Fired Solo Directors Reflect On Their Experience With Star Wars Film

Ousted Solo: A Star Wars Story directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller reflect on their briefer-than-expected experience making the 2018 movie. When Solo first entered production, it was being helmed by Lord and Miller, whose previous directorial efforts like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie had endeared them to many. The movie was one of the few standalone Star Wars films Lucasfilm produced before taking a step back from that side of the franchise; it follows the early adventures of roguish smuggler Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich), covering everything to his first meeting with Chewbacca to how he got his name.

Solo seemed primed for success, but it ran into some serious creative speedbumps during filming. More than halfway through production, Lord and Miller were essentially fired from Solo due to creative differences between them and Lucasfilm. The situation seemed to speak to a larger problem within Lucasfilm, as the studio was developing a reputation for not allowing its directors much creative freedom. In the end, Ron Howard was brought in to oversee reshoots and complete production.

Since then, Lord and Miller haven’t said much about their time with Solo. However, during a recent appearance on Josh Horowitz’s podcast Happy Sad Confused (via ComicBook.com), the pair actually reflected on their brief stint within the Star Wars universe. Lord summed up their thoughts, starting by explaining a bit of what they had hoped to achieve with the film. He then offered a rather positive spin on the entire ordeal, indicating it wasn’t a completely terrible experience. Lord said:

“We’ve always wanted to make projects that are, like Han, a maverick, and so that’s what we were always trying to do, that’s what we were hoping to do with those movies. It was funny, about [the original] Star Wars, it’s an independent film made outside the Hollywood system. And Han is the spirit of that kind of independence and that’s why we were always inspired to work on that with everybody.

“The good news is, they can’t take away what you learned. We learned so much. We got to work with the greatest people, we made so many friends. We, what we call in animation, put ‘pencil miles’ under our belts and it made us better filmmakers in the long run. So, in a funny way, there’s obviously a lot of negative emotions associated with that, but the way I feel about it now, like I feel about all these projects, which is you’re just trying to become better and learn and collaborate with people and that doesn’t go away.”

Upon its release in 2018, Solo stumbled a bit both financially and critically. Though it was seen as a solid Star Wars movie overall, some questioned the need to explore every bit of Han Solo’s past. At the box office, Solo earned a mere $393 million worldwide, a surprisingly low amount of money for a Star Wars movie. Lord and Miller’s firing likely did little to impact box office in the long run, but many have spent the years since Solo‘s debut wondering how their film would’ve looked different. It seems likely that a Lord and Miller Solo would’ve given the franchise the creative jolt it needed back then.

It’s clear their departure still stings, but their decision to also see the positives in the situation shows they aren’t choosing to linger in the past. At the time, Solo was the biggest production Lord and Miller had undertaken as directors, so it was already guaranteed they would be learning a lot as they went along. To hear they are still utilizing those lessons is a small comfort, even if one wishes they hadn’t been taken off Solo at all. Still, this shows that all experiences can have positives and negatives, and sometimes it’s better to focus on the former.

Source: Josh Horowitz/Twitter (via ComicBook.com)

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Rachel Labonte
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Rachel LaBonte is a news, feature, and movie review writer for Screen Rant with a deep passion for film and television. A graduate of Emerson College, she majored in Media Arts Production while specializing in screenwriting. She’s been a writer ever since high school when she realized she was rather good at it and joined as many entertainment news clubs as she could while in school. Most notably, she wrote for Emerson’s website Emertainment Monthly, and one of her film reviews won an Evvy (Emerson’s student awards) for Best Review. Her deep love of movies led to her working at a movie theater for five years, which she loved despite the angry customers. An avid reader who constantly buys books before reading the ones she already owns, Rachel is a huge fan of superheroes (especially of the Marvel variety) and wizards and will likely never be able to catch up on all the movies/TV shows she longs to watch.

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