A recent eBay listing, since deleted, offered concept art claiming to be from the production of “Red Cup,” otherwise known as the untitled Han Solo Star Wars Story now filming for a May 25, 2018 release date.
Star Wars News Net has all the photos, which I’d rather not duplicate here without a miniature lawyer on my shoulder. Sorry, I know how annoying that is. Please join Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in supporting copyright reform.
There appear to be 10 or 11 different and never-before-seen ships represented in the collection of concept art. After two Star Wars movies that mostly introduced variations on existing designs — it’s a TIE fighter but, uh, palette swapped and an AT-AT that’s... bigger — the Han Solo movie looks to be rebuilding the Empire from the ground up. Fitting its period in the timeline, before the events of the original Star Wars (it will never be A New Hope in this house), these new Empire designs are chunky and Imperial white, piloted by small units of stormtroopers.
But forget the Imperial stuff, could any of these other ships be the Han Solo movie’s Millennium Falcon? We know from Disney CEO Bob Iger that the Han Solo movie covers 6 years of the smuggler’s life, from the age of 18 to 24. “There are a few significant things that happen in Solo’s life, like acquiring a certain vehicle and meeting a certain Wookiee that will happen in this film,” Iger said. “But you will also discover how he got his name.” (Whatever that means.)
You can’t tell me a smuggler who custom mods his Corellian freighter didn’t have a ship dear to him before the Millennium Falcon. The guy’s whole identity is wrapped up in it, so giving him a prequel sweetie makes sense. And wouldn’t you know it, among the claimed Han Solo concept art is a drawing that suggests just which conveyance had laid claim to his heart before the Falcon.
It’s a motorcycle. Or the Star Wars equivalent. One of the pieces of concept art, again only anonymously asserted to be from the Han Solo movie, is of Han Solo next to a speeder bike/landspeeder hybrid, like a low-slung, triple-engined version of Rey’s speeder in The Force Awakens.
Can’t you just see young Han Solo tinkering with his souped-up, POS space motorcycle on some desert world that looks exactly like Tatooine? He’ll probably talk to it, like it’s a horse. It is a Western, after all.
At the bottom of the Star Wars News Net picture rundown (again, sorry), there’s concept art for what may or may not be the same speeder, as seen from above. It looks just a little like a podracer, striking a chill in vulnerable hearts. But even if young Han Solo turns out to be a greaser like Mutt in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , there’s evidence that this team will pull it off. Or, at least continue Disney’s streak of solid, good-enough Star Wars movies.
Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (21 Jump Street) and written by Lawrence Kasdan (Dreamcatcher, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Force Awakens), the next Star Wars Story comes out May 25, 2018, after this year’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
