This week we’re talking with Lawrence and Jon Kasdan about what it was like writing Solo together.
Plus, Ewoks are finally coming to Battlefront II.
Take it away, Yoda Fountain!
This is The Star Wars Show!
From the Lucasfilm headquarters in San Francisco, here’s your hosts, Andi and Anthony!
Hello and welcome to the show, a show whose hosts, you and me, talk about our biggest
passion with the viewers every week.
And that passion is?
Motorcycles.
Hm.
JK, My babies!
That was a patented Goots Goof for ya!
Let’s talk about Star Wars!
She has to say whatever’s in the prompter.
Our writer is mad at me for cutting my hair.
Goots Goof.
You know every time we give you one of these things it sticks.
You’re going to have so many catchphrases.
Yay!
[Laughing]
On Sunday, Lucasfilm released a brand-new 45 second TV spot for Solo: A Star Wars Story
entitled, “Crew”
The spot gave us more looks at the infamous card game between Han and Lando, as well as
a little more insight into the budding relationship between Chewie and Han.
Then on Tuesday another TV spot dropped showing more of the interior of the Falcon, our first
vocal confirmation that yes, Lando has always called Han “Han” and L3 having none of Lando’s flirting.
What does it all mean?
Hmm.
Only 36 more days before we all find out.
Battlefront II has added a brand new, limited time mode that I think someone on the show
is a little excited about.
Kevin the Ewok, come on out and tell us about it.
Kevin?
Is Kevin even here?
KEVIN!
[Crickets]
I guess we’ll have to talk about it then.
Beginning today, all Battlefront II players can try out the brand new Night on Endor update.
The update includes the limited time mode, Ewok Hunt which pops you in the middle of
the forest in the dead of night either as a stormtrooper on patrol, or as an ewok stalking
and protecting your village!
That sounds like so much fun!
I cannot wait to play that.
For more information on Ewok Hunt and other additions coming to Battlefront II as a part
of this update, check out StarWars.com
But seriously, where is Kevin?!
KEVIN!
You’re watching The Star Wars Show!
Move along.
Today we are here at Lucasfilm with Art and Science Program.
We had panelists from Industrial Light and Magic and Lucasfilm coming to talk to the
students to help inspire and educate.
[Porg yell]
This is what the porg rig actually looks like.
It’s a puppet inside the computer that you move around.
We have little controls on it to move every little bit.
I personally liked looking at the different layers that they added to the screen.
It feels so surreal.
I know that they don't exist but like it's hard to exist that they don't actually, it’s
just a bunch of people in front of a computer.
Charmaine Chan and her team of compositors use Python to create an automatic system so
they could have multiple blaster shots at once so they didn't have to hand animate all
the blaster shots.
So that was really cool to me because I’m learning Python.
[Blaster sounds]
Being creative requires thinking on your feet and always being open to the new and the different.
[Clapping]
I’m really inspired by what I’ve heard today.
Being an animator is something I want to do and I should probably continue doing that.
It’s really cool and I think I’m going to be a producer.
[Porg sounds]
So excited to be joined here in the studio by Lawrence and Jon Kasdan, the writers on
Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Thank you so much for coming in.
A pleasure.
Having written Empire and Jedi and then The Force Awakens.
You have written the majority of Han’s life here.
[Laughing]
And you were looking on Solo previous to TFA right?
That’s right, when I agreed to do Solo I said I can’t do this without Jon.
He had helped us out on Force Awakens, he had been around the whole thing for a while,
he had great ideas about Han and I couldn't really face doing it myself without him.
Obviously you, as a Star Wars fan, had a very singular sort of childhood around Star Wars.
It was!
It was crazy!
I mean I sort of became a fan like a lot of kids in my generation through seeing it on
video and the toys.
And then when George and Larry sort of continued to maintain a relationship it’s always been
sort of been a Star Wars family.
We’ve been tendentially related.
So when they sold the company, Larry had not told me anything about it.
And I called him up and I said, I bet they’re going to try and get you in there for something.
And he was like, well, actually.
[Laughing]
We’re having a meeting.
I was like, I knew it!
And then, you know, I sort of kept it close.
When this came up it seemed like an opportunity for us to write something together, which
we always wanted to do.
I did want to write with Jon for years.
But of course there’s that weariness.
Can a father and a son…
...even be in the same room together for that much time?
It can be ragged but the good times, which were most of the times, were amazing.
So many of these characteristics that we see in Han, the ego and the bravado.
Like Han’s a guy who wants to walk into a room fully formed.
Yeah!
Han doesn't want you to know about Han.
He would never want this movie to be seen.
[Laughing]
So how do you take a character like that back even further?
What we had was a character that we loved, who is enormous fun.
It wasn't like we ever approached it like, okay we’re going to fill in the backstory
or the origin story of Han Solo.
We had Han Solo and we were going to make a great crime movie around him.
What we started with in A New Hope was a very cynical guy and it allowed for a character
arch that naturally lent itself to this movie.
Which is, how do you become a cynical guy?
And that’s sort of fascinating to me.
Is to go back and sort of tell this beginning.
There’s this sort of idea of what needs to be told and what needs to be sort of kept
mysterious or kept a secret.
Absolutely.
So what first popped into your heads as writers about how much to tell or how little to tell about Han?
Han was always my favorite character.
I loved him in A New Hope.
I had enormous fun writing him for the next two.
When he was on screen, I was involved.
So I didn’t approach it so much as what dont we know.
But he was living person in my life and like any living person, you wonder about what was
their youth was like, how did they get to be like the person that I met much later.
Obviously we’re bringing in a couple characters that we already know.
Do you write lines for Chewie?
We did.
Or do you write feelings for Chewie?
In this script we wrote every one of Chewie’s lines.
We wanted Alden, who was playing Han, to know what was being said to him so he would know
what to play regardless of what he interpreted from the moan.
Cause there needs to be a very deep affinity between Chewie and Han.
So you can’t have any, I would imagine, sort of ambiguousness between the two of them.
No, no.
Yeah, you know, it echoes the reality of filmmaking.
Which is, you come in and the actors don’t know each other and over the course of a difficult
endeavor they get to know each other and they have to trust each other and that happened
with Alden and Joonas.
And people are so overwhelmingly into Lando.
Oh boy, it seems like it, huh.
[Laughing]
There’s something about Donald that you see him dressed that way and it was immediate.
Everyone wants to see more.
The utter dichotomy in Lando is that he’s this incredibly sort of loose, casual guy.
But at the core of his story in our movie is a very deep relationship with his co-pilot.
We’re talking about Elthree, right?
Elthree.
Yes.
Elthree is interesting because this is a droid that kind of upgrades herself…
Yes.
...and kind of has more of a emotional animus.
There’s an emotional core to her.
With Elthree you’re instantly, you know, enchanted by her.
And the actress playing her is phenomenal.
She’s the female version of Donald.
And the combination of that and her conception of what this droid should be like is so charming.
You can’t turn away.
Talking a little bit more about Han’s past, we did get to meet some new characters as well.
Yeah.
We got to meet Qi’ra.
This is somebody who’s known Han since he was a child.
Which I feel like is something Han must not love at all.
We talked about Han growing up in an urban environment.
He really grew up on the streets where he had to learn to be quick, where he had to
sort of survive.
And we wanted him thrust into a sort of makeshift family.
That sort of throughline of found family is in all the Star Wars films.
Absolutely.
Qi’ra and Han have sort of a shared background that is very rough.
Another character that I saw that I was instantly into because it’s a character that has that
iconic Star Wars look.
Can you us about that character?
Enfys Nest!
To understand who Enfys is, you first kinda think you gotta understand who Woody Harrelson
plays, which is a character named Beckett.
Who is sort of a highly trained, very lethal criminal.
He’s a real pro, who’s into big jobs, and he runs a crew.
But one of their competitors is a sort of more pirate-like gang and the leader of that
gang is Enfys Nest.
All the movies builds on the backs of the people that came before.
Now we’re in a certain galaxy so that’s a certain kind of story.
But it did give us enormous freedom to draw from whatever we wanted.
That’s amazing.
Well I’m looking so forward to it.
Thank you so much.
We’re looking forward to you guys seeing it.
Yeah.
[Chewbacca roar]
[Screams]
[Chewbacca roar]
Mondays am I right?
[Chewbacca roar]
Oh my God!
Is this a costume?
Is it real?
[Chewbacca roar]
I knew that.
I knew that was going to happen.
[Porg yell]
Last week we launched Cutie Watch 2018, and man, do you all love you some cuties.
Tyler Ellis said, “Y’all are hyping the main sabaac table players but who’s that
just taking its sweet time peeping everybody?
Albino Space Bat, that’s who.”
That’s who indeed!
Kendall Schroeder went with this eight eyed, two headed cutie, Matt Cillia voted for Rio
Durant, and Fred Martin Campo went with this handsome six-eyed cutie.
But the clear winner, and my favorite cutie was of course…Lando.
Lando is always the cutest of the cuties.
Thanks to everyone for submitting and to you for watching the show this week.
And as always remember to like the video, subscribe to the channel, follow us on Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram, talk to us in the community tab on Facebook, read the articles
on StarWars.com and download the Star Wars app.
And remember that the Cutie Watch never ends!
We should build like a storm tracker for all the incoming cuties.
What are we local news now?
For some, I think we are, yes.
Okay, sure, yeah.
Thanks for watching.
May the Force be with you.
There’s a cutie front coming in from the north.
Nothing in the rulebook that says a human can’t be a cutie.
We've got a high pressure cutie coming in from here.
There’s like a whole jet stream of cuties.
Ah, from your mouth to God’s ears.