ItSolo: A Star Wars Story is well known for its disappointing box office results, which led to the slowing down of canonical Star Wars universe films and the movement of Obi Wan’s spin-off into a show instead. However, Solo also has the impressive accolade of being the most problem-free Star Wars film.
Unlike the other entries in the series, it isn’t full of inconsistency problems or filming errors, and (considering its poor performance) is a rather brilliant film. Either way, we still managed to scrape together ten errors. Did you catch these when you watched?
Problems With The Card Game
We all know that both Lando and Han, despite their brilliant bromance, can’t be trusted. They can’t trust each other and no one else should trust either of them if they know what’s good for them. Due to this, it makes no sense why Lando would bet the Falcon after Han failed to provide him with the ship he won in the first round of Sabacc.
On top of that, Han’s cheating isn’t exactly subtle. Someone should definitely have called him out for playing a card that obviously wasn’t his. These issues make the whole card game a bit of a plot hole.
More Problems With The Card Game
Considering they’re playing for big, big things in these Sabacc games, you’d think everyone involved would also want to keep up a little more professionalism, too. In almost all card games (especially competitive ones) the players glance at their hand, then keep it face down on the table. In this game, everyone seems to be holding their cards throughout, which could lead to some serious cheating if another player was simply able to peek over the shoulder of whoever was next to them.
When Did Han Learn Shyriiwook?
Considering Han only met Chewie for the first time when saving him from a life of slavery, it doesn’t really seem like he has spent a lot of quality time among the Wookiees. Despite this, he is able to have long, detailed conversations with him in fluent Shyriiwook. Where did Han have the time to learn this complex, non-human language?
Technically, this might not even be an error. Maybe Han really did just spent a long time undertaking an intensive course in Wookiee communication, but for someone busy running various shady dealings, that doesn’t really seem like his style.
Teleporting Hat
Early on in the film, we see Han take a hat from a child. When the shot changes and we see the child standing with his mother and sister, he has the hat on again. This makes it seem like either Han took the hat and immediately returned it, or the hat jumped straight back to its owner. Or even more unlikely, as soon as Han took the hat, it doubled in quantity and now both have their own hat. Then again, perhaps the most likely reason of them all is that the directors shot the scene from a different angle before Han had taken the hat, so the continuity doesn’t match up.
Changing Hands
There is a deleted scene that shows Beckett lending Han his DL-44 rifle as they walk through the trenches. Considering this exchange isn’t shown in the official film, it makes it a little confusing to the viewer as to why Han has the gun in the first place.
Things get even more confusing a few moments later, however, when Beckett takes the gun with his right hand. The shot changes, and it seems to have jumped into his left hand.
Failed Subtlety
When the film reaches its grand conclusion, it is revealed that Beckett wasn’t to be trusted after all, as he betrayed Han. His condition for dealing with Crimson Dawn (when stealing coaxium from the Pyke Syndicate) was that his crew could not be shown to be connected to Crimson Dawn under any circumstances. Despite this, Vos sends his self proclaimed, and certainly recognizable, “most trusted lieutenant” with them, with no objection from Beckett. This doesn’t really seem to be the best way of avoiding suspicion or connection, but no one seems to raise an eyebrow. Surely you’d choose someone a little less high-ranking?
Joonas Suotamo’s Finger
Considering they like to use real costumes and practical effects to their advantage in the Star Wars franchise, the series does surprisingly well to avoid costume malfunctions or moments that might give away the fact that there is an actor underneath.
Peter Mayhew might not have had any issues with his portrayal of Chewie, but his replacement, Joonas Suotamo, doesn’t get so lucky. When Qi’ra is flying away, Chewie puts his hand on Han’s shoulder and if you look closely, you can see his human finger buried in fur.
Why Does This Car Explode?
Star Wars runs into a lot of problems with inconsistency. Throughout the main films, the big problem seems to be the lack of consistency in how powerful blaster bullets are. Sometimes they’ll send a stormtrooper flying backward never to be seen again, while other times, a stormtrooper will brush it off and keep going.
Something similar happens in Solo during the coaxium heist on Vandor-1. We had just seen many of the cars fall from their railing with no explosions, but when Han himself drops one, it hits a mountain and we see a huge explosion. Maybe they wanted Han’s actions to seem more dramatic than the accidental drops?
The Parsec Problem
Perhaps this doesn’t count as a continuity error in Solo itself, more a retcon that creates (or fixes, depending on how you look at it) one in the wider series. In the original films, Han is constantly bragging about how he “made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs”. Despite having ‘secs’ in the word, a parsec is actually a unit of distance, so this statement doesn’t really make any sense.
It has often viewed as part of Han’s character building, portraying him as a bragging liar who shouldn’t be trusted. In Solo, he takes a shortcut through the Kessel Run and makes the original statement (regarding distance) true. This takes away the interesting interpretations of the original statement, and turned it from a charming lie-brag, into something actually true.
Darth Maul
This one takes a little bit of explaining. The fact that Darth Maul is alive and well and appears at the end of Solo in one of the greatest reveals in the history of the franchise makes total sense. This is thanks to the Clone Wars TV series, in which we find out that he brought himself back to life through his hatred of Obi-Wan, and went on to live with spider legs.
While not a continuity error at all, the problem his inclusion in the film created was a unique one that might have passed by anyone who knew Maul was alive thanks to Clone Wars. To a viewer who had only ever seen the full films, this might end up seeming more like the twist of the film is that it was actually set before The Phantom Menace when Maul was alive. Obviously, that isn’t the case, but it’s an interesting interpretation that should probably have been considered for audiences unfamiliar with the animated show.
