The 1999 movie that was simply too big for Ron Howard: “It would’ve been too daunting”
With almost half a century of directing experience, it’s become clear that Ron Howard has never met a genre he isn’t willing to try at least once. However, despite being presented with a massive opportunity on a silver platter to venture into new territory, he was too scared to accept and turned it down.
If a studio needs someone to direct a comedy about a man falling in love with a mermaid, then Howard is their guy. What about a gritty revisionist western? Yep, he’ll do it. A revenge thriller? Sure. Biographical dramas? He’s done a few. Literary adaptations? He’s done a few of those, too. Dr Seuss? Done. Family comedy? Done. Car chase B-movies? Done. The point is, he’s done it all.
It may not have been his intention when he started out under Roger Corman’s watchful eye, but Howard’s versatility had become key to his longevity. He’s never going to blow audiences away with a dazzling visual feast or push cinema forward with his innovative techniques, but being the living definition of a solid-if-unspectacular filmmaker has yielded plenty of success and awards season recognition.
But there was one glaring omission that lingered over Howard’s filmography for years. For all his reliability and range, he hadn’t yet stepped into the kind of large-scale, effects-driven spectacle that defined so many of his contemporaries. It wasn’t necessarily a weakness, but in an industry increasingly obsessed with scale and spectacle, it stood out. The blockbuster arena was where legacies were cemented, and Howard had, for one reason or another, kept his distance.
That distance wasn’t born out of disinterest, but caution. Howard has always struck a balance between craft and control, favouring projects where he could maintain a steady hand rather than being swallowed by the machinery of massive productions. The idea of inheriting something as culturally loaded as a major sci-fi franchise wasn’t just another job, it was a different kind of pressure altogether, one that even a director of his experience wasn’t entirely eager to embrace at the time.
One thing missing from Howard’s CV that the majority of his peers, contemporaries, and even friends had ticked off was an inordinately expensive blockbuster sci-fi flick. Steven Spielberg had Close Encounters, ET, and Jurassic Park; Robert Zemeckis had Back to the Future; James Cameron had Terminator 2; Ridley Scott had Prometheus; Christopher Nolan had Interstellar, and so on.
Howard did eventually scratch that itch, but it wasn’t his intention. Lucasfilm hired Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to helm Solo: A Star Wars Story, but they were fired with weeks remaining of principal photography. It was a last-minute decision that allowed him to make up for a rejection he’d dished out to one of his earliest supporters two decades previously.
George Lucas cast Howard in American Graffiti, and when he segued into filmmaking, the Star Wars creator’s visual effects house, Industrial Light & Magic, worked on Cocoon, Willow, and Backdraft. They were close, but when Lucas approached him with an offer to helm what was the most hotly anticipated release in Hollywood history at the time, he turned him down flat.
“He told me he had talked to Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, and me. I was the third one he spoke to,” Howard explained on Happy Sad Confused about being gauged for his interest in directing Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. “They all said the same thing: ‘George, you should do it’. I don’t think anybody wanted to follow up that act at the time. It was an honour, but it would’ve been too daunting.”
Anybody could have steered The Phantom Menace to success when it would never be anything other than a resounding smash hit, and it became the second highest-grossing film of all time after hitting theatres in 1999. Lucas was never a great director, and after his attempts to pass the baton fell on deaf ears, it’s almost as if he directed the prequel trilogy because he felt he had to.
