Solo: A Star Wars Story

It's hard to know where to start with this one. If I had to come up with one phrase to describe Solo: A Star Wars Story, I'd say it's an epic, galactic disaster that belongs in a galaxy far, far away.

Here are the things I liked about the movie: Donald Glover's performance.

Here's what I didn't like about the movie: the rest of the casting, every scene, the flow of the plot, the score, the lighting, the color grading, the clunky humor, the awkward delivery of lines, the lame antagonist, the bland action scenes that lasted way too long, the fact that I wanted it to end about two minutes in.

I think there was a decent thought of an overall plot here that went horribly bad. It feels first-draftish in nature, but who knows? Maybe there were too many cooks in the kitchen. Some of the lines even felt like they should have worked, but missed so hard for whatever reason. I can't state strongly enough how miscast this movie was.

The biggest flaw in the Star Wars movies, outside of the original trilogy, is how underdeveloped the characters are. Even in the better movies, like Rogue One, the characters are just too flat. And that's what makes Solo such a disappointment: some of these characters were already well developed in previous films.

I don't think we'll ever know the true story of what happened with the movie. When directors are fired over creative differences midway through, you know things are probably not going to end up well. Even with the monstrous $250M budget, this film had little chance of being good.

The problem with this is that Disney is watering down the whole Star Wars franchise with films that don't come close to living up to the potential of what Star Wars film should be. Solo: A Star Wars Story is certainly one of the worst of the bunch. I almost walked out several times.

I hope Disney can pull the franchise out of this slump. It has to start by hiring talented writers who can create great characters. Until they do that, we're going to have a mix of decent and substandard films, neither of which belong in the beloved Star Wars franchise. Message to Disney: spend less money on CG, and more money on screenwriters who can create epic characters. It can only increase the franchise value in the long-run.