Since the late 1970’s, Star Wars has been one of the biggest and most beloved film franchises. Through the 1980’s, its popularity grew with spinoffs, toys, merchandise and video games. We couldn’t get enough of it. The franchise remained strong in the 90’s, with VHS re-releases of the original trilogy and the lead up to to the first new movies in nearly 20 years.

After Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas, Star Wars rejoiced at the prospect of more movies, more games and more everything Star Wars. The Force Awakens was a box office juggernaut that not only took the US box office crown from Avatar, it snatched it from its head, pushed it down, kicked sand in its face and uttered something about its mama.

The following year brought us the first Star Wars spinoff in Rogue One, which also performed very well and is in the top ten performing movies of all time. However, last year dropped The Last Jedi into theaters and while successfully raking in over $600 million, it was poorly received by many long-time Star Wars fans.

It was a big drop from the massively hyped The Force Awakens, but still massively successful. In addition, a standalone Han Solo movie was coming a few months later, which should build the Star Wars hype even more until the long wait for 2019’s Episode IX.

The thing is, the Han Solo movie bombed. A Star Wars movie bombed. Analysts are predicting this film will lose between $50 and $80 million dollars for Disney.

How could this happen?

A perfect storm

---

_^Image:CNET

Since the initial totals came in, people have been tossing around their theories as to why this Star Wars movie is the first real failure in the 40-year-old franchise. Let’s examine some of those theories.

Franchise fatigue

This claim suggests that Solo is the victim of ‘franchise fatigue.’ This is the most easily dismissable claim, since this doesn’t seem to effect Marvel movies. With Black Panther and Infinity War bringing in $700 and $600+ million each after being released just three months apart, this argument simply doesn’t hold water.

Polarizing themes

Whether you agree with them or not, the social and political themes running through The Last Jedi were hard to ignore. Much with how the kneeling controversy damaged the NFL’s ratings, ticket and merchandise sales last season, there’s little doubt this has alienated some Star Wars fans as well. Its not hard to find plenty of evidence of fans sick of having political and social agendas shoved into their escapism entertainment, which lowered the desire to potentially see more of that in Solo.

Backlash against The Last Jedi

This is what I consider to be the biggest factor in Solo’s failure. The Last Jedi had a huge opening and a sharp drop after poor word-of-mouth started to spread. Poor writing (dropping bombs in zero gravity?), perversion of Star Wars legacy and concepts that break the entire continuity of the Star Wars universe (i.e. Holdo’s destruction of the Imperial fleet by weaponizing lightspeed) have turned this into the most hated Star Wars movie since the one that introduced Jar Jar Binks. There is a tremendous amount of anger about this movie and the direction of the franchise, which angered hardcore fans who are speaking with their wallets and taking out their frustration on Solo.

Lucasfilm feuds with Star Wars fans

Possibly a small factor, but there’s been a fairly public feud between Star Wars fans who hated The Last Jedi and staff from Lucasfilm, where rather than discussing these fans’ displeasure with the movie, they’re actually being attacked by those who are involved with the films. While this doesn’t directly effect many people, the poor PR has likely pushed some fans from being lukewarm about seeing Solo to disinterested. The pompous attitude held by some Lucasfilm employees is also turning off fans, as they proclaim they’re making the movies they want to make rather than making movies for lifelong Star Wars fans.

Production issues

While probably a small factor to some degree, the highly publicized problems with the production may have lessened enthusiasm to catch the movie in theaters. When stories start to float around about the lead needing acting lessons on set and most of the movie needing to be shot over, it doesn’t instill much confidence about the quality of the end product.

Disinterest in spinoffs

I don’t buy this excuse either. Rogue One was massively popular while being a standalone film that tied into the Star Wars universe, but presented us all new characters. Solo should have knocked it out of the park since it was telling the origins of one of the series best-loved heroes.

---

Whatever reasons there are that Solo has failed, Disney needs to examine all factors to make sure they don’t permanently damage this franchise. I fully expect Episode IX to underperform The Last Jedi because at this point, as they’ve lost too much goodwill and turned away a lot of their fans. Hopefully Lucasfilm can turn things around and create films that they’re proud of, that fans love and which make money for the company. Otherwise, the future of the franchise may be in jeopardy.

Wh do you think Solo is the first official Star Wars flop? Let’s discuss!

Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!

^{Cover Image Source: Star Wars}