It's fascinating to look back at milestone moments in the history of one's favorite media and think about how things might have been different if just one solitary aspect had changed. What if Marcia Lucas didn't utilize her masterful editing skills to reign in George in the original Star Wars trilogy? What if Nicolas Cage actually did play Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings? What if Nicolas Cage also played Superman? Really, there are a surprising number of Cage-related hypotheticals in this subject.
But one possibility that has floated through the minds of many Star Wars fans in the past 6 years is just how different Solo: A Star Wars Story might have been if its original directors hadn't been unceremoniously dumped and replaced with Ron Howard? Luckily, those same directors, the much sought-after Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, have now broken their silence regarding that whole situation. Just what does this famous directing team think about such an infamous point in both their careers and the history of Star Wars?
Surprisingly, they're pretty chill about it. Speaking with The Business podcast in a recent episode, Lord and Miller seemed to focus on the good things they accomplished rather than what they didn't. The directing team, who is currently busy with several projects like the Apple TV Plus series The Afterparty and an upcoming HBO Max revival of Clone High, had plenty to say about the whole ordeal. Miller offered up an optimistic view, saying, "as negative as the ending was, and as deeply misunderstood as we felt, the lasting memory is of the great collaboration we had. We shot, 90 days on that movie, you can't take the experience away from us, you can't take away the pencil miles from us—a term we use in animation—and we had a very fruitful, creative time with all the departments and with one another and we became better filmmakers for it."
"And we met such amazing, talented crew that we still work with, and love and are in touch with to this day," Lord chimed in. "So, ultimately, it was a positive experience that had a hard-to-get-through chapter, but luckily we had many other things to jump into and funnel all of that creativity and things that we had learned into those things." It takes a pretty strong character to keep such a charitable view as Lord and Miller, given the circumstances. Then again, with an Oscar win for their work on 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as well as several nominations, things seem to be going more than OK for the duo.
Of course, not everything is pure sugar and rainbows. The directing team also had some slightly less flattering words for Solo: A Star Wars Story itself, particularly its perceived over-reliance on fanservice and nostalgia. "If you're giving the audience exactly what they expect and a bunch of 'fan service,' they're going to end up disappointed. They’re gonna be like, 'Yeah, this is stuff I already knew,'" Lord offered. "The trick is to figure out what it is they don't quite yet realize that they want and every idea that you add into the stew is something that you’re like, 'Oh, that would be a cool thing to see that I haven't seen before and isn't the thing that's expected because I think people are really savvy now and so you have to stay two steps ahead of them and I feel like that’s our job."
They certainly don't pull any punches, but they also don't appear bitter about their firing from the project all those years ago. Hey, everybody deserves to be a little petty after going through such a thing. It's interesting to think about what sort of movie Lord and Miller might have made if they had remained, given their views on fanservice. There's no use thinking too hard about alternate timelines, at least until the TVA from Loki comes knocking.
Solo: A Star Wars Story is now available on Disney Plus.
Source: The Business (via The Playlist)