LOS ANGELES (AP) – Lawrence Kasdan isn’t afraid to play favorites. For him, Han Solo is it.
He didn’t create the scruffy-looking smuggler. He hadn’t even heard the lore that George Lucas partially based Han on Francis Ford Coppola. But it was Kasdan who helped fully realize “Star Wars'” favorite scoundrel when he stepped in to write “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.”
“He’s reckless, he’s feckless,” Kasdan said in a recent interview. “He’s cynical. He’s tough. He’s pragmatic. He’s not that smart. I like that. He’s the most fun.”
In fact, it was the character of Han that made him consider coming back to the world of “Star Wars” in the first place. When Kathleen Kennedy called him up in 2012 to tell him that she was taking over Lucasfilm and that they were planning to make more “Star Wars” films, Kasdan took the meeting of course, but wasn’t certain he wanted to rejoin the franchise.
Yet for Kasdan, 66, a four-time Oscar nominee who wrote “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and wrote and directed “The Big Chill,” ”The Accidental Tourist” and “Grand Canyon,” the shadow of “Star Wars” loomed large.