160 Days…Rose Tico’s run as the worst character in Star Wars history is over. To say that The Last Jedi left a bad taste in the mouths of Star Wars Fans is an understatement. Many in the media wrote hit pieces to bash the fans who were unhappy with the film as sexists who simply couldn’t handle strong women in the place that Kathleen Kennedy put them in. This included people directly involved in Lucasfilm including Rian Johnson and Mark Hamill that piled on the mockery of disappointed fans. Six months of backlash behind the Star Wars franchise and it really isn’t a surprise that the buzz behind Solo: A Star Wars Story is at an all-time low for the Disney era. After all the talk of reshoots, acting coaches, and behind the scenes turmoil, the latest Disney Star Wars project has hit theaters and it isn’t the dumpster fire you may have thought it was…but it is NOT without its problems as well.

The timeline of this film is a bit fuzzy (and we’ll talk about that later), but the film begins with a young Han (Alden Ehrenreich) and his lover Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) on the run in Corellia. After being split apart for three years trying to flee criminal gangs, Han is serving as an infantryman during the war and stumbles upon a plot to steal a shipment of the hyperfuel coaxium on the planet Vandor for a lot of money. With a handful of thieves, including his soon to be great friend Chewbacca at his side, Han must complete his heist so he can afford to go back to Corellia and find his love until he discovers that she is working for the guy he is stealing for.

So a few questions to answer right off the bat, is this film as bad as The Last Jedi? Hell No, not even close. Is Alden Ehrenreich a good Han Solo? Not really. Is Kathleen Kennedy still pushing her SJW agenda through the Star Wars franchise? Oh hell yeah, she is. This movie felt much like this year’s WrestleMania, it started off very well and made you think this experience was going to be great. However, halfway through the show the quality nosedives while the bad balances out the good. The pacing in the 1st act of the film is great. Solo has a decent back story and we follow his journey to becoming one of the galaxies greatest outlaws. Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton are great characters that make you root for their success very early on. Donald Glover’s role as Lando Calrissian is deserving of its praise. His work with Han sets up many key aspects of their future relationship in the universe. There was so much promise in the early stages of the movie, I sincerely thought I was going to eat a bag of crow…and then came L3-37.

It’s been said before; Kathleen Kennedy is her own worst enemy when it comes to Star Wars because she is so obsessed with getting in her “Force is Female” representation in the Star Wars Universe, that just when things are going well, she ruins it because she simply can’t set aside her agenda for the sake of the film’s quality. L3 is the droid companion of Lando and yes, they imply a romantic relationship between the two. The second L3 shows up on-screen the film comes to a screeching halt because her character is the robotic embodiment of a rainbow-haired social justice warrior. Unlike K-2SO in Rouge One who’s character added humor and charm to the movie, L3 shows up and makes Roman Reigns look like Rocky Balboa in his prime. If you like characters that spend the majority of their speaking lines talking about equal rights, slavery, and rebellions against the system, you’ll be the one guy who likes this character.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you like equal rights?

Anyway…

This character was so bad that her presence alone drags the film down a full point, she is far more annoying than Rose Tico EVER was. Then you had the hype around Enfys Nest, so much hype that you knew it had to be a girl and shocker it was. But this leads to one of the biggest plot issues of the film. Nest is presented as a hero towards the end, but her actions lead to the deaths of some major characters in the film and NO ONE including Han calls her on it, it’s like once it’s discovered that she’s a girl, all is forgiven and it’s such a glaring hole in the story. Ehrenreich and Clarke being the weakest actors in the film, not only is their chemistry, poor but the poor writing, in the end, leaves their relationship unresolved and unexplained for a plot point that is the entire motivation of Han’s character. Hell, even Vanity Fair calls out that a character that makes a cameo really makes no sense in the timeline of the universe itself.

Solo: A Star Wars Movie is a mediocre film that shoots itself in the foot preventing it from becoming great. If the writers never said Lando was ‘pansexual’ they wouldn’t have caused more people to pass on the film than want to watch it. If Kennedy could do one Star Wars film where a lead female character doesn’t stop the film to make a progressive rant against Capitalism, Star Wars fans would have less to complain about. If there is a lesson to take home about this film, don’t get too happy about the Boba Fett and Obi-Wan films in development because their ceiling is meh at best under the current leadership of Lucasfilm.

2/5

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