On the dangerous smuggling route

J Every movement begins with a spark. Whether it propagates as an electrical signal across cell membranes, for contracting muscles to take the first step, or as a spark that starts the engine. At the end of each movement there is a price to pay. And between sparks and price awaits the adventure.

Axel Weidemann

In “Solo: A Star Wars Story” this spark is central. He lights up the movie theater like a stroboscope, as the young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) attempts to short-circuit a speeder at the start on the run. A spark will save the crew of the infamous spacecraft “Millennium Falcon” from the clutches of a lovecraft cosmic octopus as well as the pull of an unobtrusive singularity. He will see to it that Han later claims to have flown the “Kessel Run”, a fabled smuggling route, in less than twelve parsecs. And finally, the episode III-IV movie must function as a belated initial spark for two thirds of the Star Wars universe. Han Solo – the role helped Harrison Ford a breakthrough – is for many the most important figure in the Star Wars series.

George Lucas describes him in 1975 as a “cowboy in a spaceship, simple, sentimental and firmly convinced (‘cocksure’) of himself.” So it seems, the story that tells how he talks on his hairy copilot, the Wookie Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) meets, gets his blaster and wins the Millennium Falcon from capping card player Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) to stage as a galactic western. “It is a lawless time” is in the beginning in proven blue writing on the star-studded cinema screen.

Space cowboy on the run

A “Outlaw” on the run: off the streets of spacecraft industrial planet Corellia, a sort of oversized VW plant where Hans father already worked on that space freighters model YT-1300, later for his Filius in the form of “Falcon” for the determination. His girlfriend Qi’ra, ( Emilia Clarke aka Daenerys Targaryen from the series “Game of Thrones”) he leaves there. We accompany him through a brief episode as a soldier in the ranks of the Empire. There he teamed up with gangster Beckett (Woody Harrelson), with whom he cumbersomely tries to get to Coaxium, the stuff that hyperspace fuel is made of – the gold of this space western.

Since Lucasfilm confirmed in July 2015 that Han will be seen in his first solo mission, the project was torpedoed. Producer Kathleen Kennedy went bankrupt with directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (“21 Jump Street”), so Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”, “Frost / Nixon”, “Apollo 13”) had to take over. He is said to have shot over two-thirds of the film.

If you have not had anything to do with the Star Wars, you’ll get a sparkling Muppet-Laser-Western-Version of “Catch Me If You Can”, the action of which is largely resolved in rather smart settings (camera Bradford Young). Anyone who already belongs to the converts, who has to check whether he wants to get involved in all the self-quotations that come primarily from the fourth to sixth episode of the saga.

Deficiencies of all kinds are found in this film as numerous as on the “Millennium Falcon” in the eighth episode. The banal, but traditional naming of Han Solo, the fact that Emilia Clarke is rarely more than a smiling extra, Hans tries to speak the Wookie language “Shyriiwook”, and the confusing timing of the whole thing in the main narrative of the saga only some. The charge of predictability was itself predictable. But the film has quite a few surprises, absurdities and quirks. From a magical shower scene to the first “female” droid in the series, which provokes a rebellion of the machines. The texture, which is not just dictated by the fact that all wear fur all the time to point out the pankosmic hairiness of things, has been missing a lot in the seventh episode and a little less in the eighth. The “Falcon” looks at the beginning as if he had just hatched from the egg. And anyone who sees Hans grinning as he sits in the cockpit for the first time as the ship accelerates to hyperspace speed will perhaps remember his first drive in his own car and the fact that no master has yet fallen from the sky.