Forbes.com take a look at Solo: A Star Wars Story and give 5 very good reasons why this could be a top notch Star Wars adventure, not least of which is the first opportunity to see a hand of sabacc.
One thing everyone suspects about Solo is that we’ll finally get to see young Han Solo win the Millennium Falcon from young Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover.) That’s an exciting prospect partly because I’m excited to see how the gambling game sabacc works. That’s the Star Wars version of poker, basically. It’s mentioned briefly in The Empire Strikes Back, though I think the first time I really noticed it in detail was in reading Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.
It’s little details like this that are exciting to me as a Star Wars fan. Disney wiped away any and all canon established in the Extended Universe when it purchased Lucasfilm, but it never hurts to give us a little fan service. The film also takes place at least in part on the swamp planet of Mimban. That’s important because it was a location in the very first EU novel, 1978’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye by Alan Dean Foster (in which Kybur crystals made their debut, though they were called Kaiburr at the time.) Importantly, the book predates even Empire Strikes Back.
