Han, What?

The underlying problem with ‘Solo’

Warning: If you have not yet seen 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' do not read this post. There be spoilers. Read it after you see it. 

The fact that I waited two weeks to see Solo probably isn’t a good sign for Disney. While I may not be a Star Wars absolute diehard, I’m firmly in the fanboy camp. I think I’ve seen every film since the original trilogy on the opening weekend.¹ I even went to an early preview of The Phantom Menace to see it in all its… glory? I should have been all-in on Solo, but something was holding me back.

Having now seen it, I think I know what it was. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. It was fun. It didn’t seem too long (unlike many other films these days). And I’d happily watch it again. But, if I’m being honest, the most memorable thing beyond one bit at the end (more on this later) is just how decidedly unmemorable it was. It was the most vanilla Star Wars adventure yet. Again, not the worst, just the most forgettable.

But that view is in hindsight. I suspect there’s a reason one level deeper why the film isn’t resonating with audiences in the way the other films — even the highly controversial The Last Jedi and the production-plagued Rogue One — have. And I think it ties directly into what Disney does right with another one of their properties: Marvel.

The problem with Solo isn’t the actual film itself, it’s that it was made in the first place. It was an error in judgement by Kathleen Kennedy and crew to grab the lowest of low-hanging fruit. Everyone loves Han Solo. Even Luke Skywalker has his detractors, but Han does not. You love him, and he knows.

Therefore, everyone would love a Han Solo origin story, right? Well, no. It’s not necessarily that answering all those questions about his backstory ruins him as a character, it’s that those stories are actually completely unnecessary to the character. This sounds counterintuitive, I know. The more backstory, the better, right? Again, I think the opposite is often true — there’s immense power in deciding what to show (and tell) versus what you don’t. You leave it up to the audience to fill in the gaps. Solo removes that mystique.²

In other words, Han is sacrosanct.

Marvel has no such baggage. The origin stories of their characters, for the most part, were done before the characters were united in The Avengers films. There are counterexamples — Black Panther being a prime one — but these aren’t characters deeply ingrained into the cultural zeitgeist in the same way. At least not yet. So you can tell backstories without much worry.³

This is slightly unfair to Disney since they acquired the Star Wars franchise after it was already well established, versus building up the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) from scratch.⁴ But, what’s the line Spider-Man liked to say (in the era before MCU Spider-Man) — with great power comes…

Disney could have looked to the disaster that was the first (and as a result, only) X-Men Origins film: Wolverine.⁵ Yes, it was an awful movie in many ways, but the story itself felt unnecessary. It wasn’t until the second, and really the third Wolverine film, Logan, that the filmmakers got it: it doesn’t need to be an origin story, it just has to be an original story. Logan was great, as a result.

This, by the way, is exactly what Rogue One got right as well. It’s not predicated around any of the characters we know and love, it’s a tangential story in the same universe. And it works. If you had subbed out Jyn Erso for Princess Leia, it would have been another ridiculous origin story.

See also: the prequels.

So yes, the Solo filmmakers did the best they could with the cards they were dealt. And again, they did a pretty good job!⁶ Solo is definitely watchable, and even pretty enjoyable at several points. But the reason for its existence is questionable, at best.

One more thing:

As alluded to above, the most memorable scene is obviously the Maul reveal. This was a character that was maybe one of five good things about the prequels — and certainly one of the only decent things about The Phantom Menace. It’s nice to create a bridge to that god awful trilogy, I suppose.⁷

Did we need to see Maul again after he was pretty definitively cut down by Obi-Wan Kenobi? No, but that was a choice made by the folks in charge of the animated canon. I only found this out after watching the film and doing a Google search — here’s a good primer. I find it odd to rely on different formats to be fully up-to-date with storylines.

Make fun of the MCU all you want, but at least it largely sequesters the films from everything else. You can go into a Marvel movie knowing that if you’ve seen the others, you’re set — something which has undoubtedly helped the box office results, by the way. The same is apparently not true for Star Wars, which is an odd choice.

Anyway, now I’m nitpicking. The key issue is the existence of Solo in the first place, not that the universe isn’t as well-maintained as the MCU — newsflash: nothing this complex in the history of cinema has been, it’s the masterstroke of Kevin Feige. Now a Lando Calrissian movie with Han Solo as a minor character, that I would have been all for.⁸ And it sounds like we’re going to get that. It’s just too bad that Disney needed to learn something from all of us watching Solo to get there…

¹ I was two years old when Return of the Jedi was released, but I saw all of the re-releases of the original trilogy on opening day in the 1990s.

² That said, I did love the bit about why the Billy Dee Williams-era Lando always called Haaahn, Hannn. Good gag — but could have been done in the Lando movie!

³ It helps, of course, that Black Panther is a actually a really good movie in its own right.

⁴ Obviously the comics have existed for decades, but there were already so many story lines by the time of the movies that it would be nearly impossible to hold anyone accountable for diverging from a specific storyline.

⁵ Incidentally produced by 21st Century Fox, not Disney, of course.

⁶ Especially when you consider the narrowly averted disaster of firing your directors halfway through the film!

⁷ As we did with Jimmy Smits in Rogue One.

⁸ If only Disney hadn’t ruined Lando’s best line — “Everything you’ve heard about me is true.” — in the trailer. I hate when studios do this so, so, so much.