Kathleen Kennedy Learned The Wrong Lesson From 'Solo'
Kathleen Kennedy, head of Lucasfilm, said to Vanity Fair, “There should be moments along the way when you learn things.” Usually, that would be an excellent way to live, being open to lessons along the way. It’s a problem, though, when people learn the wrong lessons. The lesson Kennedy is talking about here is why she thinks the standalone Star Wars film Solo: A Star Wars Story did relatively poorly at the box office. She says the problem with the movie was that they recast the role of Han Solo.
That is such a bad take, and I want to explain why. But before starting, I want to get out of the way that Solo is my favorite Disney Star Wars movie. It has its issues, which I’ll get into, but it is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend two hours. The cast is excellent, especially Paul Bettany as Dryden Vos and Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian. It’s a fun movie and combines action and humor well.
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However, just because I liked the movie doesn’t mean there weren’t any lessons to learn from it. There were many. For starters, in the scene where Han joins the Imperial navy to get off of Corellia, he is given the name Solo by the officer at the recruiting station because Han says, “I don’t have people; I’m alone.” This is answering a question no one asked, and it’s silly and hacky. Plus, Han talks about his father in a later scene. So, he had people who would have given him a name. Han’s last name is Solo because George Lucas, as much as I love him, has never been subtle. He created a loner character and named that loner Solo. It’s as simple as that.
Another lesson Solo can teach is why and when to kill characters. Three deaths in the movie were handled horribly: L3, Rio, and Val. All three characters were only kind of introduced before they were killed off. The audience didn’t have enough to become invested. As a result, their deaths didn’t evoke any feelings. Also, the only conceivable reason for their deaths was to raise the stakes. But there are two problems with that. First, the stakes didn’t need raising in either scene. And, due to their lack of character development, killing unnamed extras would have been equivalent. To be effective in a story, deaths have to happen because the plot demands it. Anything else cheapens the story.
A third lesson has to do with worldbuilding. Han joins a high-stakes game of sabacc with Lando to try to get Lando’s ship. This whole scene was in the movie because of a bit of throwaway dialogue in The Empire Strikes Back, where Han says to Lando about the Millenium Falcon, “Hey, I won her off of you fair and square.” The problem is that sabacc is nothing more than poker with a different name. They talk about straights and seeing, raising, and calling. It takes the audience out of the galaxy far, far away, and plants them in Vegas. And, if the game was as high stakes, as they say, there’s no way Han was the only one who noticed Lando’s cheating. Not only were they just playing poker, but the players were terrible at it. The filmmakers could have shown a little creativity and created their own game.
Now we come to the biggest lesson that should have been learned from Solo. It was a bad idea to make a new origin story for a character who already had an origin story. That’s why the movie performed poorly. Han’s original origin story was a little film called Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. So there was no reason for the hardcore fans to see a movie they had already seen. Han’s character arc in Solo was the same as it was in the very first Star Wars movie. The only thing Solo did was raise a bunch of avoidable questions like: Why did Han forget all the lessons he learned during Solo? And why did he abandon the growth he had made and revert back to the loner/scoundrel? If any movie was ever unnecessary and unwanted, it was this one. As I said before, I liked Solo, but I’m hardcore and was able to look at it as an isolated film, disconnected from the rest of the Star Wars universe.
There are also non-story reasons why the ticket sales were slow. Solo was plagued by very public production issues. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were initially brought on to direct the movie. They completed principal shooting, but Lucasfilm cited creative differences that led to Lord and Miller leaving the project. So, they were let go and replaced with Ron Howard, who did extensive reshoots. Then, when the film was finally released, Disney failed to consider the cultural environment. Avengers: Infinity War (another Disney film), released about a month before Solo, was still in theaters and dominating the box office. And Deadpool 2 was released the week before and doing well. There was simply a lot of competition. The production issues are hard to fix, but finding a better release date shouldn’t be a problem.
Instead of learning any of these legitimate lessons, Kennedy decided to blame the disappointing box office on casting decisions. Obviously, she has forgotten that Obi-Wan has been recast twice without harm. Anakin has been recast three times, Ahsoka was recast, and Boba Fett was recast. Chewbacca was recast. None of the new actors were responsible for hurting their shows and movies. Alden Ehrenreich did a commendable job, and the people who actually saw the movie accepted him as Han Solo. I can’t help but wonder where Kennedy took her lesson from.
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Source(s): Deadline, Wookiepedia