STAR WARS

The Kessel Run

We're now introduced to Chewbacca and Han Solo:

Ah, the Kessel run. Here's what starwars.com has to say on the subject:

"While Captain Solo is known to make boastful claims that seem to defy the basic laws of space-time physics, in this particular case, an understanding of the mechanics of the Kessel Run illuminates this statistic.

The Kessel Run is a contest of speed and endurance for smugglers. Those who undertake it must deliver specified cargos (usually illicit in nature) to a series of divergently moving transport vessels. The smuggler must deliver the cargo before the transports wander out of the free trade lanes into restricted Imperial space.

Solo's record is impressive, since the transport vessels covered less than 12 parsecs of distance during his hurried run between them, a testament to his piloting and the speed of the Millennium Falcon.

There is more than one way to smuggle spice out of Kessel. According to one tale, Solo left out the middleman and ferried the stolen goods himself, skirting dangerously close to the Maw Cluster, a baffling congregation of black holes. In doing so, he shortened the distance for the run, achieving an impressive record of under 12 parsecs.

Using either methodology allows Solo's claim to stand, but there are many, including the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, who felt that the Corellian captain was just blowing hot air."

Check the description in the screenplay again. It lists Solo's boast as "obvious misinformation". This is worth noting as another incidence of the interpretation offered in the screenplays not matching the reality of the Star Wars uninverse. If this is supposed to be nonsense bragging then it's completely out of character for Solo - he never again says anything like it. It sounds very much like something a real spacer would say (sure, we could discuss the possibility that Lucas just screwed up and that the whole Expanded Universe explanation for the Kessel run is just a retroactive continuity fix (or 'retcon') but that would require us to treat these historical documents as fantasies dreamed up by a storyteller. So we won't be doing that:). The Kessel run offers proof to some of the staff (namely, Sara Chrenen) of Blackwolf Comics that Lucas somehow channeled, rather than wrote, the Star Wars epic - the contention being simply that no one could have written it that well).