Solo: A Star Wars Story

‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ was never going to win an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, Screenplay, Directing or Acting, but even so, splashy sci-fi movies do tend to fare well in the more technical categories and that includes the likes of Best Original Score.  John Williams won that accolade for ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’, and was nominated for his scores for ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, ‘The Return of the Jedi’, ‘The Force Awakens’, and ‘The Last Jedi’.  Although Williams only won once, the ‘Star Wars’ movies are known for their bombastic theme music.  But this year, Disney didn’t even try to get a nomination for Best Score for John Powell for ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’.  They failed to submit it for consideration by the cut-off date of November 15.

The Academy Awards nominations won’t be announced until next year, so it may be possible that ‘Solo’ could be up for some other technical awards like Visual Effects, Costume Design, Sound Editing, etc.  It depends on whether Disney chose to submit the film for consideration.  But after ‘Solo’ tanked so hard at the box office, it’s possible that the studio simply wants to wash their hands of the whole thing.

An Academy Award nomination can certainly elevate a film’s status and drum up desire to see the film from some that may have otherwise have skipped it.  But that generally only applies to the major categories.  The technical awards don’t carry the same cache.  After ‘Solo’ underperformed, Disney seems to be revising their approach to ‘Star Wars’ as a whole and may be busier planning their upcoming projects than worrying about winning people over to this turkey.

As Variety reported, in addition to ‘Solo’ a number of other would-be contenders were also disqualified for various reasons, including: ‘Mandy’, a revenge thriller starring Nicolas Cage, featuring the final score by the late Johann Johannsson, which was disqualified because it went to VOD before completing the necessary theatrical run; ‘Green Book’, because its score was deemed to rely too heavily on pre-existing music by the Don Shirley piano trio; and Orson Well’s final film, the unwatchable ‘The Other Side of the Wind’, which was finally completed this year, but whose score was composed too heavily of pre-existing licensed music.

Do you think ‘Solo’ should be recognized in any specific categories?