A troubled production makes for some fascinating special features.
Solo's famously troubled production made for a slightly weird hodgepodge of a movie--although an enjoyable one, too. And it also makes for some fascinating special features, as director Ron Howard, writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, and the rest of the cast and crew behind Solo take to the Blu-ray to reveal what it was like to work on this movie.
Did you know that George Lucas dropped by the set when production resumed after the hiatus following the original directors' departure--on Ron Howard's first day? What about the special mud they brought in to make Chewie's filthy fur when we first meet him look just right? Or did you ever wonder how all these actors reacted when they found out they'd been cast in a Star Wars movie? Across multiple featurettes and a roundtable interview featuring the entire cast and Ron Howard, Solo's special features answer these questions and more.
Solo may not have been the strongest Star Wars movie ever, and it wasn't exactly a smash box office hit. But many Star Wars fans who flew into theaters to watch it found it to be an enjoyable, if somewhat safe, movie. There were even some surprises--like the way Solo addressed the "Han shot first" controversy head on, or how its most incredibly shocking cameo came to be. Elsewhere in the special features, we even learned why Han Solo was kicked out of the Imperial Navy.
Click through for the craziest things we learned from Solo's special features. When you're done, check out all the tidbits that co-writer Jonathan Kasdan posted on Twitter after not being asked to record an audio commentary track, plus 33 Star Wars Easter eggs and references you might have missed in Solo.
1. When Alden Ehrenreich found out he'd been cast as Han Solo, he went to the beach by himself.
The actor says during a roundtable with the cast and director Ron Howard that since he couldn't tell anyone, he went to the beach and rode an amusement park ride by himself. Donald Glover replies that it's "the most Alden answer I've ever heard." Ehrenreich also told his "nana," who proceeded to tell tons of people, against his instructions.
2. Donald Glover immediately called his dad.
He and his dad had watched the original Star Wars movies together all his life, and he said he felt like his whole life had been leading up to this.
3. Joonas Suotamo, who plays Chewbacca, opened a bottle of champagne with his fiance.
And then he went and played LEGO Star Wars on a PS3.
4. The original Star Wars movies inspired Paul Bettany to become an actor.
"In 1977 I was 6 years old and I was taken away from a rainy, dreary London by these movies," says Bettany, who plays Dryden Vos in Solo. "I mean, I think it was really instrumental in me wanting to be in this business."
5. Alden auditioned six times for the role of Han Solo.
Some of the auditions took place on the Millennium Falcon, while others involved acting alongside a puppet of a dog as a stand-in for Chewbacca--mostly so they could maintain the illusion of Ehrenreich not knowing quite what he was auditioning for, to keep it secret longer.
6. People started recognizing Donald Glover as Lando immediately as the casting was announced.
From random strangers on the street, to the guy giving him his pizza, to the employees at the airport the very next day, people instantly starting calling Glover Lando as soon as the news broke. It kind of freaked him out, apparently.
7. Thandie Newton has an origin story for her character, Val, and Woody Harrelson's Beckett.
"We talked about it a little bit, you know, I feel like Beckett saved her life at some point, and I feel like it may have been very perilous for him to do that, so there's a sense of gratitude and loyalty there," Newton said.
8. Dryden Vos's face was done with CG.
"They were able to track it without putting the dots on my face," Bettany says. He didn't see what his face would look like in the movie until director Ron Howard sent him a photo that he wasn't even supposed to see yet.
9. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who played the droid L3, wore a Green Man suit while shooting.
"The suit was such an extraordinary experience in itself," Waller-Bridge says. "You don't really ever get to wear a skin tight green sock very often in life."
10. Glover and Waller-Bridge also have a theory for how Lando and L3 met.
"I think it started violently probably," Waller-Bridge says.
"I feel like we were probably in a bar, and I needed you to get out of there," Glover continues.
11. George Lucas himself visited the set.
He showed up somewhat unexpectedly on Ron Howard's first day on the movie, which was the cast's return from hiatus. They were shooting the closet scene between Han and Qi'ra, which Emilia Clarke claims gave her a "stubble rash."
12. Lucas made at least one contribution to the movie.
According to Ron Howard, as they filmed the closet scene on the Millennium Falcon, Lucas leaned over to him and suggested that Han wouldn't hang Lando's cape back up, but would throw it carelessly over his shoulder. Howard loved the note, and it's in the final movie.
13. Emilia Clarke says Kit Harington is "desperate" to be in Star Wars.
Clarke says her Game of Thrones cast members want to talk about Star Wars with her constantly. "Kit, who plays Jon Snow, is desperate to be in it," she says during the roundtable.
14. The Kasdans got a box of Star Wars toys from Lucasfilm every year on Christmas.
In the "Kasdan on Kasdan" featurette, Jonathan Kasdan, who co-wrote Solo with his father Lawrence Kasdan--who worked on the originals--describes getting a box of Star Wars toys every year.
15. Lawrence Kasdan basically implies he's never seen the prequels.
"I've written four of these movies, but [Jonathan] knows more detail," he says. "He's very funny about it. He thinks it's sort of charming and pitiful that I don't know some basic facts. There's a whole group of movies I know almost nothing about, and he's seen those...I'm sort of an original--you know, I'm faithful to the originals."
16. One of the biggest challenges was making the Millennium Falcon look new.
"One of the biggest challenges with Solo was to take the Falcon and say, 'OK, this is actually now back in time. What did the Falcon look like when it was under Lando?'" says set decorator Lee Sandales in the featurette "Remaking the Millennium Falcon."
17. They considered many modifications for the Millennium Falcon.
These include a Smokey and the Bandit-inspired decal as well as hot rod flames. Ultimately, they settled on some blue accents and larger rear fins, which is what wound up in the final film.
18. The Millennium Falcon's bar in Solo was inspired by earlier movies.
These included the Skywalker homestead in A New Hope, and the kitchen in Rogue One, according to assistant art director Liam Georgensen.
19. The Falcon's silver headphones are another reference.
Likewise, the silver headphones seen on the ship in Solo are a nod to a pair of headphones visible in the background during A New Hope, according to Georgensen.
20. The Falcon set used in Solo wasn't built for this film.
The set used in Solo is actually the same set built for Episode VII, The Force Awakens. Underneath the shiny new construction is the older, more shabby version. "If we were to take down certain bits of this set, the older pieces of the set are still there," Georgensen says.
21. They kept as much of the chase scene practical and "in camera" as possible.
The goal with the car chase early in the movie, according to producer Simon Emanuel, was to make it feel like a chase from a 1970s movie. They did as much of it practically, with stunt drivers, as possible.
22. They have a map of Corellia designed specially for the chase scene.
"They all turned to me and said, 'Give us a map, James," says Lucasfilm design supervisor James Clyne. He drew on designs of other Star Wars places, including the Death Star and Cloud City. "They're all very simple shapes."
23. They pictured Corellia as "a Star Wars version of Venice [Italy]."
"But an industrial Venice," says set decorate Lee Sandales. They shot much of the city scenes at a power plant in Southampton, England.
24. The speeder Han steals is a mix of many different elements.
"Designing a Star Wars vehicle is a balance of making something look fantastic and visionary, but also keeping it grounded," says Georgensen. They took visual inspiration from muscle cars like Ford Mustangs and Dodge Challengers, while they used parts from sources as different as fighter jets and grocery store displays to build it.
25. Alden wanted to know how to really drive it.
"Alden loved it," says Senior art director Gary Tomkins. "He was very keen to work out how all the controls worked, because we have levers, and afterburners, and ignition switches and things. So I spent maybe an hour with him just going through the different controls. I was just making it up, of course, because it's not a real speeder. But at least then in his head he knew exactly how, if it were a real speeder, how he could drive it."
26. The sound of the big truck that chases Han and Qi'ra was created using a "pulse jet engine."
We have no idea what that is, but apparently very few people in the world know how to build them. They recorded their sound out in the desert, and they became the basis for the truck's sound in the movie.
27. The character Rio is part practical, part CG.
Rio, voiced by Jon Favreau, is one of the most underused characters in the movie. The practical portion was played by a circus performer in a suit, while other parts were animated in CG.
28. The explosion after the train heist involved setting off firecrackers underwater.
They filmed it using high speed cameras and played it in slow motion.
29. Chewie's dialogue is written into the script.
Despite the fact that we can't understand him and it basically doesn't matter what he's saying, the Kasdans wrote all Chewie's dialogue into the script. "We wanted Alden to know what was being said to him, so he would know what to play, regardless of what he interpreted from the moan," says Jonathan Kasdan.
30. They had to record new sounds for Chewbacca.
They wanted Chewie to be introduced into the movie with a terrifying roar, but that sound didn't exist in Chewie's existing audio library of noises. "The main recording of Chewbacca is a bear that Ben Burtt, the original sound designer, recorded many, many years ago," says supervising sound editor Tim Nielsen. "But because the original bear only made so many sounds, Chewbacca's vocabulary's always been a little bit limited." For Solo, they spent time recording the noises of bears and other animals, including a very cute sea lion.
31. Getting Chewie muddy was a huge challenge.
"We've never done anything like this with Chewbacca before. He's always been clean, dry," says supervising animatronic designer Maria Cork. They tested different kinds of mud, including mud from the dead sea. With the mud caked on, she says, the suit weighed six or seven times as much as normal. "I was so happy when we got through that scene," says Chewie actor Joonas Suotamo.
32. L3 wasn't always a humanoid droid.
"Once upon a time, she was actually an R2 type droid, and she'd modified herself and given herself legs and arms and continued to evolve," says producer Simon Emanuel in the featurette "Becoming a Droid: L3-37." At one point in here design, she even had Leia's hair buns.
33. They used original Millennium Falcon sound effects for L3.
There's a moment in Solo when L3 hits her head and emits a unique sound. If you listen closely in A New Hope, the Millennium Falcon makes the same sound. It emphasizes even more that L3 becomes part of the Falcon after her "death" in Solo. "We wanted to have that connective tissue," says supervising sound editor Matthew Wood.
34. They had a Sabacc trainer on set.
Steven Bridges, Sabacc trainer, explains the rules of the game in the featurette "Scoundrels, Droids, Creatures and Cards: Welcome to Fort Ypso."
35. The creatures in the Sabacc scene are a combination of puppets and people in suits.
They're designed in such detail, and the puppeteers have such minute control over them, that the actors are often surprised how lifelike they are when they get into a scene with them.
36. The visual effects during the Kessel Run were practical--sort of.
"What we set out to do is make it as immersive and realistic as possible," says visual effects supervisor Rob Bredow. "The special effects department actually built this rig so it could spin, and turn, and rattle. And then Industrial Light and Magic created the media that would go around this wrap-around screen. And it was completely photorealistic, and it was high enough quality, that the camera could photograph it directly. And on set, we had multiple projectors that were all lined up, so the shots that you see on the set are actually what you see in the film. We shook the cockpit a little bit. It was basically like going on a very custom ride at Disneyland."
37. The Millennium Falcon's sound in this movie includes a "really old air conditioner."
The buttons and switches on this old hotel air conditioner had an almost musical quality, according to supervising sound editor Tim Nielsen.
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