Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s sci-fi blockbuster Project Hail Mary is absolutely crushing at the box office. In its first week, its $80M take was on par with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, drawing flattering comparisons and making a credible argument that non-franchise films are back. Now, a little over two weeks into its run, it’s passed the $300 million mark at the global box office and is still going.
I’ll always champion an original film that’s so good it doesn’t have to lean on the crutch of a pre-existing fan base to generate attention. But as I walked out of the theater, totally smitten with Ryan Gosling’s budding friendship with his alien pal, Rocky, I couldn’t help but think of another Lord and Miller joint (albeit one that almost was) about a man and his best alien friend: Solo: A Star Wars Story.
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For those who forgot, or are just unfamiliar, about 10 years ago, Lord and Miller were the original directors hired for Disney’s Han Solo prequel. Honestly, the drama surrounding that tumultuous production—which ultimately got Lord and Miller ejected from the project—was far more compelling than the film itself. Don’t worry, we’re going to get into that drama; it’s too good to not rehash.
I don’t think it was a coincidence that there was a flurry of reports criticizing Lord and Miller’s improv-laden directing style, as style that at times could require dozens of takes. A lot of these reports ended with a Regina George-style quote along the lines of “They’re talented, but just weren’t ready for big-budget production.”
Maybe that was true. But here’s the thing: Their improv-laden style is exactly what everyone is pointing to as to why Project Hail Mary is so great. So let’s get into the virtue, which is evident in their most successful films… even while being the sin that got them removed from Star Wars: improvisation.
Lord and Miller and Improvisation
Lord and Miller are like IP alchemists. Everything they touch turns to gold. Movies like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street (and its sequel), and The LEGO Movie should not have been as successful as they were. In interview after interview, when anyone involved in those films is asked about how they came up with a funny or memorable moment, it’s usually the same answer: improv.
Remember that scene in 21 Jump Street where Jonah Hill shoots Rob Riggle in the penis, and then a handcuffed Riggle picks up his dismembered member with his mouth? Yeah, that wasn’t in the script. It was improvised by Riggle on set as he kept trying to get the crew to crack up.
In The LEGO Movie, when Chris Pratt’s Emmet is rallying the master builders and he’s getting confused between Dumbledore and Gandalf, he claims, “Ah, we gotta write all that down ’cause I’m not gonna remember any of it, but here we go…” Yup, that was improvised as well.
So it should come as no surprise that as Lord and Miller set out once more to make a big-budget sci-fi flick, they made sure to bake in a lot of time on set for improv for Ryan Gosling, who plays Ryland Grace, and Rocky’s puppeteer, James Ortiz. And as with all of Lord and Miller’s previous films, some of Project Hail Mary’s best moments are—you guessed it—improvised.
As with all of Lord and Miller’s previous films, some of Project Hail Mary’s best moments are—you guessed it—improvised.“
Rocky and Grace’s first encounter—the one that ends in a dance-off between the two—was completely improvised. And they took their time shooting it too, giving Gosling an earwig/one-way radio that allowed Lord and Miller to pitch him ideas and dance moves while the cameras rolled.
One of Rocky’s best running gags, his inability to thumbs up, was also discovered while shooting. It turns out that Lord and Miller were giving Ortiz direction to have Rocky thumbs up, but because of the puppet’s design, Ortiz couldn’t rotate Rocky’s wrist without breaking it. All’s well that ends well, however, because Rocky’s inability to point up “got such a belly laugh on set” that they just kept it.
Even Gosling’s favorite line in the film was improvised. While he was riffing in character about Grace’s ex-girlfriend, he looked up at his friend, Mark, who happened to be on set and had earlier told him about a recent breakup. This led to Gosling exclaiming, “But now she’s with Mark.” Without skipping a beat, Ortiz delivered Gosling’s favorite line: “Rocky hate Mark.”
I said earlier that Lord and Miller were IP alchemists. Their secret to that success is their ability to consistently control the chaos of improv to generate small moments that stack on top of each other, like layers of sediment, resulting in a unique chemistry that feels effortlessly charming and wholly organic. From Clone High’s JKF and Ghandi, to 21 Jump Street’s Jenko and Schmidt, to Project Hail Mary’s Grace and Rocky, Lord and Miller leveraged the talent of their performers to “yes, and” their characters into living, breathing characters.
So a long time ago, on a movie set that now feels like galaxies away, they were ready to test their improv alchemy on what is arguably the most iconic human/alien BFFs of all time. But it just wasn’t in the Sabacc cards…
Project Hail Mary Rocky First Look
Solo: What Went Wrong
Ok, let’s get into the drama that was the production of Solo: A Star Wars Story. We’ll dig into the facts, as well as my interpretation of them. Full disclosure: I think Lord and Miller were done dirty. Vulture published a behind-the-scenes account from a source that didn’t want to go on the record. The crazy thing is that the article describes a similar type of on-set behavior that’s being heralded as genius in the wake of Project Hail Mary, but we’ll get to that.
In July of 2015, five months away from the release of The Force Awakens, a very confident Disney announced Solo. At first, I was skeptical. Han Solo is, hands down, my favorite fictional character of all time. As an only child who wasn’t allowed to have a dog, this amoral scoundrel driving around the galaxy with his alien buddy (who was based on George Lucas’s Malamute), smugglin’ stuff in his rat-rodded spaceship, was the exact kind of character I gravitated towards.
That skepticism immediately evaporated when I realized Lord and Miller were going to direct the film. Disney was even bringing back The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi scribe Lawrence Kasdan (exciting!), who was going to pen the script with his son, Jonathan (less exciting).
They also got a pretty good up-and-comer to play Han. Alden Ehrenreich was coming off a great performance in the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar, and he looked like he could play the titular rogue.
Would that it were so simple.
Eventually, things went south. Shooting ran behind schedule, and Lord and Miller started clashing with Kasdan and the film’s producer (and Lucasfilm) president Kathleen Kennedy.
Here’s the thing. In my opinion, Solo is fine. Is it Rogue One? Uh, no. Is it Rise of Skywalker? Absolutely not. Solo is like if mediocracy was carbon monoxide; it won’t offend your senses, but it will put you to sleep.
And I blame a lot of that film’s lackluster qualities on the script.
To me, Kasdan is kinda like Paul McCartney. The art they created when they were young is some of the best of their respective mediums. I can’t tell how you much of my life I’ve spent listening to Sgt. Pepper’s and watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back. That was then. But when was the last time you heard anyone talk about Egypt Station? What even is Egypt Station? It’s the album Paul McCartney released in 2018, the same year Solo came out.
I think Lord and Miller knew Kasdan and son’s script was mediocre, but walked onto set thinking they’d be alright because they could fix it with improv.“
If you’re wondering why the hell Paul McCartney is catching strays in an article about Project Hail Mary and Solo: A Star Wars Story, it’s to illustrate a point. Sometimes culture passes an artist by, making their work struggle to resonate in the mainstream. Is Paul McCartney a worse musician than he was half a century ago? No. But his new music just doesn’t feel as exciting as it once did. Time moves on.
Kasdan’s Solo script feels like a new Paul McCartney album. It’s not bad, but it’s safe, in a bland way.
Here’s the thing: I think Lord and Miller knew Kasdan and son’s script was mediocre, but walked onto set thinking they’d be alright because they could fix it with improv.
Unfortunately, Kasdan wasn’t too happy about what Lord and Miller were shooting, plus with the film being behind schedule and over budget, Kathleen Kennedy decided enough was enough. Solo needed a new direction.
Enter Ron Howard.
Alien buddies.From Solo to Project Hail Mary: A Contrast in Alien Buddy Movies
It still blows my mind that they brought in Richie Cunningham to direct a movie about Space Fonzie, but (slaps jukebox) heyyyy, he did it in three takes or less and brought the movie in on budget and schedule. So good for Ron Howard.
We should not blame Howard at all for anything Solo related. He did a job and should be commended for it. While Solo was supposed to focus on the budding relationship between Han and Chewie, it failed to capture the same kind of camaraderie and interpersonal chemistry that Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew brought to the original trilogy. Which is sad—and to bluntly reiterate the whole point of this article—because Lord and Miller are the guys you get to deliver that kind of on-screen camaraderie.
Arguably the best scene in Solo is when Han is being punished for disobeying orders by getting beaten up in a mud pit by “a beast.” According to a Jonathan Kasdan tweet, it was Lord and Miller’s idea to have Chewie be the beast and have Han speak Shyriiwook to convince them to work together to escape. Lord and Miller might have been fired, but the Star Wars canonical moment of Han and Chewie meeting was all their idea.
Alien buddies!
Before the film came out, there was a ton of reporting published around what happened on set. In that Vulture report, an unnamed actor who was on-set contrasted Lord and Miller’s style to Ron Howard’s, saying:
“Where Lord and Miller would typically demand more than 30 takes of a given scene—seemingly unsure of what they wanted other than a delivery ‘different’ from the last—Howard got the job done in no more than two or three takes.”
In the same report, Lord and Miller rejected those claims, calling it completely inaccurate. But those reports echo the same type of production pace they took with Project Hail Mary.
In an Entertainment Weekly interview with Ryan Gosling, the actor gushed that they “were improvising for hours off script in character.” I’ve talked about it above, but a ton of the hype and reporting around this film was about just how many of these memorable moments were improvised. A less charitable way of describing this would be, “[Lord and Miller] were unsure of what they wanted other than a delivery ‘different’ from the last.” Isn’t that what improv is? Playing around until you “yes, and” your way into laughs and continuing to tinker to supercharge those initial laughs.
I’m sure it probably helped that Drew Goddard and Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary’s writers, weren’t running to the bosses at MGM, complaining Lord and Miller weren’t shooting their script as written.
Maybe there was something fundamentally broken about Solo. Maybe Alden Ehrenreich just couldn’t deliver. According to Vulture, when things were going bad on Solo, an acting coach was hired to help Alden, and apparently worked, exclaiming: “He became more Harrison-Like. … The coach helped!”
Still, I would love to see their footage. To see the weird places Lord and Miller took those characters as they were just playing around on those gorgeous, expensive Star Wars sets for days. It may not have been safe, and it might not have been good, but it would have been like no other Star Wars we would have seen before. Besides, could it have been any worse than what Disney would churn out later in the name of the galaxy far, far away?
I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. But man, walking out of Project Hail Mary, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Lord and Miller’s Han and Chewie would have been like.
In the end, maybe Project Hail Mary is the best possible outcome. Maybe Solo had to be the microphages that dimmed Lord and Miller’s sci-fi ambitions, just so their Grace and Rocky could charm their way into our hearts.