What’s the real story about Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s unceremonious dismissal from the directing job of “Solo: A Star Wars Story?” That’s a question that people have been wanting an answer to for years now, after the acclaimed comedic filmmakers were dumped after three months of filming and replaced by Ron Howard, who ended up reshooting almost the entire film. Well, even though the directing duo isn’t keen on spilling all of the details, they did shed some light on the learning experience that was “Solo.”
Speaking to The Business podcast, hosted by Kim Masters, Lord and Miller talked as openly as we can expect about the “Solo: A Star Wars Story” situation. Obviously, they’re not about to speak ill of Lucasfilm and the folks who work at the studio, but it’s clear the duo wants people to know that there’s more to the story than what we might have assumed.
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“Well, there are two sides to every story,” said Chris Miller. “And every success that is public, there are many things that don’t come to light and many disappointments. Certainly, we’ve had ebb and flow in our career, maybe not as visible, so at the end of the day, it’s always about: you’re always in film school. You’re always learning and trying to become a better filmmaker.”
“So, as negative as the ending of [‘Solo’] was, and as deeply misunderstood as we felt, the lasting memory is of the great collaboration we had,” he continued. “We shot, 90 days on that movie, you can’t take the experience away from us, you can’t take away the pencil miles from us—a term we use in animation— and we had a very fruitful, creative time with all the departments and with one another and we became better filmmakers for it. At the end of the day… in a funny way, it’s isn’t a debacle, it’s actually just on the continuum of learning and becoming a great filmmaker.”
“And we met such amazing, talented crew that we still work with, and love and are in touch with to this day,” Lord added. “So, ultimately, it was a positive experience that had a hard-to-get-through chapter, but luckily we had many other things to jump into and funnel all of that creativity and things that we had learned into those things.”
Again, it’s not necessarily clear why Kathleen Kennedy fired Lord and Miller from ‘Solo.’ The reports claim that the directors were hoping to blaze new ground and bring a unique spin to the “Star Wars” franchise. Kennedy, so says the reports, was uneasy about the tone of the film and brought in Howard to right the ship and deliver what was ultimately a lackluster “Star Wars” feature that felt very safe, with fan service moments and winks and nods to other films.
Lord and Miller seem to be on the side of the discussion where they believe fan service might be fun at the moment, but that goal will ultimately bring disappointment.
“If you’re giving the audience exactly what they expect and a bunch of, ‘just fan service,’ they’re going to end up disappointed, they’re gonna be like, ‘Yeah, this is stuff I already knew,'” Lord explained. “The trick is to figure out what it is they don’t quite yet realize that they want and every idea that you add into the stew is something that you’re like, ‘Oh, that would be a cool thing to see that I haven’t seen before and isn’t the thing that’s expected because I think people are really savvy now and so you have to stay two steps ahead of them and I feel like that’s our job.”
“You can’t play scared,” Miller added. “So, I don’t really relate to some fear of a fanbase. We don’t think about it that way. There are people out there, I suppose, that are trying to game the marketplace and follow a formula. They’re trying to serve the quarterly earnings of a big company, but a company doesn’t make a movie or write a song, these things are made by human beings and we’re always trying to serve the human beings making the movie and the human beings witnessing the movie, always remembering, what you’re putting out there, that’s only half of it. The other half is, there’s a person in a movie theater and you’re beaming sound and light into their face and they make the movie in their brain. So you have to understand that as a relationship and a conversation, put yourselves into the shoes of that person.”
“We’re so sincere with wanting to serve that person and trying to deliver surprise and delight and also affirmation, to help that person imagine what goodness looks like in the world,” he continued, “Those things are all genuine, and that is the Teflon that allows you to take great risks with this material and this hallowed ground because you understand the fundamental underpinnings of it and you’re honoring that.”
While they don’t talk about specifics to the “Solo” situation, it’s clear Lord and Miller were trying to achieve things with their “Star Wars” feature that Lucasfilm is actively not trying to do now. When you have series such as “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett” filed to the brim with callbacks to previous films/series/comics, it’s clear Lucasfilm wants to capitalize on the “Star Wars” nostalgia before trying to blaze a new trail for the franchise.
All that to say, Lord and Miller obviously didn’t see eye-to-eye with the top brass at Lucasfilm, and that led to a situation where we’ll never get to see truly what the directors had up their sleeve.