One Can Only Go Solo

We went and saw Solo. My joke was that we were going to find out that his real name was Hank Solinski. I saw it and enjoyed it. Mostly a fun movie. 

But that's just me. I saw the original Star Wars, before it was A New Hope, in 1977. I was hooked. I loved it. But I was also five. I think I loved Sesame Street, Welcome Back Kotter, and Mr Rogers. My parents could have thrown anything at me at five and I would have loved it. 

People tell me now that they hate Star Wars. I hate them. But I cannot really defend it. It was like my first car. I'll always love that. Sure it broke down on the freeway a couple times. Maximum speed was 50 mph. Gas gauge didn't work. When I started it, the starter would miss the flywheel and make this awful grinding sound, but I loved my International Scout.

Star Wars and me are like soulmates. I couldn't say no to Solo. And I definitely could not say no to Ron Howard. I knew he was going to get Clint in there. It is like the Alfred Hitchcock or Stan Lee cameos. Clint Howard is a staple.

The guy who played Solo wasn't very Han Solo-ish. Kind of looked like him, but basically, it wasn't really him. And there was no way it could be.

And that brings me to this: Why? What was the point? Were they sitting around in a room thinking about all the different possible Star Wars movies?

1. How about a story revolving around the Cantina? We could have it be like Cheers. And different folks come in and out. We could make it a trilogy. The Cantina Trilogy...

2. How about the prequel to the prequels? It could be the years from Anakin's birth to when he turned ten years old and Qui-Gonn and Obi Wan and Jar Jar come in and change his life forever.

3. How about a remake of A New Hope and have George Lucas lookalikes play all the characters in the movie?

Each one of these makes as much sense to me as doing the Han Solo origin story. They didn't even go that far back. It's an origin story, but we are only going to show him five years before he showed up in A New Hope. Those were very formative years though. Everything he references in the other movies happened in this span...

Why not show him as a 6 year old kid travelling around with his costumed mates picking pockets for a living? Or show him cruising around in his go-cart and after evading all the neighborhood bullies, he points to the sky and says: "Travelling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy!"

Disney is sitting there going: Alright, we've got Star Wars! Now what?! Let's just crank out as much as we can. That should work. And we don't need any new ideas. We'll just use what worked before and go with that.

But alas, I am still five years old. They got me. They could throw up Ewok adventures and Holiday Specials and Jar Jar origin stories and I am in.