Solo: A Star Wars Story writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan share details on how they were initially split on whether to include the infamous Kessel Run in the prequel film or not. The idea of a young Han Solo film started with Star Wars creator, George Lucas - before he sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012. Longtime franchise writer Lawrence helped Lucas in writing the script. But when he was tapped to help finish the story for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, his son, Jonathan Kasdan, who had been unofficially helping him, was left to continue working on the standalone movie until he returned.
The second of the planned Anthology movies by Lucasfilm, Solo debuts Alden Ehrenreich, who follows the footsteps of Harrison Ford playing everyone's favorite galactic smuggler. Donald Glover as young Lando Calrissian, Emilia Clarke as Qi'ra, Paul Bettany as Dryden Vos, and Woody Harrelson as Tobias Beckett, also star in the movie directed by Ron Howard.
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Speaking with The Los Angeles Times about the creative process behind Solo, the father and son writing duo shared their initial disagreements with regard to the film tackling Han's legendary Kessel Run story. "I was drawn to take the job because it suggested to me [that] I get to see how he's formed, I get to see how he met Chewie — because this is really a love story between them — and very quickly I thought, 'We've heard a lot about the Kessel Run. I want to see it,'" Lawrence recalls.
However, Jonathan was less enthused about the idea - worried how they could bring to screen possibly one of the most iconic hearsay moments in Star Wars in a way that it will meet people's expectations of how it really happened. "When he said that, I said 'Really, do we have to?' Because it's such a complicated bit of logic, and solving it was really challenging. We spent a lot of time arguing about how it could work [and how] the language of what [Han] says in that one scene shot years ago that you know George [Lucas] was just sitting there thinking, 'This sounds cool: "I did it in 12 parsecs"' — could be flushed out into a fully fledged coherent sequence that was satisfying and fun. I'm thrilled with how it came out, but it was one of the daunting elements of this always."
Fortunately, Jonathan gave in and followed with his father's instincts. The Kessel Run sequence in Solo: A Star Wars Story is one of the most thrilling scenes in the film - and that says a lot considering Solo has a few of them. It also adds to the mythology of the Millennium Falcon not just because it made the legendary route in 12 parsecs (rounded down), but with the reveal that Lando's beloved droid, L3-37, was uploaded to the ship's navigational system.
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Source: The Los Angeles Times
