Solo: A Star Wars Story - what went wrong
Disney decided it was time to explore the backstory of one of the galaxy's most beloved characters. There was speculation from the beginning as to why this film was even being made, as fans already knew enough about Star Wars' greatest scoundrel and with such a charismatic performance from Harrison Ford in the original films, it's difficult to imagine anybody else playing that role.
The pressure fell on Alden Ehrenreich to bring Solo to life with his interpretation. Unfortunately it seems the project was destined to fail. It came just months after The Last Jedi and there were problems on set whilst shooting. Alden had to have an acting coach to show him how to act like Han Solo whilst filming was still underway.
Original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were fired during production of the film and subsequently replaced by Ron Howard who stepped in to the director's chair to complete the project. It's unclear what caused the switch up, but rumours suggest that there were issues with the script and reshoots had to be made, pushing the films budget up to $257 million.
Even with such a high budget, Solo became the first Star Wars film to bomb after only returning $393 million at the box office.
The problem with this film, in my opinion, is that Disney put so much focus on Han's backstory that it risked diminishing the character from the original trilogy and caused some confusion with continuity.
To summarise the issues, it felt as though Disney spent a few hundred million answering questions that nobody asked.
How did he meet Chewbacca? How did he win the Falcon off Lando? How did the Kessel run play out? Why is his last name Solo? That last one in particular really stripped away any ambiguity the character had from the original trilogy.
It was interesting seeing the criminal underworld aswell as Dryden Vos (played by Paul Bettany) and the surprising (yet not surprising if you follow the expanded universe) return of Maul, complete with both legs and his signature lightsaber.
It was exciting to see Ray Park reprise the role with Sam Witwer once again providing the voice from Clone Wars and Rebels and to hear him mention his homeworld of Dathomir (a first in the films) was particularly exciting.
Where that leaves that continuity now is very much up in the air, with some fans wanting a sequel and others wanting to forget the film ever existed. It seems it was cursed to fail thanks to poor timing and poor writing.
However, love it or hate it, this was one spin-off that was always going to struggle to get off the ground, particularly because, as much as other actors deserve a chance, to step in to Harrison Ford's shoes was always going to be ambitious for any actor. Alden doesn't do a bad job, but when it comes down to it, he's not Harrison Ford.
However, this isn't the first incident where part of Han's character has changed. Back when they re-released the original Star Wars Saga on Blu-Ray, Lucas made a drastic change to Han's scene with Greedo at the cantina on Mos Eisley.
A controversial change to the scene which shows Greedo shooting at Han only for Han to evade the shot with a tilt of his head and retaliate, a strange change to the original scene where Han shoots first.
George Lucas claims the change was done to make it appear that Han was shooting in self-defence, as opposed to a simple cold attack on Greedo. Some fans feel as though this scene weakens the character. As far as I'm concerned, Han shot first!
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