Synopsis:

I wasn’t really expecting to do another edit so soon after the Alien: Romulus one, and I didn’t really think I was actually doing one until I realized I’d spent couple 2-3am nights in a row poking at what I thought was just an idea or two I had. I guess it was inevitable. You hang around OriginalTrilogy, you’re gonna give a Star Wars edit a go (ya lumpy brute!) Anyway: Solo! Why that one? Well, I think the last 7 years have been okay to it, really! There’s always been sort of rueful charm there, a ramshackle vibe that feels like a dog-eared Del Rey paperback come to life, and almost 10 years later, I feel like it’s actually grown into that more. I liked that it didn’t really take itself or “Star Wars” that seriously! I didn’t mind its tone, or the irreverence with which it treated its “legends,” none of that! What I minded was what everyone else seemed to mind: The look is a complete mismatch with that tone (all respect to Bradford Young), it took way too long, and it took way too much pleasure in stopping to pull up Wookieepedia pages and explain them way too loudly. Now, this edit doesn’t get rid of all the “And here’s how Han did X!” stuff, because then there’d be no movie; that’s just the cost of admission here, unfortunately. But there can be some balance between letting backstory just be backstory, in the back somewhere - and letting things also be foreshadowing without signaling that through on-the-nose yapping about it as it’s happening!

Intentions:

So that’s the goal of this Alternate Cut - to keep that paperback vibe alive, while minimizing the “lore”-fest it gets bogged down in visually and metaphorically. I’ve tried to do that via some scene and dialog deletions - primarily conversation trims (a few throughout), especially with Han’s would-be “mentor”/enemy Tobias Beckett, and through the excision of Corellia entirely (that’s the big one). There’s also the removal of that one special guest star since it was always kind of a goofy Marvel-esque inclusion that never went anywhere in the first place; and your by-now-standard color-correction. It’s no “The Bold One” or anything, but hopefully it’s providing the show a little more punch. (examples below).

Change List:

All due respect to Bradford Young, one of the most talented and rightfully acclaimed cinematographers of the last 15 years - but the look of this movie completely clashes with everything else it's doing. It's a beach read come to life, a barely-tethered-to-plausibility-cartoon about 2.5D space criminals, bumping into each other to comedic (yet sometimes cathartic!) results. But it's shot like we're ACTUALLY watching a Laserdisc of McCabe & Mrs. Miller in a library. So a scene-by-scene color-correction's been done. Nothing too bold, not trying to sear corneas here, just trying to provide some contrast, to put some pulp back in this paperback, to add some color to its cheeks, without blowing out all the highlights or crushing too much the shadow detail. So far as all the "And HERE'S how Han got X..." stuff that reads in the original film like a very sugar-high dude has memorized Wookieepedia and wants to let you know alllllll about it? Well, I didn't get rid of ALL that. I don't think I got rid of half that, in fact. Better or worse, that's just the movie Lawrence Kasdan conceived: Han meets Chewie, then Lando, then they do the Kessel Run, then he gets the Falcon. That's the spine of the story, so the spine's gotta stay. But there ARE moments in and around there, extra elbows to the ribs from that sugar-high dude that CAN be blocked out and/or silenced entirely while keeping the adventure moving forward - and those have been. Side Note: Another thing I didn't get rid of (normally you don't devote a bunch of time on one of these things to explaining what you kept in!) is the Lando + L3 stuff. Firstly: I think everything about it fits perfectly with that pulp paperback feel. Secondly: 99% of Glover's best work in this movie is rooted in his interplay with L3. But mostly, it's because everything about Kessel depends on L3. They don't escape the colony without her, and they don't finish the Run without her. The full impact of both those set pieces' payoff gets diminished if I mute part of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's performance by cutting it down in the setup. So it stays! It's a pretty vibrant story even as its tossing off gags & one-liners. It cares... while very much fronting like it doesn't care (another Solo specialty). So I tried highlighting that balance more carefully than just having people flat-out say "I CARE" in various ways (see, that's a Luke specialty. Wrong guy!) in the hopes it would restore some IMPLICATION to Han's past again. Typically this comes in the form of small dialog trims, but there are larger examples where key confrontations rest on understanding characterization through action, not verbalization. And the key example of removing the over-reliance on "backstory," not bogging down in explicitly showing things best left implied through tossed-off mentions of past events - Corellia's been completely removed from the movie. This does a lot improve the pacing of what's otherwise a straight up heist comedy, and also to reverse the flattening-out of Han's characterization in the movie's first third.

Additional Notes:

Aside from the small dialog trims scattered throughout the films runtime, the primary changes are: * New scene-by-scene color correction * New opening (replaces all Corellia-set scenes) * New title card * No "special guest star" in final reel