So after an inauspicious start to what could end up a PR nightmare, neither Ron Howard or any of the cast of the upcoming Han Solo anthology film decided to make an appearance at D23 to renew morale. Ron Howard, a more than competent filmmaker, was brought on to helm the project following the firing of directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord. Ever since then, fans and pop culture commentators have been having a field day surmising the inner workings over at the Star Wars department of Disney; the general consensus being that this film is doomed to fail. I’m as much in the dark as the next guy, but if the kind of formulaic success garnered by both The Force Awakens and Rogue One says anything, it’s that Kathleen Kennedy is not about to let a dud slip through the cracks this soon.
I predict that the yet-to-be-titled Han Solo film will be a “good movie.” Not a great one, not a compelling one, but a “good one.” It’ll have the imagery you’ve come to love, the perfunctory nods to the original films, a “holy shit, the Millennium Falcon did a thing in a thing” scene and a dash of MCU-style irreverent humor for good measure. It will be a fun, if not inconsequential, nostalgia jaunt that’ll quench our thirst until Collin Trevorrow knocks it out of the park with Episode 9 a year later. That’s how these things go now. A bunch of studio execs figured out what makes Star Wars work, so they’ll keep making Star Wars movies till we’ve had our fill or until we’re all dead, then they’ll just Peter Cushing our corpses and prop us up in every theatre across the country so we can watch some more.
I’m not above the system – I’m a willing participant. I paid to see Rogue One FOUR times, not because I thought it was a good film, but because nothing says mind-numbingly good time quite like the sound of blasters or the buzz of a lightsaber. It’s old fashioned American cinema. It works and that’s the problem.
I like the idea of the main saga feeling unabashedly like Star Wars movies. The Force Awakens did a masterful job of capturing the essence of the original films whilst ushering in newer elements that felt organic and familiar. My fear is that the anthology films, which I thought were intended to be genre films set in the Star Wars universe that played it a little less safe, are also going to be retreads of themes and images we’ve already seen before. Rogue One for example, seemed like the perfect project to shake things up with. A heist film in the context of the Star Wars mythos? How awesome would that be? Despite the erroneous cry of fan boys dubbing it a “war film,” we got another Star Wars movie, through and through. Same musical cues, same beats, same vehicles, dog fights, references, tone, etc.
It was a fine film to be sure, but the magic of Star Wars will absolutely dissipate if they all feel the same at the volume of which Disney plans to release them (at least one a year for the foreseeable future).
It’s still too early to tell if this is a trend, but the firing of Chris Miller and Phil Lord over “creative differences” to me indicates the two filmmakers, beloved for their very distinctly comedic style, were starting to take the Han Solo film to places that steered too far away from the status quo.
For all I know, in these particular instances, Miller and Lord may not have been compatible with the material, but the hiring of Ron Howard means, for better or worse, we’re going to get a lot less ambitious version of the film.
The canned extended universe taught fans that there are so many kind of stories to tell in the Star Wars universe – stories that don’t involve Jedis or Tie Fighters. The world established by Lucas is a varied sweeping fantasy sandbox and I’m dying to see what else it has to offer.
