The upcoming Han Solo movie is going to tell us part of the story about our favorite smuggler that we never knew before. However, it may include at least one place that is already familiar to fans. Director Ron Howard's endless stream of media from the set of the still officially untitled Han Solo movie is continuing, including a new image which shows a couple of shots from an action scene that may be taking place in a familiar location. It looks a lot like a cantina, in fact, it could actually be the cantina, as in the one from Mos Eisley where we first meet Han Solo? If so, we could be going back to Tatooine.
The top down image of the shot posted to Ron Howard's Twitter certainly seems to indicate the location is a bar of some kind, with small tables around the outside edge, and while the side shot is obscured by people, there's something about the architecture and furniture we can see that feels familiar. The set just feels very much like it could be a recreation of the Mos Eisley cantina from the original Star Wars.
On the one hand, it's true that it could be anyplace. While the Han Solo movie is set prior to the events of the original trilogy, it's not set that long before it, and so it would make sense that things built during the same era might look similar. At the same time, does it really make sense that all bars look like the one at Mos Eisley? Did the same intergalactic architect travel all over the galaxy building bars? Of course, the biggest issue may be that the image is in black and white. Even if the structure of the location is similar to Mos Eisley, if everything here is, say, blue, as opposed to the yellow and brown of Tatooine, then it's obviously someplace else.
Of course, there's also every reason to believe that this could be Mos Eisley and that the Han Solo movie will have scenes that take place on Tatooine. The spaceport's reputation as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" clearly came from someplace, and that means that the same sorts of people had been inhabiting it for a long time. We know that Han Solo's mentor Beckett, played by Woody Harrelson, is a criminal, so it's just the sort of place he might hang out. We know that Han Solo had been to Tatooine before, as he had run-ins with Jabba the Hutt, but there's every reason to assume he went there a lot, perhaps because his mentor taught him there was always work to find there. Solo had to learn of the place somehow.
We'll find out for sure when the Han Solo movie arrives in theaters next summer. Of course, we might see something sooner if the movie ever releases a trailer. Of course, to do that, they'd have to have a title. Maybe someday we'll know what this movie is even called. The rest will come later.
