“I got a really good feeling about this.”

Solo: A Star Wars Story has always kind of been the black sheep out of all the main live-action Star Wars movies, especially of the Disney era. It wasn’t even able to crack the four hundred million dollar mark at the box office, when all the other Star Wars movies that had come out in that time from 2015 to 2019 all made over a billion. On top of that, as one might assume with it not reaching anywhere near that box office mark, it was the first red flag for Disney Lucasfilm, which in turn, made them pivot to more Disney Plus television shows, for better and for definitely much worse. Solo definitely isn’t my least favorite mainline Star Wars movie, but it is definitely the one that I have revisited the least because it just doesn’t have that “oomph” to it like all the other films, and overall just hasn’t ever felt that important in the grand scheme of things.

But I would be lying if I didn’t say I have a fun time every rewatch. It essentially plays as somewhat of a heist movie in the world of Star Wars, and all of the action and very memorable set pieces that we get from that make for a very entertaining just over two-hour watch. The train scene is definitely the standout for me, but even all of the other action that we get is pretty top-tier, I would say. There is a heavy amount of blaster action here, and I don’t know, something about the way that all of the characters use their blasters has always been fun and very much fitting for a Han Solo movie. And even if it is pretty over the top, the main Millennium Falcon sequence is quite the spectacle in both being an absolute thrill ride (literally) and looking absolutely incredible from a visual effects and cinematography standpoint.

The story here is pretty good too for what we get. The opening sequence establishes a really solid connection to this version of Han Solo, and gets the viewer on board for this journey with him. It’s also full of a bunch of extremely memorable locations, similar to Rogue One, the other Star Wars movie with “A Star Wars Story” attached to its name. One thing that stood out to me this time around is that there are quite a bit of solid surprises here and there, even though you know where the story is inevitably going to end, which is almost always the case with prequels. The central villain, Dryden Vos, is actually pretty underrated, I would say, and one of the more intimidating non-force user villains I think we’ve gotten in live action. Every scene that he is in (expertly played by Paul Bettany) perfectly plays into the stakes that you feel for this mission going according to plan throughout the story.

I am also a massive fan of the side characters. Having Woody Harrelson in a Star Wars movie was always going to win me over (he’s one of my favorite actors), but his character, Tobias Beckett, an outlaw who recruits Han, and is essentially who gets him involved in the smuggler world. He is a character who intentionally feels a bit distant, but in a good way, and provides good insight to Han and actually helps shape him into what he will eventually become in the original trilogy, even though he is certainly not the most ethical person himself. On top of all of that, he is just simply extremely entertaining to watch and easily the standout new character from this movie.

Even though she is a bit of a controversial character for some Star Wars fans, though, nowhere near as much as any of the controversial characters from the sequels, I will still always defend Qi’ra. She is the key player in getting us engaged with where Han goes by the end of the opening sequence, and where we next see her in the story automatically adds a level of intrigue to what she has been up to over the years. I don’t want to get too much more into her character because she is one of the more “easy to spoil” elements of the movie, but where her story starts and ends with Han is by far the most engaging part of the narrative from an emotional standpoint, and provides some solid depth to Han with where we see him next.

Speaking of depth, we get a lot of that here for Han. He has always been a character that audiences have connected to extremely well, which is why, even though I really like this movie, it probably didn’t need to exist, but for what we get throughout this story, it really isn’t half bad at all. By the end of it, we see why he and Chewie connect, we see why he is the way he is at the start of the original trilogy, and honestly, I think his backstory with Qi’ra actually makes his eventual relationship with Leia even more impactful, which I know probably sounds crazy to some.

As far as the mixed goes, this is about as much of a mixed as something can get, because depending on your setup, it might not even affect your viewing. However, even when I’ve watched this movie on Blu-ray, not limited by the compression of streaming, it’s still always been a bit hard to see. The cinematography is actually really good, but for some reason, it’s very dimly lit, where even the scenes that should have a lot of light honestly don’t. This really only becomes a problem with some of the scenes with very little lighting, especially one at the very beginning of the movie, and thankfully, there aren’t too many scenes where this problem really becomes all that big of a deal.

The main problem I have with Solo: A Star Wars Story is honestly Alden Ehrenreich’s performance as Han. This almost seems unfair to criticize, though, because Han Solo is quite literally on the pedestal of characters so incredibly tied to their actor that anyone who tries to recreate them will inevitably come off as at least somewhat of an impersonation rather than a performance, where the actor truly becomes the character. I honestly blame Disney and Lucasfilm far more than Ehrenreich himself, because, number one: I don’t think a Han Solo prequel movie was really all that needed, even though they did a solid job with it, and number two: recasting Han at all in live action was really never going to sit right with everyone in the first place, even if the performance was somehow incredible. The only other movie I’ve seen Ehrenreich in is Weapons, and even his performance as one of the supporting characters was enough for me to easily be able to tell that he is actually a really good actor when put in the right role.

The other big thing that has stood out to me about Solo for quite some time now is that the story quite literally feels like a checklist at times. The writers very evidently took pretty much everything that was hinted at about Han’s past in the original trilogy and tried to jam all of that into this film. This inevitably ends up making the events and his overall backstory feel rather contrived in a way. This might not, and probably isn’t, a big thing to most people, but it definitely bugs me quite a bit.

To be honest, that’s really where my criticisms with this film end. It doesn’t really have much wrong with it in the grand scheme of things; it just doesn’t reach above and beyond in any particular way either.