The standalone Han Solo movie is reportedly the biggest box office
flop in the Star Wars franchise. That is an entirely relative statement, as I’m
not sure many people would label $265 million dollars in ticket sales a bad
thing. But, the movie had a $400 million budget apparently, so in industry
terms, it flopped. There are multiple theories as to why this happened, but as
is the case with all things Star Wars these days, only a few of them are
rational, while many more are fueled by a truly impotent rage coming from the
more delicate corners of the fan community.
Young Han Solo here, as a figure, suffers from one problem:
the actor, Alden Ehrenreich, looks nothing like Han Solo. Sure, during the
movie, you can sorta see it, if you squint at just the right angles. But the
figure looks like Alden Ehrenreich, so it gets points for screen accuracy. This
is literally the problem with this toy: it does not look like the character it
is named after, or at least, the version of the character that most of us think of when we hear that name. 
Aside from that, young Han here has all the usual Black Series highlights: good
posability, again, screen accuracy, an overall good look about it including
some nice detailing that is consistent with other, older, “real” Han Solo
figures. Initial Coffin responses to this figure upon reveal were that it was
unwanted and lame, not resembling the beloved smuggler enough to warrant
inclusion in the collection, and that it would probably be passed over in
store, also kind of knowing that this figure would tread the same road as the initial,
jacket wearing Finn from The Force
Awakens line, languishing on shelves for long enough that it could be one
of those wonderful “haven’t bought anything in a while” purchases. Then we saw
the movie, and then my wife found it on Amazon for like $14, and then it was
delivered to our home.  |
| Bros |
It would seem that the real worth of this Han Solo figure is
when he is displayed alongside the younger versions of Lando and Chewie, and
for anyone who laments the difficulty of displaying younger versions of
characters, like “where are they supposed to fit in?”, the
not-as-obvious-as-you’d-think answer is, “with each other.” And that is
something of a perplexing issue for Star Wars figures, which generally look
fine with any other Star Wars figures. Having a Luke Skywalker duel Darth Revan
is not an issue, as despite coming from different eras, they don’t look
terribly incongruous. But a youthful version of a character looks odd next to
an OT or original version of any other character, doesn’t look right. Put this
Han next to an OT Luke or Leia. It just doesn’t work. So, who are they supposed
to be displayed with? Each other. The shelf in your collection for Solo figures is really supposed to only
contain Solo figures, as a
self-contained set. Then, everything makes real good sense. As forehead-slappingly
obvious as that sounds, it’s not entirely the first thing that pops to mind for
some, and that can really complicate the place a figure like this has in a collection.
Personally, I think it’s pretty neat to have figure versions
of characters at various points in their lives. Now, we’ve got young Han, ANH
Han, ESB Han (with a second, Bespin version incoming), and TFA Han, so your Han
Solo shelf can display a real time lapse look at the character. I’m not
entirely sold on the idea that this should be a future development for the Black Series, nor that Disney should continue making character-specific prequel
films, though. But when it happens, it’s kind of neat.
So, if you’re going to buy a figure of a younger version of
Han Solo, and you’ve chosen the Black
Series offering, you know what you’re buying. But I want to talk about Solo: A Star Wars Story. The movie may
have been a box office flop, but it was hardly a bad movie. A really cool heist
movie set in space, the movie had essentially everything that you want from a
Star Wars offering. It had action, and characters that you could really love,
previously unknown smuggler Tobias Beckett chief among them. It gave us other
new entires, like Lando’s droid partner L3-37, a cool revolutionary who, as
soon as she uttered words on screen, I knew was going to be hated by that strata
of people who bitch and cry whenever something ideological is presented that
they don’t agree with. We also got younger versions of known characters, and
some backstory on them. Some of it may be a little lame, such as how Han comes
to be known as Han “Solo,” and some of it, like the Kessel Run, veers away in
severity from what was previously known to be the story of the Kessel Run.
Now, I’m usually the first person to say that no one has to like anything, and if you didn’t
like Solo, or any of the new Star
Wars movies, or the Prequels, or the Original Trilogy, that’s totally fine. But
at least be rational with your dislike. This is a topic for a different day,
but these people who decry recent Star Wars because of diverse casting or
female characters in positions of power are frankly embarrassing, despite their
not being developed enough to actually feel embarrassed at their lameness.
Dislike characters all you want, but dislike them for actual reasons, not because of something that
is a clear and obvious smokescreen. In Solo,
Han is written as a little bit of a putz, and if you dislike that, that’s cool.
Solo Han isn’t yet the dashing
scoundrel that he is when we first actually met him in A New Hope, because he’s a younger version of himself. He’s
confident and sly and has a big head, a sense that everything is going to go
according to his plan because it is his plan. But in Solo, he’s often left looking like a guy who’s lot of talk and no
real brains. Because he just got involved in the smuggling underworld; people
expecting him to be the same Han as the old Han are apparently working under
some type of life delusion that states we are all born fully formed and developed
into our final forms, and they ignore the obvious fact of life that we learn
and grow and change over time. Young Han hooks up with a gang of veteran and
established criminals, and THEIR plans go awry as well. What sense would it
make for Han to appear and suddenly and totally be a criminal mastermind? His
plans in the OT don’t generally work out that well either. . .
But, for those of us who have grown up on Star Wars, we’ve
got hero worship issues with characters like Han Solo. When we think of Han
Solo, we think of the charismatic rogue we grew up with, and Solo shows us a Han that hasn’t yet
grown into that Han. And I guess some people just can’t handle that. 
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