Despite years of flying around on the Millennium Falcon with that holochess game on board, “Solo: A Star Wars Story” shows Chewbacca never managed to improve his strategy.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” follows young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as he gets started on his life of crime, meets and befriends Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), gets hold of the Millennium Falcon and gambles with Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). It also stars Woody Harrelson, who plays Tobias Beckett, Han’s mentor in piracy. In a new clip released ahead of the movie’s May 25 launch date, we discover how Chewie learned the game, and why he might need some lessons.
The clip finds Tobias teaching Chewie to play Dejarik, a chess-like game played on a round board, in which players control holographic monsters that fight each other. Fans of “A New Hope,” the original “Star Wars” film, will recognize the game as the one Chewie (Peter Mayhew) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) play after leaving Tatooine.
Watch the video above.
As Tobias shows Chewie the rules of the game, he beats the Wookiee with a move that’s also an Easter Egg — Tobias’ big green lizard-creature picks up and body slams Chewie’s smaller yellow guy. It’s the exact same move R2 uses against Chewie in “A New Hope.” You’d think Chewbacca might have learned in the intervening years, given that he could have been practicing all that time.
In “A New Hope,” R2’s monster-smashing move causes Han (Harrison Ford) to caution C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2 about their strategy, suggesting they shouldn’t upset Chewie. C-3PO argues that nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
“That’s because a droid don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose,” Han explains. “Wookiees are known to do that.”
Thinking better of the whole thing, 3PO suggests a new strategy to R2: Let the Wookiee win.