The main
crew of the Millennium Falcon are iconic characters. Luke Skywalker, Leia
Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, even Lando Calrissian to a lesser
extent, but the one with most potential history to explore is Han Solo. How did
he become the man he was in the Star Wars films?
This project
has been in development by Lucasfilm for some time, even pre-dating the Disney
buyout. But production issues kept it from getting its feet off the ground in
one form or another. Lawrence Kasdan was initially hired to write the story,
he’d been involved in writing the original trilogy, but duties were passed to
his son Jonathan as he was picked up to write the Force Awakens. Jonathan
Kasdan had written a few episodes of Dawson’s Creek and wrote and directed In the
Land of Women and The First Time, both of which are niche films that received
mixed reviews and didn’t make much money.
Originally
penned as directors were Phil Lord and Chris Miller, hot off the heals of the
highly successful The Lego Movie, unfortunately creative differences with the
studio caused them to leave and be replaced by Ron Howard. Lord and Miller
would go on to be hired by Sony for Into the Spider-verse, so don’t feel too
sorry for them. Ron Howard would go onto to reshoot most of the film, inflating
the budget to nearly $300m
The film was
released in a crowded May-slot with the likes of Deadpool 2 and barely off the
heels of Avengers: Infinity War; it ended up making only $393.2m at the box
office, the first and only Star Wars film to make a loss at the box office.
But let’s
take a look at the story we ended up with and see if it’s a worthy addition to
the Star Wars timeline
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