Disney got into the habit of buying popular pre-existing franchises and to churn out “content.” And an easy cheap way to come up with “content” is to invent explanations for every little thing that didn’t need explaining, and is actually becomes worse when it is explained.
All recent Disney entries commit this crime to some extent, but the worst offender was the Solo movie.
Han Solo is a classic side character with a compelling backstory that’s quickly explained in a few lines of dialogue. He’s a smuggler and skilled pilot. A man of many skills, but with not much of a moral code. One could call him chaotic neutral but if you really think about it, he’s kind of a loser. Instead of using his skills to pursue an honest profession he tried to get rich quick by engaging in illegal activity, which completely backfired on him. One time he came across an imperial patrol and was forced to jettison his cargo, which left him owing an impossible amount of money to Jabba the Hutt. So he happily accepted the mission to transport the good guys because they offered him enough money to pay his debt.
That’s all you need to know about Han’s background. You don’t even need to learn more about Jabba the Hutt, who at the time of the first Star Wars movie wasn’t an onscreen character and all you need to know is that he’s some sort of criminal boss. What makes Solo interesting isn’t his back story, it’s his redemption arc from a selfish asshole to a hero fighting for a good cause.
As a new movie, Solo was doomed to failure from the start because the entire premise is something nobody needed to say. And what made it an outright bad movie was the attempt to explain a bunch of stuff that didn’t need an explanation, and nobody had ever even one time thought needed an explanation. How did Han get his iconic German Luger-style gun? Uhh, someone gave it to him. Why did Han start calling Chewbacca “Chewie?” Uhh, they met for the first time and Han decided to call him that. How did he get he get those golden dice that literally not even one person had noticed from the original movies? Uhh, his girlfriend gave them to him.
Then there was all the stuff that was already explained but Disney writers just decided to show anyway. He won the Millenium Falcon in a card game. He made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. Why did they feel they had to show stuff we already knew about him? Because showing something we don’t know about him would require creativity.
What makes Disney Star Wars so god awful is the exact reason is that they’re making movies and shows that have to fit into a preexisting series that already ended. So by definition they can only subject the character to trials that don’t change him in any meaningful way. Which makes those trials pointless.
The Obi Wan series was also terrible in this regard, and actually ruins his character in the original trilogy. George Lucas established that Obi Wan and Anakin were comrades for many years before Anakin betrayed the jedi, forcing the former friends to have one last battle that left Anakin brutally disabled. Then 20 years later, they meet again.
Despite the prequels being kind of sloppy, Lucas pulled this aspect off perfectly, and the additional backstory actually add to the original movie in a good way. Even the original movie’s kind of pedestrian special effects and choreography make sense. Obi Wan and Anakin, now Darth Vader, haven’t seen each other in 20 years, so don’t have any way to tell how they have respectively grown in skill. They approach each other, with no fancy tricks. It’s exactly how one would imagine two old friends cautiously approaching and testing each other.
Then Disney came along and wanted the fan service of Obi Wan and Darth Vader meeting and fighting, but they both have to survive for the (already existing) movie, which makes the additional fight pointless, and ruins the drama of their later encounter.
And of course they did the same thing to Han Solo, only worse. They wanted to have him in the sequel trilogy, but didn’t want to change the character because fans might not like that. So he’s still a rogue running around the galaxy pointlessly and owes people money. Han could get away with that as a rogue in his early 30s, but to see him still a loser in his late 60s is just pathetic and ruins the character.
Ian Kummer
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