COMING BACK TO LIFE
Ron Howard revives Han Solo BRUNCH
Ron Howard boasts a solo directing credit on Solo: A Star Wars Story, but it was far, far away from a solo effort.
The Oscar-winning director of A Beautiful
Mind (2002) took over the film after Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy dismissed Phil Lord and Christopher Miller deep into the production of the Star
Wars prequel, which follows the early days of that intergalactic scoundrel Han Solo. His job was to shepherd Solo to the finish line and its May 25 release date.
“I wouldn’t have jumped in if I didn’t feel that the screenplay did a really good job of answering the fans’ questions,” Howard said. “How might Han turn out to be Han? What are some of the early events and relationships that impacted him and pushed him toward a singular life and those characteristics?
“So I believed in that and I really believed in the cast,” he said. “I thought I could help. I thought I understood how to make it work. As I got into it, I was gratified to have the latitude from Lucasfilm to tackle the things I thought needed tackling and experiment with scenes I thought could be experimented with, as long as we were working with urgency and purpose in trying to get the movie done.
“I was also very, very grateful for a lot of the invention and ideas Phil and Chris had put into place,” Howard continued, referring to his predecessors, who are credited as executive producers. “They were incredibly gracious. We spoke. We had a lengthy meeting during the transition period, and we’ve spoken since. They were very supportive and collegial and great about it, which I appreciated.”
Howard, the child actor turned filmmaker, recently discussed Solo via telephone from an office in London, where he was applying the film’s finishing touches. He’d been a longtime Star Wars fan, he explained, but not a fanatical one, and he’d worked with George Lucas as an actor in American Graffiti (1973), which Lucas directed, and as a director on Willow (1988), which Lucas produced. Nonetheless, actual involvement with Star Wars had remained a Kessel run out of his grasp … until now.
“I didn’t particularly watch the animated series or anything like that, but I saw every movie, some more than once,” Howard recalled. “Always through George and my friendship with him, I was up the sleeve with what was going on. We’d visit the set once in a while, or I.L.M. [Industrial Light and Magic, Lucas’ special-effects house]. Without ever really analysing it or particularly doing a deep dive into why the movies worked so profoundly well, I was always a fan and always appreciated
Star Wars, especially the first one.
“I worked with George in American Graffiti,” he said. “In fact, I couldn’t even get an audition for Star Wars (1977), which I found a little frustrating. But certainly I knew a lot of people involved and was dying to see it. Opening weekend, my wife, Cheryl, and I went to the [Grauman’s] Chinese Theatre and stood in line for two hours to see the movie at a matinee, a 10am show. We had such an amazing experience. I was so emotional by the end of that movie. I’d been so transported.
“When we walked outside and saw another two-hour line,” Howard continued, “we just said, ‘Do you want to see it again?’ We both just agreed instantly that that’s what we would do. We got in line for another two hours and saw it again that same day.”
Howard certainly hopes that millions of Star Wars fans around the world will feel the same way about Solo. Alden Ehrenreich steps into the massive shoes of Harrison Ford to portray Han Solo, with Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca. Donald Glover co-stars as Lando Calrissian, the fellow smuggler and sparring partner played by Billy Dee Williams in The Empire
Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).
New to the story are Woody Harrelson as Tobias Beckett, Solo’s enigmatic mentor, and Thandie Newton as Val, Beckett’s partner in crime. Emilia Clarke plays Qi’ra, a mysterious femme fatale, with Paul Bettany as space mobster Dryden Vos and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as L3-37, a self-modified female droid who’s part of Team Calrissian.
“It’s a rite-of-passage story for young Han,” Howard said. “What really appeals to me is that, while it is a full-on adventure story with the action and all the things you’d expect in a
Star Wars adventure, it is very focused on Han, the events and relationships that’d change him.
“So that’s what makes this different in a lot of ways, is that the action set pieces are important in terms of the plot and the adventures, sure, but they’re even more significant for us as fans in terms of the way they demonstrate Han’s nature, skills, weaknesses, and also test him in important ways that will ultimately shape him.”
Howard has mounted massive movies before, among them
Willow, Apollo 13 (1995), How the Grinch Stole Christmas
(2000), The Da Vinci Code (2006) and its 2006 and 2016 sequels, and In the Heart of the Sea (2015). Nothing, he said, will “ever be tougher” than the fantasy film Willow, which was based on a story by Lucas.
“We were trying to do some ambitious things visually at a time when visual effects were still so limiting to work with,” Howard recalled. “Now there’s so much flexibility and the I.L.M. wizards are so cutting-edge. I found Solo to be a lot of hard work, a tremendous amount of detail, of course, and we were under real deadline pressure from the first moment on this movie, sure, but creatively it was just a fantastic sandbox to play in, tonally and in terms of the technology at my disposal.” With Solo behind him, would Howard want to direct a Star
Wars instalment from scratch?
The director started to speak and stopped a couple of times before answering.
“I … certainly did feel I missed out on the sort of year of prep and design and so forth that goes into these movies,” Howard said cautiously. “I still had a great time making this movie. I was drawn to this one by the story, and the script, and I think that’s probably the way I would feel about any project in the future.
“Also, Solo happened to come at a time when I wasn’t really planning to direct anything for Imagine,” he said, referring to the production house run by Howard and his longtime friend and business partner, Brian Grazer. “I was working with Brian on developing projects and growing our company and fundraising, as Imagine is really stretching its wings. So I hadn’t expected to direct at all, and then this came my way. And I took the lead.
“It’s a big commitment to take on one of these movies from start to finish,” Howard continued. “That would take me away from Imagine, too, so I don’t know.
“It’s not a very cohesive answer,” he admitted, “because I haven’t really thought about it too much. I’ve just been pedal to the metal trying to make sure we get Solo to audiences and maximise the possibilities of the story.”
At 64, Howard is right where he wants to be. The former star of The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968) and Happy Days (19741984) still dabbles in acting, narrating Arrested Develop
ment and appearing as himself recently on This Is Us (2017). Ever since his first short films, early television movies and debut feature, Grand Theft Auto (1977), however, he had envisioned moviemaking as his full-time future.
“That was the dream, without a doubt,” Howard said. “By the time I was doing anything professionally, I was really committed to trying to make it be my career. For a while I thought maybe I would be a hyphenate and combine the acting with the directing more, but I fell in love with directing. And then so many great opportunities started going my way that I literally felt as though I retired from acting.