EPISODE 317: GETTING COCKY, KID
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
(Sorry this is late: I sent it yesterday, as usual, but once I hit "send" the Tiny Letter system froze, then refused to let me back in until just now.
Thank you Thank You Thank You, Tiny Letter Support. You are R2-D2 fixing my poorly cobbled together hyperdrive forever.)
It’s happening, y’all. A whole film about the early days of Han Solo, out tonight. Harrison Ford’s performance is so iconic (and Billy Dee’s too) the whole idea is absurd.
On the other hand, I can’t wait to spend two hours in a hive of villainy and scum. The underworld of the Star Wars universe is such an interesting place.
Why do we love Han Solo, do you think? For me maybe it’s because, as Mark Twain says of Huckleberry Finn, he “sets out”. We don’t know where he’s from but we know he’s on an adventure. And isn’t that the dream?
It’s certainly what Luke dreams of. Leia, too, underneath all the layers of responsibility.
Han’s also a mess and most often in trouble in a For-Real way. Jabba Don’t Play.
But the movies never quite go there. We watch Han shrieking in pain from the Imperial torture on Cloud City, but the moment passes fast (and seriously, his hair never looks better than it does on Cloud City). His freezing in carbonite certainly has a tragic quality to it, love lost, the fellowship broken. Yet rather than tormented or grief stricken he stands there quietly, surrendering himself to the Who Knows What is to Come.
Han's death is similarly striking for the way that he has no fear in the moment, only surrender and love. (Him gently touching Ben’s face before he falls into the abyss tells us everything.)
Meanwhile we watch Luke howl in pain while holding the bloody stump of his arm, he gets repeatedly and extensively electrocuted by the Emperor and is tormented by images of himself as the evil lord he’s fighting. And he spends ten years in self-imposed exile after almost killing his nephew, who then destroys pretty much everything Luke has created.
It’s just no comparison. Except for his final scene in Force Awakens, Han is never not in an adventure film. Meanwhile Luke is always at least a little bit in a horror flick -- except maybe for his final scene in Last Jedi.
(Come to think of it, at those moments, the two kind of switch places. Luke becomes the cocky adventurer, brushing the dust off his shoulder and mocking his opponents. Meanwhile Han finally faces the horror story he’s been struggling in for years.)
(And Leia's operating at a whole different level, really. While these two men struggle to grow up, she's always the adult in the room.)
Maybe Luke is who we feel we are – complex, frustratingly mysterious (even to ourselves), often struggling, with really complicated families :) -- and yet trying to stay open, hopeful, kind.
Meanwhile Han, the rogue, refusing to be ruled, always over his head and yet always somehow having fun, always somehow saved from disaster—even as his story is filled with his own foolish or dark choices, he is liberation.
He’s like his baby, the Falcon, always escaping gravity.
And now, for your pre-film entertainment, fifteen things you might not know about Han Solo, Chewbacca, the Falcon and Lando Calrissian.
1. Han Solo was originally imagined as a huge green-skinned fish monster Jedi.
The first draft of Star Wars is VERY different than what eventually got made. It's been made into a graphic novel. Here’s Solo:
Yeah, basically Han Solo was Swamp Thing in leather.
Lucas supposedly also thought about casting a black actor, fearing that Ford’s performance was so iconic in American Graffiti audiences would be distracted.
I wonder if these ideas are part of what led to his conceptions of Chewbacca and Lando...
2. Han Solo was supposedly inspired in part by Francis Ford Coppola.
George Lucas and Coppola were friends from grad school. And supposedly Lucas was so impressed by Coppola’s swagger and smooth-talking he wrote those qualities into Han.
(Thank God he didn't also give him the beard.)
3. Han Solo had a wife before Leia.
Marvel Comics, fellow Disney-owned property, started a new line of Star Wars comics around the time of The Force Awakens. And one of its craziest reveals has been this idea that long before Leia, Han was briefly married to another smuggler Sana Starros (above).
The full story has yet to be told, though I get the sense it was all part of a scam kinda sorta. But everything that happens in the comics is considered canon. So who knows—perhaps we will even meet her in Solo.
4. The original draft of Empire had Han leaving the group to go looking for his stepfather to convince him to join the Rebellion.
That’s a lot of fathers and sons (even for Lucas). It’s also pretty darn close to the Luke story.
But there might have been something else at work, too...
5. Carbonite Freezing: Secret Origins
Whereas youngsters Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill signed on to three Star Wars films from the start, Ford was only under contract to do one more after Star Wars.
This put Lucas in a difficult position. Write an ending to Empire in which Han was fine, only to have Ford opt out of Return; or write a cliffhanger that could pivot into “Han Died First.” (See what I did there? This is what you pay me for.)
Nobody likes obstacles, but when it comes to filmmaking so often they inspire great creativity. The Han cliffhanger is maybe not as gutsy as the Vader reveal, but it’s pretty close. His plight is certainly the engine that gives the next movie such a strong opening.
6. Chewbacca was supposedly inspired by George Lucas’ dog Indiana.
Lucas had a big dog that liked to sit in the front passenger seat. People supposedly sometimes mistook it for an actual person. (I feel like this is a very big "supposedly". But the name Chewbacca does in fact come from the Russian word for “dog”, “sobaka”.)
And you thought he was a Bigfoot...
(Fun fact: They actually had to make actor Peter Mayhew stay close to set when filming in the California Redwoods, because they were afraid hunters would think he was in fact Bigfoot and shoot him.
Humans are excellent.)
7. George Lucas’ First Ideas are Often Crazy.
Lucas initially saw Chewie as a monkey/dog/cat combo. He is described as “an eight-foot tall, savage-looking creature resembling a huge gray bushbaby-monkey with fierce ‘baboon’-like fangs. His large yellow eyes dominate a fur-covered face … [and] over his matted, furry body he wears two chrome bandoliers, a flak jacket painted in a bizarre camouflage pattern, brown cloth shorts, and little else.”
You know, for the kids.
8. There were Ongoing Concerns about Chewbacca’s Nudity.
You might note in that first description Chewie is wearing shorts and a flak jacket. By the time they were shooting a different thinking had prevailed.
Except Chewie’s nakedness really freaked the studio out. Lucas kept getting notes asking him to consider putting some clothes on him.
Thankfully, Lucas refused. (Imagine Chewbacca in the short-shorts of the 70s...)
9. Roger Ebert was not a fan.
Roger Ebert on Chewbacca in his review of Empire:
This character was thrown into the first film as window dressing, was never thought through, and as a result has been saddled with one facial expression and one mournful yelp. Much more could have been done. How can you be a space pilot and not be able to communicate in any meaningful way? Does Han Solo really understand Chewie's monotonous noises? Do they have long chats sometimes? Never mind.
Chewbacca responds.
10. Chewbacca received a Lifetime Achievement Award from MTV.
Luke and Han get medals at the end of Star Wars. Chewbacca gets what? A request to call the troops to attention? It’s weird, and pretty much implies Chewie is like the movie’s mascot, rather than the brilliant pilot and mechanic who Han is constantly counting on to fix his ancient ship.
In 1997 MTV decided to rectify that. Chewie received his award from Carrie Fisher. And he gave a speech.
11. Billy Dee Williams was not the First Choice for Lando.
Yaphet Kotto, who had been in Alien and would go on to do Lt. Al Giardello in Homicide: Life on the Street (above), was originally offered the role, which Lucas imagined as a sort of Rudolph Valentino character, a slick, riverboat hustler type.
Kotto passed, fearing he’d be typecast as I don’t know what, always in the greatest sci-fi films?
12. Correction: George Lucas’ First Ideas are Always Crazy.
Lucas’ first idea of Lando was that Lando would be a clone, Lando Kadar, member of one of a number of clone families. That’s why he’s so good with ladies; it’s genetics.
Not kidding; that was a real idea that was considered. The distance from here to some of the racialized disasters of Phantom Menace is so much closer than you think...
(Although, as Slashfilm points out, basically Lando is a “space pimp”, his dress and presentation deeply indebted to the blaxpoitation genre so popular at the time.)
13. The Millennium Falcon was not Always Awesome.
The original design for the Falcon was what became the Tantive IV, the ship that Leia is escaping from Vader from at the start of Star Wars.
I’ll tell you one thing: this ship definitely did NOT do the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.
Luckily, Lucas feared his idea would look too much like the Eagle Transporter in Space: 1999. So they went for something better.
(Something which by the way also makes for fantastic found art.)
14. We Also have Space: 1999 to Thank for the Falcon’s Name.
1999+1=2000, aka two Millennium. And if not Eagle, how about Falcon....
If you want to know more about the Falcon’s origins, this is the rabbit hole for you. It even has the best title: “The Complete Conceptual History of The Millennium Falcon or How I Started Worrying and Lost My Mind Completely Over a Fictional Spaceship Someone Please Do Something Send Help Why Are You Still Reading Someone Do Something.”
(Actually it looks like that site is an amazing rabbit hole for all things Star Wars. If you don’t hear from me again, this is where you should look.)
15. The Falcon’s Dish is Important.
Generally the laws of physics suggest if you want to make something go fast, don’t put a huge friction-creating radar dish on it.
(Also, if you’re going to insist on having something like that, you might as well paint a bullseye on it, because wow is it a great target.)
So why is that there on a ship that is all about going fast and getting away?
I have to admit, I had never asked that question before I read the answer here on ScreenRant’s fun facts about the Falcon.
It turns out it’s all about the smuggling. Big Radar Dish=I Can See You Before You See Me=I Can Head Out Before You Even Know I’m There.
Han Solo, smarter than you think.
(Oh let's be honest, that was totally Chewie's or Lando's idea.)
See you in a galaxy far far away...
(This painting is from Japanese artist Noriyoshi Ohrai, who did lots of amazing Star Wars movie posters for Asia, and a lot of other cool movie work. You can find his work here, and more with his 2015 obituary.)