Does Han Solo listen to cool music? In the movies, the answer is no. But, according to fans, he has similar taste as Captain Kirk. The badass track “Sabotage” from the Beastie Boys has once again been juxtaposed with cool sci-fi, this time in a recut of the Solo trailer. But is Han Solo biting on Captain Kirk’s style?
On Tuesday, War Starts at Midnight Podcast posted their fan-made re-cut of the Solo trailer featuring “Sabotage.” In their description of the video, they wrote: “Because the first trailer felt an awful lot like ‘Solo: A James Tiberius Kirk Story.’”
This references the fact that “Sabotage” has been used in two of the Star Trek reboot films, and is kind of like Captain Kirk’s theme song. In the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, a tween James T. Kirk steals a car, and blasts “Sabotage” while a cyborg on an anti-gravity motorcycle tries to give him a ticket.
Sci-fi Fans have long debated who is a bigger ass-kicking troublemaker: Captain Kirk from Trek or Captain Solo from Wars. So, putting “Sabotage” into the Solo trailer makes a lot of sense. But, this isn’t the first time fans have mashed-up this song with a new Star Wars movie.
In 2016, fans re-cut the trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to include “Sabotage,” which was a little weird, since Rogue One came out the same year as Star Trek Beyond, which, also had “Sabotage” in its trailer, and featured the song prominently. In the climax of Beyond the crew of the Enterprise (flying a borrowed ship called the Franklin) actually blasts “Sabotage” into a complex alien fleet in order to break-up a swarm. Jyn Erso and her buddies didn’t listen to any music, as far as we know.
At this point, not one character in a Star Wars movie has listened to any music that is remotely as cool as the Beastie Boys. In addition to concerns about literacy, it seems like if you don’t love John Williams in the Star Wars galaxy, you’re out of luck. Other than one track composed by Lin Manuel Miranda overheard in Maz’s bar in The Force Awakens, we really don’t have a lot of variety of music in that galaxy far, far away.
So, if Han Solo wants to listen to any hot tracks, the fans have to step in for him. In the meantime, maybe the Star Wars galaxy should take up Noel Gallagher on his residency offers.
Solo: A Star Wars Story is out everywhere on May 25, 2018.
