Butler's Cinema Scene

Joonas Suotamo, Alden Ehrenreich

“SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY” My rating: B- 

135 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

For one who has felt smothered by the solemn pomposity of recent “Star Wars” releases, the prequel “Solo: A Star Wars Story” is a palate cleanser, an origin yarn about two of the franchise’s most beloved characters in which the words “The Force” are never uttered.

Yeah, it’s overlong. And as is par for the course for “Star Wars” films,  and the plot is mostly a series of mini-quests providing plenty of opportunity for f/x and action overkill. But at its best “Solo” reminds of why we fell in love with a galaxy far, far away in the first place.

Directed with assurance if not much personality by veteran Ron Howard (taking over after “Lego Movie” creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller were dismissed…who can tell who directed what in the final cut?), “Solo” follows Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) from his youth through his first big adventure(s).

Along the way father-and-son screenwriters Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan take the opportunity to fill in seminal but never-before-seen moments from Han’s bio:  How he got his last name in an “Ellis Island” moment, his first encounter with the towering Wookie Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), his acquisition of the Millennium Falcon and that distinctive blaster in the low-slung holster, and his early partnership/rivalry with gambler/smuggler Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover).

Our yarn begins on a planet where young Han and his girl Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) are among the orphans in the gang controlled by Lady Proxima, a huge caterpillar voiced by Linda Hunt (think “Oliver Twist’s” Fagin.) Already a conniver, Han absconds with a vial of a priceless energy source called coaxion, a few ounces of which should allow him and Qi’ra to bribe their way off the planet.

But things go bad and Han finds himself on his own, vowing to return for Qi’ra.

He enlists in the Imperial Air Force with dreams of piloting his own ship, but a few years later is a mere grunt knee-deep in trench warfare on a mud planet.  There he encounters not only Chewbacca, but crosses path with a band of mercenaries run by Beckett (Woody Harrelson), who at the behest of the shadowy criminal syndicate Crimson Dawn steals materiel from the Imperial forces.

Pushing his way into Beckett’s group, Han participates in the film’s action highlight, the highjacking of a freight train speeding through a mountainous ice planet.  A mashup of “Snowpiercer” and a “Mad Max” movie, this sequence finds Beckett’s band battling not only the train’s Imperial guards but a rival crew of bandits intent on stealing their prize.

Donald Glover

In other developments Han runs into Qi’ra, who is now the Girl Friday (and possibly consort) to Red Dawn bigwig Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).  It should be said at this point that Clarke’s Qi’ra is a waste of space…a boring character boringly portrayed. In fact, what besides GOT’s Daenerys Targaryen has Clarke done that wasn’t half-cooked?

Faring far better is Glover’s Lando, a cocky, slightly fey (all those capes!) wheeler-dealer who — in the franchise’s first suggestion of trans-species mating — may have a romantic thing for his droid co-pilot L3-37 (voiced with hilarious sarcasm by Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

Who can blame him? L3-37 is the most interesting character in sight, the robot version of the Me Too movement, seethingly angry at human enslavement of her fellow A.I.s. and sashaying John Wayne-style through life.

The burning question here: How well does young Ehrenreich channel a younger version of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo?

Well, he’s OK.  Nothing here is as head-snappingly amazing as Robert DeNiro’s take on a younger version of Brando’s Don Corleone in “Godfather: Part II.” But with a bit of imagination you can see Ehrenreich as a young, not-yet-fully-formed incarnation of the iconic  character.

The problem with “Solo” is the same one that has come to be the franchise’s biggest burden — a refusal to mess with the goose that lays golden eggs.  This is why you’ll never see a “Star Wars” film by an auteur director — the formula was set in stone long ago and nobody will be allowed to mess with it.

But one can dream.

| Robert W. Butler