Solo and the Weird Failure of the Star Wars Movie For Star Wars Fans

seriously, moar Enfys Nest plz

I've spent a good chunk of my life reading Star Wars Expanded Universe materials. Until around the time that I got sick of doing more reading for the New Jedi Order books than I'd eventually do for my thesis I read every single book that detailed the adventures of Luke, Han, Leia and the next generation. I poured over the New Essential Characters reference books. Ever since Disney bought the franchise and moved the old EU to the Legends canon and started writing new comics, books, etc all tied together by a central story group I've read nearly every scrap of new info they put out there. I love Star Wars. Can't get enough of it.

In a lot of ways, Solo: a Star Wars Story seemed the safest bet in the universe. Take a young Han Solo, fill in all of the backstory, give us some landspeeder chases, throw in some unsavory characters, and show him behind the controls of the Falcon for the first time. You don't need to take the franchise in a new and risky direction like The Last Jedi, you don't need to give us any new ideas. Just give us more of what you already know we love. It's absolutely targeted at super-fans like me.

Does it work? Sure. For me. I'll always go out of my way to learn more about Star Wars and just about everyone in it. I'm grousing already about the fact that they chose f--kin Boba Fett for the next movie over better characters like, y'know, anyone else, but I'll be there to watch the movie and I won't pretend otherwise. Unfortunately, as I've learned many times in my life when trying to turn random conversations to the topic of the Seven Forms of Lightsaber Combat, people who love Star Wars as ardently as I do aren't that common. Sure, we're a pretty big fandom, maybe the biggest, but as Warner Brothers recently learned, you can throw Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman into a movie together and it's actually not a license to print money unless you find a way to persuade some people who aren't wedded to the brand to come and see it, too.

As a movie, Solo is well-made. Alden Ehrenreich is absolutely successful at convincing you this is a younger version of the guy we know. Emilia Clarke's Qi'Ra is definitely the most interesting character in the movie, one I hope we see again. As expected, Donald Glover absolutely steals the show as the young Lando Calrissian. The formation of the lifelong bond between Chewbacca and Han is everything you'd want it to be. Woody Harrelson was exactly what you'd expect him to be in the role of the hardened old crime mentor. Enfys Nest is everything a cool ass Star Wars space pirate should be, and I hope that story continues somewhere.

In the end, the story beats are what you expect, if enjoyable, and while I have a few quibbles with, for example, how innately altruistic young Han appears to be despite the circumstances of his upbringing and the cynic we know he'll be ten years later in A New Hope, I would recommend the movie to any Star Wars fan. Unfortunately I don't think those are the people I needed to recommend this to, and Lucasfilm might be better off in the future considering how to make these anthology films providing backstory on existing characters (unlike Rogue One, which introduced new characters and a new story that simply tied into an existing story and was thus successful) more appealing to the people who wouldn't go see any movie that had Star Wars slapped on it.

(Also next time release the movie in December. We had a good thing going every year and you guys ruined that and shot yourself in the foot needlessly putting this film up against Deadpool and Infinity War. Nobody needed two Star Wars movies in the span of six months.)