Why Ron Howard thought ‘Star Wars’ would be terrible: “I couldn’t imagine what he was trying to do”
It’s easy to look back and admire the way Star Wars changed the face of cinema when it was released in 1977, but when George Lucas was piecing together his sci-fi epic in the early stages, Ron Howard was just one of many people who couldn’t quite wrap their heads around the filmmaker’s vision.
After putting the finishing touches on his debut feature THX 1138, Lucas was keen to keep playing in the same sandbox, which inspired him to start concocting a cosmic story inspired by everything from his love of the old Flash Gordon serials to the works of Akira Kurosawa, which wouldn’t have been an easy sell to major studios in a period where expensive sci-fi was hardly in huge demand.
Once Lucas earned plenty of recognition and acclaim for helming one of the most profitable films in history in ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ nominee American Graffiti, development on Star Wars began at pace. Howard was the second-billed name in the cast of the coming-of-age dramedy, which marked the beginning of a decades-long personal and professional connection between the two.
During that period, Lucas elaborated on his plans for Star Wars, leaving Howard fairly perplexed by what he was hoping to accomplish. “George tried to explain it as a kind of Flash Gordon movie but with better special effects,” he told the New York Times. “And I thought it was a pretty terrible idea. Sci-fi was really a B-minus genre. I liked Planet of the Apes alright, but I couldn’t possibly imagine what he was trying to do.”
Howard definitely understood when Star Wars became a cultural phenomenon, rocketing towards the status of being the highest-grossing movie ever made, earning ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ nods at the Oscars, winning eight prizes for its revolutionary technical merits, and reinventing the way Hollywood’s most high-profile releases were marketed, merchandised, and sold.
Suffice to say, Howard was never going to doubt Lucas again, and he was the first filmmaker on the Lucasfilm head honcho’s mind when it came to taking the reins on the lavish fantasy Willow. 30 years after he’d been left bemused by what Star Wars was supposed to be, things came full circle when the Oscar-winning director was drafted in to steer prequel spinoff Solo across the finish line following the firing of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
Unfortunately, it ended up as the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars flick ever and the franchise’s first outright flop, so it wasn’t exactly the most joyous of full-circle moments. Back in the mid-1970s, though, Howard could have never imagined he’d be directing the 10th entry in the series when he struggled to comprehend exactly what it was that Lucas was planning.