Kessel Run in 12 parsecs: screenplay error, or part of the movie?

Question

I know this has been a long debated question among Star Wars enthusiasts, but when Han Solo said that he made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs did he actually know what he was talking about?

During the scene Han really does seem to be talking about the time it took him to make the run. When he is talking to Obi Wan he is trying to persuade him that the Falcon is the fastest ship in the Galaxy, but if he were truly referring to the distance he made the run in, it would be more referring to his pilot skills, not the ship's speed. Could it have been that he just misspoke, or was his "I made it in 12 parsecs" really referring to the distance of the run.

This wiki article agrees with the latter of the two:

Solo was not referring directly to his ship's speed when he made this claim. Instead, he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance.

All of the contradicting pieces of evidence have made me wonder:

• Did Han know what a parsec was?
• Was he just trying to impress Obi Wan with big words, not knowing who he was talking to?
• Was it an error in the screen play?

Answer 1

It was an error in the screen play that was retconed later. Wookieepedia's Kessel Run article says that :

In the A New Hope novelization, Han says "standard time units" rather than "parsecs."

it also say that :

In the revised fourth draft of A New Hope in 1976, the description for "Kessel Run" is put as follows:

Han: It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs!

Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.

But it was still a mismatch of a distance unit in place of time unit. They had to fix that assertion in the extended universes.

Answer 2

In the Han Solo Trilogy (I believe the last book), Han drops his load of drugs to save some Corellian slave kids from the Empire. The Empire comes after him and he runs through the Kessel sector, running closer to the Maw and thereby shortening the distance of his trip. This is how he outruns the Empire and rescues the children. He returns to Corellia and receives the Corellian Bloodstripe (the yellow one on his pants) for his act of valor/honor. Of course he also finds out that Jabba has put a hit on him for dropping the drugs. He needs to find some fast cash to pay Jabba back and ends up on Tattoine... where history is made.

Hopefully my details aren't too far off, it's been a few years since I've read the books. As a retcons usually go, this one was nicely done. Probably because Lucas wasn't the one who wrote it. "A New Hope" was a terrible book IMO.

Answer 3

I'm pretty sure it was a scriptwriting error.

There was a well-finessed retcon in one of the novels.

Basically, it said that hyperdrives were rated by acceleration capacity. The better the rating of your hyperdrive, the closer you could fly to a gravity well without being pulled out of hyperspace. Therefore, with a superior hyperdrive, the Falcon could not only fly faster, but fly a shorter course because it could skirt closer to obstacles. For example, the Falcon could make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs when a normal ship might have to run a 15 or 18 course.

Think of trying to run out an inside-the-park home run in baseball wearing cleats as opposed to, oh... flip-flops.

I don't know about the Han Solo trilogy (so there may have been one there, as well), and I don't remember it from the Jedi Academy trilogy.

For some reason, I remember it being in the first X-Wing series of novels.

Answer 4

It was originally supposed to show that he is just a cocksure, stupid braggart:

in the original script:

      HAN
                     It's the ship that made the Kessel 
                    run in less than twelve parsecs!

           Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with 
           obvious misinformation.

In other words, he is telling this obviously untrue information just to make himself look better. Later on, it was retconned into the whole story about Kessel run being a path between singularities.

So back to original questions:

• Han Solo didn't know what parsec is
• Yes, he is just trying to impress
• It was intentional

Answer 5

Simple - they made a silly, ignorant mistake, and then, when that ignorance was pointed out, covered it up with scientific theory and technobabble. They covered the kessel run in twelve parsecs - that sentence doesn't refer to the kessel run, or the parsecs - it refers to the massive coverup that the novels did on a massive goof-up.

Sometimes, if you've made a mistake in ignorance, admitting that ignorance honestly, and then correcting it is the most honorable thing one can do. The Jedi thing, if you like. I see that good ol Lucas isn't a Jedi. But does it have to be made obvious?

Well, at least he isn't Sith. A sith would be killing everyone who ever knew or perceived the error, instead of merely covering it up :)

Answer 6

So many extravagant explanations (including by Lucasfilm themselves) aren't really necessary. While I have no doubt that it was originally just an oversight/misinterpretation of what a parsec really is, it can simply be explained by a misinterpretation of another kind... the dialogue. Han seems shocked that Ben has never heard of the Falcon (as though it is famous for something). Ben asks 'should I have?' as if to say 'what's it so famous for?' Han then explains the reason why it's famous. It's known as the only ship that has done the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. This is not a claim to the ship's speed, but the reason why Ben should have heard of it. He then goes to claim that it's fast enough based on outrunning Imperial starships.

Answer 7

Kessel Run in 12 parsecs is NOT a mistake. Solo: A Star Wars Story movie has confirmed it.

In the movie,

while escaping planet Kessel, Han piloted the Millennium Falcon along a dangerous 12 parsecs route through an uncharted maelstrom to elude an Imperial blockade. After encountering Imperial blockade, Lando told Han to drop unstable Coaxium containers because they could no longer make the run in 20 parsecs. Well, Han made the run in 12 parsecs by finding another route through the maelstrom.

Answer 8

Han was bragging about his navigational skills. When speed and time are more or less constant, distance becomes the only variable. Whoever can travel from point A to point B in a manner closest to a straight line, is reaching point B faster. As Han explains to a panicky Luke: if they flew right through a star or bounced too close to a supernova because of hasty navigational calculations, that would be bad.

Answer 9

Actually, making it in twelve parsecs could be a factor of speed. In order to fly close to large objects, you would have to be flying fast enough to not be pulled into them by their gravity. The faster the ship, the closer it can fly to large objects, hence making it possible to shave distance off of a journey. Without knowing the details involved in the kessel run, it is theoretically possible that there are several massive objects like black holes that must be avoided. A faster ship could stay closer to these without getting pulled into them and thus keep a straighter line resulting in a shorter distance travelled than for a slower ship that had to go further around them.

Answer 10

O.K

It does appear that he his referring to a time frame as people seem to concur, but what if he wasn't.

However what about if light speed cant be done in straight lines because of astronomical issues, such as so called black holes, asteroid fields or other space type threats such as imperial blockades even. Don't forget he was a smuggler / indeed a reference to him as even a pirate.

Therefore making the distance in 12 parsecs, an astronomical unit of distance, may still be argued as feat to be bragged about "the kessel run" in less distance than most other's.

Answer 11

I think Han indicates that his ship has better technological capabilities to shorten distance traveled.

From: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run

In the commentary for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope DVD, George Lucas mentions that the parsecs are due to the Millennium Falcon's advanced navigational computer rather than its engines, so the navicomputer would calculate much faster routes than other ships could.

Answer 12

I think the real question isn't "Did Han know what a parsec was?" but rather, "did George Lucas know what a parsec was?" And I think it's fairly clear that the answer is No, he didn't. Neither did anyone who read the script during production. Neither did the majority of his audience, so it didn't really matter. Likely, YOU didn't know this was an error the first time (or even the first several times) that you heard it.

This was the very first of these movies, and Lucas was making his first foray into writing about space. He latched on to catchy terms and made use of them, and in this case he did so incorrectly. He was throwing the term out to his audience the same way that it is now implied that Han was throwing it out to who he thought were two dusty farmers. It worked perfectly well until people started pointing out that a parsec is a unit of distance while Han acts like he's talking about time. And then, rather than admit to the mistake, Lucas and the writers of the novels decided to make it work for the correct definition. Because this is all fiction, and fictional worlds will continue to evolve, both forwards and backwards, as long as their creators continue to explore them.

So, to put it simply, it seems like it was originally a screenplay error that then became accepted in the lore, which adapted so that a line that was intended to be a boast anyways became a statement of fact.

Answer 13

It's not a mistake. He made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs of distance rather than taking a longer route. He and the falcon are the only ones to have taken than shorter more dangerous corner cutting course.

Answer 14

"kesselrun" is a standard unit of time used to rate starships. The question is how far you can travel in one "kesselrun". The MF going a whole 12 parsecs in one kesselrun is ridiculously fast, no other ship ever getting farther than 10.63 parsecs. :-)