A new featurette hit the internet the other day to ramp up excitement for May 25th and for our own origin story for the galaxy’s favorite scoundrel. And well … I barely saw anyone talking about it afterward. And I follow a relatively decent number of entertainment sites and Star Wars nerds.
The seeming lack of excitement is not a death knell, but I have a bad feeling about this.
What’s Bad
What Marvel has done with the MCU is truly remarkable. Ramping up excitement for each subsequent movie with tiny cameos, end-credits clips and Ant-Man sized easter eggs has kept their fan base salivating, commiserating, and prognosticating between each new release like it’s their full-time jobs. The fandom, particularly the women involved in it, have kept their eyes and ears and imaginations at high-level interest for YEARS now, and that is no small feat in an industry currently beset like a plague with reboots and rehashes and returns and new worlds alike.
Star Wars used to be the arbiter of that type of fandom loyalty. Even with the scorcher of Episode I, Star Wars fans came out in droves for Episode II. The Special Edition releases of the original trilogy in the late 90s were the first time I remembered overnight crowds sleeping for movie tickets. The midnight premiere showing: a Star Wars thing.
Image via Lucasfilm
And while theories do abound, that level of excitement, the kind Star Wars used to engender and that the MCU currently does, is not evident in this last month’s runup to Solo. Sure, we know Han Solo, and we want to know more. But do we have to see The Last Jedi to understand this movie? Are we incapable of understanding the characters and themes and villains and world-building of Solo without seeing The Force Awakens or Rogue One? Will Solo makes us ACHE for the next Star Wars installment? All of those questions can be answered with a classic Solo Scoff. No way.
There’s also the chaos of the production itself. Rumors have been plaguing the Solo set since casting was announced. The directors left. Sure, Ron Howard stepped in as a more than competent replacement, but if The Hobbit movies taught us anything, it’s that even the most competent director can flail when time is against him (and when another director altogether did all the pre-production). Rumors swirled that the star, Alden Ehrenreich, was sent to ACTING CLASSES mid-shoot because he wasn’t turning in a good enough performance. This picture exists. Can any fan truly get stoked for a movie that has you essentially just gritting your teeth and praying it’s not a total shitshow?
What’s Good
But all is not lost. The glimpses we’ve seen in the trailers have shown a galaxy that’s gritty, a fitting setting for the formation of our flyboy smuggler. The new featurette even hails some really awesome new footage. Watch:
Sure, we expect to hear Ron Howard and cast talk about the movie in vague and slightly titillating terms: it’s a featurette. But when Donald Glover and Alden narrate, each with perfectly sleepy vocal fry, about how we will see HOW Han became Han, the first tingles of emotion come through. This is someone we think we know well, but as he tells Emilia Clarke’s character at the end, “What’s that?” Like, really. What DO we really know about Han sans Chewie, pre-Falcon?
The idea that this is a movie where the Empire truly controls everything – there is no Rebellion, no Resistance – already has me anticipating the world-building. Will it feel in some places like a communist regime, the Roman Empire, or 1984? The appearance of Lawrence Kasdan reminds me that despite all the myriad rumors, the script was at least in great hands. Han as a soldier! Lando as a mob-boss acting gangster! Chewie and Han forming a bond that lasts … well until Episode VII. And they took at least one major thing from the MCU that will ensure it’s good: they both have Paul Bettany. All of this is the good.
And here’s something even better: it has been reported that tickets for Solo will go on sale, you guessed it, May the Fourth. So watch for that!
And when it comes to being a Star Wars fan who is unsure whether or not Solo will be any good, let me give you a piece of advice from the scoundrel himself:
“Keep your distance, though, Chewie, but don’t look like you’re trying to keep your distance.”
