Solo: A Star Wars Story

A troubled production, a box office flop (kind of) and mixed reviews…. Solo: A Star Wars Story must be a pretty bad film right? Not at all really. It’s a lot of fun, a good Star Wars story and a lot better than we’ve been led to believe. Read on to find out my thoughts on the film or listen to them on the Cinebois2Cinemen podcast which you can find embedded at the bottom of this review!

Solo: A Star Wars Story is directed by Ron Howard after original directors Chris Lord and Phil Miller were fired off the project- sparking a tonne of reshoots and allowing Howard to take sole credit for the film. It follows the origins of Han Solo when he joins a gang of galactic smugglers. Indebted to the gangster Dryden Vos, the crew devises a daring plan to travel to the mining planet Kessel to steal a batch of valuable coaxium. The film stars Alden Ehrenreich in the role of young Han Solo, he doesn’t do a complete Harrison Ford impression but easily holds the film with his charm and wit. Donald Glover plays young Lando Calrissian, donning more of a Billy Dee Williams impersonation but absolutely nailing it and - with his limited amount of screen time - leaves you wanting more. There a whole host of new characters including Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Paul Bettany. They’re all doing great things and - unlike the Star Wars universe’s first anthology film, Rogue One - the new characters are all very interesting, layered and have a level of mystery to them.

With this being a prequel film, it has its slightly more cringey moments; as you learn how Han got his name and his blaster and that line etc… but you also get to see some cool scenes like how he first met Chewbacca, now played by Joonas Suotamo, and he very nearly steals the whole film. Thankfully a lot of these moments are played out near the beginning, allowing the story to just become its own thing, a fun heist film set in the Star Wars universe. In fact I would argue that this film could be enjoyed by anybody who hadn’t seen any of the other Star Wars films. I reckon it would probably get a lot more critical acclaim if it didn’t have the Han Solo name attached to it. Did we need it? No. But I enjoyed it quite a lot as a fun sci-fi film. Despite knowing the outcome for the lead, there are still a lot of stakes for everyone around him and the film manages to have a lot of surprises up its sleeve.

Tonally wise this feels like Star Wars, specifically the original trilogy; groups of characters sneaking around, going undercover and fighting for themselves and the little guy. As a huge Star Wars fan this makes me happy. As a film fan though, there is no doubt that I wanted more from this anthology series, rather than the one off prequels for characters we’ve already seen before. We need to expand the universe: there’s more to this world than Luke Skywalker and friends. I personally would love to see Lucasfilm give out $20 million to several up and coming diverse directors and see let them make a film set within the world. Nothing epic, just small stuff like “Hey, here’s a horror film.”, “a comedy film” or “a romcom” set in the Star Wars universe. I thought that we might have been getting something like that from Lord and Miller’s version of the Solo film. As much as I enjoyed this version of the film, I would love to know if I would have enjoyed their version as much. The film definitely has less comedic moments than you’d expect and is more of an adventure film. However, I still believe Ron Howard was a great choice to have take over the ship.

Another great choice in this film was the music. It wasn’t afraid to use the classic Star Wars fanfare when needed but composer John Powell added his own original scores as well which really fit into the world and sounded amazing when loud on the big screen. He’s be a great choice for future instalments as John Williams has already said that Episode 9 would be his last film. As much as I loved the sound, the visuals to accompany it were not always as good as we’ve seen from recent Star Wars films. Don’t get me wrong, most of it is great but the first half an hour or so is so weirdly dark that you can barely make out some details on the characters face, I felt myself squinting a lot. I thought this might have been a projection problem from my screening but I’ve heard similar complaints from other people. So if anything, don’t go see it in 3D.

Despite the worry and low expectations, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It’s not the masterpiece that The Last Jedi was (screw you haters) but it is a good fun ride none the less. The great moments outweigh the slightly cringe prequel moments. Star Wars isn’t dead people, it’s very much alive. This film even teases further connections to the expanded universe as well as a thread which might link all these spin off films together. Go watch it this weekend, you won’t be disappointed. I’m rating Solo: A Star Wars Story a 3.5/5.

What did you think of the film? Let me know in the comments below.

And now for the listening section. Thanks again to Danny and Alfie for having me back on the podcast and allowing me to get all nerdy over Star Wars. 

Thanks for reading/listening!

The Martian

It's been a while since Ridley Scott has made a truly great film, but has his recent direction on The Martian changed all that? Read my full review below to find out!

The Martian follows Mark Watney, an astronaut who has to survive on Mars after being accidentally stranded there by his crew, who believed him to be dead. Let me start by saying, this film has an amazing cast! Ridley Scott has managed to bring some of the best talent around to take part in this film and it really pays off, I mean just read this, the film stars Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Chiwitel Ejiofor, Mackenzie Davis and Donald Glover! The cast is incredible and they all do incredibly in their roles, some of which are relatively small, but they all get their chance to shine. There's a scene which features Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean and Mackenzie Davis together which had me thinking this is the best crossover of The Newsroom/ Game of Thrones/ Halt and Catch Fire that I never knew I wanted. A film is not its cast though, they have to do well and like I said before they all do however, this film mainly falls on one guys shoulders and that's Matt Damon, who has to convince us that he is a scientist/astronaut that is stuck on a different planet. Considering he mainly talks to himself through various video logs, he does this very, very well.

The plot itself is great, yes its a long film, but it's part survival film and part film about the philosophy of the human race coming together to save one man, you can't usually do that in 90 minutes. It's truly emotional at times considering the events themselves aren't based on any truth, I mean the accuracy of the science seems believable, but we have never left someone stranded on Mars. In fact the film is based of the self published novel of the same name by author Andy Weir, now I haven't read the book but from what I have heard, the film is extremely faithful to the source material. The film itself doesn't have one dull moment, you are constantly on the edge of your seat wanting to know what happens next and particularly in the final act of the film, things get very tense, it's brilliant and like with most space films it's exhilarating.

One of the reasons it's so exhilarating is the fact that it all looks so real. We saw a couple years ago with Gravity that effects these days can make outer space look very realistic. Now The Martian is not a special effects orientated film, the effects are there to enhance our experience, but hell, they might as well have filmed in space or on Mars for all I cared because the film looked stunning. Add a great soundtrack to the mix and The Martian has got it all.

This film is set slightly in the future, everything you see isn't out of the realms of possibility, unlike last years Interstellar (which yes I still love), this film presents itself as being very believable. The science, to my ears, sounded plausible enough and even though very geeky at times it was also accessible to a wide audience without ever needing to 'dumb' itself down.

I didn't really have any problems with the film, there was one moment that I felt could have been trimmed or left out but it didn't effect my enjoyment or love for this film. So yes this is a return to form for Ridley Scott, a form I hope continues when he comes around to making the next Prometheus or Alien: Paradise Lost as its being called now...

At the end of the day I am a sucker for these kinds of films, I love a good sci-fi, so much so that the first feature script I wrote was one. Space is something that has always been able to capture my imagination, I love stories that revolve around it and this one is definitely one of the better ones out there! As you can probably tell, I absolutely loved The Martian and therefore am giving it a rating of 5/5.

Have you seen The Martian yet? If so what did you think? If not then stop being a fool and go watch it on the big screen and then after let me know what you thought in the comments below!

Thanks for reading!