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We weren’t enthused about seeing a “Star Wars” film where we know the ending.
Did we consider, however, that in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” that the movie, as we could have predicted, was a platform to set up many others – to the point that one should ask if the film was made for that very purpose?
There are at least four films that could spin off the movie that was released to the public Thursday evening.
(Spoilers follow.)
Those movies include a sequel about Han Solo and pal Chewbacca, and features about Darth Maul, the Rebel Alliance and Lando Calrissian.
Put a “probable” on a Lando flick. “We think the next spinoff will be dedicated to Lando Calrissian,” said Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, the “Star Wars” boss.
Kennedy also said “Of course, there are still many stories to tell about Han and Chewbacca,” IndieWire reported.
So, despite Kennedy’s walk-back of her Lando comment, you must think a film about the character is in the works. How could Kennedy resist running out Donald Glover as the lead man while he plays the most popular of magnetic characters? (Let alone that Glover sounded, wondrously, just like former Lando actor Billy Dee Williams at times.)
That’s beside movies about perhaps the greatest dynamic duo in film.
Darth Maul, because a villain (Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra), in a twist, not only survived but became the lead villain by murdering the person to whom she answers (Paul Bettany’s Dryden Voss). Or, she was thought to be, until, in an even bigger twist, Maul (Ray Park/Sam Witwer) was revealed to not only be alive but the ultimate person to whom Qi’ra answers. (Maul appears not long before the credits roll, yet he looms over the entire story element of the film of evil acts.) Maul even speaks of going after Han (Alden Ehrenreich), Chewie (Joonas Suotamo), and Lando, so a sequel to “Solo” involving Maul in some capacity, if not a lead capacity, is rather possible.
(For what it’s worth, Clarke said “I can’t wait,” SYFY WIRE reported when talking about what writers of new “Star Wars” films, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, will do with them. Is that a reference to working with them, as she has before on a film where Maul is the antagonist as suggested by “Solo” screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan’s comments?)
The Rebel Alliance, because director Ron Howard, commended as he should be for making such a great movie, went out of his way (on Disney’s orders?) to get in a mention and displaying of people of “rebellion,” as seen in “Solo.”
We could have seen “Solo” being a setup for many more films because it was already confirmed that specific people had been tapped in Benioff and Weiss, the co-creators of “Game of Thrones,” to make several more “Star Wars” films. Jon Favreau, the “Iron Man” director, is also slated — for a television show. Possibly related films include the Obi-Wan Kenobi movie and the newly announced Boba Fett standalone.
If the struggle for power that is a thread in “Solo”, climaxing with Qi’ra’s killing Voss and the Maul reveal continues in subsequent films, it makes wholly perfect sense that Benioff and Weiss have been sent to the galaxy far, far away.
Their show is about the struggle for power.
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