Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

It’s always a strange place to be, writing a review after learning that the movie hasn’t resonated with audiences in a big way. Solo: A Star Wars Story proves that you can in fact recast an iconic figure like Harrison Ford with a high degree of success, but it would seem also to prove that audiences aren’t terribly interested in that. I do wonder in what universe an $80-some million opener isn’t a smash (sounds like a lot of dough to me!), but I do feel a twinge of sorrow at the notion that the narrative of Solo might end up being not one of a scrappy against-all-odds winner but one of a misfired also-ran.

Alden Ehrenreich stars as Han Solo, desperate to escape the harsh streets of Corellia with his partner (in every sense of the word) Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). This being a prequel to Star Wars, you know at some point he’s bound to encounter the mammoth Wookiee Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and the roguish gambler Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), though getting there is half the fun – the other half being Han’s introduction to smuggling, courtesy of heist man Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and gangster Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).

Prequels can be tricky territory – heaven knows George Lucas learned that one the hard way – but Solo manages to navigate that terrain as deftly as its titular flyboy might, finding an appealing balance between fan service and genuine surprise. In the case of the former, there is a certain thrill to be had when we sense that Chewbacca is just around the corner or that Han’s about to see the Millennium Falcon for the first time; on the other hand, Solo manages to hold a few tricks up its sleeve, narrative about-faces that feel about as surprising as Vader’s “I am your father” must have seemed in 1980. Despite Beckett’s insistence that “people are predictable,” there are at least two or three genuine shocks in Solo that ought to excite anyone with a modicum of investment in the storytelling of the Star Wars universe, which bodes well for a prequel that may as well spin-off its own spin-offs.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of all is that Solo actually hangs together as a film. We’ve all heard the troubled production history of the film, with director Ron Howard replacing original filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller at as close to the eleventh hour as humanly possible. And having just seen a case of how aft agley these things can gang with last year’s Justice League, where the seams on the reshoots were as transparent as Wonder Woman’s invisible jet, Solo feels like a singular film with a singular vision, a consistent way of looking at the seedy underbelly of Star Wars. Whether we get another Solo movie is almost less important to me than whether Ron Howard gets another shot at the sandbox, with all the Western pioneer grit that gives Star Wars that lived-in feeling. Put another way, it’s a short putt from here to Tatooine in a way that never feels as reiterative as Jakku did, instead feeling much more of a piece with the danger and the dust that made Luke Skywalker so wistful for anything but.

As far as the cast goes, I’ll wager that anything I say here, you’ve probably already heard elsewhere – for one, Ehrenreich acquits himself quite well once you get past the fact that he’s not Harrison Ford. He’snot, true, but neither was Roger Moore entirely Sean Connery as James Bond, though no one raised such a fuss on general principle. We’ve seen recasting before, and Ehrenreich does find the core of Han Solo – clever, hapless, and a sucker for a good cause – to the point where even the most stubborn among us should find him an acceptable substitute for the otherwise unavailable late-70s Ford. Clarke is a welcome new kind of protagonist in a galaxy populated by princesses and queens, while Glover does a masterful riff on Billy Dee Williams as the smoothest operator in the galaxy. Harrelson and Bettany, meanwhile, are just fantastic, with the latter especially giving a performance that just exudes casual menace with every gleeful bite of the scenery. 

If the original Star Wars was The Hidden Fortress by way of Alphaville, I think there’s a conversation to be had about which visual languages Solo reappropriates. I don’t want to say too much by way of spoilers, so I’ll just note that the film begins as a Star Wars-ian riff on the outdoor sections of Blade Runner (with what appears to be a Blade Runner take on a Star Wars crawl) before moving into a heist film courtesy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, detouring through the light tunnel sequences from 2001: A Space Odyssey (as scored not by Strauss but by the greatest hits of John Williams), before ultimately cycling back around to the interiors of Blade Runner. Spoiler-phobes can rest easy while the rest of us try to draw points of connection, which I raise not to accuse Howard of any sort of plagiarism – indeed, this may just be my own filmic apophenia – but to note with some curiosity how he may have taken a trick from George Lucas’s own playbook and made a Star Wars film out of a cinematic bricolage.

Ultimately, I think Solo will end up being something of a litmus test for Star Wars fans, telling us more about the moviegoer than the movie itself. For the xenophobes boycotting the film until producer Kathleen Kennedy is fired for the crime of daring to include just a whiff of diversity (both cultural and narrative in The Last Jedi), Solo is a staging ground for protest. For those of us living on planet earth, however, Solo is either a lackluster cash-grab or a fine diversion through a side street in Star Wars. It’s not a game-changer for the saga (though it may contain one, in the very last place you may be expecting it), but I’m of the opinion that these Anthology films – subtitled A Star Wars Story, as Rogue One was – need only be engaging standalones that just so happen to take place in that galaxy far, far away. While we wait for Episode IX to reveal the final fate (for now, at least) of the Skywalker bloodline, Solo is the kind of side-trip that reminds us why we fell in love with Star Wars in the first place.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi action/violence.” Directed by Ron Howard. Written by Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan. Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, and Paul Bettany.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

It’s been a wild ride here at The Cinema King, getting amped up for Captain America: Civil War by engaging ourselves in a Grand Marvel Rewatch of the twelve-picture Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel’s latest (and longest) film, Captain America: Civil War is also its biggest in terms of stakes, cast, and moral complexity, and it’s a dazzling super-triumph.

After years of operating unchecked amid several major global events, The Avengers find their powers under scrutiny by a United Nations resolution that seeks to oversee their operations. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), feeling guilt over his complicity in the creation of Ultron, signs on almost immediately, but Captain America (Chris Evans) has grave reservations about signing away his liberty. The rest of their teammates are forced to choose sides in the conflict when Cap’s childhood friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) comes out of hiding, further splitting the team as regards Bucky’s responsibility for his actions as the Winter Soldier.

Civil War manages to be both sweepingly epic and deeply personal, with far-reaching consequences stemming out of what is essentially a clash of personalities, a philosophical difference of opinion about the nature of individual power. And what’s really striking – shout-out here to directors Anthony & Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, because they deserve it – is that the film never sacrifices one for the other. We get wonderful character beats and big-scale action sequences. One minute we’re in the kitchen with Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as hosts of an adorable impromptu cooking show, and the next we’re in Leipzig for the airport sequence which is even more awesome than the trailers let on. (Honestly, the airport scene might be Marvel’s best action sequence to date, worth the price of a DVD, and eerily reminiscent of Whedon’s two 360-degree shots of the Avengers collaborating.)

And yet, for as much as the film valorizes character development, delivering some of the least opaque motivations for superhero characters yet, I really must quibble with the title of this film. Captain America: Civil War is not quite a Captain America movie – at least, not in the way that Captain America: The Winter Soldier was. In some part, this is due to the inclusion of RDJ as Iron Man, because Downey steals the screen whenever he shows up, but it’s also because the script is uncannily fair to both sides of this conflict. Both Stark and Cap have lines that might convince a fair-minded viewer to change their own opinion, and the film has neither a cop-out “villain orchestrated it all” twist nor any out-of-character beats like the comics source material (in which Tony Stark put Daredevil in a space prison). Civil War is balanced, and it may be difficult to digest for that reason, and kudos to the filmmakers for never cheapening the weighty debate.

Indeed, a better title would have been, simply, Marvel’s Civil War, for the film is unmistakably a waypoint for the franchise as a whole. There are beats in here that pay off all the way back to 2008, bringing everyone from Ant-Man to Thunderbolt Ross into the fray, and Civil War introduces Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) to the MCU in ways that make me incredibly excited for their standalone films. Holland in particular is the new definitive Peter Parker, capturing the webslinger’s inability to keep quiet without letting us forget that he’s perhaps too young for this. Civil War feels very much like a slice of a universe, but while Cap is undeniably a star it’s difficult to say he’s the star.

Ultimately, this is not actually a bad thing. It’s at worst a misnomer, but I’d rather have a film with a handful of fantastic characters than a film that limits its focus unnecessarily. I think we can all agree, for example, that The Force Awakens didn’t necessarily need more Luke Skywalker, especially if it cost us a few scenes with Poe Dameron. Whether it’s Captain America 3, Iron Man 4, or Avengers 2½, Civil War is too exciting, too much fun, and too engaging to write off on a technicality. It leaves you wanting more, a sage move for a ballooning franchise like this one. It sends you out of the theater debating over which scene was the coolest, to be sure, but it also sends you away with a moral question that’ll take up most of the car ride home.

Captain America: Civil War is rated PG-13 for “extended sequences of violence, action and mayhem.” There’s a lot of running/jumping/shooting/punching sequences, several extended; a few explosions and scatological profanities; and a few shots of bloody people. More of the same, really, from Marvel.

Transcendence (2014)

While I spend a lot of time on this blog heralding the innovative vision of Christopher Nolan, I’ve never mentioned the name Wally Pfister, Nolan’s chief cinematographer and a key guiding hand in the creation of that aforementioned vision.  The shadow of Nolan looms large over Pfister’s directorial debut Transcendence, though the end result feels more like the work of an impressionist than a disciple.

Transcendence stars Johnny Depp as Dr. Will Caster, an artificial-intelligence scientist shot with a radiation-laced bullet by anti-tech terrorists.  During his last weeks, Will’s wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) works to digitize and upload her husband’s consciousness, to the dismay of their friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany).  Max fears that the program Evelyn activates isn’t really Will, fears that take on weight when “Will” quickly advances beyond the realm of the possible.

Transcendence clearly rides the post-Inception wave of high-concept science fiction, a wave dominated by the technical achievement of Gravity.  With Transcendence, Pfister and screenwriter Jack Paglen tackle the issue of the singularity, a post-human digital environment epitomized by the idea of “living long enough to upload.”  The film poses a number of important questions about this technology – how much of a personality is changed during the dehumanizing process of uploading?  What are the upward limits of “transcendence”?  And at what point does AI surpass our understanding of conventional morality?

Unfortunately, Transcendence never really answers those questions, stopping short at presenting them.  What’s frustrating, though, is that the film presents these questions as though they will become important plot points, as when anxiety arises about whether “Will” is really Will; though at least one scene teases an answer to the question, it’s never revisited until the conclusion, which takes the answer for granted.  To be fair, this is Paglen’s film debut as well as Pfister’s, and he’s already offered something smarter than most science fiction does, but it is only half the battle.

Just as the script only takes us halfway there, the rest of the film never quite emotionally engages.  Depp and Hall have genuine chemistry together, playing the quirky-scientist-couple brilliantly in the one scene they have together before Will is shot, and Hall proves herself the actual star of the show with a commanding lead as the increasingly-distraught Evelyn.  As for Depp, he acquits himself rather well, playing a subdued performance that you won’t believe comes from the same man as last summer’s Tonto.  The rest of the cast, though – Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy among them – are basically interchangeable, which is a shame given the range they’ve displayed elsewhere (and largely in Nolan films).

This, then, is the larger weakness of Transcendence – its inability to pass the Plinkett test,¹ which requires characters to be distinct beyond physical appearance and function to the plot.  Will and Evelyn for all intents and purposes pass the test, though none of the other characters do.  The result is a fairly uneven film, in which two out of three running plotlines proceed purely on the requirements of the narrative itself.  The film needs an antagonist for its central AI-based protagonist, so a thinly characterized terrorist group (RIFT) is created, with oblique gestures at their motives.  Common sense suggests that the US government might object to the existence of “Will” on their soil, so a team of government agents chases the plot wherever it goes.

I’ve never fully understood why some moviegoers have difficulty connecting emotionally to Christopher Nolan’s work.  Despite the overtly cerebral nature of his films, they’re anchored by very human stories, such that the very ending of Inception cares more for how its protagonist acts than whether what’s happening is actually real.  (The same can’t be said for twist-ending flicks like The Sixth Sense, where the revelation is all.)  With Transcendence, though, I feel like I’ve approximated that sensation; Will and Evelyn aside, I couldn’t engage emotionally with any of the characters on screen and indeed found several of their decisions – mostly shifts in allegiance – to be baffling beyond the necessity of the plot.  I have no idea, for example, how Freeman’s character goes from desk-jockey scientist to FBI analyst, or why (potential spoilers ahead) Paul Bettany’s character joins up with RIFT – beyond, that is, the need for characters in a film to move toward the conclusion of the plot.

At the core of Transcendence is a very moving, very meaningful science-fictional take on a hetero-organic marriage between a woman and her computer – the dark response, I suppose, to Spike Jonze’s Her.  Orbiting that compelling story, though, is a series of narrative false steps and mechanical storytelling that make Transcendence more of a disappointment than Pfister’s promising career to date would have foretold.  One wonders what would have come of “Christopher Nolan’s Transcendence” had a more deft filmmaker been at the helm.  Transcendence is just shy of a failure, feeling more like the training wheels on Pfister’s bike were taken off a bit too soon.

Transcendence is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi action and violence, some bloody images, brief strong language and sensuality.”  There are a few shootings with a fair amount of blood (mostly seen as bloodstains on clothing), and some viewers might be ooked out by the moments when machines augment human bodies via healing or implantation.

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1 Plinkett dismantles the Star Wars prequels in a series of YouTube videos for many reasons, most prominently its failure to create characters as rich as the ones from the original trilogy. A focus group in his Phantom Menace review is able to describe with great precision the personalities of Han Solo and C-3PO but is unable to do the same for Qui-Gon Jinn and Queen Amidala.^↩