O Solo Mio

[captainsblog]

Yes, I saw it. Yes, there will be spoilers. Lots of them. So leave now if you don't want.  I'll fill the space with other things from life so nothing inadvertently appears.

This has been a clean up round the yard weekend.  The other day, Eleanor bought a new garbage can to haul stuff out in- we've been down one since an ancient metal one either was stolen or just dissolved. To solve the problem of wheeled cans whose wheels get knocked off, she went with a separate base that the new can locks into-



Seeing the base separately, I thought it was a Roomba.  Maybe someday when it grows up...

Anyway, that can is now full. Yesterday was Whack the Wisteria Day, which filled at least one other of our cans and went well other than d'Artagnan here using the just-assembled hedge trimmer to slice a clean and mortal wound through our longest extension cord. That resulted in a Pilgrimage of Retail yesterday- to one hardware store (with a coupon) to replace the cord, to another to get two chainsaw chains sharpened, to Kohl's to use Kohl cash to accessorize the last shit I bought there, to Wendy's for lunch for both of us, and finally to the local cinema to lock in my seat for that night's performance.  You can keep reading- I'll get to the film soon.

Then, today we tackled the detritis on the other side of the yard. There are some dead and self-seeded nasties along our property line with the new neighbors, and the chainsaw came out to do them in. One was so dead, while Eleanor was lining its stump up for a meeting with a pickax, I reached down and pulled the thing out without even bending over.

But the trees weren't done with us. After we got that whole side largely denuded, I took to cutting the pieces down to size, as they all have to fit in a standard-size trash can as above.  This went fine with a combination of chainsaw and pruner- until one of the branches launched a prickly needly thing right into the back of my left thumb. Dr. Eleanor tweezed it out, but it was pretty painful until then.  I also spent time cleaning up on the inside, including finally giving up on the printer that HP killed with a leaky ink cartridge, and took it to the town dump. Unlike the one in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that got Arlo Guthrie in such trouble, our town-dump equivalent is open on Sundays and holidays, so once my residency was checked, it was HEAD RIGHT OVER.

And to be honest, it was sad.  Most of the dropped-off items looked newer than the Windows 7-era printer I was offloading. And then there was this:



How cute is that? I wanted to fix him and hug him and name him George- but I couldn't:(

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Speaking of George, as in Lucas,....


You've been warned.

Eleanor had a Buddhist event last night, and she generally prefers that I check out these big budget boom-bam-BOOM! movies first to see how tolerable their visuals and sound will be.  And so it was that I went to Solo, solo.  Might be the most meta thing I'll do all year.  After interminable previews for films I'll never want to see, we finally went off to a galaxy far far away, and a very different side story than Rogue One, the last (and first) of them.

R1 was a very big piece of a previous puzzle, but except for one early flashback scene, it was entirely set right before the events of the first Star Wars film- complete with Leia and others being CGI'd into it.  Solo, on the other hand, is entirely character-driven, and is he a character!  All the previous films, four of which he was featured in, told us very little about his origin story.  So he now has one, which both makes sense and makes good cinema.

We meet Han on a Bad Planet, from which he barely, and solely, escapes. Years then pass with him off in some military role, but before long he's introduced to Chewy (who I don't think is ever referred to by that term of endearment in the entire film), to Lando (very well and faithfully played by Donald Glover), and to The New Guys- led by, of all people, Woody Harrelson.  At this point, Woody is just playing himself in whatever role he takes on. Last three I've seen are this, Three Billboards and Edge of Seventeen- they couldn't be more different in terms of plot or the character he's given, but nobody could have done any of them as distinctly as he did.  I also wondered if he'd be spared the gruesome death he got in Billboards. Erm, no.

Foreshadowing is so prevalent, it needed its own lighting department. The dice, the "I've got a bad feeling," the "I know" line- all are there, or are the complete and polar opposite of there. And of course, the Falcon, and I don't just mean the spaceship. I saw this in an early scene on Bad Planet, where Han and Love Interest are escaping Certain Death in a landspeeder.  Look at this puppy from behind:



Tell me that doesn't remind you of a 1960s Ford. Motor, not Harrison. As in the Ford Thunderbird that was the object of affections in George Lucas's early hit American Graffiti, which Harrison Ford AND this film's director Ron Howard were both in. Amirite?

Not quite.  It's even better- from the gearhead website wot I got that picture from:

See where I’m going? When I saw those jets on that slab-like body, I immediately thought of ‘60s Fords. One Ford in particular: the Ford Falcon.

Falcon. The first thing we see Solo piloting is something that sure as hell is reminiscent of a Ford Falcon. Is there any other thing that Han Solo is known to pilot that has Falcon in its name?

That's all the early scene.  There's also plenty of intrigue in how Han winds up getting said Falcon from Lando, and how he lives long enough, despite facing badass traitorous bad guys and imperial blockades, to win the ship off the dude at the end. 

If I have a nitpick, it's that they maybe tried too hard to cram in ties to too much past and future.  Darth Maul shows up at the end, and his connection (if it is a connection) to Q'ira is likely going to extend beyond a simple sequel to this film.  I thought Han's story (and to a lesser extent, her story), were enough to carry the film on their own.  At least there were no gratuitous appearances of the future droids or anything else just pandering to the fen. 

They're coming fast and furious now. Episode 9 is well under way, Obi-Wan's debut goes next year, this one is due a sequel, and, who knows? Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru could fill a summer weekend in 2020!