Traffic stopped for a spaceship on one of Los Angeles’s most famous streets Thursday night—a massive, towering replica of the Millennium Falcon, to be precise, which Disney dropped in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. Just five months after The Last Jedi and all the intense fan debate that came with it, Lucasfilm was unveiling the highly anticipated and famously embattled Solo: A Star Wars Story for its first public audience. Standing on the red carpet surrounded by shouting fans dressed in Solo vests and Lando capes, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy admitted in an interview beamed out around the world that the electric energy at the Dolby Theatre had as much to do with uncertainty over a Han Solo prequel movie as it did with general excitement about more Star Wars. Over two hours later, the star-studded audience was applauding on its feet—but the overall reaction to Solo was still up in the air.
Though plenty of celebrity Star Wars fans turned out for this fourth installment in Kennedy’s newly invigorated take on the franchise, the Solo premiere felt like a much more subdued affair than last December’s splashy Last Jedi unveiling at the Shrine Auditorium. (The Dolby Theatre, for example, may be the home of the Oscars, but it also seats nearly half as many people as the Shrine.) And while that Episode VIII premiere was loaded with A-listers of every stripe, a fun pre-screening game for the more select audience at Solo involved trying to guess the connection between some of the famous faces in attendance and the movie’s popular cast. One of the film’s leading ladies, Thandie Newton, had clearly invited her frequent Westworld scene partners Leonardo Nam (who plays the friendly tech Felix) and Angela Sarafyan (who plays the traumatized Clementine). And while Emilia Clarke’s Game of Thrones friends are busy shooting Season 8 in Spain this week, Donald Glover’s former TV family was represented by Community alum Yvette Nicole Brown. As you might expect, she cheered the loudest when he showed up Solo—and she wasn’t alone.
The Solo team decided to skip Disney’s usual tradition of parading its stars out on the stage and letting the director, in this case, Ron Howard, address the audience before the screening. But as the cast paraded into the theater in the last seconds before the lights went down, the crowd went wild for Glover, dressed in a splashy, Lando-esque ensemble of red shirt and suit, chains, and slight white shoes. Not only is Glover’s stock at an all-time high thanks to triple pop-cultural wins of Atlanta Season 2, Saturday Night Live, and his head-turning music video for “This Is America,” but his meme-worthy take on Lando in the Solo trailers had many in the crowd expecting that his character would walk away with the film. When Lando first arrived, the crowd reacted accordingly.
But if laughter, applause, and generally approving hoots are any indication, the premiere audience in the Dolby Theatre actually seemed the most taken with a performance that no one may have seen coming. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Killing Eve’s show-runner and the creator and star of Fleabag, won everyone over as the sardonic, outspoken, and emotionally compelling newcomer droid L3-37. (Alan Tudyk’s droid K-2SO was a similar surprise hit of Rogue One, so perhaps it’s time we all stop underestimating Lucasfilm’s robotic characters—which have progressed far beyond even the popular beeps and blustering protests of R2-D2 and C-3PO). Clarke, no stranger to wowing a crowd with displays of strength, got the biggest round of applause of the night for a particular stand-out moment.
The audience also seemed eager to reward the appearance of major pieces of Han Solo’s iconography in the film. While everyone in the theater that night seemed to agree that reports of Alden Ehrenreich’s acting difficulties on set were highly exaggerated, the nostalgia-triggering moments that come with any prequel story—Han meeting his famous friends, laying eyes on his famous ship, etc.—were gobbled up by the premiere crowd. Paul Bettany’s villain, a surprising new face, and a familiar old one also proved to be hits.
Most of the film critics, Star Wars lovers, and pop-culture writers I spoke with before the film expressed apprehension over whether Solo would be able to live up to the fandom’s 40 years of devotion to Harrison Ford’s take on the roguish smuggler. It did seem to take both the audience and the film a little bit of time to figure out the groove of this particular galactic adventure. But by the end, the crowd seemed to be won over, and the immediate social-media responses were, for the most part, ebullient.
While tweeting was allowed, longer, more thoughtful takes are under embargo from Disney until next week—which means that you had to be in the room to hear critics still mulling over how the film will affect the larger Star Wars legacy, once the pleasing surprise of what Ron Howard pulled off fades away. At the after-party, one influence was immediately apparent: I’ve never seen so many Hollywood partygoers wearing capes. Some were powder-blue knockoffs of Lando’s original fashion statement from The Empire Strikes Back, but others were less costume-y and more loosely inspired by the stylish Calrissian staple. Might Solo accomplish the truly impossible and deliver a larger fashion moment for capes?
After the screening, filmgoers nibbled on snacks amid elevated mannequins elegantly dressed in fashions. Joonas Suotamo—the 6-foot-11 Finnish actor who took over the role of Chewbacca—was an auspicious presence in the crowd. As the night wound down, most seemed to unanimously agree that the film was better than they expected it would be, though far from a franchise high. The post-Solo discussion lacked some of the more polarizing highs and lows of the one surrounding The Last Jedi—but, honestly, after the fandom spent the holidays bickering over the importance of Luke Skywalker’s legacy, a breezier adventure with Han Solo may have been just what we all needed.
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