Solo: Another Star Wars Prequel

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Oh man, you guys, are you ready for another Matt Ferra Star Wars review? I know it’s only been like five months since the last one, but that’s okay! Because as everyone knows, I freaking love Star Wars!

You know, sometimes it gets really exhausting being the “I Freaking Love Star Wars” Guy. Let’s just get this over with.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is the second of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars anthology series, following Rogue One. Unlike Rogue One, which focused on putting new characters in a familiar-yet-unseen situation, Solo focuses on the backstories of already established, beloved characters. Fortunately, it doesn’t mess this up like the prequels did.

My biggest concern going into this movie, as well as many others’, was Alden Ehrenreich as Han. But after seeing the movie, I can confidently say that he’s not too bad as the character. He’s not Harrison Ford by any means, but I don’t think that’s what they were going for. Had they tried to make him Harrison Ford, it would have been too distracting. It’s kind of like what the prequels did with Obi-Wan Kenobi: it’s not an impersonation of the performance we had before, but more like an earlier version of the same character before they evolved. They get the spirit of the character of Han right, and that’s all that matters.

The rest of the cast is pretty solid too. Paul Bettany especially surprised me as scar-faced crime lord (oh that’s a clever subtle joke) Dryden Vos. I kind of figured with Bettany being brought in so late in production to replace a different actor, he might have phoned it in with the rushed production. But he did really well portraying Vos in a properly sinister light.

And of course, there’s Donald Glover as a young Lando Calrissian. As predicted, he perfectly emulates Billy Dee Williams’ charm as the character. Nothing else needs to be said except that he dons the cape like he was born to wear it.

The only character I really didn’t like was L3-37, the new droid. They do a new spin on the Star Wars universe by making her a fighter for droid rights, but they make her so aggressive and preachy about her ideals that it kind of makes her annoying at times. I understand what they were trying to do with the parallels with droid rights and I hope that some people could find L3 to be a positive role model for people wanting to fight oppression and injustice, but I felt that they could have done better with representing this cause than to make her too similar to the “social justice warriors” you see on the Internet all the time.

Solo has a pacing problem at times. Sometimes the movie rushes through scenes, sometimes it takes its time, once in a while it uses a time skip. It can get a little confusing when you’re trying to gauge by the pacing where you’re at in the runtime of the movie. It’s a similar problem I had with The Last Jedi and its five different climaxes.

Overall, I liked Solo better than Rogue One. Rogue One’s characters fell flat at times, it had themes that weren’t properly explored, and it’s overall tone was too dark and dull to be fun like other Star Wars movies. Solo is more fun and has more likeable characters, which is probably due to the fact that we already know some of them from the previous movies. The new characters, like Qi’ra and Beckett, aren’t nearly as engaging as Han, Lando, or Chewbacca, but they serve their purpose.

I liked the fact that the movie took place in the criminal underbelly of the galaxy, which certainly felt different than the “Jedi/Rebels vs. Evil Empire” dynamic the other films had. Even Rogue One, which was certainly different than other Star Wars movies, was still about the Rebels fighting the Empire, just from a different point of view. In this movie, the Empire isn’t even a major force, and it’s set before the Rebellion is even official set up. I felt this was a fresh change of pace amidst the complaints that Disney only cares about recreating A New Hope over and over again.

And it’s a minor thing, but I really appreciated all the little nods this movie gave to the Star Wars expanded universe; from name-dropping planets like Felucia, to showing members of the Pyke Syndicate, capped off with Darth Maul’s entire appearance raising confusion in those who haven’t watched the Clone Wars cartoon. It appears that Star Wars is more interested in making their movies and TV shows feel more interconnected than Marvel is.

Solo isn’t a deep story, and it certainly doesn’t have the same stakes as the main “saga” Star Wars movies. But for what it is, it’s a good popcorn flick filled with mindless entertainment.

But most importantly, it didn’t suck.

Deadpool 2 or: How Fox Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the R Rating

SPOILER ALERT

I think Deadpool is kind of overrated.

(I know: great way to start a Deadpool 2 review, right?)

If I can get on my hipster soapbox for a moment, Deadpool used to be this thing that not many people knew about, this irreverent, self-aware anti-hero that wasn’t like any other comic book character. Then he started appearing in more video games and some of the cartoons and the magic of being a Deadpool fan melted away; it wasn’t special anymore to say that Deadpool was cool now that everyone was saying it. And not everyone can write Deadpool well, either. Eventually, the concept of a fourth wall breaking sociopath who spits off pop culture references like bullets from a semi-automatic stopped being funny.

And then along came Ryan Reynolds.

This man – along with the writers and director of the first Deadpool movie – managed to pull Deadpool out of the wreckage that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine and make the character interesting to me again. The movie had jokes aplenty, but it was mixed in with a lot of violence, drama, and a surprisingly compelling love story. Capped off with Reynolds’ usual charisma and quick wit portraying the Merc Who Got His Mouth Back, and the Deadpool movie became one of the only incarnations of Deadpool that I could tolerate.

The sequel follows in those same footsteps, mostly for the better.

It’s still not a million jokes a minute like the comics are. There are legitimate scenes of drama with stuff like Vanessa’s death and some of the interactions between Deadpool and Russell. But when the jokes do hit, they hit hard, especially in regards to the superhero movie industry (and all of the gut punches towards DC and their movies).

However, sometimes the movie does suffer from what I call “Sequel Remembrance Syndrome”, wherein a movie sequel – usually a comedy – re-uses iconic jokes from the previous installment, usually with minor adjustments made to them. Examples from Deadpool 2 include Deadpool having to re-grow his legs as baby legs (instead of his arm like the previous movie) and the jokes directed at X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Green Lantern. While these jokes are still funny and are elevated from the previous movie – the jokes about Reynolds’ prior movie career is extra harsh in this one thanks to the insanely meta post-credit scene – I’d be lying if I said I wish they’d try more original jokes.

That being said, one of this movie’s instances of SRS (Sequel Remembrance Syndrome) wound up being what I thought was the funniest joke in the whole movie. It’s where Deadpool goes to visit the X-Mansion like in the first movie, and one again complains that he never sees any other X-Men at the mansion except for Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (due to the studio being too cheap to afford anyone else). Only this time we see, just out of Deadpool’s peripherals, Professor X (as in James McAvoy) and his X-Men team from Apocalypse quietly close a classroom door so that they don’t have to deal with Deadpool’s antics. Brilliant, while also further raising the question of how McAvoy hasn’t turned into Patrick Stewart by this point.

I feel like the first act of this movie is a bit of a slog to get through, but once Deadpool assembles the X-Force (and that spectacularly fails), the movie really picked up for me.

(Also, I know some people were upset that the X-Force characters were built up so heavily in the trailers and then immediately killed off, but I don’t really know anything about these characters so I thought it was a funny subversion. I’m just glad the post-credit scene saved Peter above all else.)

Ryan Reynolds is on record saying that Deadpool 2 is a “family movie.” Now this isn’t to say that you should take your six-year-old to see a foul-mouthed superhero movie where the protagonist falls onto a steel table and folds like an accordion, but the theme of creating an unconventional family is prevalent in this movie. The interactions between Deadpool, Cable, and Domino are some of the best in the movie, and you really get a good sense of comradery between them. And as stated before, Deadpool and Russell’s father-son dynamic can get pretty sweet at times. At the end of the movie, when Deadpool is walking off with Cable, Domino, Russell, Colossus, and Dopinder and narrating about family, I did get the sense that yes, this is the kind of weird, effed-up family I would like to see in a movie like this.

Some people are saying Deadpool 2 is better than the first. Some say it’s worse. I say that it’s just as good. They both have a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses, but it’s still an incredibly enjoyable film. Sometimes the pacing gets weird and the supposedly comedic superhero movie is bogged down with long scenes of drama, but the first movie had that too. It’s got a lot more in it than the first one, and it integrates itself farther into the greater X-Men universe with inclusions like the Juggernaut (who is much better here than he was in X-Men: The Last Stand), hints at future elements like Mister Sinister, and actual cameos from the big league X-Men stars.

(Also, as a side note, I thought it was really clever how they basically turned Vanessa into the movie’s version of Lady Death – Deadpool’s star-crossed love who awaits him in the afterlife every time he dies – without making it blatantly obvious. You know, until the post-credit scene reverses it.)

If you liked the first Deadpool movie, you’ll like this one fine. Stick through the uneven first act and you’ll have yourself a nice night at the movies filled with meta humor and heartwarming friendships between violent sociopaths.

The ironic part is, when comparing this to other superhero movies out right now, Deadpool 2 is probably a lot less emotionally scarring for little kids than Infinity War.