something i like: star wars!

do you know what is going to be a major highlight for me this year? as always when it happens, the release of the new star wars movie, “solo: a star wars story.”

with each and every star wars movie/comic/tv show released, i fall further and further into its fandom. but i’ll be honest with you, for the longest time i wasn’t quite sure how i felt about a movie focused on a young han solo. no offense to alden ehrenreich, but the idea of someone besides harrison ford playing the role of solo just didn’t feel ok to me.

at least that is how i felt until the release of the teaser trailer earlier this month.

the trailer opened my eyes to many things that i was refusing to see, one of them being that ehrenreich isn’t as far stretched of choice for han as i thought. there were multiple times in the trailer where i thought, “yeah, that looks like han to me.” such as the scene where he appears to be making an escape in some kind of speeder.

something else from the trailer that really had me looking again was the millennium falcon and how damn shiny and new it looked. i figured we would see the falcon come into han’s possession from his buddy lando calrissian during the film, but never did it cross my mind how different it would look.

there aren’t too many official images of the falcon out yet, but from the little we see of it in the trailer, it’s obvious it still has lando’s marks on it. lando is much more of a showman than han, and as the falcon was originally lando’s ship, it makes sense that he would have kept it in show condition. for example, we see an actual paint job of sorts on the exterior (instead of the just battle-damaged metal we see in every other film where it belongs to han), a pristine interior, and most noticeably, a front end that appears to be solid versus two separate mandibles.

i’ve been reading star wars forums like there is no tomorrow and one of the hot-button issues with the new solo movie is why the falcon looks the way it looks. we know the falcon is technically a freight vessel (yt-1300 light freighter), and being such a craft, people assume that the solid area between the mandibles is some kind of cargo section, similar to this concept design where cargo is set between the falcon’s mandibles and it pushes it, just on a much smaller scale (i do like the idea of it being able to push something that large though).

however, i don’t think that is 100% right.

i think that middle section is some kind of ship. maybe a speeder or smaller spacecraft of some sort. it wouldn’t be the first time star wars has done this kind of thing. the ghost, from the star wars rebels tv show, has a smaller ship, the phantom, that docks into it.

why do i think this?

even though there aren’t too many official images of the falcon out yet, what we do have is official images from lego’s new millennium falcon set.

with the release of these images, we can really see some of the differences from later variations of the falcon seen in other movies. aside from the single nose, the falcon has some cool blue accents, a different radar dish, and much less intimidating firepower.

thanks to high-resolution images provided by lego, i was able to make a guess as to where the second ship docks into the falcon.

kind of funny-looking, but really the whole ship is when you think about it. it makes sense though, especially when you zoom way in on one section where it appears there is a translucent blue brick, a color lego would use to show an engine.

if my theory that is solely based on images from an unreleased lego set end up being even remotely true, i’d be so surprised, but also really thrilled because that would be such a cool feature for the falcon to have. and even if i’m 100% wrong, i’m still excited to see what the new nose means.

but nonetheless, the number one thing i’m excited about in this film is donald glover’s portrayal of lando.

damnnn…