Being cast in Star Wars can transform unknown actors into household names. But there’s a flip side, as many people who star in these movies soon discover that they’re not a guaranteed ticket to a glittering career.
Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen both struggled to get work after the Prequel Trilogy and more recently, Daisy Ridley said she found it hard to land roles post-The Rise of Skywalker. Hell, even Mark Hamill toiled away in relative obscurity after Return of the Jedi, finally finding his feet as the voice actor for the Joker a decade later.
Such a fate seems like it may be befalling Solo: A Star Wars Story‘s Alden Ehrenreich. Since the Han Solo spinoff disappointed at the box office, he hasn’t starred in another big screen project, with his only recent credit being a TV adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Now, in an interview with The Independent, Ehrenreich has revealed that the movie simply isn’t on his mind much anymore, explaining:
“It’s not a huge part of my life anymore. But my sense is that there was a really clear disconnect between the way it was really received and then the stories that came out about it. That we had a troubled production or whatever. And it’s not really a story that the movie did totally fine. It didn’t make a billion dollars but it did fine and people liked it – but that’s not interesting. What’s interesting is: ‘This is the biggest movie of all time and it was absolutely a disaster’.”
To be fair to the actor, his performance as Han Solo was perfectly adequate. Stepping into Harrison Ford’s shoes to play one of the most iconic characters in cinematic history is an almost impossible task. But I thought he did a decent job and isn’t to blame for any of the film’s flaws, most of which are down to a general blandness as a result of overcautious producers.
Solo was once expected to launch a series of spinoffs featuring Ehrenreich’s Han Solo, presumably showing him going toe-to-toe with Darth Maul’s Crimson Dawn crime syndicate. That’s now not going to happen, of course, though those dangling plot elements may eventually pop back up in the delayed Obi-Wan Disney+ show.
Ehrenreich at least seems sanguine about the movie, concluding:
“When somebody’s at the end of their career, all people talk about are the successes, and not all the ones that flop. I’ve certainly felt in over my head before, and overwhelmed in many different junctures but… I remember Dustin Hoffman saying in some interview that ‘it all felt like failure at the time’. And it’s true. But you use it, and you deepen, and you get better.”
Tell us, though, did you enjoy the actor’s performance in Solo: A Star Wars Story? Sound off below with your thoughts on it and let us know if you’d like to see him return to the role.
