Here's a scenario for you. You're not a big Star Wars fan; you like the movies well enough but you don't rush out to see every new movie or follow the news or get too deep into canon. You decided to skip Solo: A Star Wars Story this year (you weren't the only one) thinking you already knew about Han Solo. But now you're sitting around and you get curious and decide to Google "Solo" only to discover that this isn't the movie you thought-- not according to Google. The search engine has accidentally mixed up the Star Wars movie film with another Solo, with the current description for Solo: A Star Wars Story reading as follows:
Android military weapon Solo (Mario Van Peebles) is designed to put down Latin American rebels. But when Solo arrives, the machine feels compassion for the rebels fighting for freedom. Despite Solo's design, he begins fighting for the people he's supposed to kill. When his creators, including Gen. Haynes (Barry Corbin), attempt to bring him back, he flees. But the military doesn't give up. They send an upgraded android into the field to take Solo -- and the villagers -- down.
We thought that Han might have fought rebels in a past life, but we had no idea he was android killing machine. Also having Mario Van Peebles play young Han Solo is a bold choice on the part of Lucasfilm. Clearly someone at Google is quite amused with themselves at the moment, either that or the algorithm is flawed. Google has accidentally mixed up this year's film with the 1996 sci-fi action film Solo, starring Mario Van Peebles. This is the description that pops up when you throw "Solo" into the search engine. Maybe the algorithm just likes the idea of a self-aware android, making its own decisions and killing folks and has similar aspirations. What's especially funny about it is that it isn't just the description that's mixed up.
The poster is for Solo: A Star Wars Story but the description is from Solo. The Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb scores, which are not good, are from Solo, while the Metacritic score is from the Disney film. We all know that Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed at the box office, but it looks especially bad with Google listing its box office at $5.108 million. The search engine shows that Solo: A Star Wars Story is the sixth-most expensive film ever made, with a ludicrous budget of $19 million. The Google result also adds another bit of humorous confusion to the question we've had for a while, who directed Solo? Well, according to this Google listing, Solo: A Star Wars Story is the work of Ron Howard and Solo 1996 director Norberto Barba.
It's unclear how an action sci-fi movie from over twenty years ago gets mixed up with one of this year's biggest blockbusters on a platform like Google, but maybe now people will discover a new film they might like. Then they can check out some of Mario Van Peebles' other roles in front of and behind the camera in movies like New Jack City, Baadasssss! and Ali.
You can plan your Solo double feature when Solo: A Star Wars Story is released on digital on September 14th and 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on September 25th.
