Solo: A Star Wars Story - The Star Wars Genre?
Thoughts On: Solo: A Star Wars Movie (2018)
The story of how Han became Solo...
Solo is a deeply mediocre film, almost unforgivably so. 'Star Wars' has become a genre unto itself by now. We can think of this technically by considering genre to be that which underlies a story and links it to other art; those qualities of a story which make it determinable, categorisable and recognisable in regards to other works. Star Wars has become its own genre because the films in said series are so deeply intertwined--in spirit and form, not just because they exist in the same world. Each Star Wars film is a product and descendent, categorically, of the original that has, by virtue of its originality, left no extraneous roots for each new film to grow from. That is to say that it is incredibly difficult--pointless maybe--to compare, for example, Solo, to an average action, adventure or sci-fi film. It seems only feasible to speak of it as a Star Wars film, and this, it seems, is its primarily and maybe singular genre. This situation is not necessarily a success of filmmaking for the Star Wars franchise as the emergence of the Star Wars genre and its cultivation/continuation is foundationally worrying.
Genres flourish because the prototypical genre narrative that underlies all that can be categorised as, for example, a romance, is either profoundly truthful or revelatory. Furthermore, a million romances can be weaved over a thousand years due to the genre's elemental base, its abstractness and ambiguity that allows for a myriad of narrative forms. Genres come and go, rise and die off or somehow come to play themselves out and tell their last tale--the whole tale--often because their ambiguity and fundamental meaning become exhausted. This, it seems, is what happened to the American Western. The Western takes the fundamental hero narrative and specifies it, gives it a context and certain key themes (a conflict between past and present as just one example), and so therefore confines it. One could argue that it is because the hero's tale is limited by the Western that the possibilities within the genre and the range of its narrative forms are also limited; the hero's tale can be told endlessly, but the Western narrative is not necessarily timeless - film history speaks for itself in this regard.
The danger, or rather, fault, of Star Wars becoming its own genre of film is two-fold. Firstly, how profound is the prototypical narrative? Objectively, one could say much about the force, about the dichotomy of good and evil typical of Star Wars that is hinged upon familial relations. Alas, whilst the basic Star Wars narrative deals with a dark and light side, a father and a son, two parts of a whole that have become fractured but will become whole, there are further melodramatic and spectacle-driven constructs around this which cheapen and have come to overwhelm the prototypical narrative. Looking, then, at the evolution of the basic Star Wars narrative, we see a definite disavowal from an exploration of good and bad, and especially of familial relations, and an emphasis on humour, side-characters, plot and spectacle. The new Star Wars films, The Last Jedi especially, also attempts to integrate a classical vision of the world, one which is based upon family and romance, into itself, but simultaneously exists in a social context which would rather distort what you might call old dogma and binaries--and it suffers for this. The Star Wars films can then easily be seen to be disavowing one of their key elements, seeking to embody a Pixar-ian vision of family (one which sees many differing individuals form what you might call a unique family). I will not attempt to engage any of this subject matter, instead, I merely mean to outline the ways in which the fundamental Star Wars narrative is being lost in the new films and was made a mockery of in the prequels. What does this mean for the Star Wars genre? It seems to be killing itself off.
If we return to the idea that the original Star Wars films attempted to cultivate a profound and symbolically affecting narrative at this point, we can too easily become confused. Where has this profundity gone? Was it ever there? If the modern Star Wars films essentially disregard the logic and meaning in the prototypical Star Wars narrative--if the modern Star Wars narrative is interested more in disenchanted groups and special individuals as opposed to familial binaries that billow up a cultural network--then what is there to be said of truth in the Star Wars narrative? It seems that truth is still being searched for. And whilst this is not necessarily bad if we consider the Star Wars films to be a mere succession of filmic products, it is damaging to the Star Wars genre. If there is no fundamental logic that is engaged in all incarnations of a genre's prototypical narrative, then the genre begins to fracture. This is why the most basic genres, such as romance, have their sub-genres. Star Wars, in my perspective, is too limited of a genre - there are only 10 films - to begin fracturing; the fissures between the narratives only implies that something is wrong to me.
Second to this issue of truth and meaning in regards to the Star Wars genre is an issue of formal ambiguity and flexibility. Whilst the Star Wars films are failing to send and build a cohesive message, they all assume the very same conventions and incredibly similar plot forms. This is the reverse of what you'd hope for a flourishing genre; in all hope, the narrative form would change across films as to shine new light on some deeper meaning motivating the existence of the genre. With Star Wars, the narrative form is pretty much so replicated, or is incredibly trope ridden and exhaustively self-reflexive, whilst the subtext meanders about blindly. In short, the Star Wars genre, as it is, has nothing in particular to say and has nothing new to show us.
Solo feels like an awful symptom of this diseased and dying genre. Whilst one could speak about the poor dialogue, the abundance of plot holes and the shockingly poor handling of character, these are not the most damning failures of the film. What makes Solo unforgivably mediocre is its desire to placate its audience by throwing a plot at them, which is pitifully subservient to unimaginative spectacle, that takes them from an unknown point A to a known point B without ever showing us anything new. In short, we know who Han Solo is, and one of the key facts about him that we are all very familiar with is that he is in the original Star Wars films. This means that he is not going to die in a prequel. With this being painfully obvious, why does this film use its plot to wander between action set-pieces that assume that we, the audience, don't essentially think of Han Solo as invincible? Why should we care about how close Han comes to death if we know he won't die? Why must this be a constant focus? Are we supposed to be excited about the fact that Han Solo--who is definitely not going to die--came close to death?
How idiotic the framing of this narrative is. Why focus on plot and spectacle when we know where the plot must end up and that the spectacle has limitations? It is painfully clear that the purpose--if there even is one--of telling a Solo story is to reveal parts of his character which we have not yet been privy to and to cultivate wider meaning in the Star Wars universe through this. Are we ever provided details of interest that reveal a new face of Han Solo, that change the Star Wars universe? No. We are given facts via plot devices that essentially de-brief us on, for example, how Chewy and Solo met. Even the prequels do a better job of exploring how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader than this does exploring how Han becomes Han Solo. The prequels then understood-- better than Solo--that what an audience is really looking for in a story which has a known end is new layers of meaning: Why do Chewy and Solo meet? What are the consequences of their meeting? The only detail provided here is in the form of a terrible romance that leads to a revolution; Han Solo loves a girl and inadvertently begins many revolutions in his quest to be with her.
In this, there seems to be an attempt to provide some new meaning and logic to the Star Wars genre in Solo. This is found in the film's exploration of betrayal and love; trust. These ideas are loosely connected to family, good and evil, but never is anything of cohesivity and substance conjured in this film. Therefore, this appears to be subtextually distracted. Solo adds little to the grand Star Wars narrative by way of symbology or character; who Solo is in the original Star Wars films is not changed, is not given more depth by this film. And such should have been its sole purpose.
In total, I can only say that Solo is grindingly purposeless and stupidly lacking in intention. If this is one of the most expensive films ever made, I'd like to know where the money went. I turn to you, however: What do you think of Solo? What do you think of Star Wars as a genre and of the franchise's future?
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Pinch Me - Happy Apathy In The Hyper-Normal
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End Of The Week Shorts #76
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
The story of how Han became Solo...
Solo is a deeply mediocre film, almost unforgivably so. 'Star Wars' has become a genre unto itself by now. We can think of this technically by considering genre to be that which underlies a story and links it to other art; those qualities of a story which make it determinable, categorisable and recognisable in regards to other works. Star Wars has become its own genre because the films in said series are so deeply intertwined--in spirit and form, not just because they exist in the same world. Each Star Wars film is a product and descendent, categorically, of the original that has, by virtue of its originality, left no extraneous roots for each new film to grow from. That is to say that it is incredibly difficult--pointless maybe--to compare, for example, Solo, to an average action, adventure or sci-fi film. It seems only feasible to speak of it as a Star Wars film, and this, it seems, is its primarily and maybe singular genre. This situation is not necessarily a success of filmmaking for the Star Wars franchise as the emergence of the Star Wars genre and its cultivation/continuation is foundationally worrying.
Genres flourish because the prototypical genre narrative that underlies all that can be categorised as, for example, a romance, is either profoundly truthful or revelatory. Furthermore, a million romances can be weaved over a thousand years due to the genre's elemental base, its abstractness and ambiguity that allows for a myriad of narrative forms. Genres come and go, rise and die off or somehow come to play themselves out and tell their last tale--the whole tale--often because their ambiguity and fundamental meaning become exhausted. This, it seems, is what happened to the American Western. The Western takes the fundamental hero narrative and specifies it, gives it a context and certain key themes (a conflict between past and present as just one example), and so therefore confines it. One could argue that it is because the hero's tale is limited by the Western that the possibilities within the genre and the range of its narrative forms are also limited; the hero's tale can be told endlessly, but the Western narrative is not necessarily timeless - film history speaks for itself in this regard.
The danger, or rather, fault, of Star Wars becoming its own genre of film is two-fold. Firstly, how profound is the prototypical narrative? Objectively, one could say much about the force, about the dichotomy of good and evil typical of Star Wars that is hinged upon familial relations. Alas, whilst the basic Star Wars narrative deals with a dark and light side, a father and a son, two parts of a whole that have become fractured but will become whole, there are further melodramatic and spectacle-driven constructs around this which cheapen and have come to overwhelm the prototypical narrative. Looking, then, at the evolution of the basic Star Wars narrative, we see a definite disavowal from an exploration of good and bad, and especially of familial relations, and an emphasis on humour, side-characters, plot and spectacle. The new Star Wars films, The Last Jedi especially, also attempts to integrate a classical vision of the world, one which is based upon family and romance, into itself, but simultaneously exists in a social context which would rather distort what you might call old dogma and binaries--and it suffers for this. The Star Wars films can then easily be seen to be disavowing one of their key elements, seeking to embody a Pixar-ian vision of family (one which sees many differing individuals form what you might call a unique family). I will not attempt to engage any of this subject matter, instead, I merely mean to outline the ways in which the fundamental Star Wars narrative is being lost in the new films and was made a mockery of in the prequels. What does this mean for the Star Wars genre? It seems to be killing itself off.
If we return to the idea that the original Star Wars films attempted to cultivate a profound and symbolically affecting narrative at this point, we can too easily become confused. Where has this profundity gone? Was it ever there? If the modern Star Wars films essentially disregard the logic and meaning in the prototypical Star Wars narrative--if the modern Star Wars narrative is interested more in disenchanted groups and special individuals as opposed to familial binaries that billow up a cultural network--then what is there to be said of truth in the Star Wars narrative? It seems that truth is still being searched for. And whilst this is not necessarily bad if we consider the Star Wars films to be a mere succession of filmic products, it is damaging to the Star Wars genre. If there is no fundamental logic that is engaged in all incarnations of a genre's prototypical narrative, then the genre begins to fracture. This is why the most basic genres, such as romance, have their sub-genres. Star Wars, in my perspective, is too limited of a genre - there are only 10 films - to begin fracturing; the fissures between the narratives only implies that something is wrong to me.
Second to this issue of truth and meaning in regards to the Star Wars genre is an issue of formal ambiguity and flexibility. Whilst the Star Wars films are failing to send and build a cohesive message, they all assume the very same conventions and incredibly similar plot forms. This is the reverse of what you'd hope for a flourishing genre; in all hope, the narrative form would change across films as to shine new light on some deeper meaning motivating the existence of the genre. With Star Wars, the narrative form is pretty much so replicated, or is incredibly trope ridden and exhaustively self-reflexive, whilst the subtext meanders about blindly. In short, the Star Wars genre, as it is, has nothing in particular to say and has nothing new to show us.
Solo feels like an awful symptom of this diseased and dying genre. Whilst one could speak about the poor dialogue, the abundance of plot holes and the shockingly poor handling of character, these are not the most damning failures of the film. What makes Solo unforgivably mediocre is its desire to placate its audience by throwing a plot at them, which is pitifully subservient to unimaginative spectacle, that takes them from an unknown point A to a known point B without ever showing us anything new. In short, we know who Han Solo is, and one of the key facts about him that we are all very familiar with is that he is in the original Star Wars films. This means that he is not going to die in a prequel. With this being painfully obvious, why does this film use its plot to wander between action set-pieces that assume that we, the audience, don't essentially think of Han Solo as invincible? Why should we care about how close Han comes to death if we know he won't die? Why must this be a constant focus? Are we supposed to be excited about the fact that Han Solo--who is definitely not going to die--came close to death?
How idiotic the framing of this narrative is. Why focus on plot and spectacle when we know where the plot must end up and that the spectacle has limitations? It is painfully clear that the purpose--if there even is one--of telling a Solo story is to reveal parts of his character which we have not yet been privy to and to cultivate wider meaning in the Star Wars universe through this. Are we ever provided details of interest that reveal a new face of Han Solo, that change the Star Wars universe? No. We are given facts via plot devices that essentially de-brief us on, for example, how Chewy and Solo met. Even the prequels do a better job of exploring how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader than this does exploring how Han becomes Han Solo. The prequels then understood-- better than Solo--that what an audience is really looking for in a story which has a known end is new layers of meaning: Why do Chewy and Solo meet? What are the consequences of their meeting? The only detail provided here is in the form of a terrible romance that leads to a revolution; Han Solo loves a girl and inadvertently begins many revolutions in his quest to be with her.
In this, there seems to be an attempt to provide some new meaning and logic to the Star Wars genre in Solo. This is found in the film's exploration of betrayal and love; trust. These ideas are loosely connected to family, good and evil, but never is anything of cohesivity and substance conjured in this film. Therefore, this appears to be subtextually distracted. Solo adds little to the grand Star Wars narrative by way of symbology or character; who Solo is in the original Star Wars films is not changed, is not given more depth by this film. And such should have been its sole purpose.
In total, I can only say that Solo is grindingly purposeless and stupidly lacking in intention. If this is one of the most expensive films ever made, I'd like to know where the money went. I turn to you, however: What do you think of Solo? What do you think of Star Wars as a genre and of the franchise's future?
Previous post:
Pinch Me - Happy Apathy In The Hyper-Normal
Next post:
End Of The Week Shorts #76
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
