Film Less Bad than Rogue One
It was about half an hour into Solo that I thought to myself, "you know, I'm kind of enjoying this. What were people complaining about?" It felt like it was doing all the things that Rogue One was trying to do, but to a higher standard. The first third of Solo is a gritty war movie prequel that manages to balance dark, dirty elements with lighthearted humour and two-fisted heroics. Unfortunately, the next two thirds came after that.
First I can pay some complements. Contrary to the negative press about his acting ability, Alden Ehrenreich does an excellent impression of Harrison Ford. He's got the mannerisms down to a tee. I am also interested in seeing heists and criminals within the Star Wars universe, away from the actual Star War bit. It gest us away from big CGI battles, in favour of grubby practical effects, costumes and locations. I also like how our old favourites, Chewbacca and Lando, are introduced into the story. I also like the fact that the bad guy travels in a flying skyscraper.
Now here are the problems. The first and foremost is that Solo - much like Rogue One - never manages to justify its own existence. It needlessly extrapolates small details from the original trilogy, often in the most boring ways possible. Compounding this is the movie feels the need to constantly make references all the time, as though scared we wouldn't see it as Star Wars enough. It's cheesy and distracting.
Next is the length of the movie. As much as I liked the first third, it mostly turns out to be redundant. You could cut an entire train heist and the characters in it, and it wouldn't make a difference to the movie plot. The film just keeps going and going. It then has a big climactic space chase that feels like the end, but instead of ending the film goes on for about another hour. We then have downtime as everyone sits around waiting on a dirt planet, and then our supervillain turns up in his flying Trump Tower for the final battle. It's very uneven, and often boring.
Finally, the characters are wasted. Besides those who are unceremoniously killed off, we have a femme fatale ex-GF to Han who doesn't get to do anything. Woody Harrelson is there as a proxy father figure, who apparently there to teach Han some cynicism, but fails to do that. We have a wacky droid who parodies social activists in a universe that has literal slaves; she's our first lady droid, so she also spends the whole time talking about romance and having sex with humans. Then there's Chewie and Lando, who have fun introductions but don't do much else.
There are ingredients to a good story floating in this mess of a stew. But much like Rogue One, it doesn't feel like it has a strong identity of its own. It awkwardly clings onto the coat tails of the original trilogy, failing to be an especially memorable or entertaining movie.
Film The opposite of Rogue One
The last Star Wars movie of this type was well shot, had great fight scenes, and a lot of fan service. It also added little to the Star Wars narrative beyond fan service, simply reinforcing things the first Star Wars movie already made clear, rather than giving them extra depth or meaning.
Solo adds the most useful information to Star Wars since the first film by contrast. It's the most visceral, comprehensive case for why the Galactic Empire must be destroyed, and it shows this despite the Imperial forces themselves being tertiary antagonists. It's a brilliant counterpart to "A New Hope" in that regard.
While it does an excellent job of showing why The Empire is horrible however, the film is otherwise by the numbers and fairly unremarkable. Where "Rogue One" only succeeded in clarifying some continuity and lore questions, it did have great action. While "Solo" tells a more meaningful story, the action and "Legends" nods are more lacking here. There is nothing here that wasn't better in the "Legends" material and little in the way of a war scene with visible extra planetary scope, in Star Wars!. Finally, while "Solo" doesn't go with a Foregone Conclusion as "Rogue One" did, it does end with a Shocking Swerve comparable to WCW's infamous Black Scorpion angle.
Film An Absolute Blast, but not much else.
I have heard that loads of people are going to not watch Solo because they no longer trust Disney with the franchise after the terrible Last Jedi. Which is a shame, because this film is genuinely good.
The film ultimately works because, unlike Rogue One, Solo just says "yeah, let's just have fun." The result is a film that is an absolute blast to watch and littered with so many references that not even the most avid Star Wars fan will be able to pick up all of them in one watch (at least, Fandom didn't notice the refurence to Felucia, so assumed they didn't).
However, it is bogged down a bit by the de-noodlising. They started with the Kessel Run and the legendary game of Sabacc and just ran with it from there. Heck, do we really need an explanation for why Han refers to the Falcon as she?
(Although, admitedly, L3 is the best part of the film, so I can let that part go).
Also, Dryden Vos never really meets his full potential. He's always too far away from the plot to come across as the villain...except when the heroes fight him directly. And kill him. However, the set up for that one character kinda made up for it, even if that character is a little overused by this point.
Overall, Solo lacks the interesting characters of Rogue One and is bogged down by denoodleisation (and I want to use that word more), but at the end of the day it's just a standard action flick. And as an action flick, it's an absolute blast.
Film What would be a really good movie, but dragged down by the franchise
If you showed Solo to someone that's never seen or heard of a single piece of Star Wars media in their life (...somehow), they'd probably enjoy the film more than someone who does know the franchise intimately.
This isn't like TLJ, where the issue is complaints about continuity. Rather, it's how the film always seems to feel stronger when it's not trying to tie things into the other films. Star Wars' style of filmmaking, where the world is presented as it is and random galactic details don't need exposition about them, it's still here and it wouldn't leave people behind...
...but those moments when it does bring up something from the Franchise, like OMG HAN GOT HIS BLASTER or OMG KESSEL RUN IN UNDER 12 PARSECS, they land very flat and are clearly cloying... made worse with a lot of stuff in the finale that go out of their way to Remind You Of The Thing.
Also, enough with the damn dice. They worked in TLJ to symbolize Han's loss, but no one cares about the goddamn dice >_<.
Film Here's some money...maybe don't see this Star War.
This film was a very hard sell for me the second I saw the face of the actor playing Han. But I still watched it, and it probably lands at the bottom of Disney's cinematic output for this franchise for me (yes, even below Rise of Skywalker, which was at least engaging and interesting to watch).
My misgivings about the casting weren't assuaged. Alden Ehrenreich sometimes delivers lines like Harrison Ford, but I'm sorry, the lack of physical likeness is too distracting to me. I think for a character as iconic and beloved as Han freaking Solo, the casting needed to be dead-on physically and performance-wise and I don't think either were achieved. Emilia Clarke as Qi'ra kind of bored me, in that she's yet another white brunette female Star Wars lead, and the series' third British one by this point, and her performance was like Felicity Jones' in Rogue One in that I felt anybody could have done it and someone else probably could have fit the character's scripted persona better. Donald Glover as Lando was inspired, though, and was fun to watch.
The story of Solo is a mix of things being too complicated and narrative-over-character and too indulgent in fanservice and explaining the origin of things nobody needed answers to.
The plot of the movie simply was not exciting to me and focused too much on criminal heists and double-crosses, such that gang politics and convoluted confusing dealings took over the film in lieu of character arcs and depth. I feel like we don't get a good enough picture of how Han's experiences informed his morals, and they're all right there! The characters don't make me care about the plot, and the plot doesn't make me care about the characters. Also, two of them die one sequence after their introduction for no reason at all. The most memorable character arc in the film is the bizarre droid activist who is Lando's companion, and about whom the film can't decide to take seriously or not. It's an awkward and uncomfortable characterization that feels like it's trying to say something cruel, and it's the one that stands out the most.
As for backstory, some things are good. We see Han on Corellia, we see him meeting Chewie and Lando and getting the Falcon...but also, we get unneeded explanations. The film features the Kessel Run, which was originally characterized as a swindler's tall tale and would have been fine as such. We learn why Han's last name is Solo as if the Star Wars universe was not linguistically weird enough for that name to be plausible as his birth name. We learn the origin of his dice, and there's even an explanation for why the Millennium Falcon has a gap between its prongs, and??? Who cares???
There's just not a lot recommending this film, in my opinion. The plot isn't fun or meaningful and the performances aren't largely engaging enough to stay for. The production messes obviously harmed it and I get why the anthologies got paused and shifted to TV series in its wake.