Alden Ehrenreich, who played a young Han Solo in Disney's 2018 standalone Star Wars movie, Solo, says media coverage distorted the movie's box office numbers. The 2018 film was up against it from the start. Fans took umbrage at the recasting of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian with younger actors (Ehrenreich and Donald Glover replacing Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams, respectively). At the same time, many questioned the need for a movie exploring the rogue's origins in the first place.
Things only got worse after the directors who were initially hired, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, were unceremoniously fired from the project for taking too many risks. Veteran director Ron Howard was brought on to complete the movie and re-shot much of what had already been put in front of cameras. Unfortunately, fan reception to the film was not good, and it ended up making just under $400 million at the box office. Compared to Force Awakens and Rogue One, the previous two Star Wars efforts produced by Disney, which both made over $1 billion each, those numbers are woeful. Even more so when you factor in the high budget for Solo, reported to be north of $275 million once re-shoots were factored in.
However, speaking to Total Film, Ehrenreich says he still believes that the media distorted the numbers to make Solo appear to be more of a failure than it was. Calling the need for attention-grabbing headlines "dangerous," the actor says that the media focused too much on comparing Solo to other Star Wars movies rather than movies outside the franchise. You can read his full comments below:
[Solo] didn’t do as well as other Star Wars movies, but it still did well for a movie. And so it was kind of this medium thing. But that’s not newsworthy. Even at high-level journalism, there’s an intense pressure, sometimes, it feels like, to [either] catastrophize or celebrate. And I think that’s really f---ing dangerous, especially when it pertains to the stuff that really matters, like the state of the world. An article headline that says "things are complicated, and there are good sides and bad sides" isn’t getting the emotional response. And I just think we really have to take a step back, and give a lot more thought to the way our emotions are being run by the stories we’re getting inundated with.
While one can understand Ehrenreich's sentiments, especially considering that the critical and fan ambivalence the movie received was undeserved, given that it is an entertaining blockbuster, they also need to be taken with a pinch of salt. The film was meant to launch the actor as a star, and it didn't turn out that way, with him taking a break from acting following its failure, only now reappearing to star in Peacock's TV adaptation of Brave New World. Thus, there might be more to his comments than meets the eye.
Besides, when one looks at the numbers objectively, there's no doubt the box office for Solo was disappointing. It's not a slight on the movie's quality to say that only making $100 million more than the budget is not a success, particularly when the marketing budget likely swallowed up that amount. Instead, what's unfair here is that the movie, and Ehrenreich's stellar performance as Han Solo, were criticized for existing in the first place, rather than being judged on their own merits.
Source: Total Film