of an abstraction, like the cartoony Nazis from an old movie. In Solo the back story exudes darkness against the bright hope of the action. The galaxy is a lawless place despite the empire’s pledge to impose order—a criminal racket that only a few daring souls care to challenge. And Han? He’s content to pick up the crumbs of corruption with Chewie at his side. His awakening will come.
