There isn’t a whole lot of difference between the original Solo movie and the Deepfake version, which is kind of unnerving since a young Harrison Ford and Alden Ehrenreich don’t look too terribly different, at least at a first glance. The only real disappointing part is that the Solo movie didn’t do nearly as well as it could have, even with Chewbacca being a big part of it. Somewhere along the line this movie just tripped up and kept tripping since it never really righted itself, even near the end. There were some cool effects and a few interesting things that happened, but otherwise Solo was kind of a flop, and it’s one reason why the Star Wars franchise is taking a break without a doubt since between Solo and The Last Jedi, which actually did better, there’s been a lot of fan backlash that it would appear Disney wasn’t ready for and wasn’t expecting in this manner. If ever there was a time when leaning into the Expanded Universe, or Legends canon, would have been useful, this would have been it, since in the EU Han and Chewbacca still met up and had their adventures, but in the EU Han’s story began on Corellia and he still met with Lando and a host of characters that were fun to read about. Plus, the main bad guy wasn’t a hastily put-together character that depended on the acting skills of Paul Bettany, who’s great, but not really cut out for the part that they slammed him into.
It’s enough to make a fan tear their hair out when both Disney and George Lucas fail to see the genius of the EU since if there really are as many continuity issues as they claim, then they’re easy to fix. But of course, now that Disney has gone and really mucked everything up as much as possible the EU canon might still be possible, but not with the same characters and certainly not with the same storyline as it was written before the Mouse House got their grubby fingers on Lucasfilm. Even selling to Warner Bros. would have been a better option in some respects since they might have been able to do something with it. But this is the direction that things went, and to be honest it hasn’t been all awful since The Force Awakens wasn’t terrible until people had a second look at it considering that it had been a while since any of us had seen another Star Wars movie. Plus, Rogue One wasn’t horrible, The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker had a few interesting points, and the animated series was a lot of fun as well.
Solo was, unfortunately, victim to bad timing and a lot of poor decisions that just didn’t allow the movie to really find its legs and get moving since by the time the movie started it was already too late. Emilia Clarke might have done better in another role where she didn’t already know Han and had to meet and put up with him for a while, though Han’s meeting up with Lando was at least handled somewhat expertly since the two of them have been friends for a long time in the Star Wars franchise and they did share a somewhat tumultuous past. After all, a smuggler and a gambler were bound to have an issue with their combined egos and it shows in the movie since neither one of them has that much give and doesn’t want to back down for fear that they might be seen as somehow lesser in the eyes of their fellow scoundrels. The dynamic between Han and Chewbacca was even pretty good since the way they met was a lot different but it was still effective even if the argument could be made that Chewie saved Han as much as Han saved Chewie. The life debt between them was something that has existed for a long time and has kept Chewbacca from returning home to be with his family, but one has to wonder if Chewbacca shows up in any future Star Wars movies if that’s still going to be the case. After all, Han is gone, Leia is gone, Luke is gone, and as a result, Chewbacca has no one else to turn to but Rey and possibly the Resistance, so it’s likely that he’d go home and finally be among his people after so long.
But watching the Deepfake of Solo is kind of eerie since it does make it clear that Alden was a decent pick for Han Solo since he does somewhat resemble a young Harrison Ford at first glance, even if a second glance is enough to make them stand out from one another. It’s a nice effect, especially since it would work pretty well if Deepfake had their technology perfected.
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