Why Han Solo's Stories said goodbye to filmmakers so easily (Topic)

Firing directors in the middle of the filming process is a public relations disaster, which was inevitable for both Kennedy and her entire team, so making this decision meant that the conflict with those who directed Han Solo gained so much large scale, that it could no longer be hidden or resigned. Nevertheless, this state of affairs is not new for President Lucasfilm.

Too dark for new Star Wars

Rumors that during the filming of "Rogue One. Star Wars. Stories" there were also big problems and misunderstandings between the administration and the director surrounded the project from the very beginning of work on it and continued until Tony Gilrow replaced director Gareth Edwards ("Godzilla") in the final stages of making the film, when it was necessary to re-shoot a lot of what Edwards had already shot, not to mention the fact that the script itself was modified.

According to some sources, the reason for the replacement of the director was that the original footage that had already been filmed turned out to be too dark and too far beyond what Lucasfilm would like to see it.

So, although the film finally turned out to be quite strong and of high quality, it is impossible to hide from an attentive eye those fragments that bear the signs of a duel of creative views that once took place, which creates a feeling of some incoherence of fragments and even incompleteness of the film when watching .

Unlike Lord and Miller, Edwards was at least able to finish filming the film before the filming process began over again. Perhaps at that time Lucasfilm did not want to take such big risks, while in 2017 they did not even wait until the end of filming and just changed the director.

Hollywood changes directors like gloves

While it is unusual for directors to be replaced right in the middle of the filming process (usually "creative contradictions" arise even before it begins), it is not unheard of.

For example, "The Wizard of Oz", which nowadays is ranked among the pantheon of masterpieces that have ever been created, went through a series of changes of at least four directors.

From start to finish: Richard Thorpe spent 10 days filming the film before he left the studio after the first actor to play the Tin Woodman became seriously ill from the makeup required for the role; for a short time he was replaced by George Cukor and then Victor Fleming did most of the work (therefore his name only appears in the credits of the film and only after his death in 1949 King Vidor, another of the great directors of MGM studio, revealed the fact that he was appointed to filming the beginning and ending of the film in sepia tone).

The reason Fleming left the project rather quickly was that by that time he had already been assigned to another project, which also required replacing the director on the set of "Gone with the Wind" after Cukor was fired by the film's producer David Selznick and even after that, the production of the film went so hard that Sam Wood was brought in to replace Fleming (but this did not affect Fleming's Oscar in the category for best director).

Disney and Pixar are ruthless employers

Only Disney and Pixar have shown themselves to be especially ruthless in canning projects and firing directors if they thought something was wrong. Ian Pinkawa was dismissed from his native project, Ratatouille, because Pixar feared that the vision of the director and scriptwriter of the cartoon was too esoteric for a wider audience, so Brad Bird, who carefully revised and redesigned the entire project within 18 months and led the film to commercial success and critical acclaim.

For example: Brenda Chapman was to become the first female director in a Pixar project in Episode 6 of Once Upon a Time, season 5, inspired by her relationship with her daughter. A year before the premiere of the film, Disney decided to replace her with Mark Andrews.

As a result, the film has become more voluminous and still bears traces of the fact that someone tried to connect the separate pieces of the puzzle together, but these pieces did not fit together to the end. Although Chapman's name is mentioned in the credits for the film, the situation in working on him turned out to be almost identical to what we already saw in Rogue One. Star Wars. Stories: the discrepancy between the creative vision and the business idea, which is aimed at the target audience.

The future of the Star Wars franchise

When Han Solo Star Wars Tales ended under the Ron Howard banner, we still have questions about where the franchise will take in the future and how the next generation's vision can or should fit into all of this. If Kennedy and the studio still want to stick to the status quo and continue to use a model that has proven itself to be a win-win, then of course it is a smart business decision that will always deliver results and profits: if Star Wars fans can survive the prequels. then they will survive anything.

But it is still somewhat upsetting that the most iconic series of films over the past 50 years has not the slightest desire to experiment and deviate from the expected, especially when the new era of expanded universes and franchises wanting to be like them uses the same model in your projects.

Being a director of Star Wars is probably still the dream of many directors, but more and more promising film talent will think twice about whether they want to repeat the fate of Lord and Miller.

The Topic of Article: Why Han Solo's Stories said goodbye to filmmakers so easily.
Author: Jake Pinkman