It was my reaction to Alden Ehrenreich‘s performance in Alexandre Moors‘ The Yellow Birds, which I saw at last January’s Sundance Film festival, that convinced me he won’t be a good Han Solo. He just doesn’t have that presence, that Harrison Ford cock-of-the-walk cool. There’s just something about Ehrenreich that feels guarded and clenched.
Alden Ehrenreich and Untitled Han Solo Film costars (including Woody Harrelson) in recently posted set photo.
Posted on 1.22.17: “Where In The Valley of Elah had the great Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron butting heads while looking into the stateside death of Jones’ son, The Yellow Birds mostly just wades into the frosty expressions and general lethargy of Ehrenreich’s Bartie — a guy I had zero interest in and didn’t want to hang out with.
“The reason is Ehrenreich himself. He simply lacks that X-factor magnetism that popular lead actors all have. Charming as he was in Hail Caesar!, this beady-eyed fellow doesn’t have ‘it’ — he’s always wearing the same sullen, hiding-out, stone-faced expression, no matter what kind of situation or character he’s playing. He never lifted off the ground or stepped out of bounds in Rules Don’t Apply. I’ll be seriously surprised if he turns out to be a great Han Solo as that Harrison Ford sexy-rogue quality just isn’t in him.”
After the disastrous disappointing underwhelming reception to his titular performance in Solo: A Stars Wars Story ('18), Alden Ehrenreich seemed to go into hiding. Okay, not entirely. Two years later he costarred in Brave New World, a Peacock streaming series based on the Aldous Huxley novel, but it was cancelled after a single season. The general impression (at least in this corner) was that the poor guy's career had been seriously dented, and that his leading-man aspirations had been dashed.
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Alden Ehrenreich was riding high after his amusing performance as Hobie Doyle in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail Caesar (’16). But his next three films delivered a triple-whammy effect, and the godz turned on him.
Ehrenreich’s amiable performance as Howard Hughes‘ chauffeur in Warren Beatty‘s Rules Don’t Apply (late ’16) did him no favors after the film bombed. He was wounded again when The Yellow Birds, in which Ehrenreich played the lead role, opened at Sundance ’17 and flatlined. Then came the final hammer blow with his underwhelming performance as young Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story (’18), which opened roughly two years ago.
Ehrenreich dropped out of sight to lick his wounds and reassess the landscape. I was no fan of Solo or Yellow Birds, but I felt sorry for the guy.
Now AE is back as the lead in Brave New World (7.15, Peacock), a dystopian sci-fi drama (vague shades of THX-1138) based on the 1932 Aldous Huxley novel. Exec produced by David Wiener, co-written by Wiener, Grant Morrison and Brian Taylor. Gut reactions?
Aldous Huxley picked the wrong day to die from cancer — 11.22.63. He was tripping his brains out on LSD when he passed into eternity.
Is it now permissible to use the term “Solo collapse”? Over the last two days it’s gone from being an “uh-oh, not doing as well as expected” to an “aagghh, I’m melting, I’m melting!…oh, what a world, what a world!”
Posted Sunday morning by Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro: Solo: A Star Wars Story is now sinking well below its $130M projection with Disney now reporting the pic’s three-day at $83.3M and four-day at $101M. Industry estimates are in sync with what Disney is seeing.
“As we already detailed in the previous update, Solo‘s weekend prospects were dragged down by a maelstrom of fan negativity toward the concept and/or behind-the-scenes problems” — — i.e., the absurdity of casting the short, small-shouldered, beady-eyed Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo — “as well as summer tentpole and Star Wars movie over-saturation (we just had Last Jedi in December).
“The under-performance of Solo is a high-class problem for Disney, and they’re the victims of their own success especially when you consider that their first three Star Wars movies grossed $4.45 billion worldwide. Solo reps a barometer of how well [forthcoming] classic character spinoffs” — i.e. James Mangold‘s Boba Fett project — “can do.”
For the third time: Solo is basically a numbing formula exercise that never really sings or revs or lifts off the pad with a levitational force of its own. Everyone (Ron Howard, Alden Ehrenreich, the audience) is going through the motions because Disney is determined to monetize the Star Wars franchise as much as possible, including (God help us) hiring James Mangold to make a Boba Fett movie. Yeah, okay — Ehrenreich does a relatively decent job of pretending to be a youngish, much shorter Han, and if you want to go along with this second-tier charade, be my guest. I felt hugely bored and irritated during the first hour, which is all about adrenalizing the ADD crowd with the usual distractions. Nor was I taken with throwing in the crucial card game (the one in which Han won the Millennium Falcon from Lando) at the very end, almost as an afterthought. But don’t let me stop you. If you’re determined to be an easy lay, you’ll find a way to convey enthusiasm.
HE reminder: Solo pops in two days. The second half is okay but don’t expect too much. I never felt turned on or lifted up or caught up in the flow of the thing, and I’m saying this as someone who half-enjoyed The Force Awakens, felt mildly engaged by Rogue One and was half-taken by portions of The Last Jedi. I just couldn’t respond any more. I couldn’t take the plunge.
Alden Ehrenreich does a relatively decent job of pretending to be a youngish, much shorter Han, and if you want to go along with this charade, be my guest. But there’s no eluding the fact he’s nowhere close to being a chip off the old block. There’s a moment when Ehrenreich, listing his strategic attributes to Woody Harrelson, says “I’m a driver”…and I almost said out loud, “Yeah, of a fucking Prius!”
I felt hugely bored and irritated during the first hour, which is all about adrenalizing the ADD crowd with the usual Star Wars distractions — Han-in-big-trouble, Han-escapes-trouble, Han drives like a bat outta hell, the usual derring-do, high-speed chases, pulse-weapon battles, skin-of-their-teeth escapes…wow, wow, wow, wow…nothing.
Solo finally shifts into gear with the arrival of Donald Glover‘s Lando Calrissian and the Millennium Falcon, and especially when the Kessel Run smuggle plan kicks in and yaddah-yaddah. But Han doesn’t get behind the controls of the Falcon until the 90-minute mark. And then the film keeps going for another 40 minutes — it should have ended at the two-hour mark already. Plus I honestly lost patience with Harrelson and Emilia Clarke’s characters pulling last-minute, character-shifting switcheroos. Plus the big poker game in which Han wins the Falcon happens at the very end, almost as an afterthought.
For the 37th time, in order of preference:
1. The Empire Strikes Back (’80). Far and away the most handsomely captured Star Wars film (the dp was Peter Suschitzky) until The Last Jedi (shot by Steve Yedlin) came along. The darkest and finest Star Wars flick because it’s essentially a noir, and because the story points are all about losing, which is totally against the formulaic grain of all fantasy and superhero flicks. Lose, bruise, run for your life. The heroes get chased, kicked around, outflanked, betrayed, ambushed and barely survive. Luke convulsed by self-doubt, losing his right hand in a light-saber battle, horrified by a revelation about his lineage. Han being captured, tortured and put into carbon freeze. Guts but no glory, wounds, pain, “there’ll be another time.”
2. Star Wars (’77) is entirely satisfying for what it is and occasionally quite special, but why is it I haven’t re-watched it in several years? Because it’s nowhere near as good as Empire and I just can’t seem to find the time.
It was announced this morning that Ron Howard‘s Solo: A Star Wars Story, the most negative-buzz-plagued Star Wars movie in the history of the franchise, will screen out-of-competition during the Cannes Film Festival. The screening will happen on Tuesday, 5.15, or ten days before the U.S. debut and eight days before the French opening.
It’s not certain that Alden Ehrenreich, the too-short, charisma-challenged, completely miscast actor who had to be professionally coached in a seemingly desperate effort to capture the insouciant vibe and commanding physicality of young Harrison Ford, will be roasted by the Cannes press contingent. But the knives will be out, you bet.
Then again Disney probably wouldn’t offer Solo for a big Cannes screening if they weren’t at least somewhat confident that it satisfies on its own terms, Aldrenreich’s shortcomings notwithstanding.
Solo costars Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo and Paul Bettany.
Exec producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who directed Solo for for four and 1/2 months before being canned by producer Kathy Kennedy over creative differences, will presumably attend the red-carpet ceremony along with Kennedy, director Ron Howard, screenplay authors Lawrence and JonathanKasdan, producer Simon Emanuel and executive producer Jason McGatlin.
The Cannes Film Festival runs from Tuesday, 5.8 thru Saturday, 5.19. The slate will be announced on Thursday, 4.12.
If, as the head of Lucasfilm marketing, I’d been recently ordered to come up with a title for Ron Howard, Kathy Kennedy, Phil Lord and Chris Miller‘s Han Solo film, I would have left work early on Friday. The idea would have been to withdraw from the hurly burly and think long and hard. I would make myself a pot of green tea, shut off all electronic devices, put on a Japanese robe and sandals and take long walks through the woods and along the beach.
“What to call it?,” I would ask myself over and over. “Yes, a three-year-old would have suggested Solo, and yes, I understand how the simplest approach can sometimes be the best one. But I wouldn’t want to adopt a lazy attitude. I’d want the title to be a pure and poetically perfect distillation of the Han Solo mythology.”
The answer might have hit me immediately or it might have taken all weekend, but by Sunday night my decision would be firm — Solo: A Stars Wars Tale.
“It was my reaction to Alden Ehrenreich‘s performance in Alexandre Moors‘ The Yellow Birds, which I saw at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, that convinced me he won’t be a good Solo. Aldenriech just doesn’t have that presence, that Harrison Ford cock-of-the-walk cool. There’s just something about Ehrenreich that feels guarded and clenched.”
Posted on 1.22.17: “Where In The Valley of Elah had the great Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron butting heads while looking into the stateside death of Jones’ son, The Yellow Birds mostly just wades into the frosty expressions and general lethargy of Ehrenreich’s Bartie — a guy I had zero interest in and didn’t want to hang out with.
“The reason is Ehrenreich himself. He simply lacks that X-factor magnetism that popular lead actors all have. Charming as he was in Hail Caesar!, this beady-eyed fellow doesn’t have ‘it’ — he’s always wearing the same sullen, hiding-out, stone-faced expression, no matter what kind of situation or character he’s playing. He never lifted off the ground or stepped out of bounds in Rules Don’t Apply. I’ll be seriously surprised if he turns out to be a great Han Solo as that Harrison Ford sexy-rogue quality just isn’t in him.”
A rambling report about the firing of Han Solo spinoff helmers Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, posted yesterday (6.22) on Starwarsnewsnet.com, basically says that concerns about Lord and Miller’s “screwball comedy” approach were first voiced by none other than Han Solo himself — i.e., the beady-eyed, relentlessly sullen Alden Ehrenreich. Rather than summarize this epic-lengthed saga, I’ll just post excerpts with the snow boiled out:
Excerpt #1: “Several weeks into production, there were concerns that in spite of the good work that Lord & Miller were doing with their movie, something was decidedly off about the way that their signature approach was taking the project, and that the bickering between them and the powers that be (i.e., Kathy Kennedy, Lawrence Kasdan) continued off and on. But the first person who [expressed concern] about these worries wasn’t Kasdan or Kennedy. It was fucking Ehrenreich.” [HE explanation: The last four words were written entirely by me — I just liked the way they sounded.]
Alden Ehrenreich, allegedly the guy who first voiced concerns about Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s screwball approach to the Han Solo spinoff flick.
Excerpt #2: “Ehrenreich…started to worry that Lord & Miller’s screwball comedy angle was starting to interfere with what the character of Han Solo is really about, [given that Lord and Miller’s Solo] was a younger, more reckless take on the character than the one we met in that Cantina on Tatooine. One source described it as being oddly comparable to Jim Carrey’s performance in Ace Ventura at times. Ehrenreich let his concerns be known to one of the producers, who then told Kennedy about it, which led to her decision to look over the existing footage.”
Excerpt #3: “People close to the project have positively described…several isolated scenes [directed by Lord and Miller]. However, once an assembly cut actually started to come together, Kennedy and Kasdan — as well as the other people reporting to them — started to get deeply concerned. There was something of a ‘zany’ tone to more scenes than they would have liked — in part due to some of the improv — and I get the feeling that fans might take more of an issue with this than they would have if the film had been left unfixed.
Excerpt #4: “At some point in production, some kind of hiatus took place, and this is where they reviewed the footage and told Lord & Miller that they’d need to overhaul the movie with reshoots when they worked on it later. Lord & Miller…were pretty rebellious [about this], their response being an ultimatum — i.e., either let us handle the reshoots our way or we’re out. And [so] they were shown the door.”
As I began to glumly settle into an awareness of the kind of film CocaineBear is — a film that’s weirdly cottonball and barren but at the same time not a piece of shit and which is reasonably well-framed, cut, written and directed…as I took stock of what it was up to, I didn’t know what to make of it. Really…I was lost.
I can report that I laughed twice, which should count for something.
I honestly don’t know what to say except that CB is some kind of dopey–asshybriddeadpan comicgorefest, and yet one that’s chortle-worthy at times and even touches bottom once or twice. “This is a wank, a waste of time,” I was muttering, “but it’s not that awful.”
I found myself lamenting, in fact, that director Elizabeth Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden had decided to go for dumb laughs — if they’d only committed to making some kind of dry, half-realistic ensemble docu-dramedy, CB might have amounted to something (though I can’t quite imagine what that would be exactly).
I’ll tell you this much — the late Ray Liotta plays it totally straight as a furrowed-brow drug dealer, and I felt really badly that he wasn’t allowed to play a nogoodnik of greater consequence, or at least that he wasn’t given better lines.
Alden Ehrenreich (whose hair is going gray already!) plays Liotta’s half-heartedly criminal son, and I swear to God he’s more compelling in this role than he was in Solo or Rules Don’tApply.
The steadily low-key O’Shea Jackson Jr. is wasted, and that bummed me out. Ditto Keri Russell as a good mom searching the forest for her 13-year-old daughter (Brooklyn Prince, who of course looks nothing like Russell)…she also plays it straight like Ehrenreich and Liotta.
I just wish Banks hadn’t tried to goof her way through it. I wish she’d made this film in a Steven Soderbergh-type way. That’s all I’m saying.
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman: “Sequels exist, as art and as business, to remind you of something that existed before. They are parasitical by design. That’s why, well into the ’90s (the era of Another 48 HRS, RoboCop 2 and Speed 2: Cruise Control), they were a form greeted with a mixture of (momentary) enthusiasm and (mostly) mockery.”
HE: There are still only two Star Wars movies of serious consequence — The Empire Strikes Back (which is approaching its 40th anniversary) and to a slightly lesser extent the original Star Wars: A New Hope. Some of the Star Wars films made over the last four decades have been marginally exciting or diverting or harmless as far as they went, but none even came close to packing the mythical cliffhanger punch of The Empire Strikes Back.
Since 1983 and the arrival of the mostly underwhelming Return of the Jedi, they’ve all been about one thing and one thing only — i.e., cashing in on the lore. And that, from my perspective, has never been a compelling thing to wade into.
Q: What’s in it for me? A: Well, if you like it you’ll feel good and fulfilled. And if you don’t…well, not a whole lot. Ether way they basically just want your money.
Gleiberman: “Star Wars has come to represent a kind of capitalist religion: the notion that Hollywood can create a universe that’s so powerful, such a golden goose, that it never has to end.
“The birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in 2008, was a direct iteration of this philosophy, one that emerged in spirit out of what George Lucas had accomplished with his prequels. And in an odd way, it was the very mediocrity of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith that became central to their meaning in the global entertainment marketplace. The mediocrity suggested that when the brand is mythological enough, ‘if you build it, they will come…even if the films don’t measure up.’
HE: The general presumption is that Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were “summarily dismissed” from the Star Wars universe (i.e., an attempt to create a whole new world of Star Wars-like characters and narratives) because they weren’t able to shake off their drive and personality and become docile stooges for the Disney Empire — cogs in the corporate mechanism. They presumably wanted to do that to some extent, at least in the beginning stages, but it wasn’t in them. Their visions were too far afield of the generic Star Wars template.
