Ron Howard’s efforts in the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story seem to have made a good impression on Lucasfilm as they have allowed him to reshoot a larger part of the film than initially proposed. The second spin-off Star Wars movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story has been through a lot of behind the scenes turbulence after the unexpected firing of earlier directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, however, the latest news indicates that things were not as chaotic as they seemed to be.
The early reverberations caused by Lord & Miller’s exit were not primarily due to their firing. Directors are often fired. The Star Wars under Disney has witnessed this several times such as Josh Trank’s exit from the proposed Boba Fett film and Colin Trevorrow being pushed out of Episode IX, but, it has also been the case with various other projects such as Ant-Man from MCU which saw Edgar Wright leaving or the exit of Michelle MacLaren from DCEU’s Wonder Woman. The remarkable difference between these films is that Solo: A Star Wars Story was just a few weeks shy of wrapping up filming, whereas, the other firings took place in the pre-production days.
Justice League also had a different scenario. Zack Snyder exited after wrapping up principal filming, and Joss Whedon helmed the rewrites, reshoots and later changes. However, when Ron Howard entered the scene to modify the tone from the hilarious touch of Lord & Miller, the variation is that Howard’s changes are aimed to recreate the original version of Lawrence Kasdan’s script of Han Solo. The constant issue with big blockbuster reshoots is that they compel some rewrites and the ultimate movie is in a Frankenstein mode. Although, we don’t rule out such an outcome for Solo, the fact that the script was ready before the filming began and the firing of Lord & Miller was due to the fact that they went too far beyond the script and that indicates the final product being a strong story and not a patched up version of the same as we often see in case of the reshoots.
This is substantiated by Paul Bettany, who played a part in Ron Howard’s reshoots. Bettany recently spoke to Total Film and praised Howard greatly.
“His staging ability is so fucking brilliant; I think he went in and he was like a laser, working out what needed to be done when he looked at the footage. And then, as things moved on, everybody felt so secure with him. And they gave him more. He reshot a lot more than was originally intended.”
Soon after Ron Howard’s arrival, he had stated that most of the earlier footage was “very usable” therefore, it was kind of surprising to see the production go on for such a long time and made us anticipate that most of the Lord & Miller’s work has been replaced. While that might be true because the Ron Howard reshoots are reported to comprise 80% of the film. The fascinating thing here is that the reshoots are not just because the footage from Lord and Miller was unusable, but, because “everybody felt so secure” with the things that Ron Howard did that they asked him to do more, which implies as the studio’s faith in Ron Howard’s work.
As fans, we don’t know what is coming up because the promotions haven’t started yet, but, that doesn’t worry much. Avengers: Infinity War’s trailer came out only recently. The mega MCU film releases just a few weeks before Solo, therefore, Lucasfilm is not late to start promoting Solo: A Star Wars Story in January.
Besides the drama, Solo has a lot favoring it. It has a script by Lawrence Kasdan (writer of Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark) and a superb cast which includes Thandie Newton, Emilia Clarke, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Donald Glover, Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson and Paul Bettany. Factor in Bradford Young, the cinematographer who won an Oscar nomination for Arrival and of course the vast directorial expertise of Ron Howard. No doubt, Solo: A Star Wars Story has a lot of promise.
