The Millennium Falcon is not only one of the most recognizable vehicles in pop culture, but has become a beloved character in its own right. Making appearances in all three Star Wars trilogies (it’s in the prequels, you just have to zoom in really far), the Falcon has changed and evolved along with its fellow human and nonhuman cast members. From the lethargic hunk of junk we were introduced to in A New Hope, to a malfunctioning yet nimble hot rod, slipping between asteroids and into space station superstructures of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the old girl is as iconic as they come... and maybe just as mysterious.
The most famous ship in the galaxy has a lot going for it: a debonair scoundrel of a captain with a loveable alien sidekick, a few special (and highly illegal) modifications, and enough chutzpah to have played a crucial role in the destruction of not one, not two, but THREE space fascist weapons of mass planetary destruction. However, everyone’s favorite flying hamburger has some pretty glaring inconsistencies and that’s really saying something in the Star Wars universe, where frog wizards duel wrinkly old men who shoot lighting. You’ll never look at Han Solo’s old ride the same after you get through our list of the 25 things about the Millennium Falcon that don’t make any sense.
25 WHERE DOES THE CARGO GO?
Before becoming the ship that killed the second Death Star (and without whom the first one and its big bad successor Starkiller Base would have been a lot harder to blow up), the Millennium Falcon was just another mass produced Corellian YT-1300 freighter. The freighter part of that name really sticks out because, well, where does all the actual freight go? We get a pretty good sense of the ship’s layout from the five movies in which it appears but in all that time we’ve never seen anything resembling a cargo bay.
Sure there are Han’s smuggling compartments under the floorboards that everybody hides in when they’re captured in A New Hope, but that barely holds a couple droids and a Wookiee. That's not exactly the kind of space you that would need to make hauling goods from one end of the galaxy to another profitable. Even the size of the ship itself doesn’t exactly seem big enough to have a trunk to put junk. The dueling expanded universes do have some scenes that explain the Falcon’s freighter designation, but it's inconsistent and doesn’t make sense, given the amount of screen time the Falcon has gotten in the franchise. Freighter? So far the Millennium Falcon is more like a hatchback.
24 THE COCKPIT
The Falcon’s outrigger cockpit is one of its most distinctive features. That off-to-the-side setup is original and gives the ship a very cool looking silhouette, but it just doesn’t make any sense. The YT-1300 and similar Corellian light freighters like the YT-2400 (seen in use by Iron Squadron in Star Wars Rebels and by Dash Rendar in Shadow of the Empire) supposedly sport this setup to allow the pilot to see around any large loads that the ship may be pushing.
This begs two questions. First, why would a ship be designed so that cargo modules would be stuck on the front of it?
That’s like designing a truck where the trailer attaches to the front of the vehicle and then sticking the driver off to the side. (Okay, we get it, space is different because of its lack of friction, but still, that's a weird design.) Second, doesn’t that make maneuvering unnecessarily difficult? Especially given the Falcon’s propensity for traversing tight, obstacle-filled environments like the inside of a mineral planet or Death Star, having to glance out the window every two seconds to make sure you’re not about to rip 99% of your ship off makes no sense. It also might explain how the Falcon keeps losing those radar dishes.
23 THE MANDIBLES
The jaws on the front of the Falcon are a big distinguishing feature that keep the ship from being a basic flying saucer. In the old expanded universe, the mandibles were integral to the ship's role as a freighter. The mandibles would clamp onto cargo containers like an intergalactic tractor trailer. That’s fine. That make makes sense and even explains why the cockpit needs to be off to the side like that.
But since we got our first glimpses of Lando’s version of the Millennium Falcon from Solo: A Star Wars Story, fans across the holonet have been complaining about a pretty serious difference. The mandibles are gone, replaced by a sleeker more aerodynamic forward module. This totally undermines the plausible backstory behind the design choice in the old Legends universe. It also undermines the principles behind the outrigger cockpit design. Why not just put the cockpit at the front like every other normal ship? Judging from some speculative analysis of the Solo trailers online, there could be some redemption in the film. The front piece could be a detachable cargo module or a separate craft, a la the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels.
22 INDESTRUCTIBLE?
The Millennium Falcon is one durable piece of junk. Throughout the original and sequel trilogies, the ship takes a beating in almost every way imaginable. Dueling with Imperial TIE fighters and their souped up descendants in the first order, uncountable turbo-laser blasts from Star Destroyers, asteroid impacts, and so much more: the Falcon survives them all without much more than a scratch. That is, except for the radar dish... but we'll get to that in a bit.
The Falcon’s apparent invulnerability was emphasized even more in The Force Awakens, wherein, leaving the ground for the first time in years, Rey smashes it into the ground before taking out an alien structure with the front of the ship. Later, during the daring assault on Starkiller Base, Han Solo takes out about 50 km worth of thick forest before crashing on the precarious edge of a cliff. The Falcon is inexplicably fine, though. In-universe, the explanation could be that the ship is outfitted with shields and armor typically found on capital class ships. If that were true though, why wouldn’t blasts from puny TIE fighters be like mosquito bites on a gundark? The Millennium Falcon’s incredible durability makes it easy for heroes to survive tight scrapes, but when you really think about it, the ship would better a battering ram than a freighter.
21 THAT RADAR DISH
The oversized circular radar dish on the top of the Falcon doesn’t survive the Battle of Endor after Lando cuts it a little close in the Death Star II’s superstructure. It doesn’t seem to matter too much though, except that Lando had promised to return the Falcon to Han "without a scratch." Once it is gone, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. It makes sense that the radar would be really important in a battle like the one above the sanctuary moon with hundreds of hostile and friendly craft zipping around.
It would be handy for navigating the complex tunnels inside a structure the size of a small moon. But once it’s gone, Lando and Nien Nunb don’t seem to mind much.
The presence of a radar dish on the Falcon is doubly strange because they are totally absent on the rest of the canon vessels in the Star Wars galaxy. Ok, the Gozanti-class Cruiser from Star Wars Rebels has a dish but since no other craft have pronounced dishes, it still doesn’t make much sense. The only purpose the big bowl seems to serve is as an unimportant bit that can get knocked off during a chase through a tight space.
20 KESSEL RUN
When Han is bragging about the Millennium Falcon to Old Ben in the Mos Eisley Cantina, he mentions that it's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. Obi-Wan gives Han a look that says "you’re full of Bantha poodoo," and for good reason. Parsecs are units of distance, not time. And they’re huge. One Parsec = 3.26 light years, which is really, really far. So, either Han is an awful liar (probable) or the Kessel Run is not measured in time, but distance and whoever can make the run, whatever it is, in the shortest distance gets bragging rights?
Having gone on to become by far the most talked about whoopsies from the original trilogy, attempts have been made to explain the Kessel Run in a way that prevents Han from looking like a total laserbrain. Still, the canon explanations are directly contradictory. Either Han, Chewie and the Falcon skirted dangerously close to a maw of black holes in order to make a record-breaking shortcut to an infamous smuggling route or, Han lied trying to impress prospective customers. Fortunately, the new Solo movie looks to set this straight by showing us the momentous event on the big screen.
19 WHAT'S WITH THAT WEIRD GAME?
During some downtime aboard the Millennium Falcon, after the daring escape from Mos Eisley in A New Hope, Chewie, R2-D2, and C-3PO play a holographic game of something that resembles a combo of Pokemon and chess. In an apparently brilliant move, R2 uses his, uh, space monster piece to smash Chewie's other space monster piece. This causes Chewie to get a little upset and Han to tell the two droids that they shouldn’t upset a Wookiee because he will dismember them. The scene and Threepio’s recommendation to R2 to "let the Wookiee win" has become iconic. The game even made a brief cameo in The Force Awakens. For the diehards, it is called Dejarik... and it makes no sense.
The rules seem to mimic chess or checkers with checkered squares and a turn-based system. Or it could be something like the galactic equivalent of a hyper-violent game like Mortal Kombat. where realistic depictions of creatures murder each other for small droids' entertainment. According to the official Star Wars site, when Dejarik made an appearance in an episode of Star Wars Rebels, actual rules were developed for the game. However, most of the footage was cut from the scene and the rules were never released to us lowly fans.
18 WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Not to get too existential about a series of children’s movies that feature laser swords and a blatant disregard for the laws of physics, but what IS a Millennium Falcon? We're not talking about the ship itself -- everyone knows about the stock YT-1300f freighter that was converted to an overpowered smuggling vessel that is responsible for saving the galaxy from magic space nazis at least twice now. The name, though it sounds really cool and exceedingly difficult for small children to pronounce, sounds like someone took shots at a dartboard with cool words on it and then never thought about it again.
A millennium is one thousand earth years. A falcon is a large bird that has knives for fingernails and is notoriously fast. The falcon part makes sense but those two words together mean literally nothing.
A thousand year old falcon is not exactly intimidating. A thousand falcons? That would be a lot more respectable, but that’s not really apparent in the name. Is there a species of raptor in the Star Wars universe that are called Millennium Falcons? Is there a Century Eagle out there somewhere?
17 LANDO'S CLOSET FOR CAPES
When the casting for Solo: A Star Wars Story was announced, it was met with all manner of reactions. Apathy, excitement, and outright derision met each one of the cast choices. That is, all but one. Donald Glover as the smuggler, gambler, and galaxy-renowned ol’ smoothie, Lando Calrissian, is the closest thing to perfection most of us will ever know in this life. His portrayal of the Falcon’s original owner has already ignited the internet with excitement with only the briefest bits of footage.
As part of the promotional campaign for Solo, the Official Star Wars Youtube channel posted a behind the scenes tour by Glover of his Millennium Falcon. During the tour, Glover shows off Lando’s luxurious captain’s quarters, including his walk-in cape armoire. While showing off the suave smuggler’s cape collection in hilarious fashion, one has to wonder what Han would eventually use this space for once he takes ownership of the ship. Han’s not exactly known as a style icon quite like Lando is. Does he fill it with a collection of vests and fashionably low hanging pistol holsters? Is the space repurposed into a showroom for his non-canonical collection of Corellian pogs and slammers from his childhood?
16 HOW OLD IS SHE?
We know enough to never ask a lady her age, but we really need this cleared up. According to the new Disney canon, by the time the Millennium Falcon resurfaces in The Force Awakens, the ship is around 90 years old. This means that by the time Anakin Skywalker meets Obi-Wan Kenobi and, more importantly, Jar Jar Binks, in The Phantom Menace, the Millennium Falcon is already at least 30 years old. This brings up a whirlwind of questions and inconsistencies.
Officially, the Millennium Falcon can be seen going in for a landing on Coruscant in Revenge Of The Sith, but by the time of Solo about 10 or 15 years later, the Falcon looks radically different. The blue and white paint job is there but the mandibles, which are conspicuously absent on Lando’s Falcon in Solo, are back! This means that whoever had the good fortune of owning the Falcon before Lando must have been as upset as the fans were when he filled in the front of the ship. This also means that Han or some other force had the front taken off later on. That’s enough to give the poor old girl an identity crisis for sure.
15 WHERE DOES CHEWIE SLEEP?
Chewbacca is a saint. Putting up with Han’s foolish risk taking, occasional rudeness and propensity for getting involved in every major galactic conflict, Chewie deserves to take it easy when he wants. He’s also a big boy who can’t just sleep on the couch around the dejarik table. We’ve seen a bit of the captain’s quarters in promotional material for Solo: A Star Wars Story but what about the Wookiee? Does he have to sleep on the medical couch? There’s also a tiny little bed above in the forward cabin that looks like something Yoda would find a little snug.
So where does Chewie sleep? Does Chewie sleep? If not he still deserves his space.
According to most available info about the layout of the Falcon’s interior, there is a crew quarters but it looks like it’s suitable for only one, normal sized, person. This makes zero sense. Do Han and Chewie take turns sleeping in the same bed? That has to be awkward. What do they do when Leia comes over? The Falcon is supposed to be the pair’s home amongst the stars, but Chewie might be sleeping in an escape pod, and that just can’t sit right with Star Wars fans who support equality among all the species of the galaxy.
14 FASTEST HUNK OF WHAT?
Han endlessly brags about the speed of his ship, claiming among other things that the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive makes .5 past light speed. This sounds impressive but like Han’s boast about the Kessel Run, it doesn’t mean much on its own. The hyperdrive may be fast, but most of the trouble-causing lasers occur outside of hyperspace in boring old regular space. And from what we’ve seen in the movies, the Falcon isn’t exactly the kind of hotrod that inspired it.
According to the not-so-canon-anymore Legends, the Falcon’s Girodyne SRB42 engines were modified with a SLAM overdrive system that made it capable of great bursts of speed. With all that, the Falcon still struggles to outrun the massive Star Destroyers orbiting Tatooine during A New Hope, which is like someone bragging about their speedboat and then struggling to outpace two aircraft carriers. It even has to risk an asteroid field to lose a few boring old TIE Fighters in Empire Strikes Back. It wouldn’t make for as exciting of an action sequence, but watching the Falcon zoom past other ships is something we haven’t seen yet and it really doesn’t make sense why not.
13 THE SURPRISE GUN
One of the things that makes the Millennium Falcon special is the extensive number of modifications and enhancements made to the standard freighter setup by Han Solo and previous owners. Han says as much when he introduces his beloved ship to Luke and Obi-Wan. Engines, shields, and the twin quad laser cannons on top and bottom of the ship have all been extensively upgraded. One of the biggest surprises, however, is the Falcon’s covert arsenal. Namely, we're talking about the Blastech Ax-108 "Ground Buzzer" blaster cannon that pops out of the ship’s underside to accurately toast a squadron of bumbling Snow Troopers.
Strangely though, this nifty little piece of home defense is never used before or after. How many times have we watched the heroes of Star Wars clamber up the Millennium Falcon’s ramp while under fire from troopers or other baddies? It sure would have been useful during the escape from Mos Eisley and the Death Star in A New Hope. Maybe it wasn’t installed? But during The Force Awakens, when Han and the Falcon are finally reunited and have to bail before being blasted by thugs or eaten by Rathtars, the Ground Buzzer should would have come in handy.
12 YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THING?
After the gang escapes from the Rebel base on Hoth in Empire Strikes Back and the Falcon unknowingly parks inside that space slug to wait out the Empire and make repairs, Han says something really intriguing to C-3PO that never fully gets explained. The smuggler tells 3PO that he needs to "talk" to the Falcon and find out what's wrong with the hyperdrive. The moment is interrupted by a spot of gastropod indigestion but the revelation that the "busted-up-spaceship" is one of the six million forms of communication 3PO is fluent in is pretty big.
According to the Expanded Universe, the Falcon has three droid brains, which help balance all the extra doohickeys Han outfitted her with.
Besides definitely voiding the Falcon’s warranty, this means that she has three brains just as capable of thought and emotion as R2D2. Imagine that hell: sharing your body with two other brains and not even being in full control of it. Plus, you have to watch on as some nerf herder from Corellia and his hairy naked friend break the law while galavanting across the galaxy. No wonder 3PO thinks the Falcon has a "peculiar dialect." The three competing brains have probably gone completely insane.
11 EXTRA-VEHICULAR ACTIVITIES
While inside the asteroid cave slug in Empire, Princess Leia is sexually harassed by a Mynock and she, Han, and Chewie head out to give it a stern talking to. Trouble is, the air inside the slugs gastrointestinal tract isn’t breathable. Thankfully, the Falcon comes equipped with one-size-fits-all-species breathing masks to make sure our heroes don’t suffocate and die.
Being concerned about breathing makes sense -- it’s important. What doesn’t make sense, even in the Star Wars universe, is that these masks are, A.) all the team needs to survive exposure inside a giant slug, which is on an asteroid, which is surrounded by the vacuum of space, and B.) standard equipment the ship has for people who need to go outside in less than ideal environments. Is the atmosphere inside the slug (or atmoslug if you want to use the technical term) somehow of a temperature and pressure that wouldn’t immediately suck everyone's eyeballs out of their sockets and freeze them like ready-to-eat meatballs at the space grocery store’s frozen food section? Leia even seems to know this, asking Han if he’s crazy before following him right down the ramp anyway.
10 NONE OF THE BUTTONS ARE READABLE
The Falcon’s cockpit is covered with buttons. Every panel and even the ceiling is a light-show of controls that don’t actually seem to serve any purpose. Likewise, every scene in the Falcon’s cockpit is accompanied by the frantic pushing of buttons and flicking of switches. But besides the hyperdrive levers, there really does not seem to be any corresponding action associated with any of this. Watching Han, Chewie, and now Rey beep and boop across the controls while yammering about deflector shield angles and auxiliary power is fun. What’s weird, though, is that none of the controls are labeled at all.
Most people can barely remember our web browser’s keyboard shortcuts but somehow the Falcon’s crew is supposed to remember the difference between the "start the engines" button and the "suck all the air out of the ship" switch, which just happen to be right next to each other. There’s not even so much as a speedometer or check hyperdrive light, both of which would be useful given Solo’s penchant for bragging about speed and the entire movie's worth of hyperdrive malfunctions.
9 DIRTY BIRD
For most of our lives, we’ve known the Millennium Falcon as the dingy old smuggling vessel that doesn’t look like much but has it where it counts. Solo: A Star Wars Story is set to change that with the introduction of Lando Calrissian’s version of the Millennium Falcon. Sleeker, more stylish and with a spiffy new blue and white paint job, the Falcon has never looked better. Of course, that depends on your view on the whole mandible situation, which is, as we have outlines above already, an increasingly divisive topic of conversation.
That all notwithstanding, seeing the Falcon looking so shiny and new is great, but it calls into question Han and Chewie’s cleanliness.
With only 5 or 10 years between Solo and A New Hope, how did he Falcon get so absolutely gross and dirty? Does Chewie have a two packs a day smoking habit? Did Han have a job smuggling Kowakian monkey-lizards that totally trashed the place and he never cleaned up? Maybe it’s all a cover for the smuggling operation. Imperial customs officials are a lot less likely to search every nook and cranny of your ship if those nooks and crannies are full of gross.
8 THE DEATH STAR TRACTOR BEAM
During the famous "that’s no moon" scene in A New Hope, our plucky band of heroes is captured by the Death Star’s tractor beam after being lured into it by a lone TIE fighter. The space station is so far away that Han has a hard time believing Obi-Wan’s evaluation at first. The Death Star’s tractor beam operators were ready to capture and interrogate any ships entering the system that formerly housed Alderaan and locked onto the Falcon before you could say "Wookiee cookies sound disgusting."
So at the end of the film, when Han has a change of heart and swoops in to save the day and give Skywalker a chance to take his shot, how did he manage to get so close? The entire base is on alert, what with it being under attack by rebel star fighters, which it stands to reason are too small for tractor beams and turbo-laser batteries. So how did they miss the Falcon vectoring in on the exact area that was under attack? Wouldn’t it make sense that the Falcon would have been caught just as easy as the first time. Someone deserves to be fired. Well, they would if they weren’t blown up.
7 THE GARBAGE WILL DO
Given its role in intergalactic regime change and crime world smuggling, the Millennium Falcon is probably the most famous ship in the galaxy. Corellian freighters are probably a dime a dozen but after the events of the original trilogy, demand for the YT-1300 light freighter probably skyrocketed. Every wannabe scoundrel with a vest and a hairy friend would be flying around the galaxy using it to pick up chicks and get free drinks. So how did such a ship end up gathering dust under a tarp at a junkyard on Jakku? That’s the Star Wars equivalent to finding an intact SR-71 at a garbage dump in New Jersey.
Even if that compressor installer and notorious Moof-milker Unkar Plutt didn’t realize he had a crazy powerful and famous ship like the Falcon in stock along with his dehydrated bread packets and little slave girls at first, as soon as he started it up, he should have realized. Overpowered engines and shields, weapons that can take out three TIE fighters in one shot -- that stuff would stand out. What, was he using it to shade his petunia garden from the harsh Jakku sun?
6 WHERE DOES THE WOOKIE HAIR GO?
If you checked the filters on the Millennium Falcon’s air scrubbers, they would probably look like if you did the same on the ship of a crazy cat lady smuggler. We don’t know whether or not Wookiees shed in the new Star Wars canon but chances are, given how much time Chewbacca spends onboard the ship, not to mention the amount of recirculation that must be part of the ship’s life support systems, there has got to be some serious buildup.
Does the Falcon have a Roomba-style droid that we’ve yet to see? Is it all pumped out of the airlock at regular intervals?
Secondly, how does Han keep his vest and trademark stripe trousers so free of any hair. Going through the Star Wars Original Trilogy Blu-rays there’s hide nor hair of anything so much as a piece of Wookiee dandruff. As anyone who cohabitates with any animal, or exceedingly hairy significant other, that is very impressive. Perhaps Wookiees don’t shed. Perhaps the key to their having become sentient is not having to worry about little hair monsters building up in their domiciles. Either way, we deserve an answer and the new Solo movie better give them to us.