Throughout all the reports of behind-the-scenes turmoil during Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s time directing “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” there seems to be one word that gets brought up time and time again – tone. While there are fans that will always wonder if there’s more to it than that, it appears that the reason for the highly publicized change behind the camera on ‘Solo’ was all about this one issue.
In a new report by Variety about the troubled production, we learn, again, that somewhere along the line Lord and Miller’s vision for ‘Solo’ clashed with Lucasfilm. And it seems that at the center of all this drama is Lawrence Kasdan, the veteran “Star Wars” writer/producer, who is said to have personally clashed with the directors. In the report, he explains why the duo was ultimately let go, and why it was a tough decision.
“Tone is everything to me. That’s what movies are made of,” Kasdan says. “But this was a very complicated situation. When you go to work in the morning on a ‘Star Wars’ movie, there are thousands of people waiting for you, and you have to be very decisive and very quick about it. When you are making those split-second decisions — and there are a million a day — then you are committing to a certain tone. If the [producers] think that isn’t the tone of the movie, you’re going to have trouble. It may not always end this way, but no one was happy about it. It was agony.”
Judging by reviews of ‘Solo,’ it sounds as if the incoming director, Ron Howard, has crafted a very “Star Wars”-y adventure. And since that finished film is the one that Kathleen Kennedy, Kasdan, and the rest of Lucasfilm are proud of, then you can assume that Lord and Miller really were out to try something different.
One of the actors involved in the production, Donald Glover, explains how he saw the situation. “I was just like, ‘I know this is not ideal, but now there’s a control in this experiment,’” he says. “It was weirdly beneficial, not to belittle the seriousness of the situation, and [Lord and Miller] were really good. But I think there was honestly a miscommunication in the artistic vision.”
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However, since the directing duo isn’t necessarily talking about the film or the drama, we really only get a chance to hear from those who stuck around ‘Solo.’ That being said, Variety has an anonymous source that attempted to shed light on what fans might have expected from Lord and Miller.
“In their minds, Phil and Chris were hired to make a movie that was unexpected and would take a risk, not something that would just serve the fans,” says the source. “They wanted it to be fresh, new, emotional, surprising and unique. These guys looked at Han as a maverick, so they wanted to make a movie about a maverick. But at every turn, when they went to take a risk, it was met with a no.”
Overall, what it sounds like is that any hope for a new, unique take on “Star Wars” isn’t on the horizon. Fans had their best shot at something different with ‘Solo,’ but instead, are going to see a film that very much fits in with the previous films. That’s not to say that one is better than the other, but that for better or worse, the galaxy far, far away will feel very comfortable in ‘Solo.’