The movie flirts with the idea of her being a darker character (“a survivor”) but it never fully commits to that arc, making for a frustrating and disappointing resolution to her and Han’s storyline. Emilia Clarke is never sympathetic nor femme fatale enough to really work as Han’s would-be flame Qi’ra. Jon Favreau amiably voices the crew's sight gag crewmate Rio, while Paul Bettany does what he can with one-note bad guy Dryden Vos. Thandie Newton is cool as his second-in-command and lover Val, but she’s more an attitude than a character. The role is not dissimilar from those Harrelson previously played in the Hunger Games franchise or Zombieland. Woody Harrelson is fine but unsurprising as Tobias Beckett, playing firmly into type here as the grizzled mentor and shady thief who takes Han under his wing. It was clear from the moment we met the fully-formed Han Solo in Episode IV that this was a rough-and-tumble hustler literally seeing where he came from doesn’t tell us much more about Han as a character than we already knew, so why spend so much time on it? The new characters introduced here are inconsistent, from the trope-riddled crew of crooks Han falls in with to the gangster he runs afoul of and the love interest he pines after. Han’s Dickensian youth just doesn’t carry as much weight as the storytellers might have imagined. Play The plot takes a bit too long to find its footing, not truly rousing to life until the beginning of its second act when Han encounters Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. It’s amazing how much just playing Star Wars music can make almost any roughly assembled scene work on a visceral and emotional level - and Solo seems to know that, relying on sentimentality and a shorthand understanding of this universe and its legacy characters to paper over its narrative defects. It’s a good thing, then, that the movie remains at least entertaining enough to keep one engaged through all the rote story beats of learning how Han Solo acquired the Millennium Falcon or met Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. (Imagine if Casino Royale hadn’t quite seen the evolution of James Bond all the way through to its bitter end.) Its story holds precious few surprises and the title character ends this film as pretty much the same person he was when we met him at the beginning - without quite becoming the person Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi found and pulled out of a wretched hive of scum and villainy on Tatooine. One of the most memorable aspects of the character from the original trilogy was the way in which he believably evolved from an out-for-himself scoundrel and mercenary to a hero of the Rebel Alliance worthy of Princess Leia this origin movie delivers no such satisfying arc of redemption or fall from grace. But while it gets the trappings and appearances right, Solo never delivers on the promise of finding out why Han became who he was in A New Hope. Solo – both the movie and this new iteration of Harrison Ford’s classic character, now played by Alden Ehrenreich – skates by on charm, breezy irreverence, and a just-right degree of Star Wars fan service.
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