‘Solo’ Disappoints at the Box Office, In Spite of Breaking Sales Record

Before Memorial Day weekend, Solo: A Star Wars Story was expected to eke out a whole bunch of sales records. Unfortunately, the latest Star Wars one-shot failed to capture all but the most avid series fans.

Han Solo’s solo sojourn got off to a strong start, breaking the Memorial Day Thursday record with $14.1 million. Unfortunately, from there, things only went downhill. All in all, the movie only grabbed a little over $100 million at the domestic box office over the course of the entire holiday weekend.

Solo proved to be even less alluring to the international crowd. Overseas, the movie only brought in $68 million, falling victim to a wise-cracking anti-hero named Deadpool, which has officially reached half a billion dollars around the world.

The collective ‘meh’ response to Solo is quickly being attributed to something called “Star Wars withdrawal,” presumably a public condition that’s the cousin of “superhero” withdrawal. It’s an explanation designed to let Disney know that they’re simply flooding the market with too many stories from a galaxy far, far away. That argument is hogwash.

Solo failed because it looks like something we’ve seen dozens of times before. There was nothing to draw audiences in beyond the fact that it was loosely affiliated with Star Wars. You can say the film is action-packed, but when audiences have the choice between several action-packed stories, spectacle alone isn’t good enough.

Solo isn’t failing because of Star Wars withdrawal. (That’s ridiculous. Good Star Wars movies are awesome.) It’s failing because there were simply better options.