What You Should Know About The Han Solo Spin-Off Shortlist
Spoiler warning for the five of you who haven't seen The Force Awakens by now: Han Solo is dead, long live Han Solo. The Star Wars franchise is re-expanding into the mysterious territory between the canonical films with the Star Wars Anthology series, and space nerds have a lot to look forward to. By the end of 2016, we'll have Rogue One, a movie about the Rebels who stole the plans for the original Death Star, and which is rumored to feature a cameo by a young Han Solo. Then in 2018, we're getting a film dedicated to Solo's early years. As the studio rushes to fill the role of Solo to meet its deadline, a short list of the actors who might play young Han has been released. Here's what you need to know.
Miles Teller
Comic nerds know Miles Teller from the abysmal Fantastic Four reboot in 2015, and that's all you need to know in order to count him out as Han Solo. Outside of his relatively small movie career, Teller has picked up a reputation for being a narcissistic frat boy, showing off tattoos that represent how much he used to drink, or regaling interviewers with comparisons between his nether regions and various barware. He might be a passable actor, but maybe one more of his films should get a remotely positive review before he's considered for such a weighty role.
Ansel Elgort
The baby-faced Ansel Elgort rose to visibility with 2014's The Fault in Our Stars, where he played a kid dying of cancer. Since Han Solo was around 29 in A New Hope, casting directors need to choose someone who looks pretty young, and Elgort fits the visual. Elgort even references the Corellian smuggler in his DJ "career," calling himself Ansolo. But Elgort also takes duck-face selfies with magazines where he's on the cover, and thinks that a perfect girlfriend will sit on the couch and watch him play video games, rather than like, be her own person. Even Han Solo wasn't that sexist.
Dave Franco
It's hard to separate Dave from his awful, awful brother James, but let's try for a few moments. Dave is coming into his own as an actor, and his boyish looks would fall into the proper age range. But the real test of his chops will be seen in the upcoming film The Disaster Artist, based on a book about the making of The Room, the notorious cult classic by Tommy Wiseau. Dave doesn't seem to have the old Solo sass that we so desperately need, but maybe that's something Solo grows into, along with Dave. Just don't bring your brother along, dude.
Jack Reynor
The best thing that Jack Reynor has going for him is that he looks like a young Chris Pratt, and it's not hard to see Pratt as some kind of alternate-universe Han Solo. While he hasn't been in anything exceptionally notable, he managed to hold his own in Macbeth (2015), which couldn't have been an easy task. While Star Wars certainly isn't Shakespeare, it may just be the modern equivalent, for better or worse. He's also familiar with playing the whole morally questionable alpha male role, having starred in What Richard Did (2012).
Scott Eastwood
If Han Solo was a beautiful supermodel raised in a California mansion, Scott Eastwood would be a perfect choice, but that's just not the impression we want from any version of Han Solo, no matter how inexperienced. Eastwood appeared in Fury (2014), but aside from that, he hasn't landed any truly notable roles. It won't be until August that Eastwood will appear in an undisclosed role in Suicide Squad, where we'll really get to see how he fares in a fantasy fiction role. For now, it's just way too hard to look past those cheekbones and see a serious role inside.
Logan Lerman
Logan Lerman has more well-known movies under his belt than anyone else on the short list, having played the titular hero in the Percy Jackson series and the lead in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), as well as the biblical son of Noah in the movie of the same name. He has a face that could easily sell an inexperienced version of Harrison Ford's character, and he's not so pretty that you want to punch his teeth out. And if you Google "Logan Lerman is awful," he gets far fewer results than anyone else on the short list. That's the true measure of a modern man.
Emory Cohen
You haven't heard of anything that Emory Cohen has been in, and maybe that's a good thing; the Star Wars franchise is great at pulling in obscure actors and actresses and giving them a home. Still, starring in a teen drama about a potato harvest might not be the best way to prepare for the almighty Solo, but a few shots from Brooklyn (2015) reveal that Emory might be able to pull it off, and his rebellious streak in Stealing Cars (2015) could give him just the right edge to be a really, really bad smuggler and con artist.
Blake Jenner
There are a couple of things you need to ignore about Blake Jenner in order to see him as an effective Han Solo. First, he's not related to the Jenner/Kardashian clan, so there's no danger of those two worlds ever intersecting. Second, forget about the fact that Jenner won a contest to land a role in Glee. Have you forgotten? Now, just look at that chin. If that's not a Harrison Ford chin, nothing is. Acting? They can fill that in with computers later, right?