It’s been a relative drought, but now we have the behemoths of the summer, Marvel’s Avenger, Deadpool 2, and Solo going at it for Memorial Day weekend. We saw it last night (coordinated with my parents who celebrated their 32nd anniversary last night with the Solo movie) and here are some quicktakes. Sensitive to the fact that you may not want to spoil things for yourself, I’ll put the rest after the jump…
So we’re all just going to ignore the fact that Chewbacca EATS people, is what I’m learning.
Generally, I thought this was a really good companion film to The Last Jedi. Where TLJ was dark and epic, this film was rougish and slapdash and cheeky. Begins with a kiss (and a minor torture scene) and a young Han making a grenade noise for a rock. TLJ was sterile in its romance, while this film brushed up against sensuality: the embrace at the beginning, the kiss in the cape closet, the motion toward the bed, the flirtation in the “yacht” bar, the kiss at the camp fire, the mention of “wire” manipulation between Lando and L3 (voiced brilliantly by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), to name a few. The romance has something in common with Rogue One, which was interested in examining relationships that have been neglected in the Star Wars universe before (thinking of the homosocial relationship between the two non-Jedi who die together on the Imperial Florida fortress planet), or the even less common non-incestuous hetero love between the two main characters. Romantic storyline gave the audience a set up expectations that could be toyed with.
Played with the idea of the damsel in distress model in a couple of good ways. The more immediately being the nature of the death of Qi’ra’s mob master Vos. The other being the way in which Han misunderstands and underestimates the extent to which Qi’ra has crafted a life for herself in the intervening time since they have become separated. It’s left ambiguous (even at the end), whether she has truly dug herself out of a hole she can’t escape or if her ambition is leading her to some dark places she isn’t entirely comfortable admitting even (or especially) to a lifelong friend like Han. Speaking of alternative models to the standard female roles in Star Wars cinematic canon: note Val and the young resistance figure. The two of these characters also help to piece together a puzzle long mocked in pop culture: why is Lando Calrissian the only black person in the galaxy?
It turns out, there are a whole lot of black folk that have been subjugated for the Empire’s insatiable thirst for natural resources and jet fuel, mining it on mine planets and refining it on refiner planets, and oh, by the by, we suddenly have French speakers as well! We’ve come a long way from the magical negro tropes of Jar Jar. The film seems to take care to make a lot that’s been invisible visible. The grim reality of the Empire’s endless wars on backwater planets, the brutality of enforcing obedience in imperial camps, the terrible non-choices for the poor, and for women. Qi’ra contemplates alternatives worse than the Empire as she and Han wait in line at the customs office, the words “trafficking” on her lips, very likely the first time that word has been spoken in any of the nine films. The Empire is built on the backs of slave labor and their subjugation is monitored by another underclass of droid slaves as well. This mission to reveal the gritty underbelly of the Star Wars universe could have easily taken a dark turn and languished in melancholy, but the film takes these horrors in stride, and the ethos of the Good Guys (to borrow a phrase from the movie) reflects this tension between content and delivery.
Good seems to fall into two categories that map really well on to the discussions being had about the skepticism of violence to achieve political means in TLJ. 1) Unintentional, Ancillary, Mischievous Good of the Solo sort: we need money, so why don’t we rob an Imperial train car full of valuable goods and in the course of doing so, disrupt the Empire’s supply chain, or we need money, so why don’t we liberate a bunch of Wookies from slave labor while stealing the stuff they’re digging up. 2) Intentional Good Which Accepts Collateral Damage, the sort of which the resistance group in this film embraces. This is the kind of good that Poe Dameron is so wary of in TLJ, the sort which turns Luke away from the Force altogether, the sort which leads DJ (Benicio Del Toro) to turncoat again and again.
I love that we don’t have to learn the rules of that insane card game. I half suspect that the slap dash way in which it’s played is meant to be intentionally abstruse, based on a passage from one of the Star Wars books (which seems to describe gameplay in similarly opaque terms), but also just as a reaction to the vast number of incredibly boring scenes at poker tables in the past ten years. (I’m looking at you, Casino Royale, and you, Molly’s Game, and you, Mississippi Grind, trying to make me care about poker as a metaphor for something other than a huge waste of time and money.)
I’m pleased with Beckett’s final scene for a couple of reasons. Most of all because it completes an arc for Han, giving him a bit of a darkness toward the end. The tone of the film shifts because of the way that the final twist of the film turns for Beckett, away from a clean and cheery Ocean’s 11 plot, toward something a little more limited and complete. The script gives us a glance at what could have been, a big score on Tatooine, a reunion, a tragic sequel, and then takes it away from us.
Other people are writing interesting things about the narrative relationship between Lando and Han, the way in which Han serves as a foil for others, and the weakness of a story about a positional character like Han. I recommend looking at the stuff on Slate.
Generally, really happy with how this turned out. Proves yet again that the Star Wars universe is a workable backdrop for all manner of genre films. It doesn’t have to be a space opera. It can be a heist film or a cowboy western or a prequel with no airs to be the first in a series. It can tell the stories that were missing in interesting ways without Jedi and without Death Stars or fights for the survival of the Rebel Alliance. It can be small in scope, a ragtag band of thieves and outlaws, who slowly are whittled down by the cruelty of the world, all the while laughing in the face of death. This movie has stakes and humor and self-awareness in a way that ties it very closely to the other two films in the reboot.
