Latest 'Star Wars' Film, 'Solo', Is A 'Triumph Of Simple, Uncomplicated Pleasure'

solo: a star wars story

warning: potential spoilers ahead!

Solo is fun. Forget the fired directors, the acting coach, the leaks from set, the brewing backlash. The origin story of the Star Wars universe’s smirkin’ smuggler hits the ground running and doesn’t let up, rattling along at a merry old clip. Its 135-minutes don’t reek of blockbuster bloat, but’re genuinely brisk. And, most importantly, Solo is a pleasure to watch, not a franchise-instalment chore. It isn’t out to reinvent the wheel, only to spin its wheels real fast.

A trope-by-trope breakdown goes, roughly: a car chase, tense bargaining, a longer car chase, an escape, a battle, a fight, a prison break, sitting around a campfire, a stage-coach robbery, crashing a swank party on a villain’s leisure-yacht, a foolhardy plan, a high-stakes card-game, romance, foreshadowing, the plan put into effect, a slave uprising, a last-minute escape, a spaceship chase, another last-minute escape, a reversal, another reversal, a double-cross, then another double-cross, a final Western standoff, a high-stakes card game. All this action —a host of set-pieces which feel warmly-familiar even as they’re happening— comes liberally ladled with jokes, and, even better, with no forced pathos or gravity.

A recurring refrain of critical praise for recent non-Avengers MCU entries has been that it’s nice when the fate of the world/galaxy/universe isn’t at stake. That praise applies to Solo. There’s little of the good-vs-evil grandeur of Star Wars episodes. Instead, its figures are but small-timers, scraping to get by on the fringes of grand galactic politics. Whilst there’s echoes of fascism and organised crime —not to mention evocations of slave uprisings, civil rights struggles, and the contemporary migrant crisis— these aren’t the key themes of the film. Instead, it’s space-opera as bildungsroman, a story about finding your place in the world/galaxy, your people, your values, your raison d’être.

And, thus, we meet ol’ Alden Ehrenreich, a shitkickin’ “scumrat” from the mean streets of Planet Urban Decay, who boosts cars and fences ill-gotten goods to a bejewelled sewercentipede who presides over an army of hired goons. By babyface Han’s side is his best girl, Emilia Clarke, and they’ve got big dreams of escaping the shithole they were born into. Eventually, by dint of turns numerous and emotion-ginning, they end up in a rag-tag crew with a wookie, Woody Harrelson in a very-distracting hairpiece, Donald ‘This Is Young Calrissian’ Glover and his collection of capes, and Glover’s posh-droid off-sider, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a kind of C3P-Fleabag. They’re pulling off a job for Paul Bettany’s ultra-friendly, English-gentleman, face-scars-are-always-a-sign-of-evil villain, who’s great at dinner-parties but a tad murderous when business requires it.

Along the way, from job to job, there’s laser-fire, many varied landscapes on numerous planets, ongoing hijinks, some great wookie-translation gags, endless references to other Star Wars movies, sown seeds of future (timeline) rebellions, Glover making a further case to be the definitive pop-cultural figure of 2018 (the Calrissian Chronicles!), and not a single mention of the name ‘Skywalker’. It’s one long joyride for fans either old or new, taking its easy/breezy air from its central character. Who, in his feather-haired youth, is endlessly optimistic, even idealistic; ready to talk his way into or out of anything. Though much was made over an on-set acting coach being hired for Ehrenreich —and, thus, life imitating the Coen Brothers — it’s likely that this on-set tutoring was to make sure he got the mannerisms right; that his performance as young Solo echoed that of old Solo.

And, sure enough, all his raised eyebrows, insincere smiles, and flippant hand gestures are a fine work of cinematic karaoke, tapping into a familiar character from an unfamiliar place. The kind of person who’d be outraged at either his turn, or this, is likely the same kind of human who signed a petition to have The Last Jedi removed from Star Wars canon. There’s, really, nothing to hate, here; not least of all because Solo is free from provocation. Instead, it’s enjoyable, a minor piece of generic praise that means little in terms of serious cinematic criticism, but means a lot for a piece of popcorn entertainment. And given last Star Wars film became a battleground, this is a victory unto itself, a triumph of simple, uncomplicated pleasure. Solo is fun. And, in the face of lowered expectations, that feels like more than enough.