Solo: A Star Wars Story: A Quick Review and Comparison to other Star Wars Prequel Works [SPOILERS]

So I saw Solo: A Star Wars Story today, and wanted to make a quick little post about it.  This post isn't fully a review - I'll write a few paragraphs with my thoughts of it as a general movie in a bit - but I want to talk instead about how a prequel movie like Solo has to work - the benefits and downsides of those things - and compare it to previous works in the old (now out of continuity and branded as "Legends") Expanded Universe.  This post will go into spoilers for Solo, so if you want to be unspoiled as to the movie, see it first then come back here. 

In short, Solo is fine....but just that.  The movie hits all the expected beats, features a few scenes that are referenced in prior Star Wars movies, but never really surprises.  Again, the movie is never really bad, although its very last twist, which I'll spoil after the jump, is entirely laughable (and seems meant to tease a future movie that is unlikely to happen due to this movie's box office).  But the movie never really feels willing to take chances - Han Solo must be a good guy, wanting to help do the right thing, even as he's supposedly a scoundrel trying to pull a theft, so he is. 

More in depth and a comparison to some other Star Wars works, after the Jump:

With any prequel work, there are a number of limitations set upon the work.  For one, every character who appears in the original work who also appears in the prequel obviously needs to survive this movie, so threats to those characters fail to make a big impact.  Similarly characters who do NOT appear in the original work need to have some reason in the prequel not to show up later - so significant others who don't show up in the original works must be dealt with in some way. 

There are some pretty decent ways to deal with these problems that make some prequels work very well: you can make a prequel that features no characters from the original film - see Rogue One for example.  You can set a prequel so far back from the original so that you can put off decisions that lead to the original work for another day.  You can play games with audience expectations in a prequel - although doing so too much can be annoying. 

Solo only ever does #3 - and only once - where Han faces off with Lando in a game of Sabacc for the Falcon.....and Lando wins the first time.  But even this subversion is immediately made irrelevant by the fact that Qi'ra convinces Lando under 5 minutes later to help them with the Falcon.  The rest of the issues remain however - the movie repeatedly tries to suggest Han is in danger (Yeah no), that Chewie might leave Han behind (Again, no), that Han might fail to survive their unconventional Kessel Run (gee, I wonder), that Qi'ra and Han might end up together (....you get the point), etc. 

So what's the point of Solo: A Star Wars Movie?  Ostensibly it's a Heist Film, except the Heist in question is planned and executed incredibly quickly without any problems or complications whatsoever.  Is it a film showing Han's development?  Not really - the Han at the beginning is the same as the Han at the ending, having learned basically....nothing.  The film has the gall to give sequel hook by showing Darth Maul, but well...why exactly would I want to see that sequel? 

It didn't have to be this way.  To use one contrast, I want to bring up the recent - and canon - prequel novel, Leia Princess of Alderaan (My Review Here).  This novel, of a young teenage Princess Leia, has similar limitations as Solo to overcome.  But where it differs is that the book actually serves a purpose - it shows the character development that changes Leia from an idealistic young girl to a rebel who understands the risks and costs of Rebellion and the necessity for it anyhow.  Even its use of a doomed love interest is done interestingly, in a way that demonstrates an alternative view to Leia's and shows even further the costs that Leia becomes willing to incur for her ideals.  The result is a book that - if not totally unpredictable - actually serves a point at demonstrating how the person we see in the original films comes to be. 

But to make a more direct comparison, I want to compare Solo to the prior series of books that showcased an early Han Solo before Disney took over: A.C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy.* That trilogy features similar goals and efforts as Solo: It attempts to show how Han left Corellia, How he became a pilot of the Millennium Falcon, how he met Lando and became a pal with Chewie, how he pulled off the Kessel Run, etc.  It is also significantly better at doing so. 

*The Han Solo Trilogy is not the first Han Solo prequel novel in the old Expanded Universe, but it is the widest in scope and nicely includes gaps for those other stories to take place, so I consider it the old Universe's most comparable work to Solo in what it's trying to do.

Part of this is because the Han Solo Trilogy is three books long and thus features a lot more time to spend on each part of Han's life and development, leaving it room to breathe.  Book 1 - The Paradise Snare - showcases Han's escape off Corellia, his time learning to become an ace pilot and how to be a rogue, his meeting and leaving his first girlfriend, and ending with his entry into the Imperial Naval Academy.  The equivalent parts of Solo take about 10 minutes - Han escaping from a Corellia and signing up to be a pilot before a 3 year time jump.  In Solo, Han is always an ace pilot - and there's never any time where his piloting skills are in doubt.  He enters Imperial Academy on a whim and we learn nothing why he got shifted to infantry.  There's no impact on these things as a result. 

Book 2 - The Hutt Gambit - probably more closely corresponds to the bulk of this movie, although two events - Han's acquisition of the Millennium Falcon and Han making the Kessel Run occur in the series' finale, Rebel Dawn*.  That novel is very very different - it features Han, now drummed out of the Imperial Academy for rescuing Chewbacca from an Imperial Slaver Crew (old EU Han is absolutely against slavery, after his experiences in Book 1), learning the ways of being a smuggler, acquiring his first ship, meeting Lando and other smugglers and doing his first runs for the Hutts, and ends with Han and the other smugglers of Nar Shaddaa fighting against the Empire to save the planet.  Very different. 

*Couldn't figure out where to put this in the review, but the one sort of improvement in the film is that the gambling scenes make a lot more sense in the film than in Rebel Dawn - which features Han winning the Falcon from Lando in a Tournament which essentially isn't a tourney but a super large cash game and makes no sense whatsoever.  The old EU version of Sabacc is more interesting - a combination of poker and blackjack combined with a randomizer that adds extra risk to the gamblers playing - but man does Rebel Dawn not get how gambling works.  

That said, in ways, it's very similar in concept.  In addition to featuring a meeting with Lando (very differently - Lando saves Han from Boba Fett and then asks Han to teach him to pilot the Falcon), it also features Han learning to be a galactic smuggler (sort of) and a heist-esque finale - in the final battle, the Smugglers essentially scheme ways to trick the Imperials to allow their much smaller force of irregulars to have a chance.  The thing is that that tricks are actually interesting, and so the heist-esque plot is actually fun to read about.  The same is not true of Solo, which basically has most of it be total improv, with no planning shown to the audience (a key element of heist films bizarrely lacking here).  We also get to care about characters other than Han and Chewie in this book, unlike in the film - this was a problem with Rogue One as well, but basically we have no reason to care about any other members of Han's crew, even his love interest Qi'ra. 

Speaking of Qi'ra, I want to compare her quite clearly to Han's love interest in the trilogy: Bria Tharen.  Han meets Bria on what is essentially a Hutt slave colony (it's a long story I'm not getting into), rescues her and takes her back to their home planet of Corellia where she leaves him with the money to enter the academy.  She then proceeds to become a Rebel who leads a Rebel strike-force that frees slaves under the Imperial regime, and later finds Han to aid her in an assault on the Hutt slave colony for a big score....only for her to betray Han and take all of the proceeds from that assault for the Rebellion.  She then dies helping to beam the Death Star plans to the Tantive IV (yeah, she's in part the old version of Jyn Erso).  But the key point here isn't that she dies, but that she serves a purpose - she not only provides motivations for Han, but is a major factor in his character development, turning him from a naive young pilot who wishes to be a smuggler to a gritty cynical smuggler who doesn't want to deal with love or to be involved with the Rebellion, which has burned him in the past, but has the heart to know the Empire is evil and must be stopped. 

By contrast, Qi'ra....doesn't do any of that.  Han loves her from start to finish, and her eventual betrayal is so foreshadowed as to have no impact, and is so minor as to basically not have any effect on Han.  Han is treated as a good guy throughout, even helping these early Rebels, and ends the movie as a clear good guy with no reason to distrust the Rebellion going forward.  The characters keep talking about how Naive Han is about all of this, especially about his trust of Qi'ra, but well his naivete never costs Han anything and he retains it even through the end.  You know in the Han Solo Trilogy that Han can't end up with Bria (and the moment Bria gets involved in the Rebellion, it's clear she's going to die) but she has a character beyond being simply Han Solo's girlfriend and she adds to Han's development so you don't care.  Whereas I could care less what happens to Qi'ra and she doesn't add anything.  If Qi'ra was removed from the film - or disappears after Han's escape from Corellia, would it change anything?  Not really. 

That's emblematic of Solo, which never does anything of interest with any of the characters....the only character that sort of helps Han develop is Beckett, except, Han never learns anything from Beckett either - another version of this film would show Han learning to be cynical and distrustful from Beckett, but he doesn't do that either.  The Han Solo Trilogy and Leia, Princess of Alderaan show that prequels that show the early days of characters can work and work very well, but this film basically fails at following their example.