Solo: A Star Wars Story review

There are usually two types of “Star Wars” fans; the people who watch it for Darth Vader and the people who watch it for Han Solo. Nobody watches for Luke Skywalker (Sorry-not-sorry). Because we already have two trilogies essentially devoted to the rise and fall of Darth Vader, it was almost a foregone conclusion that someone would build a story around the cocky flyboy turned space outlaw originally played by Harrison Ford. Ron Howard, who previously worked with George Lucas on the 1988 fantasy film “Willow,” directs “Solo: A Star Wars Story, “a tangential prequel that helps fill the gaps between the larger sagas, primarily focusing on Han as a youthful runaway.

Father and son writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan begin this movie showing Han (Alden Ehrenreich) escaping an enemy occupied planet without his lover Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). Proclaiming that he will one day return to save her, Han assumed the moniker Solo and joined the Imperial military to steal something large enough to buy a ship and return to his girl. There he meets up with a group of competing smugglers led by the cynical Beckett (Woody Harrelson). After joining, he makes a deal to help the group steal a volatile weapons payload for a dangerous arms dealer named Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).

 As the film progresses, we get to see the young Solo’s first encounters with the Millennial Falcon, the vein gambler Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), and his destined lifelong partner Chewbacca. We should expect the character’s greatest hits and catchphrases within this style of conceptual universe building, but it also smells a lot like fan-service, and as each of these moments pass, you can almost hear Kasdan’s red pencil drag a line through the list of directives ordered down from Mount Disney. That’s why I felt slightly guilty by the big grin that came over my face as the movie plopped these elements into the story like farmer filling the trough for his hungry pigs. I’ll be the first to admit that even as I acknowledge the pandering here, I enjoyed almost all of it.

Howard handles the sci-fi/western themes and the action sequences well. Hints of Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” and the cult television series “Firefly” feel present here, even as those properties wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the influence of “Star Wars” in the first place—a classic example of the pop culture snake eating its tropes.  Handheld shaky cam obscures some of the ground combat, and the runtime feels about 15 minutes too long, but any motion picture that gives us a train heist, a prison escape and an aerial dogfight all within the same theater experience at least has a good understanding of what populist filmmaking should be.

Is “Solo: A Star Wars Story” essentially Star Wars fan fiction? Yes, but that doesn’t automatically make it bad, even if it doesn’t move the needle very far within the overall mythology. Ehrenreich carries everything adequately, even if his boyish take on the character isn't the spot-on Harrison Ford impression people are expecting. The supporting cast is all given enough to do to keep us invested in their place within the story as well.  There’s almost nothing that’s essential or impactful about this franchise mortar of a movie, but it’s highly entertaining and full of characters (new and old) that we want to spend our time with, which is more than I can for almost half of the other entries in the Star Wars cinematic universe.

Grade: B

Originally published in Idaho State Journal/June-2018

Star Wars: The Last Jedi review

Under the steady control of Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams, this third Star Wars trilogy has built upon the traditions of George Lucas’ mythology and pays homage to the type of fan-service that sells light-sabers at Toys R’ Us. But the director of the latest installment, Rian Johnson of “Looper,” “Brick” fame, plays the storytelling of this new sequel like a bored gamer who decides to break away from the core missions to see how far the boundaries the video-game will go. This isn’t to say that “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is wildly off-topic or even experimental, but it does play with the expectations of the audience with narrative risks not seen in the franchise since Irvin Kershner’s 1980 sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back."

The story picks up where 2015’s “The Force Awakens” left off; Rey (Daisy Ridley) has found Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) hiding as a hermit on a distant planet. There, she hopes to be trained in the ways of the force by the former Jedi master. Cocky flyboy Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and the reluctant and frightful ex-Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) are traveling with the Resistance, trying to survive the intergalactic pursuit of the imperial First Order, which is led by the vengeful Kilo Ren (Adam Driver).

Structurally, many of these story beats are very similar to those built into the plot of “The Empire Strikes Back,” and similarly, this installment wishes to disturb the canon with a few sharp left turns and a few shocking reveals. But rather than making his bed in the comfort of nostalgia, Johnson’s tricky screenplay also challenges Lucas’ classical, Campbellian tropes. Rey’s journey of self-discovery does not lead to self-assuring revelations about her past, and only further complicates her place in this battle between good and evil. Ridley and Driver share several scenes in psychic conflict, in which the characters bridge the bureaucracy of war and destiny to make a deeper connection that defies both of their places in their spiritual and philosophic struggle.  This potentially treasonous relationship is very well acted and is some of the most compelling drama the series has produced thus far.

We’re treated to another side story in which Finn and a young resistance mechanic named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) travel to a space Casino full of intergalactic one-percenters to find a hacker who can help them stop the First Order from being able to track their ships whilst escaping in light-speed. This mission, while bouncy and played like a high-stakes movie heist, is also subverted and woven into the greater peril of Leia's command (Carrie Fisher) and difficult decisions made by her Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern).

Johnson’s visual take on the material is a little left of center as well, and the set design is often beautifully stark and minimal. His work with the actors is generous and thankfully he gives aged performers like Fisher and Hamill more to do in the story than to simply act as camera-winking cameos. This is a terrific action film and great advancement of the Star Wars canon.

Some long-time fans have bucked to the risks Johnson took with his entry, but what I appreciate the most about “The Last Jedi” is that, while it’s a half hour too long and some of the humor doesn’t land, this is one of the most story-driven installments the series has ever seen. Rather than serving a classical hero’s journey about good versus evil, the characters are now forced to move forward with a plot that has greater ties to their unpredictable motivations.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2017

Listen to this episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "The Last Jedi"

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story review

Long before Marvel and DC took a stab at the extended cinematic-universe idea, George Lucas’ “Star Wars” expanded in the form of comic books, novels, video games, cartoons and two Ewok movies, which then led into the much-maligned movie prequels. Now that Lucas himself has sold his intellectual properties to Disney, they’ve successfully kicked off a new trilogy with last year’s “The Force Awakens” and will be filling in the wait-times with tangential films that explore the other gaps in the established timeline.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” explains how the rebels were able to find the design flaw that allowed them to blow up the planet-demolishing Deathstar at the end of 1977’s “Star Wars: A New Hope,” but unlike the other prequels, this story doesn’t focus on any of the franchise's key players or any of the Han/Luke/Vader family drama. Here we're introduced to Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), a runaway survivor of a raid by the Empire. Her father Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) is a scientist and engineer who works for the Empire who is forced against his will to design the Deathstar. As an adult, Jyn finds a new family in a group of rebel fighters led by Diego Luna as Cassian Andor. Given her connection to her father’s involvement with this dangerous new weapon, she must lead a group into the heart of the Empirical army to find a secret blue print that shows us where Galen hid the space-craft’s only weakness.

The movie also introduces us to Jyn's downtrodden band of misfits in Riz Amed as the skittish Bodhi Rook, Donnie Yen as the blind-swordsman Chirrut Imewe and Wen Jiang as his faithful partner Baze Malbus.  Alan Tudyk voices a sassy robot called K-2SO and Forest Whitaker shows up briefly the wild-haired bandit named Saw Gerrera who first rescued and sheltered our hero as a child.

Writers Chris Weitz (“About a Boy,” “The Golden Compass”) and Tony Gilroy (“The Bourn Identity”) and director Gareth Edwards approached this movie as a kind of “Seven Samurai” ensemble adventure, dampened by the bleak, war-is-hell overtones of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” They tease us with the promise of distinct characters and a fun high-stakes heist, but the script’s slavish devotion to its nuts and bolts macguffin-driven narrative and the lack of depth explored within the movie’s wide-spread cast makes for a surprisingly dull and joyless action experience. 

Felicity Jones is given nothing to do on screen besides hold the audiences hand from one set-piece to another and her fledgling romance with Diego Luna’s angsty Cassian Andor feels tacked on and unearned, as if the movie realized at the 80-minute mark that it forgot to establish a compelling emotional anchor.  The other emotional component between Jones and Mikkelsen as her long-lost father is truncated and treated less like substantive character motivation and more as a means for exposition.

The movie boasts some haunting images of the looming Deathstar, visible though the atmosphere of the doomed planets it hovers above, and the fight choreography is held-back and treated with more physical heft than we’ve seen in this sci-fi world before. This all becomes moot as the film devolves into a swirling montage of aerial dogfights and mindless destruction without enough personal moments with the characters to be invested in their outcomes.

Because there won’t be any direct sequels to this side-bar story, “Rogue One” takes some wild risks that are commendable, and its detachment from the kid-friendly exuberance of the previous Star Wars films allowed for the movie to embody a unique identity. Yet, the film arrived at this darker, more adult space at the expense the audience, who is denied a way to penetrate its sphere of despair.

Grade: C+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Rogue One."

Star Wars: The Force Awakens review

When George Lucas sold the rights to “Star Wars” along with his company Lucasfilm to Disney and it was announced that Spielberg’s spiritual successor J.J. Abrams, of “Super 8” and the recent “Star Trek” films, would relaunch the series with an additional numerical installment, devotees were instantly optimistic about the possibility of the series redeeming itself from the dampened legacy of the franchise. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is as much a soft-reboot as it is the seventh episode of Lucas’ grand saga. Many familiar elements are reintroduced through new characters and the old cast members are brought back to pass the ceremonial lightsaber to a new generation—a younger generation of fans who learned most of what they know about “Star Wars” minutia from online reddit forums, long-winded bloggy take-downs of the much-maligned prequels, as well as various memes, sketches and remix videos.

Forty years of real-time have passed since Luke Skywalker destroyed the Empire, Darth Vader was killed and Han Solo, Princess Leia and the rebels celebrated their victory. Turns out they celebrated too early because the Empire has reformed as an aggressive totalitarian militia known as the First Order and after failing to train a new generation of Jedi, Luke has gone missing. In his absence, a new Darth Vader wannabee named Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) has led the hunt for the remaining rebel forces, dead-set on finding Luke before the other rebels can get to him. A small soccer-ball-shaped droid called BB-8 has a piece of the galactic map that leads to Luke’s whereabouts but is separated from the resistance when his master, a fighter pilot named Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), is arrested by the First Order after a battle on a desert planet known as Jakku. It is then up to a resilient scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley) and a disgruntled storm trooper in hiding named Fin (John Boyega) to bring the droid back to the rebel base before Kylo Ren and First Order discover the secrets they hold.

Much of the appeal of this film is in its attempts to conjure the aesthetics and nostalgia of the original trilogy. “Empire Strikes Back” writer Lawrence Kasdan helped Abrams pen the screenplay and many of the high-stakes adventuring, the jokey one-liners and the scrappy aerial dog fights that were missing from Lucas’ stoic prequels are restored in this exciting but sometimes frustratingly familiar plot. The younger cast of characters are genuinely likable and interesting. They fit very neatly into previous “Star Wars” archetypes but the actors fill their parts out with a lot of idiosyncratic charm and self-deprecating wit. Likewise, Harrison Ford’s return as Han Solo remains surprisingly fresh and energetic, considering the age of the actor and the grizzled joylessness of his later performances.

The special effects are appropriately updated, using a healthy blend of computer generated visuals along with real sets, real locations and tangible props and creature designs. The movie isn’t exactly short but it moves along quickly and it milks those crowd pleasing close-calls in such a way that even the most jaded of fanboys will be unable to resist a near-constant grin.  And yet, even after thoroughly enjoying myself twice in the theater—yes, I’ve already seen it twice—I can’t help but lament how narratively unoriginal and pandering a lot of this feels. Many plot points directly mirror those of the first three films and many functions of the new and old characters serve to move the story with almost the exact same outcomes. Death Stars, rescue missions, mysterious prophecies and Greek familial tragedy are all tapped again for this installment and carried out without any subversion of those dusty Campbellian tropes. As such, it’s almost impossible to be surprised by this movie (or perhaps the future of this entire franchise) once you realize where it’s headed.

Thee future of creative cinema aside, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is undeniably a good time at the movies. New audiences will have a worthy jumping on point to seed their future obsessions and seasoned fans will likely enjoy the throwbacky glee of Abrams’ childlike warmth towards the mythology. But it is it’s also undeniable that Abrams is as much a fanboy as he is a fan and has a difficult time distancing himself far enough from the source material to update it or add to it in a truly bold or progressive way.

Grade: B

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2015

Listen to more discussion about "The Force Awakens" and "The Big Short" on this week's Jabber and the Drone podcast.