Solo: A Star Wars Story, Disney and Lucasfilm’s latest addition to the Star Wars universe, is still in it’s opening weekend, but it’s already showing warnings signs of being a box office flop, likely the worst since Disney took over the famous series.
Hollywood Reporter, which called the film’s overseas take thus far “grim,” is writing about “franchise saturation.” Variety also referred to “franchise fatigue” and wrote about how Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool 2 may have impacted Disney’s big release.
But you don’t need to be a fancy business analyst to understand why Solo isn’t killing it at the box office. You can just ask a disappointed Star Wars fan like me. I’m not going to see Solo this weekend, and it has nothing to do with Deadpool 2.
One of the big mistakes that Hollywood analysts make when trying to understand why some movies do well and others don’t is that they focus too much on the individual movie itself. Are fans not ready to see a new actor playing Han Solo? Is summer now the wrong time of year to release a Star Wars film? What in the marketing campaign did fans not respond to? Such are the questions folks at Disney will no doubt be asking themselves in the weeks ahead.
The truth is, though, my not going to see Solo doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Solo itself. I’m actually a big fan of both Ron Howard and Emilia Clarke. I smiled when I heard Donald Glover was playing Lando Calrissian. I would even be willing to consider another actor taking on Harrison Ford’s iconic role.
But moviegoers often don’t make their decision based on the movie itself, they make it based on the last movie in the series. If you saw the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and it blew your socks off, you’re probably going to go see the next one. Conversely, if it sucks, you probably won’t go. This seems like common sense, but it’s amazing how often Hollywood commentators and analysts seem to forget this.
My belief is that Solo is struggling in large part due to broader problems with Disney’s handling of the Star Wars empire.
When Force Awakens broke box office records back in 2015, that had less to do with any particular brilliance on the part of J.J. Abrams and his team. Mostly it had to do with the brilliance of George Lucas and the original Star Wars films. People like myself, and many others around the world, were going to go see Force Awakens irregardless of how good or bad anyone said that it was. The mere fact that there was going to be a seventh Star Wars movie was cause for celebration, we felt at the time.
Going into it many people were skeptical of Disney’s Lucasfilm takeover. I myself was cautiously optimistic. Yes, it was weird to think about there being Star Wars without George Lucas and yes Disney is a big corporation, but to be honest they’ve made some great movies over the years. Under Bob Iger the company had released movies like Tangled and Frozen and seemed to be doing a good job of recruiting great talent and giving them the space and freedom to do their best possible work. I hoped the company would bring to the series the same care and attention to detail that are evident in the work of its subsidiary Pixar (also acquired by Disney from another great visionary). In other words, I went into Force Awakens as excited as anyone. I left feeling strangle empty inside. What had I just seen? There were good parts, to be sure. Especially the beginning. But it soon devolved into a blatant rehash of A New Hope— painfully so– but with the soul gone. People love to complain about George Lucas, but if nothing else, he always brought tons of new, creative ideas to every Star Wars movie. No two were alike. Even Phantom Menace which fans complained about (and I loved, by the way) was indisputably creative and unique from any other films in the series and moved a larger story forwards in an interesting way. The same could not be said for Force Awakens. I wanted Disney to grow some balls and bring some new ideas to the series, instead of just regurgitating what Lucas had already done.
But I understood why they had done what they had. If they’d gotten “too creative” and strayed too far from “what Star Wars was supposed to be” the backlash would be fierce. Remaking A New Hope under a different name was the safest route, even if it meant passing up on the tremendous creative possibilities that the decline of the Imperial Empire offered. My hope was that the rehashing thing would be a one time deal, and once Disney felt more secure if their place leading the Star Wars universe, they would feel empowered to make more bold, creative decisions. I struck a silent deal with myself that I would go see the first three Disney Star Wars movies no matter what. After that, if they hadn’t impressed me, that would be it.
Rogue One was a bit more creative, I felt, but it still didn’t seem to have the soul or vision of pre-Disney Star Wars. The Last Jedi had some good ideas and some lovely scenes, but on the whole felt like it had been written by a committee. It stuck to formulas and had a cynical tinge to it. Would-be serious scenes were marred by cheap, low hanging jokes. Humor has always been part of Star Wars but Empire Strikes Back was funny because Han Solo was funny. The Last Jedi tried to be funny by making fun of the Star Wars universe itself. In some movies this works, but it just isn’t the Star Wars I know and love.
Though I like Daisy Ridley, most of the characters came across like cardboard cutouts. While George Lucas seemed to put tremendous thought into the details of the Star Wars universe at large, Disney’s writers on the project seemed to have not thought things out much at all. Even Mark Hamill himself publicly disputed what Disney writers claimed Luke Skywalker would do under the circumstances in the film.
It felt cynical and predictable. As one of my friends put it, The Last Jedi is a Marvel movie with a Star Wars skin. It felt like a hundred other average sci-fi movies. Whatever made Star Wars special seemed to have evaporated.
At one point in the movie a character said something along the lines of “there’s only one way you can get that rich: selling weapons to the First Order.” That line stuck with me. Clearly the the producers were trying to curry favor with audiences by working in a carefully calculated political statement, but it was laughably illogical. You have an entire galaxy trading with each other, apparently with cheap transportation costs. If you put any thought into the story world at all there would be countless ways to become insanely rich: building passengers start ships, building household robots, building skyscrapers on Coruscant, mining the metals that all those items require, shipping the metal that all those items require, food production, fashion, commercial transit, running the lavish casinos where all these supposed arms dealers hang out, etc. etc. But what really stuck with me was the irony of an anti-capitalist message in a Disney Star Wars movie.
Merchandising has been a part of Star Wars since the beginning and I’m not necessarily against that. To me, merchandising tie ins have helped enhanced rather than diminish the impact of Star Wars. Growing up it was more than a just movie, you played with the action figures and Legos, you wore the costumes, you studied the books on the extended universe. When a new Star Wars movie was about to come out, it was exciting to go to the store and see all the cool Star Wars tie ins, like seeing Christmas stuff in the lead up to the 25th.
But under Disney it’s gotten out of hand. When I went to IMDb to write this article, I was met with a giant full page ad using Star Wars to try to get me to eat at Denny’s. Denny’s??
During the release of an earlier Disney-Star Wars installment, I could scarcely turn on the TV without being assaulted, every ad break, with John William’s iconic score, used to sell me a Nissan. That sort of thing doesn’t enhance a movie’s brand, it cheapens it. Fast.
Disney inherited one of the greatest movie franchises in history. Handled responsibly, I believe it could continue to remain a cultural touchstone for generations. I would take my children to see Star Wars someday just as my parents once took me. In time the history of the series comes to give it gravitas. But the whole thing falls apart if we stop even liking the John William’s score because it’s over exploited for TV advertising, or if we stop going to see the movies all together because Disney chooses to churn out recycled crap twice a year rather than a very good installment every couple of years.
Clearly Disney must’ve thought of all this. They have fiercely protected their princess brands, for example, carefully controlling if and when they play on TV (which I think is a good call). I can’t say for sure why Disney has chosen to stripe mine the Star Wars franchise rather than to honor and guard it and treat it as a long term investment. But I fear Star Wars may be a casualty of our current business climate. We now live in the era of financialization and hands on shareholders. The stock market used to invest in the visions of innovative businesses, now they tell businesses what their vision should be. There is more pressure than ever on CEOs to deliver short term profits. Not ten years from now, not two years from now, this year, this quarter. Companies making physical goods, such as consumer electronics, are pushed to re-release old products with a few new gimmicks rather than making long term investments in R&D that will, years down the road, yield truly great, innovative products. Is this more or less what’s happening to Star Wars?
Every time a new Star Wars movie comes out, I feel like I’m watching a once great series being slowly, and profitably, degraded into oblivion. When I’ve gone to see them, I’ve been met with soulless imitations of some of the most creative and innovative sci-fi films of all time. I told myself I’d give Disney three chances. Solo is their fourth offering and at this point I frankly just want to remember Star Wars the way it was in it’s glory days. To the extent that I’m representative of other Star Wars fans, that’s why Solo is tanking. I take no great pleasure in seeing the Star Wars series stumble, even if I predicted it, but I hope it will be a wake up call to the Disney leadership that we’re not just going to go see whatever movie they slap the Star Wars brand on. Disney should think about how their licensing deals will affect the underlying brand, they should allow a bit more breathing room between films, focusing on quality over quantity, and they should trust their artists and storytellers to take the series in the right direction.
Disney has already degraded the Star Wars brand, but it’s not too late to turn things around. If they change their strategy now, Star Wars can still remain a cultural touchstone, to the benefit of both American culture and Disney’s long term balance sheets.
Owen Essen is a web designer and author of the short story collection Three Eyed Man.