Any film focusing exclusively on Han Solo was always going to have a pretty irreverent tone to it, but as it turns out the script for Solo: A Star Wars Story drew a fair slice of influence from some pretty familiar places. And if it all plays out well, it’ll really tie the room together.
Legendary Star Wars screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan – whose previous credits casually include the likes of The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Force Awakens, and The Big Chill, if you don’t mind – teamed up with his son Jon Kasdan – who sports episodes of Freaks & Geeks and Dawson’s Creek among his prior credits – to pen the script for the long-awaited standalone Solo flick.
The father-and-son writing due sat down with Entertainment Weekly recently to talk about the films that heavily influenced the Solo script, and the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is the Coen Brothers‘ 1998 cult hit The Big Lebowski.
The Kasdans detailed how they more or less looked at the relationship between Han and Chewie in the same way that the relationship between The Dude and Walter Sobchak works; a laconic, if not somewhat boneheaded, lead and a roaring moral compass for a sidekick.
Of the film, and how it influenced the Solo script, Jon noted that the similarities come from establishing a world of crime to set the film in while maintaining an off-beat tone to things.
Larry and I are both huge Coen brothers fans, and we talk a lot about that [relationship] as a reference.
[We were] trying to create a crime movie where our character was entering a crime world where there were already dramas in place and relationships and complications, and we have to see him negotiate a lot more rivalries than he is expecting at the beginning of the story.
[Solo] has that flavour of a crime world that has weirdness and surprise and people stumbling into things — and other people very intentionally getting into [trouble]. The Big Lebowski is a great example because Solo has a more off-kilter tone than you’ve ever seen in [Star Wars].
Weird that he refers to his old man as “Larry” but that’s neither here nor there.
The interview also revealed that the script takes influence, in some small part, from the likes of Heat, Treasure Island, Unforgiven, and Gangster No. 1 as well. Which should be enough to get any half-hearted film fan going bananas.
You can peep the full interview with the Kasdans via Entertainment Weekly.
Solo: A Star Wars Story opens in cinemas across Australia on May 24th.
