The danger in telling any origin story is that the script can get caught up in foreshadowing. Solo: A Star Wars Story is a case in point; several key scenes were essentially unnecessary setup for the Star Wars original trilogy.
Certain key scenes and ideas were always baked into a Han Solo origin story. Nobody ever doubted that the film would explain how Han became a smuggler, how he acquired the Millennium Falcon, and how he began his partnership with Chewbacca. Some of the answers Solo gave us were pretty smart, too; one of the most effective twists is the fact that Han doesn't win the Falcon the first time he goes up against Lando in a game of Sabacc.
Related: After Solo: The Biggest Lies Han Told In The Original Trilogy
But the movie blended this basic plot with a lot of fan-service, foreshadowing or teasing some of the major beats from the original trilogy that didn't need foreshadowing or teasing, occasionally feeling more focused on setting up movies we've already seen than telling its own story, and some of it even detracted from moments that, in the OT, seemed spontaneous. Here's our picks for some of the worst culprits.
The Thermal Detonator
Let's start with one of the strangest moments in the entire film. Early on in the movie, the young Han is brought before Corellian crime boss Lady Proxima for judgment. Unable to talk his way out of it, Han decides it's time to practice one spectacular bluff; he picks up a rock, makes a clicking noise with his tongue, and pretends he's really holding a thermal detonator. Given Han had been searched before being brought before Lady Proxima, it's a rather odd bluff to try, and Lady Proxima isn't impressed.
Fortunately, Han has the bright idea of using the rock to break a window, shedding a little lethal light on the confrontation. The scene foreshadows a similar gambit in Return of the Jedi, when a disguised Leia threatens Jabba the Hutt with an actual thermal detonator. Co-writer Jon Kasdan has taken to Twitter to defend this scene, insisting that Han told Leia the story and that was her inspiration. "For anyone who feels that maybe that didn't need to be explained," he added, "you're crazy, it had to be explained!"
Lando's Disguise from Return of the Jedi
When Han and his band attempt to infiltrate Kessel, their plan involves Beckett pretending to be Qi'ra's bodyguard. Beckett dons a disguise with a very distinctive helmet and breastplace, and attentive viewers recognized it straightaway; years later, Lando would use the same disguise when he infiltrated Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi.
Jon Kasdan reflected that he wished there was a special feature showing time-lapse footage of this outfit just sitting in a closet in the Falcon for fifteen years - until it ended with Lando picking it up and donning it for the mission to Jabba's palace. "And if you're wondering why or objecting to how interconnected to the movies it is with the others," he added, "it's 'cause that's the kind of nonsense I think about."
Related: How Donald Glover Made Solo: A Star Wars Story's Lando His Own
Page 2 of 2: Binders, Nicknames, and More
Chewbacca Doesn't Like Binders
One of Solo's strengths was its attempt to treat Chewbacca as a character in his own right, with motives and goals of his own. That contrasts markedly with the original trilogy, where characters were generally dismissive of the Wookiee. In one notable scene in A New Hope, Luke attempted to put binders on Chewbacca as part of a plan to rescue Leia. When Chewbacca reacted with fury, Luke handed over the binders to Han to do it instead. Critics have compared that scene to a man trying to collar an unexpectedly fierce dog, and giving the collar to someone the dog trusts to do it when he nearly gets bitten.
But we finally have an answer to a question nobody had ever asked; just why did Chewbacca object so fiercely to Luke's plan? Until Solo, viewers had assumed it was simply because Chewbacca's people had imprisoned and enslaved by the Empire, and so he hated being manacled. In reality, it's because Chewbacca remembers what happened the last time Han tried that gambit, back on Kessel. It nearly went horrifically wrong.
Weirdly, this particular bit of foreshadowing doesn't quite work. In A New Hope, when he's given the binders, Han reassures Chewbacca by telling him "I think I know what he has in mind." It's as though Han thinks Chewbacca has forgotten Kessel, and is trying to remind him that it all turned out last time.
Why Han Calls Chewbacca "Chewie"
Speaking of questions we never thought needed to be answered, Solo reveals just how Han gave Chewbacca his nickname, "Chewie." "You're going to need a nickname," Han tells the Wookiee after he's told Chewbacca's full name, "cause I ain't saying that every time." Solo seems oddly fascinated with the question of how characters got their names; the entire film was greenlit when Jon Kadan pitched the scene revealing how Han came to be called "Solo."
Related: What We Want to See in The Next Han Solo Movie
The Origin of Han's Sideways Maneuver in The Empire Strikes Back
Han has always had a reputation as an excellent pilot, and in The Empire Strikes Back that was memorably demonstrated when he flipped the Falcon sideways while flying through an asteroid field. It allowed Han to take advantage of the Falcon's profile in order to slip through gaps he wouldn't have normally have gotten through. This was a cool scene in the original trilogy, but in Solo, it turns out this is a regular move for the smuggler. It seems he first attempted this strategy while driving a landspeeder during his escape from Corellia. It didn't go so well the first time, but he evidently decided to perfect it, even pulling it off while doing the Kessel Run.
Han and Lando's Dispute
The relationship between Han and Lando should probably have been at the center of Solo. The original trilogy seemed to hint that the two had crossed paths many times over the years, sometimes working together, and sometimes at cross-purposes. As a result, viewers were particularly excited to see the young Han and Lando meet one another for the first time, and build an iconic friendship - one that was doomed to go sour by the time we got to Cloud City.
Related: Solo'First Classes' Han & Lando's Friendship
Solo decided to take a different approach, compressing the entire history of Han and Lando into the space of a couple of days. Although they may have crossed paths a couple of times since, the long history between Han and Lando is rewritten into an initial encounter back when Han was starting out his career in the criminal underworld. It turns out Lando is still mad because Han won the Falcon from him. This was a pretty disappointing explanation.
"I Know"
One of the most famous scenes in Star Wars history is the one in which a tearful Leia bids Han goodbye. "I love you," she tells the doomed smuggler as he faces his fate, about to be frozen in carbonite by Darth Vader. "I know," Han replies, subverting the romantic cliches that Lucas had originally written into the script of The Empire Strikes Back. Harrison Ford himself was responsible for that famous piece of dialogue, as he simply refused to say the lines as they were written down.
But it seems Han's response wasn't as spontaneous as we thought; in fact, he has a history of giving that reply to emotional statements. In Solo, there's a scene in which Lando bitterly tells Han that he hates him. "I know," Han reacts smugly, in what's perhaps the most underwhelming piece of foreshadowing in the entire film.
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