Around the 15-minute mark, Han joins the Empire and is sent to bootcamp. The next scene has the title card 3 Years Later. Han is in the middle of a battle and doesn’t know anything. And the title card should’ve said maybe 3 days later. He starts off flying back from an explosion, he’s hyperventilating, questioning “why are we here?” to his commanding officer.

Now I know Star War’s movie Solo wasn’t perfect. I liked it, I wouldn’t rank it among the best Star Wars movies ever made, but it was a fun ride for. But there is a scene that I hate so much and I find it weird that it’s not mentioned among reviewers.

Were you asleep in the briefing? Were you just on the crapper during this? Was he hooking up with an Ewok off world during this?

Are you telling me Han learned nothing in boot camp? That he went through 3 years of hanging with the Empire, having the best weapons in the galaxy at his disposal, learning from top military leaders and looks this green? Why would they even deploy him? And the Empire isn’t stupid. They aren’t just going to send in this guy, who doesn’t even know what’s going on, as cannon fodder. I guess the Clones were expendable, they were massed produced, but highly trained. They were also cloned from the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy. And if the Clone Wars TV gave us was insight to their training and preparation. Some of my favorite episodes were of Clones learning the ropes, being part of a unit, and overcoming an endless robot army.

I think this scene is a good indicator of why the movie was so bad. The opening scene we see Han fresh out of a heist, then shortly after he double crosses the gang he’s with, he hotwires a speeder and hatches a brilliant plan of getting him and his girlfriend off world. Han is calm, confident and most importantly cool. He takes daring risks and totally embodies Harrison Ford. But after that battle scene, Han isn’t the same.

It almost felt like the rest of the movie was a rewrite. I felt the same way watching the new Mortal Kombat. That opening scene was awesome, the cinematography, lighting and fighting were all perfect. Then the rest of the movie felt clunky and quickly written.

Han embodied too many emotions and barely felt like the same character in consecutive scenes. Alden Ehrenreich did a great job, but it looked like the scenes were vastly filmed out of order and he found a great feel for the character later on in filming and it was too late to redo the previous scenes.

Maybe I’m looking too much into it, but let me know what you guys thought.

World War Joe