There are few clearer indications that a big-budget Hollywood movie is in trouble than a change of director. It is not always the signal for a production to descend into chaos and ignominy – for every Exorcist: The Beginning there is a Dredd or The Outlaw Josey Wales keen to prove its reconfigured mettle – but it envelops its subject in a veil of curdled uncertainty. If the studio involved does not have the competence to get its house in order first time around, why should we risk losing two hours of our lives to find out if executives eventually managed to get the film back on track?
Solo: A Star Wars Story did not only lose its directors last year – The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were replaced by grizzled Hollywood veteran Ron Howard – but also it has been plagued by reports that Alden Ehrenreich (who plays Han Solo) needed an on-set acting coach. Lord and Miller have been painted as film-makers in the style of Jackson Pollock, who basically threw a whole lot at the wall to see what stuck. Howard was the safe pair of hands to select the best of the endless takes apparently shot by his predecessors and blend it with reshoot material to craft the final product.
How much of this is spin and how much stems from actual events we will probably never know. But the consensus is that Solo has emerged from the asteroid field intact. My colleague Peter Bradshaw praised the film as “a crackingly enjoyable adventure which frankly deserves full episode status in the great franchise”, even saying that “Ron Howard was born to direct it”. The film currently holds a 70% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That is some way south of the 91% handed to Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, but a long way ahead of the saga’s nadir, The Phantom Menace (55%).
An equally vital mark of a Star Wars movie’s success these days is the reaction of superfans. The Last Jedi was liked by critics, but scorned by hardcore acolytes for its indifference towards the saga’s more portentous leanings and its zippy, Marvel-style humour. Solo, penned by The Empire Strikes Back’s screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan (with his son Jonathan), takes no such liberties. The BBC reported that “no one need worry about Solo: A Star Wars Story upsetting the apple cart, or indeed the landspeeder: it does exactly what you might predict a prequel featuring Harrison Ford’s iconic space-scoundrel would do”.
Has Disney stumbled on a bizarre formula? The last Star Wars spin-off, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, also began life under the watchful eye of a plucky young film-making ingenue, Gareth Edwards, but ended up by all accounts being completed by the more experienced Tony Gilroy following extensive reshoots. That film also turned out to be a fans’ favourite, with many considering it superior to The Force Awakens.
This Frankenmovie approach would almost certainly fail were it not being adopted by an organisation with Disney’s clout and contacts book. It might be going a little far to suggest that the studio needs only to wave a magic money-wand at a problematic production to see it slip into line, but it seems to have pulled off the trick for the second time running.
Andrew Stanton, the great Pixar director, once lamented the difficulties of shooting live action compared with animation; with the former, he was able to start again if he hit a block – effectively reshooting several times over. The same process in live action would be mindbogglingly expensive. However, the fact that each new Star Wars movie is expected to break the $1bn barrier at the box office presumably diminishes those worries.
If Solo is accepted by the fans (and there still seem to be doubts), the stage will be set for more spin-offs. Perhaps we will now get the chance to see the mooted Yoda origins movie, with Frank Oz wheeled out for one last turn, or the super-keen Ewan McGregor will finally be given the chance to do his excellent impression of Alec Guinness in a movie worth his time (TMZ has reported that this will happen). Hell, they could even revisit those hastily abandoned plans for a Boba Fett flick.
All Disney needs to do is find some fresh film-making talent, then sack them halfway through before parachuting in a more studio-friendly director to shoot down the stormtroopers and escape in the Millennium Falcon. It is a formula that seems to work, however much we may have a really bad feeling about it.
