The upcoming Blu-ray release of Solo: A Star Wars Story will include a number of deleted scenes, all of which are potentially very interesting due to all the behind-the-scenes events that took place during the production. However, out of everything that could have theoretically been deleted from the film, I certainly wasn't expecting this. A new Star Wars video includes a brief deleted scene of Han and Chewie engaged in a snowball fight. Check it out.
The scene is from early in Solo: A Star Wars Story after the job that Han has joined Beckett for has gone bad. The three remaining team members, Beckett, Han, and Chewbacca, are trudging through the snow when Chewbacca hits Han in the back with a snowball. Han responds in kind and eventually, the two are wrestling on the ground and taking shots at each other with more snowballs before Beckett pipes up and gets them to quit it.
Needless to say, this scene is a little odd. It's only a few seconds long and contains nothing beyond this little snowball fight. There's no context for it at all. The Star Wars Show doesn't really explain it either, so it's not clear if this is actually the entire scene, or if there's more to it we'll have to wait for the Blu-ray to see. Perhaps there's an earlier moment where Han says or does something that results in Chewbacca deciding to hit him with a snowball. Perhaps there's an entirely separate scene earlier that explains it. Or maybe, Chewbacca at 190-years-old is just more playful than he is later on in his life.
The scene seems so out of context one wonders if it was ever really meant to be in the movie. It feels more like an outtake than it does a deleted scene. It's possible that maybe this moment was entirely improvised, and just turned out so well that it nearly made the movie. If it was a totally improvised scene, then the obvious next question becomes, was this actually shot by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and not Ron Howard? Lord and Miller are known as directors who allowed for multiple takes in order to try a variety of things and this certainly feels like something that might have been birthed by that process.
Solo: A Star Wars Story was certainly a movie with an overall lighter tone than most of the Star Wars movies we'd seen to that point, but this scene takes the silliness to a new level. Although, it honestly probably wasn't cut from the film for that reason. Solo ended up being a two hour and 15-minute long movie, and these few seconds were simply unnecessary.
We'll get to see if there's more to this scene, as well as several other deleted scenes, when Solo: A Star Wars Story is released on Digital tomorrow, followed by a Blu-ray release September 25.
