It’s just two of us watching Solo movie tonight. As Star Wars fans, this is an unmissable movie for us, despite hearing a lot of problems during the making of this movie. Thus, leaving us with low, or even, no expectation coming to the cinema.

We read about the bad acting of the main actor, we read about the director, Ron Howard, was asked to come in middle of shooting, to take over and reshoot of the movie, and we read about Disney lowered their sales expectation of this movie.

Sounds like a mess.

But it turnout to be a good, fast-paced and well-intertwined movie with the previous Star Wars movies, especially the Episode I.

It’s not as good as Rogue One, but I’m far from disappointed.

Some of my takes: *SPOILER ALERT*

• The story is simple. Linear and the surprises are on double-cross between Han Solo, Beckett, Enfys and Qi’ra. But that alone quite gave interesting twist to the story. Also some references to previous Star Wars movies are nice to be seen. Now we know who gave Han his ‘Solo’ name. We also know how Han got Millenium Falcon from Lando (and why Lando always said it was his ship when they meet in Bespin). We learned how Han Solo contributed to the establishment of Rebellion. And finally we got the proof of Han Solo took Millenium Falcon through Kessel Run in 12 parsecs! (Sorry, Star Wars geek only)

• I’ll probably join the bandwagon with the Star Wars fans who don’t think Alden Ehrenreich is the right cast for Han Solo. Yes, he is not bad. But for me, looks like he tried too much to mimic Han Solo. The smirk, the gesture. But it wasn’t look natural to him, in my opinion. He couldn’t recreate the swagger and cockiness of Han Solo ala Harrison Ford. Somebody like Chris Pratt might do the job better.
• As Solo movie timeline is actually 10 years before Episode IV (A New Hope), the surprise turnout in this movie is Darth Maul, who we saw was cut into two by Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode I (Phantom Menace). Apparently he is still alive. And if we refer to TV series Star Wars Clone Wars, Darth Maul might survive and live on artificial (robot) limbs. It’s interesting to see if we will see the continuation of this movie, with Qi’ra and Darth Maul take more center stage with their Dawn Crimson. In Obi Wan movie, perhaps?