Solo Honest Trailer: The First Star Wars Movie You Forget

Screen Rant

By Chris Agar

Published Sep 25, 2018

Honest Trailers takes aim at this year's Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is more of an origin story for Han's accessories than a character study.

The Honest Trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story is now online. Released earlier this year, Ron Howard's franchise spinoff had a pretty rough go at it during its theatrical run. With an opening weekend lower than Justice League, Solo became the first Star Wars movie to lose money at the box office. Its performance was so underwhelming, Lucasfilm reportedly put a freeze on other character-based anthologies and is planning on slowing down the output once Episode IX comes out next December.

From the moment it was announced back in 2015, fans were skeptical of Solo's prospects. Viewers had a difficult time buying into the premise, wondering what the purpose of the movie was and why the studio was even bothering with it. In the end, Solo scored generally favorable reviews from audiences and critics, but few would consider it among the best the series has to offer. That sentiment is quite apparent in the latest edition of Honest Trailers, which takes aim at Solo.

ScreenJunkies unveiled the video today (watch it in the space below), sharing their thoughts on the film. Their verdict seems to be that Solo falls somewhere in the middle (achieving a balance, if you will), as it is not great, but not terrible either. Perhaps harshly, the narration calls Solo the first Star Wars movie viewers will forget about shortly after leaving the theater.

Of course, it's difficult to talk about Solo without bringing up its infamous director switch, which saw Howard replace the fired Phil Lord & Chris Miller late in production. With substantial reshoots required and Disney refusing to move the film from its summer date, the final product is described as a "mixed bag" that didn't leave much of an impression. The Honest Trailer also criticizes the film's over-reliance on explaining the origin of Han's accessories, such as his trademark blaster. While some of this was to be expected in a young Han Solo movie, few went in thinking we'd seriously find out how Han got his last name. When Disney CEO Bob Iger teased that as a plot point a while ago, the assumption was it'd be Han establishing himself as one of the galaxy's premier smugglers. Even those who liked Solo would admit the movie went too far in a few places.

Star Alden Ehrenreich signed a three-picture deal with Lucasfilm, leaving the door open for Solo sequels. Unfortunately, given the film's commercial performance, those followups are unlikely to ever happen. Even if Solo breaks even due to home media sales, it won't generate enough revenue to warrant the production of a second movie (even if the budget is smaller). For whatever reason, this installment struggled to connect with the general public and it will forever have an interesting place in Star Wars history. Hopefully, whatever lessons the studio learned from this situation stick, and the next era of the galaxy far, far away can go off without a hitch.