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THR: Ron Howard officially directing Han Solo after Lord/Miller firing

aBarreras

Member
The weird thing about all of this is that there seems to be an obvious answer to the whole "how do we make a comedy that reconciles with the characters people already know" - make it a frame story where Han is embellishing.

Hell, maybe that's what Lord and Miller were banking on in the edit.

apparently is the contrary, kasdan wanted that, lord and miller didnt
 

sphagnum

Banned
Actually have the opening and closing be Chewbacca recounting the tale to his family on Kashyyyk in Shyriiwook without subtitles.
 

aBarreras

Member
No shit? Wild.

yep

I heard a rumour that Kasdan was basically trying to make The Big Chill version of Star Wars and that the entire thing was originally set in the Cantina on Tatooine during a sandstorm. With an older, navel-gazing Han talking about his adventures when he was younger.

Lord and Miller apparently wanted to lose that framework and take the thing out into space and that was that.
 

Mariolee

Member
If true, that's the lead actor, producer, and screenwriter against them.

At what point do we go, "Maybe Lord and Miller didn't have the right idea for Han Solo?"

That could certainly have happened, but then you have to define what the "right" idea for a young Han Solo even is, and its difficult because there's not yet an official story that's chronicled it yet.

We also have the fact that they've batted 4-0 with the films they have made so far and another report stated it was fine.

Bobby's take on the whole thing being a potentially great movie on its own, but disjointed when put in the rest of the universe is probably the right one. And honestly, that's why I wanted to see it so badly.

But that can't be true because at least they were doing something different!

Why can't "different" be right? The two ideas aren't irreconcilable. It's like how Better Call Saul has Jimmy McGill as someone who is pretty far removed from the cold hearted Saul Goodman we see in Breaking Bad. A good prequel usually shows us a different side of the character.
 

aBarreras

Member
That could certainly have happened, but then you have to define what the "right" idea for a young Han Solo even is, and its difficult because there's not yet an official story that's chronicled it yet.

We also have the fact that they've batted 4-0 with the films they have made so far and another report stated it was fine.



Why can't "different" be right? The two ideas aren't irreconcilable. It's like how Better Call Saul has Jimmy McGill as someone who is pretty far removed from the cold hearted Saul Goodman we see in Breaking Bad. A good prequel usually shows us a different side of the character.

different can be right if it is good, something is not good just because is different
 
Lord & Miller probably made a really funny, stylistically brand-new-to-Star-Wars flat-out comedy that, according to its own internal logic and characterization, fits together just fine. The problem is that it's not what Kasdan wanted in terms of tone, and it's not all that compatible with the Han & Lando we know from the rest of the series. And so they got asked to line the two ideas up a little closer, and they were like "No, just trust us, it'll be fine in the edit" and now here we are.

Thank you for the entire reply and your take on all of this.

As you pointed out, given how much footage was already shot and how little time Ron Howard has to really rework this, we might end up getting something closer to what Lord and Miller wanted anyway.
 

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
It's difficult to see any of this in a positive way. However, I can say for sure now that as soon as the movie starts and is missing the Arrested Development narrator I'm going to be disappointed.
 
From a Telegraph article last year:
Lord mentions a bone of wisdom that was recently slung at him by Lawrence Kasdan, the venerable Star Wars and Indiana Jones screenwriter with whom they (and also Kasdan’s son Jon) are collaborating on the Han Solo project.

“Larry said once, ‘I never did a movie that I loved that wasn’t funny.’ By which he means, the best dramatic movies all have a sense of humour. Gosh, even Schindler’s List has one laugh in it. A sense of humour is never a handicap.”

Working on the Han Solo script with the Kasdans, they agree, has been something of a masterclass. “We’ve been trying to get the script to a stage where it reflects the tone and vision that the four of us have for the movie, and it’s really been the four of us figuring out what that voice is together,” says Miller.

It's interesting how much of a tonal disconnect eventually took place considering how close Lord and Miller were working with Kasdan early on.
 

Mariolee

Member
From a Telegraph article last year:

It's interesting how much of a tonal disconnect eventually took place considering how close Lord and Miller were working with Kasdan early on.

It's always funny to see after a separation on a project how the team spoke about each other previously.
 

The Argus

Member
Finally Googled who Lord and Miller are. Really? Dudes who did Clone High, 21 Jump Street, and The Lego Movie are somehow being seen as a loss vs Ron Howard. Wow. Guess we just hate established old directors now.

As I said earlier, Howard knows how to do space and speed. This is key for a Han Solo flick. Nothing was lost, more was gained.
 
Why can't "different" be right? The two ideas aren't irreconcilable. It's like how Better Call Saul has Jimmy McGill as someone who is pretty far removed from the cold hearted Saul Goodman we see in Breaking Bad. A good prequel usually shows us a different side of the character.

Never said it couldn't​ be, just that there seems to be such a lust from certain people for a SW movie to be radically different to the point where it's damn near unrecognizable or it's being "played safe."

This movie can't take place long before IV, so I don't see why the character would need to be a lot different.
 
The last time anything kinda similar (but under waaaaayyy different motivation) happened was Richard Lester replacing Richard Donner on Superman II.

Lester got to do Superman III and didn't really do much after that
Donner did alright (Goonies, Lethal Weapon series, Maverick)

SuperNova and Enemy Mine were similar. Exorcist The Beginning is the worst outcome. This also happened to 13th Warrior / Eaters of the Dead.
 

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
Lord/Miller track record is so much better than Ron Howards.I really wanted to watch their vision.

th

lol, yeah what the hell was that statement??

That said, they definitely seemed a better fit for this.
 
lol, yeah what the hell was that statement??

That said, they definitely seemed a better fit for this.

fwiw that's Ron Howard winning for A Beautiful Mind, his 15th or so movie over a decade ago.

Lord&Miller do have a better track record, but only because they're 4/4, where Ron Howard has made like five or six times as many movies. Inconsistency is natural at that point. I suppose there's a case if you compare his last four movies, but hey, at least Rush is pretty darn good.

And now here's SWNN (leak site ala Making Star Wars) saying that Alden Ehrenreich was also sounding the alarm bells over how Lord & Miller were having him play the character:


Now obviously take with a grain of salt due to the source, but holy shit if the bolded is in any way accurate.

That's a sketchy write up with all the contradictions going on...
 

Arttemis

Member
22 Jump Street and Lego Batman are not exactly Earth shattering classics. I'm not celebrating their departure, but if they're depicting Han Solo in such a way that Kasdan, the man who wrote Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Indiana Jones RotLA, vehemently disagrees... I think I'd rather see them leave, too.

How the hell can anyone want a young Han Solo movie that doesn't fit in with the views of the writer of three Harrison Ford quintessential landmark films?

Their humor is frequently crass and goofy, often at the expense of the characters. Batman and Joker's relationship was depicted as romantic. It's not hard for me to believe claims that they turned Han into Ace Ventura.
 

Blader

Member
From a Telegraph article last year:




It's interesting how much of a tonal disconnect eventually took place considering how close Lord and Miller were working with Kasdan early on.
It sounds like they weren't totally aligned from the start and tried to get there eventually but just didn't.
 
22 Jump Street and Lego Batman are not exactly Earth shattering classics. I'm not celebrating their departure, but if they're depicting Han Solo in such a way that Kasdan, the man who wrote Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Indiana Jones RotLA, vehemently disagrees... I think I'd rather see them leave, too.

How the hell can anyone want a young Han Solo movie that doesn't fit in with the views of the writer of three Harrison Ford quintessential landmark films?

Their humor is frequently crass and goofy, often at the expense of the characters. Batman and Joker's relationship was depicted as romantic. It's not hard for me to believe claims that they turned Han into Ace Ventura.
They did the Lego movie, not Lego Batman...
 
22 Jump Street and Lego Batman are not exactly Earth shattering classics. I'm not celebrating their departure, but if they're depicting Han Solo in such a way that Kasdan, the man who wrote Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Indiana Jones RotLA, vehemently disagrees... I think I'd rather see them leave, too.

How the hell can anyone want a young Han Solo movie that doesn't fit in with the views of the writer of three Harrison Ford quintessential landmark films?

Their humor is frequently crass and goofy, often at the expense of the characters. Batman and Joker's relationship was depicted as romantic. It's not hard for me to believe claims that they turned Han into Ace Ventura.

They were only producers on LEGO Batman, unlike the LEGO Movie which they wrote and directed.
 

Theodoricos

Member
Are people really upset that an Oscar winner is taking the place of the guys who made The Lego Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?

I wish they were never involved in the project in the first place. This movie will be a mess.
 
It sounds like they weren't totally aligned from the start and tried to get there eventually but just didn't.

With the amount of rumors claiming Lucasfilms wanted it word for word from Kasdan's script, it's just interesting that this interview implies Lord and Miller were heavily involved in the script with Kasdan willingly adding in their suggestions fairly close to the start of filming.

At some point everyone's vision aligned enough to be willing to work in new elements to the script, then to let them start filming, then to let them continue filming for four months.

You'd think a massive production-halting disagreement over tone would have happened in the scripting phase and stopped everything right there.
 

Jarmel

Banned
One source described it as being oddly comparable to Jim Carrey’s performance in Ace Ventura at times.

If this is true, they're gonna have to reshoot most of the film. What the fuck. How did they even let it get to that point?
 
The weird thing about all of this is that there seems to be an obvious answer to the whole "how do we make a comedy that reconciles with the characters people already know" - make it a frame story where Han is embellishing.

Hell, maybe that's what Lord and Miller were banking on in the edit.
They could could take advantage of Star Wars' traditional vague time jumps in between cuts and go the extra mile for a surprise open by making it an interquel of Han telling Rey and Finn a little story about how he got the ship while they are hanging out on way to Takodana. Give them a little bit of a stronger connection to Han that was missing in TFA.
 

Batjag

Member
They could could take advantage of Star Wars' traditional vague time jumps in between cuts and go the extra mile for a surprise open by making it an interquel of Han telling Rey and Finn a little story about how he got the ship while they are hanging out on way to Takodana. Give them a little bit of a stronger connection to Han that was missing in TFA.

That might actually get me excited for this film.

But I don't think there's anyway they pony up the kind of dough it would take to get Harrison Ford to do it.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Lmao that ace ventura bit sounds a bit hyperbolic.

It does but then they haven't done anything more subdued...well ever. I think that's the risk in going with them, you don't know what their range is. The Lego Movie, Cloudy with a Chance, Last Man on Earth, and the Jump Streets are all hyper absurd in tone. But there isn't anything in their resume that indicates they could dial that back if need be.
 

Jarmel

Banned
Sounds risky at least.
That's so far on the extreme end that I have a hard time seeing how Kennedy and co didn't shoot that down to begin with. How do you film three months of that before somebody steps in? Even 21 and 22 Jump Street were nowhere near that type of comedy.
 
That's so far on the extreme end that I have a hard time seeing how Kennedy and co didn't shoot that down to begin with. How do you film three months of that before somebody steps in? Even 21 and 22 Jump Street were nowhere near that type of comedy.
KK has alot on her plate for a producer thats pretty 'hands on': Episode 8 post production, Episode 9 is supposed to be shooting in January, the Han solo movie and deciding the creative team for the 2020 spinoff. The workload seems insane.
 
It does but then they haven't done anything more subdued...well ever. I think that's the risk in going with them, you don't know what their range is. The Lego Movie, Cloudy with a Chance, Last Man on Earth, and the Jump Streets are all hyper absurd in tone. But there isn't anything in their resume that indicates they could dial that back if need be.

Since we're going by rumors:
Kennedy went to the editing room with Academy Award-winning editor Chris Dickens to see what the footage looked like when it was edited together. The filmmaking duo had filmed so many different choices that it was apparently unclear from dailies it would work or feel tonally consistent.

Going from this, it seems like Lord and Miller gave themselves tons of options tonally, rather than the whole thing being one crazy "Ace Ventura" level through out. Given they were allowed to film this long, and the release date has yet to be pushed back, Ron Howard isn't going to have a lot of time, so it points to a large portion of the footage they shot being usable.
 

blakep267

Member
22 Jump Street and Lego Batman are not exactly Earth shattering classics. I'm not celebrating their departure, but if they're depicting Han Solo in such a way that Kasdan, the man who wrote Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Indiana Jones RotLA, vehemently disagrees... I think I'd rather see them leave, too.

How the hell can anyone want a young Han Solo movie that doesn't fit in with the views of the writer of three Harrison Ford quintessential landmark films?

Their humor is frequently crass and goofy, often at the expense of the characters. Batman and Joker's relationship was depicted as romantic. It's not hard for me to believe claims that they turned Han into Ace Ventura.
Han wasn't exactly the brightest bulb when we ran into him in a new hope. By the time Empire, return and force awakens came through he was more serious but I would t say it's out of the realm of possibility for him and lando to be knuckleheaded space pirates when they were younger. Now granted Ace Ventura level dumb is abit much but I don't know if I'd believe that
 
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