Star Wars is Far Far Away From Being Over-Saturated

So the big news concerning Star Wars right now is how Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed at the box office over this last weekend. Now understand, to say ‘underperformed’ is a little misleading, as it underperformed for a Star Wars movie, which means it still was the number one movie for the weekend and had ticket sales over shadowing most movies.

I see a lot of speculation about how they are milking the franchise, over-saturating the market and so on. And I call bull on that fully. Star Wars has been milked for worse in the past and far more over-saturated. Yes, it has only been about six months since the last Star Wars movie, but we are still averaging just one a year right now. With Marvel studios doing three movies a year, Fox putting out normally a couple of X-men films a year and Sony this year putting out Venom as a stand alone, with majority of those movies doing really well, Star Wars is being fairly restrained.

Solo suffered from a lot of issues during production that hurt people’s faith in it.  And I think if anyone but Ron Howard had picked up the reins, there is a good chance it would have deserved the lack of faith. Howard came in late in the game and put together a truly enjoyable movie. But due to how it all came about, the chance of regaining people’s faith just because you have a skilled director doing the repairs, just was not going to happen fully.

The bigger issue that hurt Solo however is the backlash from some fans over The Last Jedi.  There really is no doubt that The Last Jedi was a movie that fragmented the fans.  There are still a good deal of fans who are angry over that movie and are still attacking it and claiming it ruined Star Wars, because somehow Jar-Jar and the prequels they can accept just fine. All you need to do is look at Rotten Tomatoes to see that the crowds that organized to bad mouth The Last Jedi and do all they could to bring the ratings for it down, clearly seem to have tried the same thing for Solo. A general truth about movies is that the critics are almost always going to be tougher on their ratings than the average movie goer, especially so on movies that have huge fan bases. Just look at any of the truly crappy as it gets movies from the DC Universe.  They got one good film in there, with the rest being pure crap (And that is me being polite about just how bad Batman Vs. Superman was), yet when you look at the fan reactions, you might fall for the idea that the critics were being jerks. (They weren’t, all but one of the DC movies are just horrible, and unwatchable.)  However, we are seeing just the opposite with the Star Wars movies now. Critically the movies are doing better with the critics than the fans, supposedly. Solo was 70% with the critics, but only a 60% with the fans, far less than it deserves from either. I have no doubt that the group that went after The Last Jedi to bring the numbers down in that same manner, were already ready to bring Solo down. They are angry because The Last Jedi was what it was. So like children throwing a fit, they had already decided to attack anything new with Star Wars without giving it a chance, unless Lucas films gave into their demands. Just look back and you’ll see them having said as much six months ago.

That being said, there is even more to it.

A big issue is the character of Han Solo. Solo had often been the number one character according to many, many different polls. He is truly at the top of the list for popularity, and too many refuse to see him played by anyone but Harrison Ford. It did not matter what actor they go with or how well that actor performed, too many people were just not going to accept anyone else in the role. In this case, the actor did a fine enough job, nothing impressive though. There was just no way he was ever going to live up to expectations. Because of that fact alone, the movie was never really going to get accepted by a great deal of people.

So if you look at what I have said, it was toxic fandom and their harmful attitudes that have led to the under-performing. And I will stand by that assertion. While Solo is not a perfect movie, it is better than the prequels without question.

And while the opening weekend was not as big as the studio had hoped, there is still a chance it will see a rise. All the friends I have who have seen the movie have loved it, with one claiming it to be the best Star Wars ever. Word of mouth is spreading and it can be a powerful thing. As people who were on the fence about seeing it find their friends saying how good it is, the chances of them going to see it increase. My guess is this week will be a better than average week for the movie, and that it will see a good, healthy second weekend as more people decide to give it a chance.

Although there is one aspect that will throw casual fans of Star Wars off. As it might be considered a spoiler, I will not bring it up directly, but if you are not familiar with the cartoon shows The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, there is a cameo that will puzzle you and might, as one person I have seen, make you wonder about the time line. This cameo does however show the seriousness that Lucas Films is taking in connecting what they are labeling as being the actual Canon for Star Wars.

I enjoyed Solo and feel it is a great addition to the Star Wars story line.  With the next one shot film most likely being a Boba Fett movie, I would hope they do not waste the opportunity to use elements introduced in Solo as part of a bigger story with Boba Fett. We already know there are a lot of plans in the works to keep Star Wars movies coming out regularly for some time now and I am looking forwards to seeing just where those future films will take us, as we know they are going to break away from the Skywalker storyline with the future trilogies.

I for one am far from being tired of Star Wars. With all the new voices being allowed in, I have high hopes for just where the stories will take us.