Solo: A Star Wars Story’s cool River Phoenix easter egg revealed by screenwriter

In a cool move for Star Wars fans, Solo screenwriter Jon Kasdan has stuck 52 facts about the film onto Twitter, in the absence of an audio commentary.

There’s plenty to get your teeth into, but one major highlight is related to one of our favourite actors – River Phoenix.

“Han pulling the eel out of his pants was a nod to River Phoenix who worked with Lawrence Kasdan on I Love You To Death and was the first attempt at the daunting task of of playing a younger version of an iconic Harrison Ford character,” Kasdan said.

That’s the kind of easter egg it’s basically impossible for geeks to guess at for themselves, so it’s nice to have it confirmed, and, as massive fans of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, we think they chose wisely to include it.

Kasdan also revealed that Solo has the same inspiration as The Dark Knight, a little known Michael Mann film we like to call Heat. “We wanted Beckett to be cut from the same cloth as Neil McCauley. We wanted Beckett to embody a kind of moral cynicism that Han would, later in his life, outwardly project, but never really possess.”

And we like that a confirmation of a fairly obvious Return Of The Jedi reference was thrown in there too. “OF COURSE Han told Leia the story of how he an Qi’ra broke out of the den of the white worms and that’s what gave Leia the idea to use a real thermal detonator when disguised as the bounty hunter Boushh in Jabba’s Palace in Return Of The Jedi.”

Check out all the other entries below, there’s plenty of fun stuff to be found in there.

Solo: A Star Wars Story will be released on DVD and Blu-ray September 24.

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