IN SPACE, no one can hear you daydream.
And at two recent screenings of “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” one could easily wonder how far the audiences were mentally drifting, because at both, the origin-story spinoff was met with the deadliest sound a movie can meet:
Silence.
Not respectful or hushed-into-riveted silence, but the dead quietude of the only marginally engaged.
What other Star Wars film, across four decades, have you been able to say that about?
Near quiet, over two hours — as eerily muted as the sound of one Han clapping.
Is that the truest sound of a spinoff franchise dying?
The best Star Wars moments have always spurred rousing cheers from the popcorn crowds. The awe-inspiring crawl and special effects, the pivoting plot twists, the coolest of duels, the grand entrances and the fatal exits — all the highlights have prompted “ooh’s” and “ahh’s.”
Yet it’s not just that. Harrison Ford’s wry one-liners have long prompted genuine laughs. Jar Jar Binks’s moronic one-liners have long elicited groans and audible mocking. And even Star Wars’s most divisive moments — see: “Jedi, Last” — have drawn a wide range of irrepressible noises. They’re all the sounds of a movie affecting the viewer on some core level.
But “Solo,” stunningly, sounds like a funeral that the theater’s mourners are sleepwalking through.
Oddly, this doesn’t mean that “Solo” is a dull movie. It’s actually rather exceptionally solid. All the correct story beats are hit; all the key characters are introduced and cycled through just as we would expect; and all the chase scenes, kill shots, verbal showdowns and acts of deception come precisely as we expect them.
What is lacking are true highs and lows. There are numerous charming performances, including by many of the leads, but it’s tough to play much beyond what’s on the page. Crucially — and this isn’t said lightly, because I’m a longtime Lawrence Kasdan fan — the dialogue needs serious punching up to be worthy of this franchise this far along. The jokes show more paunch than punch; they arrive in the right spots, but punctuality only gets you dutifully to the next beat.
Perhaps many of the jokes were once supposed to be found improvisationally on set, under original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who reportedly encouraged that kind of experimentation. And surely director Ron Howard, coming in late in the game, had his hands full in simply steering and docking this craft as a professional, cohesive whole — which he gamely does.
Perhaps the fault lies not in the stars, but in the frequency of these Star Wars films. Maybe we’ve seen so much that we’ve become harder to surprise. Even “Solo’s” graphical introduction — which invokes the iconic typeface and wording of “a galaxy far, far away” — seems to inspire only yawns at this point. And the rest . . . is silence.
If you’re at Disney and Lucasfilm right now, that type of silence should be deafening.
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