“I thought we were in trouble there for a second but it’s fine. We’re fine.”
Knowing what we know about the troubled production of Solo: A Star Wars Story, it’s tempting to call this bit of dialogue from the first full trailer for the movie, released this morning, a bit of meta-commentary on the film itself. Indeed, it might be.
Last summer found Solo, the second in the series of Star Wars anthology films, after 2016’s remarkable Rogue One, suddenly without a director after the abrupt firing of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller by LucasFilm honcho Kathleen Kennedy. With just weeks left in principle shooting, Kennedy, unhappy with the supposedly irreverent tone of Lord and Miller’s work, brought in a ringer. Well, inasmuch as a director like Ron Howard can every be called a ringer.
Since then, the rumor mill has been rampant with suggestions of impending disaster. Reshoots led to recasting certain roles when original actors couldn’t return, key scenes were redone to better match the intended tone of writers Jon and Lawrence Kasdan’s script. The entire project had an air of futility as months went by without so much as a hint of a trailer. Last night changed all that.
The release of the first teaser during last night’s Super Bowl certainly helped quell the feeling that there was no way Solo could make its May 25 release date, and offered us a tiny glimpse of what to expect from next Star Wars movie. That was followed quickly by this morning’s release of a different trailer, which might turn out to be the nail in the coffin for naysayers and detractors.
One of the first things you notice watching the new trailer is just how different the film looks from the Star Wars films we’ve gotten previously. Similar to Rogue One, Solo presents to us a new vision of the galaxy far, far away. Never mind the new actors (though Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover do look pretty amazing as Han and Lando, respectively), the look and feel of Solo is unlike anything we’ve seen from the franchise before.
There’s a kind of gritty darkness to the perspective that’s quickly apparent in the latest trailer, far different from the slick and polished world of the main saga. Here we’re taken down the street level, into the dirt of the galaxy; a world of criminals and smugglers just trying to make their names and hit a big score in the process.
A heist movie set in the Star Wars universe is a pretty solid premise, even if we didn’t exactly need a movie set around Han Solo. Still, it’s difficult not to get behind Ehrenreich, who seems to manifest the cocky smugness of a young Harrison Ford in his performance. It’s also not hard to get excited to see Emilia Clarke and Woody Harrelson and find out just where they fit in the larger world.
Though Solo might not be out of the woods yet, the fires of concern have been considerably dampened by the one-two punch of the trailers. At the very least, we can breathe a little easier know that we’ve seen a bit of footage—especially since the footage looks so amazing. Where it’ll ultimately sit among the Star Wars oeuvre we can’t yet know, but at the very least we won’t have to wait long to find out.
Solo: A Star Wars Story opens everyone on May 25.
2 Responses
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The Western Samurai-imagery, ridiculous fur-jacketed Snowtroopers with metal boots, a Star Destroyer being built over a dilapidated, industrial-looking Corellia and the musty set-up to a game of Sabacc with Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian could be cause for cautious optimism. But the guitar-riff in the lead-up to the action in the trailer seems out of place, as does the cartoon logo for the movie’s Solo title (very Lego, ironically). I didn’t see Greedo in the trailer, he’s got to be there, right?