Why everyone hates Solo

Solo isn't a movie so much as it is a marketing concept. Is anyone surprised there's a backlash?

Alden Ehrenreich and Joonas Suotamo.
(Image credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.)

The mounting consensus around Solo: A Star Wars Story seems to be that a Star Wars fan or completist should probably see it, but, ugh, it will be a chore. And even this limp resignation is far kinder than the blazing, let-loose-the-dogs-of-war kind of hatred that some Star Wars fans have shown.

When the film's first trailer debuted on Super Bowl Sunday, the headlines evinced an already-over-it malaise ("Here's Why Nobody Cares About Solo: A Star Wars Story"), the fancasts speculated that it would be "a colossal disaster," and the Reddit threads — well, the Reddit threads were exactly what one might expect, gleefully sharing rumors that Disney "knows this movie is a stinker and is expecting it to fail." The drama around Solo's production — the gladiatorial casting process that put every white actor under 30 inside the arena; the original directors' clashes with producer Kathleen Kennedy and replacement with Hollywood stalwart Ron Howard; and the exhaustive rewrites, reshoots, and re-interpretations — soon eclipsed any legitimate interest in, or appraisal of, the film.

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Laura Bogart

Laura Bogart is a featured writer for Salon and a regular contributor to DAME magazine. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, CityLab, The Guardian, SPIN, Complex, IndieWire, GOOD, and Refinery29, among other publications. Her first novel, Don't You Know That I Love You?, is forthcoming from Dzanc.