Solo: A Star Wars Story Review – Han's Origin

There is a version of this review that starts with a grudge. The version that opens with: nobody asked for a young Han Solo movie, the production was a behind-the-scenes disaster, and the box office underperformance proved everyone right. That version exists. I have read it many times.

This is not that version.

Because Solo: A Star Wars Story — against all probability, against every piece of pre-release discourse — is actually enjoyable. It is the waffle fries of Star Wars cinema: not what you ordered, slightly accidental in its existence, and you will absolutely eat every last one of them. It earns a 7/10, and that number surprised me more than anything in the film itself.

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Solo: A Star Wars Story (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)

The 4K transfer handles the dark Maclunkey palettes well. Worth owning if you are building the Star Wars collection.

The film comes out of one of the messier production histories in recent blockbuster memory. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — the guys behind 21 Jump Street and The LEGO Movie — were fired midway through principal photography after creative differences with Lucasfilm. Ron Howard stepped in, reshot substantial portions, and delivered something that works. That it works at all is something of a small miracle. That it occasionally works very well is the part nobody talks about enough.

The dadnology take on Solo is this: it is the origin story for a character who did not need an origin story, and somehow it mostly justifies its own existence anyway. Not because it adds mythological depth to Han Solo. But because it is a competently executed space heist with one genuinely great performance in it.

The Scoundrel Origin: A Greatest Hits Package

The film lives or dies on whether you buy Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, and the honest answer is: not immediately. The first act is rough. Ehrenreich has a near-impossible brief — he cannot do a Harrison Ford impression, because that would be insulting to both of them, but he has to evoke the character enough that you believe this is the same person. In the early scenes on Corellia, he is clearly still finding the character. The charisma is there but it is unspooled, not yet focused.

The film knows this, and it is smart enough to compensate by giving him Donald Glover.

The moment Lando Calrissian walks into the frame, everything shifts. Glover’s Lando is not an impression of Billy Dee Williams — it is a full original characterization that somehow feels more Lando than Williams ever managed to make the character feel. The silk capes, the practiced charm, the cowardice dressed up as pragmatism, the genuine love for his ship that sits just under every surface interaction — Glover delivers all of it simultaneously, effortlessly, in every scene he is in. If you gave this performance to a more commercially successful film, people would still be talking about it.

By contrast, the plot is functional rather than inspired. Han escapes his criminal gang on Corellia, joins the Imperial Navy to get enough money to come back for his girl Qi’ra, deserts, falls in with a crew of thieves led by Tobias Beckett, gets recruited by the crime boss Dryden Vos, and sets out to steal a shipment of hyperspace fuel called coaxium from the Kessel spice mines. The Kessel Run is exactly as advertised: a chaotic, claustrophobic chase through a gas cloud full of tentacled creatures, run in 12 parsecs. It delivers.

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Solo: A Star Wars Story Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Vinyl) (opens in a new tab)

John Powell's score with John Williams themes woven in — genuinely underrated Star Wars music.

What the plot does less well is its emotional through-line. The relationship between Han and Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke, doing her best with underwritten material) is meant to be the heart of the film — childhood sweethearts separated and reunited, with the dark revelation of what Qi’ra had to become to survive. It is a good idea. The execution leaves it feeling hollow. Clarke and Ehrenreich have chemistry, but the script never gives it room to breathe. The Maul reveal in the third act — which genuinely made my jaw drop the first time I saw it, knowing what it means if you have watched The Clone Wars and Rebels — goes largely unearned for anyone who does not have that context, and the film is too crowded at that point to slow down and let it land.

The comparison above captures the essential tension that makes their relationship work: Han earns things the hard way; Lando was born looking like he already earned them. That the Falcon ends up belonging to Han feels both inevitable and slightly unjust.

The Production: A Film That Fought Itself

It would be dishonest to review Solo without acknowledging what the film went through to exist. Lord and Miller’s original vision — reportedly more comedic, more improvisational, closer to their Jump Street instincts — was far enough from what Lucasfilm wanted that the studio pulled the plug with roughly 70% of principal photography complete. Howard came in, brought the film back to something more classically Lucasfilm, and reshot enough material that some crew estimated 70% of the finished film is his work.

The result is a movie that occasionally feels like two movies — a looser, funnier version and a more conventionally competent version — edited together into something that mostly works. The tonal inconsistencies are real but they are not fatal. What Howard does well is pace: the film never drags, the action sequences are clear and well-staged, and he manages the genuinely difficult task of making a 135-minute movie feel like it cost the $300M it probably cost to actually shoot.

What he does less well is color. The film is aggressively, relentlessly dark. Not tonally dark — visually dark. Large portions of the film take place in poorly lit corridors, during planetary nighttime, in the literal darkness of the Kessel Mine or the Maw’s gas cloud. It is a deliberate aesthetic choice meant to evoke the criminal underworld, but by the midpoint you are squinting slightly and wondering if the cinematographer lost a bet.

The Format Experience: Kessel Under Vision Pro

The best thing Solo offers as a viewing experience — on Vision Pro especially — is scale. The Kessel Run works as spectacle precisely because it is a confined nightmare: narrow navigation windows, a creature trying to digest the Falcon, hyperlane calculation under impossible time pressure. On a 180-degree screen with good audio, it becomes close to genuinely vertiginous. This is not a film that rewards 60-inch TV casual viewing. Give it the biggest screen you have.

The score, by John Powell with John Williams themes woven in, is significantly better than the film’s commercial fate suggested. Powell builds several themes that function as proper leitmotifs — Qi’ra’s main theme, the rising figure that represents Han’s recklessness-turned-skill — and integrates the classic Han Solo theme from The Empire Strikes Back in a way that feels earned rather than sentimental. The soundtrack album is worth listening to independently.

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Solo: A Star Wars Story (Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)

Standard Blu-ray — solid picture quality and a good price for a fun rewatch.

The Score: John Powell’s Underrated Contribution

Han Solo deserved a strong musical identity, and Powell gave him one. The main Solo theme is brassy and slightly chaotic — not quite as clean as the Imperial March or the Force Theme, but appropriately rougher-edged for a character whose whole deal is controlled chaos. There is a recurring figure in the lower brass that represents the criminal world Han navigates that is quietly excellent — ominous without being predictable.

The real achievement is how Powell integrates Williams’ existing material. The Han Solo theme appears in its full form exactly once, at a moment when Ehrenreich has finally, completely, become the character — and because Powell has been building to it throughout, it lands with the emotional weight of a callback that the film itself has earned, not just borrowed.

From the screen to the shelf: Solo is the story of how Han won the Falcon — our LEGO Millennium Falcon (75375) review covers the 25th-anniversary brick version.

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Han's ship before it was Han's ship, in brick — the 25th-anniversary Falcon for the shelf.

📺 Movie night sorted: thousands of films and shows are streaming on Prime Video — free for 30 days. Worth a look before you buy the disc.

Is Solo: A Star Wars Story worth watching?

Yes, with measured expectations. It is a fun space heist that delivers a great Lando, a serviceable Han origin, and a Maul twist nobody expected. It is not essential Star Wars viewing, but it is a solid 7/10 that earns its runtime by the end. Order the waffle fries.

Where does Solo fit in the Star Wars timeline?

Solo is set roughly 10 years before A New Hope, making it one of the earliest chronological entries in the Skywalker-era timeline. It covers Han meeting Chewbacca, winning the Falcon from Lando in a Sabacc game, completing the Kessel Run, and his first entanglement with the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate.

Is Solo good for kids?

We suggest 10 and up. The film has crime violence, some menacing villain scenes, and a character death that lands harder than the tone around it suggests. The overall register is lighter than Rogue One but darker than the main saga films. The Kessel Run sequence has genuine intensity.

Did Solo get a sequel?

No. Solo underperformed at the box office and no sequel has been produced. The Maul post-credits reveal was clearly setting up further Crimson Dawn storylines, which makes those threads feel frustratingly unresolved on screen — though Maul’s arc does continue in The Clone Wars Season 7 and Rebels if you follow the animated side of the franchise.

Who directed Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Ron Howard directed the finished film after Phil Lord and Christopher Miller departed mid-production due to creative differences with Lucasfilm. Howard stepped in and delivered a coherent, enjoyable film from what was by all accounts an extremely difficult situation. It is probably the least celebrated great job in recent Star Wars history.