The troubled production of Solo: A Star Wars Story has become a generally known fact at this point, to the point that it’s a minor miracle that replacement director Ron Howard managed to salvage a decent enough flick from the chaos. A huge new report in Variety takes a more pensive and holistic look back at the film’s production – from the mouth of the director and its stars – which is absolutely worth a read if you’re interested in the nitty gritty of what it looks like when a mammoth Hollywood production doesn’t go quite to plan.
It also contains a little tidbit which will be interesting to long-time fans of Star Wars. According to Ron Howard, George Lucas himself – who has not been involved in the series since LucasFilm was sold off to Disney – did indeed visit the Solo set and made a teeny tiny adjustment to a single scene.
Warning, here there be incredibly minor spoilers. There’s a scene where Han Solo, played by Alden Ehrenreich, and Qi’ra, plsyed by Emilia Clarke, have a romance scene which is definitely one of the more openly horny ones yet seen in Star Wars. In Howard’s vision. Han takes Qi’ra’s coat and hangs it up before they pash.
But Variety says that Lucas, who had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visit to the film’s set, recommended a tiny adjustment:
“He said, ‘You know, Han wouldn’t bother to hang it up,’” Howard says. “And then he sort of did it. George became Han Solo for a second. The body language was there and the attitude. Not only was it a nice accent on the scene, but it was also a reminder that George created this character and really understood him. He was so reluctant [to offer his opinion], and yet the choice was so right that it was fun to use it.”
Moving in on the set of an anthological addition to the series you invented and subtly telling the director they actually don’t know shit about the character you originally wrote? The mark of a true alpha.
