A Story that was better off untold - by Moataz Al Mousawi - 6/10

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Solo: A Star Wars Story is the 2nd spin off movie in the Disney Star Wars universe after Rogue One and fresh off the heels of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Solo is a star wars prequel that touches on the early years of Han Solo’s(Alden Ehrenreich) life, how he came to meet Chewbacca(Joonas Suotamo) and Lando Calrissian(Donald Glover), and how he became the smuggler and amazing pilot that we all know and love. From the beginning I went into this movie with low expectations, because the trailers never really got me that excited to watch it. The movie was directed by a lot of people, but final credits went to Ron Howard. Prior to its release, it had so many production issues and problems and you can clearly see how that affected the movie. The pacing of the movie isn’t very good and this just leads to a lot of boring moments. Let me put this into better perspective; this is a heist movie and yet its pacing is slow, so imagine how entertaining that must be to watch… However, there are still some fun and enjoyable scenes to be had. Alden’s portrayal of the famous scoundrel was fine. He didn’t really do anything to stick out and amaze audiences, but he wasn’t bad either. I can’t really blame him for it; because the character of Han Solo is just so rooted and linked with Harrison Ford’s portrayal that he can’t do much to add to it. It doesn’t help him either that the script kept it very safe and never took any risks. On the other hand, his meeting and interactions with Chewie were done in a very good way. I especially loved their first encounter. Paul Bettany plays the role of Dryden Vos, who was also recast from the original actor, a crime lord that doesn’t really do much and barely shows up. I felt like his character was underplayed, but this could be due to the recast. This in turn contributes to another flaw in the movie, which is the lacking of any real antagonist. Luckily, Donald Glover plays a fantastic Lando and his performance stands out the most among his fellow stars. There are a lot of references to be had Star Wars fan, so at the very least you can enjoy all of that fan service. While the movie may have some thrilling escape scenes and fun moments it doesn’t really do much about adding depth to Han Solo as a character and it just felt like a cheap cash grab. Quite frankly, it didn’t do a lot to justify its existence outside that goal. We were just entreated to a series of connected, sometimes fun, events that show us how Han Solo came to be without really adding anything new to the character.

6.5/10