Most Star Wars movies are bummers. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. And now, Lando Calrissian actor Donald Glover has dropped a giant truth bomb. Solo will be more upbeat than most Star Wars movies for one simple reason: main characters will not die horrible and depressing deaths.
On Tuesday, Entertainment Tonight revealed a red carpet interview for Glover’s series Atlanta in which he said that Solo is “Just a lot more fun…all the Star Wars [movies] are really fun, but with this movie, we know what’s going to happen, we know they’re not going to die.”
And when you stop to think about it, Glover has a point. Even in the most upbeat installments of the saga, major characters perish in truly upsetting ways. If one selects A New Hope and The Phantom Menace to be the tonally lightest films in the franchise, then consider this: one of those movies features a guy getting murdered by his former student by that student’s dad, and other one features a guy getting stabbed through the belly by a devil-person while his best friend watches.
The rest of the Star Wars movies feature parents dying or being murdered (Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, Rogue One), or beloved mentors bitting it after being out of action for awhile. (The Last Jedi.)
Bizarrely, the supposedly “darkest” Star Wars film — The Empire Strikes Back — features none of these things, nor does it sport genocide on a large scale, as is true of over half of the installments. Hell, even Luke commits mass murder in A New Hope. Relative to Luke, Obi-Wan, and Anakin; Han and Lando are fairly benign, despite being lawbreakers.
Lando Calrissian is not worried about anything.
So, when Glover says Solo will be fun, that means it probably won’t feature large-scale genocide, patricide, or a beloved character turning to evil and committing atrocities. Wait a minute. Is Solo even a Star Wars movie?
Solo: A Star Wars Story opens everywhere on May 25, 2018.
