The Last Jedi, Solo, and Star Wars Backlash
Is Solo: A Star Wars Story a decent movie? By most accounts it’s not terrible. The Rotten Tomatoes critics and audience scores are only 8 points adrift, so for those who have plunked down their money to go see it there’s a decent chance they enjoyed it.
But in terms of box office performance, the movie is an unprecedented, monumental failure for Disney. There are several reasons being bandied about: franchise fatigue, the ‘troubled’ production of the movie, and actor Alden Ehrenreich’s no-win task of replacing a screen legend in his most iconic role.
We can now add Scott Mendelson’s absurd conjecture that films starring a ‘white male lead’ may be box office poison overseas:
Huh?
In Mendelson’s article he also articulates that he doesn’t want to give any credence to the belief that fan hatred of Star Wars: The Last Jedi had anything to do Solo’s box office failure, at least those who hated the movie because of it’s man-hating ‘social justice warrior’ undertones.
The problem is Mendelson and every other analyst dissecting Solo are ignoring evidence in favor of social constructs. Those who hated The Last Jedi were either in the minority (just look at those box office numbers!!!) or are alt-right racists/misogynists/Trump voters who are ‘butt hurt’ that their beloved Luke Skywalker was tarnished by the film, or that it stars a female lead, or any other number of ‘indefensible’ reasons to hate the film.
Full disclosure: I hated The Last Jedi. I thought it was beautifully filmed, and terribly plotted. A two-hour slow motion chase through space? The gambling planet? The political pandering/lecturing/berating we were subjected to while suffering through the ‘gambling planet’ sequence?
But if the female lead thing was real, why did we all buy tickets to the Force Awakens and Rogue One? Why do people enjoy Game of Thrones and Westworld, where the most prominent roles have always been filled by women (You can’t tell me that Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen and Lena Headey’s Cersei Lannister haven’t been the most pivotal characters since the first episode of the series). It’s simply a non-argument meant to distract from the real problems of the film that the movie’s supporters don’t care about.
But whether the arguments are valid or invalid in Mendelson’s eyes is irrelevant. The fact is that people of all walks, shapes, colors, and religious beliefs hated The Last Jedi in record numbers for a Star Wars saga film:
Those bread-and-butter Star Wars fans, many of whom grew up with the films, toys and memories as part of their lives, were deeply disappointed with the movie, and those same fans stayed away from Solo in droves.
This wasn’t something that just happened in North America. The overseas box office for The Force Awakens was $1.1 billion. Solo earned an estimated $65 million in its opening weekend, with only Japan left among major international markets.
This is shockingly bad for Disney and Lucasfilm. If the movie cost north of $250 million to make, (likely much more given the fact that Ron Howard had to reshoot much of the film) and Disney shelled out another $200 million for marketing, this movie is in line to lose hundreds of millions of dollars for the House of Mouse. Disney has not released what was spent on the movie, but $500 million is at worst a middle-of-the-road estimate. If the film makes $300M at the combined box office (still no guarantee with the likes of The Incredibles 2 and another Jurassic World movie in the way in June) that’s a $200M write-down WITHOUT discounting profit sharing with theatres.
Six years ago, Disney took a $200 million write-down on John Carter, which made $284.1 million at the combined box office. Solo has already performed better at the North American box office, where profit-sharing favors the studio rather than theatres (the opposite tends to be the case internationally). But by even the most conservative estimate Disney spent much more money to produce and market Solo than it did John Carter, and the box office numbers will be similar by the time everything is said and done.
So just as Scott Mendelson has asked this weekend, if the bread-and-butter Star Wars fan boys didn’t like The Last Jedi, why didn’t they turn out for a film that was ‘much more suited’ to their perceived interests with Solo.
What Mendelson fails to take into account is how much these fans — who are not just a bunch of American white doods with disposable income but come from all walks of life (I can’t even believe I need to offer that disclaimer) — feel walked on by Lucasfilm. They placed their faith and trust in Disney to carry the torch of their most beloved franchise. The House of Mouse turned over the leadership to Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, who then had her pick of directors and writers to work with. She played it ‘safe’ with J.J. Abrams for The Force Awakens and ended up with A New Hope, 2015 edition, but while not every fan was happy, it worked enough for most fans to return for the sequel.
That’s when Rian Johnson, he of Looper fame, rewrote the book, and crushed the dreams of millions who had dedicated countless hours of playtime as children and adults to enjoying all things Star Wars.
These millions have been telling Disney for months since The Last Jedi came out. They felt cheated by critics who loved the film (and apparently had no connection to the original trilogy), by Disney, by Kathleen Kennedy and her writing team, and by Johnson and his desire to let the past die, as echoed by Kylo Ren in his film.
Interestingly, Kennedy has come under fire from all sides — from progressives for not hiring a female director — and from millions of YouTubers for making a terrible movie in The Last Jedi.
But the dichotomy of the argument is central to the problem of the future direction of Star Wars. Progressive media outlets like Bustle and The Mary Sue remain less concerned with making good films and more focused on ensuring diversity and inclusion are represented in all ranks of Star Wars — not just the films but in the hiring of production staff.
Fans, on the other hand, just want good movies, as they have wanted since the dawn of cinema. There is no perfect formula to making a great movie, but there are some constants that are found in the best films of the last 120 years, and great storytelling is at the top of that list. It’s not about whether your star is male of female, black or white, but whether they are in an engaging story where they take an emotional journey, and come out better for it in the long run. A few cases in point. Check out Google’s ‘best films of the 1930s’ list:
Gone With the Wind (strong female lead, still the №1 adjusted movie of all-time); Wizard of Oz (another female lead in an iconic performance), King Kong stars the Gorilla more than any human, All Quiet on the Western Front is an anti-war epic, and Snow White is again a female lead that set the stage for all animated films that followed. Heck, even John Ford’s Stagecoach gave top billing to Claire Trevor over John Wayne.
What each of these films has in coming is spectacular storytelling.
The company that has mastered this better than anyone? Disney. Walt’s core mantra surrounded the idea of family, and more specifically the broken family that heals itself. Mary Poppins is a prime example of this, but so are more modern classics like Frozen, The Incredibles, or even the Avengers films. What is the Avengers but a family — one now severely fractured and broken following the events of Infinity War? Why would viewers be willing to sit through such trauma? Because as bad as the situation seems right now, we as viewers know the emotional reward will be endlessly satisfying when they fix themselves, and hopefully the universe.
Kennedy and Johnson have missed this with The Last Jedi on an epic scale. Abrams perhaps set up the broken family mythos with the Kylo Ren/Han/Leia storyline, but this can now never find resolution. But to lecture the very moviegoers you are asking to spend money on your product is box office suicide, and that’s the reason Solo bombed in such spectacular fashion.
It’s not that the fans are racist, homophobic, sexist or any other ad hominem attack Last Jedi/Kennedy/Johnson supporters choose to hurl at those who skipped Solo. Fans have a right to spend money as they choose.
What movies have made money in the last couple of months? They weren’t all white male-led mindless action pieces — even if that’s how the detractors of Avengers view that film. Take a look at the brilliant A Quiet Place, with it’s female leads, including one with a disability. The film is masterful, with edge-of-your-seat thrills and, oh, a broken family that has to heal itself. These are damaged characters, just like us, who are trying to find a way to survive, and can only do so by relying on each other.
The same can be said for the heroes of Infinity War and Black Panther.
It’s not about rejecting the diverse world-building elements of The Last Jedi. Instead it is a rejection of the terrible storytelling, lack of character development, and complete dismantling of all the positive movement that came before (Luke’s out-of-character behavior, the non-mystery of Snoke, the terrible, seemingly never-ending chase sequence).
What made the original trilogy great was the storytelling. Yes there were special effects, sounds and sights that had never been seen before on film. The music transformed the entire saga into something beyond Epic. But the millions of fans who avoided Solo did so because they took a journey with these characters that felt deeply important as they grew up. These were characters with deep flaws that they had to overcome — in fact all three leads were a bit too cocky, despite Han’s warnings. Leia, Luke and Han were better for it as they learned to grow emotionally during the course of the films. Their emotional journeys made us care about their characters as much as the various landscapes they traveled to.
If Disney chooses to reset the current, completely misguided Lucasfilm experiment in storytelling, where inclusivity quotas are more important than character development, fans MAY return for the next film.
If not, I would wager that JJ Abram’s Episode IX suffers the same fate, if not worse. Right now, Disney is on track for a blockbuster, but if they took a gander at the comments section for their film, they might want to have a few conversations about where this thing is headed, and making sure Episode IX is not a repeat of Solo. Otherwise it won’t just be Kathleen Kennedy looking for a new job but Bob Iger as well.
