Solo was released back in May of this year. It seems like so long ago now that we were all wondering exactly how this film would do in the landscape of Star Wars movies. It turns out, not well. Writer for the film Jon Kasdan tweeted earlier today that he wonders if it would have been different had they waited until this week to release the film.
Star Wars has become a Christmas tradition for many families since The Force Awakens was released December of 2015. Since then they have tried to make one a year that would come out each consecutive December. After Force Awakens came Rogue One in December of 2016, and after that was The Last Jedi in December of 2017. Now this year we have nothing, which seems out of character for Disney.
So let’s think about this for a minute. Solo did $393,167,512 at the box office worldwide. That is the lowest for a Star Wars film. EVER. So do we blame this on it being a genuinely bad movie or timing? There were many arguments over Last Jedi being a bad film but in the end it still grossed $1,316,764,784 world wide. What a difference!
May is a month that is strange for a release date for sure. It’s not quite summer yet and kids are mostly in school. Parents are scrambling to finalize summer vacation plans if they have any and the work year is at peak time. I don’t know of anyone who actually had time, or made time after hearing about Solo from trusted critics. I mean, I saw it but that was more out of morbid curiosity.
So do you think it would have done better if it were released in December? Yeah, I mean sure, what else came out this month? Spider-Man into the Spiderverse came out the 14th, Aquaman came out the 21st(or earlier if you have Amazon Prime), Mary Poppins Returns was the 19th, and then Bumblebee came out the 21st as well. These are some pretty big competition but if your argument is “It’s STAR WARS,” then you already had your mind set.
The question is whether or not tradition would have been enough for people to come to see the film in December. It may have done a little better but I think for the most part word of mouth has a lot more to do with a flop than a release date might. It is something to be thought about, but unfortunately I think they should have just stepped up their game in Solo. Maybe casting a more interesting Solo would have done the trick, or maybe not giving us a movie about back story we didn’t need or ask for. I am one that is perfectly fine using my imagination and creating bad-ass narratives for the characters I enjoy and when you make a fixed story it kind of ruins it for a lot of people. Anyway…
How do you think it would have faired if it was released now and not seven months ago? Tell us in the comments!
