Film of the Week: Solo – A Star Wars Story

The internet sighed in unison when Disney announced a series of anthology films. When the deal was made, and Star Wars officially transitioned to Disney’s ownership, they stated all established canon outside the main film’s franchise would be disregarded completely, and a series of anthology films will be the new canon. This didn’t settle well with fans of the franchise, and understandably so. Star Wars is a massive influence across the world, and throwing away the expanded universe would leave a red mark.

However, despite our protests, we all knew Disney would make these new anthology films anyway. All we had to do was let it happen. The first was Rogue One – A Star Wars Story, which explored how the plans to the Death Star were stolen. It was much better than we expected it to be, albeit, a good chunk of the people who saw it only really remembered Vader’s scene near the end. It tied up a couple of loose ends that were never officially explained. In a way, fans of Star Wars sorted of accepted the film because it wasn’t bad.

Solo – A Star Wars Story, on the other hand, could have been much better. It once again tied up a few loose ends that were only ever referenced, such as Han Solo making the Kessel Run in Twelve Parsecs, which was further established Han was rounding down – which is in character. I enjoyed seeing that finally on the big screen, but it was bookended by a film I’m not sure was absolutely necessary. Sure, we learn a lot more about Han, and his origin story, and how he came to be captain of the Millennium Falcon. Screen Junkies, the YouTube channel said it best in their Honest Trailer video, “prepare for the feature length adaptation of Han Solo’s Wikipedia page”.

Dedicated fans have no need to see this film, because they already know Han Solo, and even if the film did add something new and original, they technically cannot as it would go against the character everyone knows the original trilogy. Except, they did add something new (or at least someone new who I didn’t know of before watching this film) and that’s Han’s love interest who he tried to save after being separated at the beginning, only to discovered she’s a completely different person, and he’s forced to understand and accept the woman who he fell in love with is no longer who’s standing in front of him. She disappears – never to be seen again in any of the 6 movies. Makes sense… I think.

Han Solo is a film we didn’t ask for, but was going to be made anyway, so some of us gave it the benefit of the doubt, and it failed. Actually, it bombed so fast, Disney had no choice but to automatically put the following films in the anthology series into consideration, with the prospect of them not being made at all. It just goes to show what us audience is capable of.

Disney has been rapidly expanding over the last few years, purchasing company after company, and for the most part, not doing that badly. It’s dominating a staggering 39% of all films released since 2017, and with the recent addition of 20^th Century Fox, complete with its entire film catalogue and upcoming projects, that percentage will only but continue to increase. My point is, with so much going on all at once, with a massive company such as Disney, of course there will be inevitable missteps here and there. It’s unfortunate that one of those most notable missteps had to be with Star Wars.

I doubt Disney is going to cancel the other films in the anthology series, it just might take a little longer for them to come out. Whether we dislike the entire idea of the anthology series – the best thing they can do in some people’s eyes is to cancel them, but that’s not going to happen. What they can do is learn from what made Han Solo not as good as Disney had hoped, and make the following films in the anthology series better, maybe on par with the tolerable Rogue One, or better yet, surpass it.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)