Oh Solo. I had such high hopes.
So did the entire Star Wars franchise, your parent company Disney and a sizeable portion of the fanbase who hasn’t turned on Star Wars yet. But you let us all down.
But the root of my disappointment isn’t even in the movie that made it to the screen. It’s the fallout we’re seeing right now. Both at the box office and on social media.
Solo: A Star Wars Story isn’t a horrible movie. But it isn’t a exactly great one either. It was decent, maybe even solid, but it wasn’t a home run. And right now, both the Star Wars franchise and Disney needed it to be.
Solo had its moments but it also had plenty of warts and shortcomings as well. It can best be described as an ambitious attempt to return to the adventurous roots of the franchise while embracing a roguish, wild west theme. It tried really hard to capture the same energy as the original trilogy but just couldn’t quite pull it off. And there were times it was apparent that it was still two different directorial visions competing (and conflicting) with one another.
All the elements were there for a great movie. And it tried really hard, but it came up just short in too many ways. Even the big reveal at the end felt forced and hasty, like it was added at the last minute. (But if you enjoyed the movie and thought it was excellent, no disagreements here. More power to you).
To return to the baseball analogy, while Solo needed to be a grand slam it was a single with ambitions to steal second. A double at best. While I didn’t mind seeing it, it didn’t blow me away and judging by its disappointing box office returns this past weekend, it didn’t blow a lot of other people away either. Right now, it looks like Solo could become the biggest (only?) box office flop in Star Wars history.
Video Star Wars
But like I said, my real disappointment is in how its affecting the Star Wars brand.
Star Wars is at a crucial point in its history. It is both amazing and more than a little disturbing how many “fans” have turned on the franchise since The Last Jedi (despite making over 620 million domestically and joining the billion dollar club). I actually just wrote a column defending the direction of the franchise and calling out fans who have turned on it (and more importantly, Kathleen Kennedy). In the days leading up to Solo’s release, social media was bombarded with fans urging a boycott and hoping it would be a flop.
They got their wish. And they weren’t shy about showing how happy it made them.
That’s the biggest reason Solo needed to hit it out of the park. It needed both a strong fan response and an equally impressive performance at the box office to instil fresh confidence in the franchise during a fragile moment in its history. And it needed to silence the pseudo fans who have been praying for the franchise’s failure and calling for Kathleen Kennedy’s head.
An unfortunate side effect of Solo’s underwhelming performance is it grants extra ammunition to the growing crowd screaming that the franchise needs to “course correct” (meaning the stories have to become carbon copies of the originals or orgies of fan fiction, Kennedy has to be replaced-preferably with a guy-and the leads have to return to being white men because girls and minorities have coodies).
I’ve already seen people thumping their chests, pointing to Solo’s numbers and screaming See! The true fans knew it would fail and now we have proof! Our way is best! Don’t cater to us and we’ll punish you.
Right now Disney has to be a little concerned that the increasingly hostile fanbase may be jeopardizing their investment. While the trilogy movies are probably going to be OK (since they’re aimed at attracting a new generation of fans), their plans for anthology films (ironically to appeal to the hardcore original fans) could be scrapped. And it would be a shame if they caved and fired Kennedy, who has delivered three billion dollar titles in a row before this.
What’s also sad is if Disney concedes (though right now I’m not holding my breath), it likely also means they’ll abandon taking chances with the franchise and adopt safe, predictable and stale story telling (which is what so many fans seem to want). It would be a tragedy if one of the most popular and beloved film franchises of all time became a product of cookie cutter storytelling just to appeal to a dated fanbase.
The fans were challenged by something new, and many of them rebelled.
This doesn’t absolve Solo of any responsibility mind you. Everyone involved should have known this needed to be the best movie they could make. And from my seat, it felt like too much of it was going through the motions, expecting to pass by on brand name recognition alone (and again, no disrespect to the many people who genuinely enjoyed the film). Hopefully this is a wake up call to the powers that be that they can no longer rely just on the Star Wars name to get paying butts into seats.
But I’m also left wondering, even if Solo had been lights out, would it have mattered? These anthology films are aimed at the fans who grew up with Star Wars and how many of them boycotted it, refusing to see it until they could get their way? How many fans turned their noses up at the comfort food Disney went out of their way to make them?
Would a better movie really have translated to better box office?
In the end, I honestly don’t know.
Image Disney Studios and Lucasarts
