Three Sentences About Each Woman In Solo: A Star Wars Story and Then A Few More About Sarah Connor
WARNING (I guess?): Spoilers ahead for Solo: A Star Wars Story.
This weekend, I participated in the collective “okay, let’s get this over with” of Star Wars fans everywhere and accompanied by boyfriend and his cousin to the 3pm Sunday screening of Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The acting is good. The action sequences are cool. The script is capital f Fine and Full of missed opportunities. But the women are BAD. Like truly dreadful. So one-dimensional I can go through 3 of them in 3 sentences each and then talk about Felicity Ridley Targaryen for most of the rest of the time.
Without further ado… the FOUR women in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Character: Thandie Newton
Purpose: Woody Harrelson’s love interest/woman who predicts exactly what is going to kill her, dies, and then is never discussed again.
Here are my three sentences about Thandie: The entire point of her existence is to make Woody Harrelson NOT alone for a hot sec and then ALONE for the rest of the #film. Could not tell you a single thing about her otherwise except that she is right and then dead. Woody Harrelson never even kind of acts sad and LITERALLY never speaks of her again after she BLOWS HERSELF UP for him so that Paul Bettany’s Face Scar Vein Tattoos don’t explode.
Character: L3 (AKA Woke Robot)
Purpose: Adding a layer to the backstory of Han Solo’s ship. His. SHIP.
Here are my L3 sentences: The singular chance this movie has to pass the Bechdel test involves L3 talking to Brunette Queen of the North about how each of the human space babes is in love with one of them. Then she unwittingly starts a Robo-rebellion before getting shot so that she can get rescued by Childish Gambino so that HE can get shot in the shoulder because in this movie the only time Han can fly a plane is if someone gets shot in the shoulder first. Her intelligence is then removed from her destroyed, useless, ladybot body and placed into the man ship.
Character: Space Pirate Teen Queen who is NOT the daughter of Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton despite having a VERY dramatic reveal and being one of three people of color in the movie.
Purpose: Um…
Sentences: There is a scene in this movie — this STAR. WARS. movie where a character stares down an older male character and removes a helmet to reveal a young-enough-to-be-his-daughter person of the same racial makeup that his daughter would have been AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS COMPLETELY INSIGNIFICANT. This young woman is a phenomenal actress and should be in all the movies but literally her role here is NOTHING except to introduce the idea of The Rebellion. Don’t even need a third sentence but here it is.
Character: Daenerys
Purpose: “Solo’s Weakness”
I have a few more than three sentences to write about Widow Drogo but not that many more. Mostly because we learn nothing about her throughout the entirety of the movie as her existence screams out on behalf of the dude screenwriters: “u think bitches b loyal but then they not loyal.’ The story opens with Han getting out and her getting stuck behind at the literal last minute. Hotter Ansel Elgort (come the eff at me) promises he’ll come for her and then proceeds to train to do exactly that. Although why he doesn’t think she’s going to be straight up murdered as soon as they catch her, I’ll never know.
Now, realistically — your boi leaves you behind (to I’m assuming get tortured and shit) for a lot of years, you’re going to work to get over it and become cool with making it on your own. I don’t know what she likes. I don’t know what she’s good at. But I know that if you’re walking around telling everyone and their mother that you’re a ‘survivor’ than it’s a lot more feasible to me that you’d tell your ex-bf that you need your space to figure out how to handle your reunion so that you can take care of yourself if he ever disappears again rather than assume that the guy who left you on your shitty factory planet to join the imperial army and then unwittingly become a thief in the service of Vein Boss Mcgee won’t love you anymore because of the “the things you’ve done.” Miss me with women apologizing for surviving. Thanks.
The thing is, the opening left SO many rich opportunities for Me Before You’s Emilia Clarke to explore a lot of complicated responses to the horrible things that happened to her. Irrational anger at being left behind while Han was off #doingadventures? Hell yeah, bring it. Acquired numbness as a coping mechanism for lost love? Gimme. Feeding in to all female character tropes throughout the entire narrative only to finally inform the audience that SHE KNEW WHAT SHE WAS DOING THE WHOLE TIME HAHA LOOK AT THIS WOMAN AWARE OF THE POWER THAT ACTING LIKE A STEREOTYPICAL WOMAN HAS ON DUMB STUPID MEN! WE DIDN’T WRITE HER LAZILY! WE MADE HER THE SMARTEST AND THE MOST BLACK HEARTED! LADIES USUALLY HAVE GOOD HEARTS WITH HONESTY SO THIS IS A FUUUUUUUCCCKKKINNN TWIST.
She doesn’t get a monologue about her philosophy of survival like Woody does 3 times. (He also speaks on her behalf at least twice.) She doesn’t do anything of her own volition at ANY point throughout the movie UNTIL she kills Paul Vein Visage Bettany. And really the whole thing feels like whoever wrote it is probably patting himself on the back going “this chick is a perfect metaphor for ALL women because erryone warns you about them and they say one thing to your face and you like really think they’re cool and everything but then they’re like NOT but then they like ARE and honestly how is anyone ever supposed to figure these chicks OUT.”
In the end, we don’t care about any of the women beyond their relationships to the men. Two of them die mostly for the purpose of their dudes watching them die. And none of them, we presume, will be back in any significant way. (Although I hope Resistance Chick does make a return she is very cool and I like her a lot).
It’s a pretty crushing that the universe that brought us Rose, Rey, and Space Laura Dern only 6 months ago turned out such pathetic excuses for female characters. There were badass, flawed, complex women before Leia. And the tragedy isn’t that this movie fails to flesh out those characters — it’s that it doesn’t even freaking try.
