Solo: A Star Wars Story (Alternate Cut)

Hello again!

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!

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).

• Runtime is now 1hr, 59min. Burnt-in subs for alien languages, english subs (srt) and chapters included. Dolby Digital 5.1, 1080p.

Please PM me if you’d like to check it out! As always, any suggestions, questions, critiques, comments, whatever you got, I’m all ears 😃 Thanks!

Thanks for that! I did a scene-by-scene correction, but not shot-by-shot. I tried to keep it a little punchy/crunchy still, but I didn’t want to lose any details in the highlights or blow out the upper-registers if I didn’t have to - which ended up being harder than I’d anticipated. Often I’d think “well, that looks pretty solid” - and then I’d check the scopes and the shots on either side of it, and realize I’m clipping the hell out of everything past a certain point: suddenly clouds are just solid white sheets, windows are just blank white squares, etc. For a movie that is generally thought of as being flat and dim, you’d think there’d be a lot of headroom to play with, but nope!

Finding the right balance for the saturation levels was also kind of a weird tiptoe through the dials - and I probably slipped here and there, too, LOL. I’m no Dre, after all. But all in all I think I landed in a place where it looks right for the paperback vibe - not oversaturated, not blown out - but not low-contrast or faded, either. Just the right amount of pulpy & vivid, if maybe a teeeeensy bit inaccurate (or color-cast in a slightly too-strong direction) for a scene or two.

Hey thanks for the questions! And I definitely don’t take any offense or anything at all like that, I’m just happy folks are interested and care to toss some questions my way! Onto the bullet points:

• I kept all of the Lando + L3 stuff. Not just because I don’t mind it (I thought it actually fit pretty solidly with that pulp paperback feel I was trying to preserve as much as I could) but because like 99% of Donald Glover’s best stuff in this movie is rooted there to some degree. I also feel like the Kessel Run doesn’t work as well as it can without L3 at full volume, as it were. She’s how they get out of the colony, and she’s how they complete the run, so it lessens the impact of both those things if I truncate the setup for those payoffs by muting her somewhat. The shower scene never occurred to me as a thing to cut, actually! I just thought it was one last physical comedy button on the preceding “Beast” scene where they’re both messing with each other pretty ruthlessly.

• The origin of his name is completely gone along with anything that happens on Corellia.

• The movie is still “Solo: A Star Wars Story” - down to the logo appearing on the screen. it doesn’t look exactly the same, nor appear in the same place though (again, no Corellia. No crawl, either)

• I did address Han’s “softness” to some degree. There’s a few moments where the original version of a scene plays out in a way that makes him look like a neophyte to crime/smuggling that doesn’t track, and I’ve clipped lines/reactions so it reads less like he needs his hand held, and more like he’s just observing or waiting for an opening. There’s at least one moment that’s been edited quite a bit to make his reaction to a meaningful event less sympathetic.

Hopefully that’s not too much of a deal-killer?