By Travis Johnson
George Lucas pulled together a lot of different influences when me smelted the orignal ’77 edition of Star Wars, and those various ingredients have ebbed and flowed in different ways in each subsequent iteration of the franchise. The Last Jedi, or example, draws heavily on Japanese chambara cinema and the work of Akira Kurosawa in particular, and it looks like Solo, with its train jobs, bad men, and what appears to be an honest-to-Ford train robbery, is leaning hard into Star Wars‘ western roots. Goodo.
Now, in case you’ve been living under a rock, the official synopsis: “Board the Millennium Falcon and journey to a galaxy far, far away in Solo: A Star Wars Story, an all-new adventure with the most beloved scoundrel in the galaxy. Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.”
Starring Alden Ehrenreich,Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, and Paul Bettany, and directed by… *check notes* …Ron Howard, Solo: A Star Wars Story premieres at Cannes on May 15 before swooping into Australian cinemas on May 24, 2018.
Fuck yeah. Space western. I’m completely down with this.