After months of both anticipation and speculation, the first footage for “Solo: A Star Wars Story” has arrived with a short spot, airing during the Super Bowl before a full teaser was dropped on Good Morning America the following morning. The exciting initial footage shows off the all-star cast, including Donald Glover (of Childish Gambino and “Community” fame) as the suave Lando Calrissian, Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”) as Qi’ra, Woody Harrelson (“The Hunger Games”) as mentor Beckett and of course Alden Ehrenreich (“Hail, Caesar!”) as the man himself, Han Solo.
The trailer sets up fans to dive into the backstory of the Star Wars universe’s famous rogue, presumably setting up the iconic relationship between him and the loyal wookie Chewbacca, the heists that made him the greatest pilot in the galaxy and the cons that earned him his notorious ship, the Millennium Falcon.
Fans and industry insiders have been worried about the status of the film after reports emerged that production was in trouble after Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm, fired original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (“The Lego Movie”) and replaced them with Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”). Rumors have suggested that Kennedy and others at Lucasfilm had felt Lord and Miller were taking the film in the wrong direction and wasting resources and budget, taking too many takes of scenes, while Ehrenreich, a relative newcomer with only one (albeit well-received) major performance to his name, was forced to take on an acting coach late into production. The fact that no footage had yet been released despite the film’s quickly upcoming release date fueled the fire of these fears, but the teaser seems to have quelled those anxieties for now. In light of this production drama, the grinning delivery of the final line of the teaser seems like just the tongue-in-cheek humor Solo himself would use to calm fans: “Thought we were in trouble for a second there, but it’s fine. It’s fine.”
We’ll have to see if Solo is right when “Solo: A Star Wars Story” hits theaters on May 25.
