On the planet Corellia, orphaned children are made to steal to survive. Young adults Han and Qi’ra make an escape from a local gang. They bribe an Imperial officer with stolen coaxium (a powerful hyperspace fuel) for passage on an outgoing transport, but Qi’ra is apprehended before she can board. Han vows to return for her and joins the Imperial Navy as a flight cadet. When the recruiting officer asks for his surname, Han explains that he is alone with no family, so the recruiter gives him the last name “Solo”.
Three years later, Han has been expelled from the Imperial Flight Academy for insubordination and is serving as an infantryman on Mimban. He encounters a group of criminals posing as Imperial soldiers led by Tobias Beckett. Han attempts to blackmail them into taking him with them, but Beckett has him arrested for desertion and thrown into a pit to be fed to a Wookiee named Chewbacca. Able to understand Chewbacca’s language, Han persuades him to cooperate to escape. Beckett, aware of the usefulness of a Wookiee’s strength, rescues and enlists them in the gang to steal a shipment of coaxium on Vandor-1. The plan goes awry when the Cloud Riders, a group of so-called terrorists led by Enfys Nest, arrive, resulting in the deaths of two crew members, including Beckett’s wife, and the destruction of the coaxium.
Beckett reveals that he was ordered to steal the shipment for Dryden Vos, a high-ranking crime boss in the Crimson Dawn syndicate. Han and Chewbacca volunteer to help him steal another shipment to repay the debt. They travel to Vos’ yacht where Han finds Qi’ra, who has joined Crimson Dawn, and is Vos’ top lieutenant. Han suggests a risky plan to steal unrefined coaxium from the mines on Kessel; Vos approves but insists Qi’ra accompany the team. She leads them to Lando Calrissian, an accomplished smuggler and pilot who she hopes will lend them his ship, a freighter called the Millennium Falcon. Han challenges Lando to a game of sabacc, with the wager being Lando’s ship. Lando cheats to win but agrees to join the mission in exchange for a share of the profits.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (or simply Solo) is a 2018 American space Western film based around the Star Wars character Han Solo, also featuring his original trilogy co-protagonists Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. Directed by Ron Howard, produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the second Star Wars anthology film following Rogue One (2016). Alden Ehrenreich stars as Han Solo alongside Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, and Paul Bettany. The film explores the early adventures of Han Solo and Chewbacca, who join a heist within the criminal underworld ten years prior to the events of A New Hope.
Star Wars creator George Lucas began developing a Han Solo prequel in 2012, and commissioned Lawrence Kasdan to write the screenplay. After Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, Kasdan was hired to write Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), leaving his son Jonathan to complete the Solo script. Principal photography began in January 2017 at Pinewood Studios, under the direction of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Both were fired in June 2017 following “creative differences” with Lucasfilm, and Howard was hired as their replacement. With an estimated production budget of at least $275 million, Solo is one of the most expensive films ever made.
Solo had its world premiere in Los Angeles on May 10, 2018, and was screened at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival on May 15, 2018. It was released in the United States on May 25, 2018, in RealD 3D, IMAX, and IMAX 3D. Solo received generally favorable reviews from critics who praised the film’s acting performances (particularly Ehrenreich and Glover), visuals, musical score, and action sequences, while some felt its storyline was predictable. It is the first Star Wars film to be considered a box office bomb, grossing $393 million worldwide, making it the lowest-grossing live-action film in the franchise. It received a nomination for Best Visual Effects at the 91st Academy Awards.
5 Reasons to be excited for the new Han Solo Star Wars movie
1. It’s being co-written by Lawrence Kasdan (and his son.)
For those of you not familiar with Lawrence Kasdan, his resume should tell you everything you need to know. Kasdan co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back with George Lucas and Leigh Brackett. He teamed up once again with Lucas on Return of the Jedi, and then decades later partnered with J.J. Abrams on The Force Awakens. Kasdan’s absence from the prequel trilogy’s is one reason those films felt so different from and inferior to the original trilogy.
But Kasdan’s work stretches beyond the Star Wars universe. He wrote the screenplay to Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Big Chill and Silverado. He’s an excellent writer of interesting, believable dialogue and has a knack for writing fun, memorable characters. If nothing else, the fact that Kasdan is writing the screenplay for Solo should make us all feel a little bit better about the project.
2. It’s part Western, part film noir and part heist movie.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Kasdan describes Solo as part Western and part film noir. That’s a great blending of genres already, but when you throw in the fact that it’s also a space opera things get really interesting.
Perhaps even better than all that, Solo is going to be a heist movie. Tobias Beckett, played by Woody Harreslon, is the ring leader and a mentor of sorts to Han Solo. We don’t know what the big heist he’s trying to pull off is just yet, but we know it involves that big space train we saw in the trailer which is called the Conveyex.
A space opera train robbery definitely sounds like both a Western and a heist flick. The film noir stuff, on the other hand, revolves around Emilia Clarke’s character, Qi’ra. She’s the femme fatale in Solo, and Clarke says of her character, “If you’ve got a really glamorous lady in a really sordid environment, you kind of know the glamor is hiding a few rough roads.”
3. We finally get to see a hand of sabacc.
One thing everyone suspects about Solo is that we’ll finally get to see young Han Solo win the Millennium Falcon from young Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover.) That’s an exciting prospect partly because I’m excited to see how the gambling game sabacc works. That’s the Star Wars version of poker, basically. It’s mentioned briefly in The Empire Strikes Back, though I think the first time I really noticed it in detail was in reading Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.
It’s little details like this that are exciting to me as a Star Wars fan. Disney wiped away any and all canon established in the Extended Universe when it purchased Lucasfilm, but it never hurts to give us a little fan service. The film also takes place at least in part on the swamp planet of Mimban. That’s important because it was a location in the very first EU novel, 1978’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye by Allan Dean Foster (in which Kybur crystals made their debut, though they were called Kaiburr at the time.) Importantly, the book predates even Empire Strikes Back.
4. The film’s story revolves around a ‘bromance’ between Han Solo and Chewbacca.
“To me, this is a love story between Han and Chewie,” Kasdan told EW. “Their relationship has always been my favorite part of the saga, and the fact that only Han understands what Chewie is saying, I find a very funny possibility for comedy.”
This is exactly what Solo ought to be. A funny bromance heist flick. In fact, it’s really what the prequel trilogies ought to have been. Imagine if those were written with a focus on the relationship and deep friendship between Anakin and Obi-Wan? If this movie can really pull off a great bromance between Chewie and Han Solo, I’d be thrilled. If anyone can pull that off it’s Kasdan.
5. This seems like the right kind of movie for director Ron Howard.
Let’s face it, Ron Howard has made both wonderful and terrible films in the past. He’s got a spotty track record. But when he’s on fire, he’s really on fire. Some of my favorite movies were directed by Howard, including George Lucas’s Willow, written by Bob Dolman. Dolman also wrote Far and Away, another fantastic Ron Howard movie. The list goes on, with Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and Rush all marking Howard’s directorial high marks.
Then again, Howard has also directed movies like The Da Vinci Code and its sequels, as well as the abomination that is the live-action Grinch movie. So he has his misses and his hits. What makes me confident about Howard directing Solo is that he tends to do best with these character driven films, and especially the more lighthearted ones. A bromance heist movie seems like the right fit for Howard.
The only thing that makes me a little nervous is that he came into the project late after original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, were canned. Lord and Miller made the excellent Lego Movie, but had creative differences with Disney. Apparently the pair thought they were making a comedy, while Disney wanted it to have only a comedic touch. I’m not really sure how to feel about that. Sometimes having a full-blown comedy can really help when there’s a bunch of Very Serious movies in a franchise. Let’s face it, both Rogue One and The Last Jedi were fairly dark and brooding, and even the lighter Force Awakens includes a fairly emotional death.
In any case, these are the reasons why I’m excited for Solo: A Star Wars Story even though I’m still not sure how to accept a different actor playing the titular role. As always, I’m holding out hope that we’ll all be pleasantly surprised even if this is not the movie I would have personally chosen for Disney’s second ‘Star Wars Story’ film.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, Paul Bettany, Sarah-Stephanie, Lily Newmark, Richard Dixon
Screenplay by: Jon Kasdan, Lawrence Kasdan
Production Design by: Neil Lamont
Cinematography by: Bradford Young
Film Editing by: Chris Dickens, Pietro Scalia
Costume Design by: David Crossman, Glyn Dillon
Art Direction by: Alex Baily, Oliver Carroll, Peter Dorme, Ashley Lamont, Andrew Palmer, Oliver Roberts, Stephen Swain, Gary Tomkins, Tom Weaving, Tom Whitehead
Music by: John Powell
Distributed by: Walt Disney Pictures
Release Date: May 25, 2018
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