Paul Bettany Doesn’t Understand Why Solo: A Star Wars Story Bombed

You may have noticed that things didn’t go too swimmingly for Solo: A Star Wars Story from a box office perspective, with the Alden Ehrenreich-led actioner said to have lost Disney at least $50 million dollars. Whether you think it’s poor marketing to blame, Star Wars fatigue kicking in, production troubles generating bad buzz, or the divisive Last Jedi keeping fans away, the Han Solo prequel just didn’t strike a chord with audiences.

Really, it’s been shocking to see the reception that the film’s getting and no matter what you chalk it up to, it’s hard to understand how it under-performed so spectacularly. Paul Bettany, who played Dryden Vos in the spinoff, seems to agree with that, too.

The actor was chatting to MTV last weekend at San Diego Comic-Con and revealed that he’s confused by all the hate there is for Solo, saying:

“I loved the movie. I went to see the movie and I loved it,” Bettany shared with MTV. “I knew some real dyed-in-the-wool nerd fans, Ryan Adams, for instance, who was like, ‘It’s so fantastic, I love it!’ and then he went to see it again. I took him to the premiere and then he went to see it again. It was confusing to me. I thought the story was so great, I thought the execution was so great, so it was surprising, to me.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bettany touched on Solo‘s box office performance, noting that the spinoff’s made close to $400 million worldwide but somehow, that’s still not considered a success.

“It’s also peculiar being in a movie that makes hundreds of millions of dollars and people say, ‘It’s just not enough.’ The thing with Star Wars is eventually everybody on the planet’s gonna see that movie and I really am proud of it and I loved playing Dryden Vos. I loved him. He’s delicious.”

Again, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong. Perhaps the whole enterprise was doomed from the outset though once the studio decided that releasing the film in May, competing with Deadpool and Infinity War, was a good idea. Or maybe firing Phil Lord and Chris Miller was the wrong move?

I mean, regardless of whether it’d have been more profitable, I think it’s safe to agree that a more comedic version would have at least been a more interesting movie than the dull Star-Wars-by-numbers guff we ended up with, wouldn’t you say?