Review by Brandon:
Another day, another Star Wars movie! While Hollywood capitalizes on the superheroes and the reboots, we were treated to yet another origin story of the Star Wars saga over Memorial Day weekend. This time it’s time to find out how Han Solo became Han Solo and the events surrounding his famous “Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs” in the Millennium Falcon. For those of you that don’t know, that is very fast!!! Take it from us nerds. Like most origin stories, you are smacked with doses of nostalgia and throwbacks to certain quotes from the original Star Wars movies that help you understand their significance. While it helps to have seen all of the previous Star Wars movies, you don’t need to know everything about every plot to follow along, you will still have fun while being clueless to every reference.
Young Han Solo (played by Alden Ehrenreich) finds adventure when he joins a gang of galactic smugglers, including a 196-year-old Wookie named Chewbacca. Indebted to the gangster Dryden Vos (played by Paul Bettany who is Vision in the Avengers movies), the crew devises a daring plan to travel to the mining planet Kessel to steal a batch of valuable coaxium. In need of a fast ship, Solo meets Lando Calrissian, the suave owner of the perfect vessel for the dangerous mission — the Millennium Falcon.
Since Han Solo’s fame is rooted by Harrison Ford’s portrayal of the character, I think that Alden Ehrenreich did a great job at setting the stage as a young Han/Harrison. He got the mannerisms down and was very convincing as Han Solo. There is a ton of humor and excellent action scenes. The story had plenty of depth and had some great emotional moments as well. If you’re in a bad mood, you may not enjoy this movie. But if you go into it expecting to have a good time and some good laughs, you will enjoy Solo: A Star Wars Story as much as I did. Thumbs up!
