I always liked the theory that Han was intentionally using nonsense jargon, to see if Obi Wan would pick up on it. To see how gullible he is. And Obi Wan just went with it cause he was kinda desperate to get off the planet, what with the stormtroopers snooping around looking for the droids.
The Kessel Run was a 20-parsec hyperspace route within the Akkadese Maelstrom used by smugglers and unscrupulous freighter captains to move spice from the spice mines of Kessel at the behest of the Pyke Syndicate, who relied on the foolhardy Kessel Runs to deliver the illicit substance to their customers.
Han Solo, piloting the Millennium Falcon, made the infamous run in slightly over 12 parsecs, boasting about his ship’s ability to endure shorter but more hazardous routes through hyperspace. By doing so, Solo broke a long-held record.
And everyone in the galaxy knows about it. Han is a terrible smuggler.
Yep I read the Han Solo trilogy where this is detailed. He cut the corners tighter and made a shortcut or two through this mazey route.
It’s a great attempt at covering a mistake in the movie. They are clearly discussing the ship’s speed in that scene, not its durability:
“Fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon? It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I’ve outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers mind you, I’m talking about the big Corellian ships now. She’s fast enough for you old man.”
The line starts with “fast” and ends with “fast.” It’s about speed, which is distance over time. The smaller the numerator gets there, the lower the speed. And Han is clearly proud that it made the Kessel run in “less than” 12 parsecs. The only way this indicates speed is if parsec is the denominator, or unit of time.
It bugged me to see the author bending over backwards to come up with an explanation retroactively. In the same novels we also learn that the stripe down Han’s pants is not just a wardrobe flair but it has a meaning like a family tartan in Scotland (or some shit).
Reading these books helped me realize how 50% of the whole Star Wars franchise is books and comics milking the movies, inventing whole stories to account for some throwaway line of dialogue or some creature that was on the screen for two seconds. The Rise and Fall of Sy Snootles and the Spiders from Mars. Shit like that. Dumb.
George Lucas has talked about this specific line and measurement in interviews. The idea was that if you have a better nav computer you could get places faster by planting the shortest route. One way to think of it with the hyperspace is as if all ships are held at a more-or-less constant speed in hyperspace, and thus to get there faster than someone the only real was was to find a shorter route through hyperspace. Better nav computers and sensors could plot better courses through asteroid fields and closer to sun’s without having issues, whereas poorer computers would plot really safe routes that take longer.
I’d love to see a primary source on what he said. I’m sure if he said it after years of people lampooning the line, his take was probably defensive and revisionist.
https://youtube.com/shorts/VOys-f1HaIc
https://youtube.com/shorts/f5bftwl0h_I
Here are two quick clips. If you spend any time searching into this you will very quickly find lots more. The original comes from the making of documentary done in the 90’s
Eh, fair enough. It is retrospective so we’ll never know how much of that he was thinking about at the time. But he explains it convincingly enough. It’s still a mistake to have such a complicated notion of what goes into hyperspace travel and then not provide enough basis in that for the dialogue to make sense. That might be a worse error than just the simple mistake of using the wrong unit.
My favorite part of a movie is the part where you have to read a wiki and listen to a commentary so that one slightly questionable line makes sense.
It doesn’t have to make sense, you could just treat it as technobabble and enjoy the rest of the movie without worries.
Right! He’s either [wiki explanation], or he’s trying to impress a naïve farm boy with bullshit.
It goes deeper.
The original intent was clearly that Han was bullshitting a farm kid, that’s why Obi-Wan smirks at the line.
Lucas at the time was asked to explain it in interviews because that was simply too subtle for children and Americans. The bullshit he comes up with is that Han is bragging about how good that ship computer is, essentially likening it to an old sailing ship having an expert navigator and accurate sea charts.
The explanation that the EU came up with, unaware of both of those things, is about the black holes and relativity. Honestly a lot better than Lucas’s excuse but ultimately missing the point of the original line.
And the movie Solo, I think, actually did a pretty genius job of uniting these interpretations. The Falcon gets a uniquely powerful ship computer, black holes fuck with relativity, and then the number he relates in the movie is higher than the one the one he tells Luke. Honestly the best thing the movie did imo.
That and actually showing blasters as dangerous instead of people prat falling when they get hit in the shoulder.
I didn’t know what a parsec even was, the first dozen times I saw A New Hope. Even now, I’m happy to let the line slide, although it does make me laugh. Not because of the line itself, but the fact that Lucas got caught with his pants down, and instead of laughing it off he and other writers bent over backwards to insist that he didn’t make a mistake.
It’s fine George! Nobody’s perfect!
Especially the Christmas Special
I know the movies retconned this badly, but measuring the “speed” of a hyperspace capable ship with distance makes a lot of sense…
At the direct “normal” space distances these ships travel, on conventional drives, going from one galaxy to the next would take more than a human lifetime. The maximum velocity of the ship makes a, well let’s not say negligible, but rather immaterial, difference in the time it takes for the ship to arrive. A hyperspace drive effectively brings two points in space closer together. The “faster” the drive is, the closer it brings those two points, and thus the MF’s impressive run is a measure of distance instead of speed.
I read that as “the mother fucker’s impressive run” and not “the Millenium Falcon’s impressive run”
Why not both?
I thought the fan theory was the route included a near pass by a black hole or something, and 12 parsecs would be the shortest “sane” route that didn’t either
- Require bravery/luck verging on stupidity
- God tier course charting to get the orbital routing just right
So to do it in less than 12 would just be generally unheard of
You can be forgiven for forgetting that exactly that was canonized in the Solo movie.
Yes. It was a stupid thing the old EU did to retcon what was much more naturally (and at least one marked-up copy of the script says so) a shady smuggler trying to get one over on what he presumed were a couple of rubes. The old EU was infamous for taking every line completely seriously, turning every idle turn of phrase into a galaxy-wide convention, and ascribing galactic importance to every extra or creature that anyone noticed.
The fact that Solo doubled down on it was a mistake.
You can even see Obi-Wan give Han a kind of, “What do you think we are, idiots?” look after he says the line,
I thought it was because Obi-Wan knew Han was boasting about a supposed lie about the Falcon, not that he was trying to lie about what a parsec was.
You would think Luke would also know what a parsec was during that scene as he’s a pilot. That seems like it would be more basic knowledge there than it would be here on Earth.
My gut still tells me Lucas didn’t know or care. The novelization back in the day says “standard time units” instead of parsecs… which would indicate it was an error in the script.
its funny how “never tell me the odds” turned into all corellians hating odds
yet han solo also calls lukes death star shot “one in a million”
Ah never saw it
They show it in Solo, and it’s pretty much that.
You could go even close, making the distance shorter.
But it would involve even more danger of your space ship getting ripped apart.
My favorite “theory” about this is based on the fact that they shot a reaction cut of Obi-Wan looking suspicious, implying that Han thought they were a couple rubes that wouldn’t know what a parsec was. That would mean it wasn’t a mistake, and you don’t need to come up with the convoluted shit other people have to justify it.
it’s not a theory, it’s in the script!
HAN Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon? BEN Should I have? HAN It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs! Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation. HAN I've outrun Imperial starships, not the local bulk-cruisers, mind you. I'm talking about the big Corellian ships now. She's fast enough for you, old man. What's the cargo?Obvious misinformation doesn’t sound the same as a nonsense.
Yup and Obi Wan is like “I don’t have time for this, this is what we’re going to pay you…”
Solo explained the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, and Skeleton Crew has confirmed the Christmas Special is canon. Life day was also referenced in the new Sequels, but Skeleton Crew used recreated footage of the circus holovid.
I’m probably going to upset a few Star Wars fans with this, but in the original version that I saw of the New Hope / Ep4, both Han and Greedo have their blaster pistols drawn under the table, and Han shoots Greedo first.
I’ve seen the entire internet argue about who shot first, but the irony is that if he didn’t shoot first he would get shot by Greedo and the story would end right there.
It wasn’t murder, it was quickdraw. :)
That’s the joke. Greedo shooting first was a poor edit made in later editions, because god forbid the smuggler plays a bit dirty sometimes. If you look closely Han’s head just shifts to the side like someone cut it out in Paint. It was the start of the downfall of the originals tragic remaster journey.
Yeap, this is pretty much fully justified and explained.
my question is whether it was a mistake they were able to fix later on or if it was never a mistake to begin with
