No question some people are, but my sense is that even these folks would be fine with spinoff films featuring other characters who can offer a little more creative freedom.

I agree with DVault with just about everything else. Han Solo's story would have been perfectly fine left as it was.

Obviously this is all nerd stuff including any and all introspection like should LucasFilm make a movie about this character or that one.

And they'll get my money in the end. But personally, I'd rather watch a Darth Maul origin story or a Yoda origin story or watch whatever Obi Wan was doing between Episode III and IV than watch Han Solo again, who I dunno, didn't seem like he had a lot of mysteries or ambiguities about him. As I said, I always thought that was his *strength* as a character.

And I still think the commercial appeal of the film to the public at large (once you get out of the Star Wars super nerds) isn't to answer the backstory questions I've never really heard the average fan ask or wonder about. As I said, the Han Solo that Joe and Suzy Public imagines and loves and wants to see again is the one that says "laugh it up fuzzball" to Chewie and is flirting with Princess Leia about how she'd like to be kissed and can't bear to let a gorgeous guy like him out of her sight and berates the droid not to tell him the odds, etc. etc., and LucasFilm knows *that*, which is why they are so fixated on acting coaches and direction as opposed to story if you read the trades and insider gossip. I think that's the mistake in concept because a whole lotta that appeal was due precisely to the talents of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher and can't easily be replicated. I think the big risk is that the film just feels ersatz and a pale imitation of what we all loved which was, in effect, Harrison Ford.

Why haven't we heard Salacious Crumb's backstory yet? Surely I'm not the only one keen to find out how he became enmeshed in a life of crime.

Searching for Chewbacca imo

I don't think of this as "the world wanted a Han Solo origin story" as much as "the world wanted more Han Solo" and the only practical way to do that is with "young Han Solo" (since the plan was to kill off "old Han Solo", and Harrison Ford was too old to play anything but that)

lol that's great. Probably exactly what happened.



I think if 100 random people were suddenly marketing honchos for Disney and asked which character they thought would make the most money with their own spin off nearly 100 of them would have chosen Han Solo.

Don't need to be full fledged jedi to read the public's mind.

people would love more Obi Wan as well. but it's not clear they could come up with anything that doesn't violate canon that would also be interesting. (we see him land on Tatooine at the end of ROTS, and then...he does amazing cool stuff but then goes back to Tatooine?). or other adventures in the timelines of episodes 1-3 that doesn't really involve the Sith - seems hard as well. and Jedi vs (something other than Force users) doesn't seem as compelling.

The Yoda backstory seems like an easier one to crack, but I don't know if Yoda can really be the protagonist in a movie

Could do a "Ben Kenobi PI" or "Mos Eisley 5-0" trilogy where he solves crimes on Tatooine or something. I'd watch it.

Yes, exactly. You and I are of the same mind: the public doesn't want a Han Solo origin story, they want more Han Solo.

So I think we have a correct read on the commercial appeal, of what you might try to do if you controlled the Star Wars Universe: give the public what they want, give them more Han Solo.

But I think this eventually ends up in the artistic regret pile, if not the commercial one. It's hard to predict too much commercial doom and gloom because you can slap the Star Wars brand on any ****ty thing and make a profit.

But I suspect audiences are fickle and what we really want is a Young Harrison Ford movie, if you catch my drift. And what Lucas/Disney will deliver is a Young Han Solo movie. And reconciling the distance between those two things might be really hard and ultimately mediocre/unfulfilling for the audience. I also think the evidence (replaced directors, hired an acting coach for the new Han Solo) reinforces/informed my opinion that the producers are in a bind, realizing the above is true, that delivering a pleasing Young Han Solo without Young Harrison Ford is a struggle. And without Harrison Ford as Han Solo, you don't have much. I'd also reiterate Carrie Fisher was a great love interest on the other side and so not only do you need a great actor to inherit the role but great, witty, romantic "will they/won't they" banter from both your leads. Without that, you just have the Star Wars aesthetic -- a soundtrack and a motif and a setting everyone loves and not much else. Probably not a super interesting backstory, probably not compelling performances from the leads.

In other words, to lay my cards completely on the table: what the Han Solo movie might be is the Prequel Trilogy. Tons of bloat, answers to questions you didn't care about, and missing the essence of the appeal of the Original Trilogy it's ultimately feeding into and trying to recreate.

Hollowing and staining Vader by showing him as an awkward emo moody teenager+ supper beyond shallow, flimsy and ultra lazy oh might as well join the sith turning arc+ NOOOOOOOOOO, was perhaps one of the prequels greatest crimes.

Now Solo is in the firing line. Whilst I doubt he will be utterly mutilated in the way Vader was in prequels, I have high confidence there will be some symbolic dilution and lessening via this cash in.

the Vader backstory is an interesting analogy. It's hard to imagine them doing any worse than Anakin's emo lines in ATOC, and yet the bad ass scary Vader from the original trilogy was not ruined. Even when we saw that Vader in Rogue One he was great. he's the same guy despite the horrible backstory they bolted on after the fact.

So, I don't think lovable rogue Han Solo from the OG trilogy is going anywhere, even if they do botch Young Han Solo completely. I think it's a bit of a freeroll in that regard. they can add to his story in a cool way, or we'll collectively block it out and just sort of cringe at it

I agree with the larger point that getting Young Han Solo is a "be careful what you wish for" situation bc there is a good chance it's a disappointment. Harrison Ford as Han Solo set an impossibly high bar, one that even he couldn't reach again in Episode 7. but like Episode 7 showed overall, getting even close to the mark is a success.

Think milage must vary on how much damage Vader took from the prequels.

I did enjoy Vaders scenes in R1, but that was because they were short and sweet, when he has more exposition in the original trilogy, there is definite degradation to his presence imo.

Very much a case of what has been seen cannot be unseen.

Is there a shortage of charismatic young actors who can play a roguish hero part? I like Harrison Ford, but I'm not really buying the idea that he turned in a legendary performance that can't be successfully imitated.

imitating Harrison Ford playing Han Solo seems a lot harder than inventing a character and just doing a great job of that

especially when it comes to perception.

Just cast the guy who played Poe in Force Awakens. EZ

They should cast Jake Lloyd in a Young Poe Dameron movie wherein Poe Dameron was actually a child celebrity who played Darth Vader in local film productions of the Destruction of the Death Star saga on his home planet before turning to a life of petty crime, plot of the movie is him redeeming himself as he joins the New Republic army.

I guess Shia labeouf isn't acting anymore? Jayden Smith would be my second choice.

My entire childhood was pretty much those first three movies, with some toys and the occasional comic or magazine article. There was some other stuff out there but I wasn't aware of it for a very long time. So, for me, those are what I see as Star Wars, everything else has sort of been bonus content of varying quality. If you take someone born in 1993 their opinion I can kind of understand it if it's not the same.

Even the special edition changes feel like bad alternates take and not the real deal. It's the originals I can't unsee no matter how badly GL or whoever else would like me to. I watched them so many times on VHS that I can't unhear Boba Fett's voice or not see Old Anakin Ghost if I tried.

Emma Watson is doing extremely well.

The guy who played Robb Stark has headlined a couple of TV shows after GoT that I'm aware of. One of them was cancelled I think, and the other one is still going on Netflix. The same opportunities will be open for Kit.

"The actors in the shows and movies I like are better than the actors in your plebeian children's films that I don't like as much."

I agree with the comparison to the star trek reboots. For the most part we get hollow impressions of the old characters and the talented actors aren't able to really own the roles

This annual Star Wars movie thing is definitely draining the hype away from the series. We're only on year 3 of this and I'm already like "meh"

If they were great movies doing things other than backstory that most sane people don't care about, it might be ok every year.

Making a great movie every year is a huge endeavor. Peter Jackson and his production team took 15 months to write the scripts for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and he was using existing source material. The whole production of all three films took something like 7-8 years in total and they never had to deal with huge story problems since the outlines and story arc were already done for them; they just had to cast the films once, didn't have to find directors for each iteration, etc.

Obviously Disney/LucasFilm have huge amounts of resources but at some point the task becomes enormous. Also doing great things often times means taking risks, which they don't seem willing to do. If the audience (or more likely their shareholders) would tolerate some duds, I do think you'd have a better chance of getting something truly great and different. Don't think that's where they are headed. There's also some market pressures, that as Star Wars and the movie industry becomes a global phenomenon and you're selling movies everywhere from Cedar Rapids Iowa to Shenzhen China to maximize revenues, you have to sell a movie into all markets. That inevitably means 'dumbing down' to some extent the story, the dialogue, the characters, and upping the action -- stuff that can sell everywhere. It's why we see a big divergence now between commercially successful movies and critically acclaimed ones. Obviously things like some MCU movies and Wonder Woman are notable exceptions but even then artistic decisions are getting made that allow for the film to play in all 4 quadrants on 6 continents or whatever.

So think we are headed for consistent least-common-denominator movies into the future.

tl;dr if they plan to do one ever year, the quality will inevitably suffer or the storytelling bland/repetitive/formulaic, something you can repeat and iterate quickly

Cannot wait for General Ackbar prequel in bikiny bottom