The Death of Han Solo

 Last time, Finn, Rey, Han, and Chewie were trying to blow a hole through the door of a large chamber that could destroy Starkiller Base. Finn and Rey move to one area to give Han and Chewie access to this chamber, and when they’re finished, they climb a ladder and find themselves looking over a balcony where Han Solo is stepping onto a bridge to confront his son, Ben Solo, who now calls himself Kylo Ren.

It’s a strange scene. A lot happens, and yet, nothing happens at the same time because I—and I believe everyone else in the theater—knew what this scene was the moment Han saw Kylo on that bridge.

Han tells Kylo to take his mask off. Kylo does. Han tries to persuade Kylo, and, at first, it looks like Ben might actually listen to Han. Then, with the supreme lack of subtlety that only Disney Star Wars can produce, the sun goes out and Kylo decides he’s a bad guy again. He runs Han through with his lightsaber. Han touches Kylo’s face, then falls off the bridge.

Let me start out by saying that there’s no use pretending I’m ambivalent about Han Solo’s death. I didn’t want him to die, and I’m not sure the writers could’ve portrayed him dying in a way I would’ve liked. But, as I said in an earlier review, Han’s death was expected.

What I’ve personally suspected to be a strategically planted rumor told the fans that Harrison Ford wanted his character killed so he wouldn’t have to do these childish movies anymore. If this rumor was true, that didn’t really work out for him, but as I’ve stated, I don’t really believe it. And I’m willing to risk being wrong on this point because, looking back, as I find this rumor a little too convenient. And more to the point, I think it was designed to hide what Disney was really planning to do, not that it took a genius to guess their plan.

Again, in the first review, I stated that upon hearing that Disney had bought the rights to Star Wars, my thought was, “They’re going to kill off my favorite characters and replace them with teeny-boppers.”

This scene confirmed my suspicion. What I didn’t predict was the pure malice and cynicism. I knew they’d want to kick the original actors off the set as fast as possible, but I honestly didn’t think they’d have the nerve to assassinate Han’s and Luke’s characters before killing them in the hopes of making their new cast look better.

It’s not that I didn’t think Disney was cynical enough to do this, but I was surprised they were foolish enough to believe there was a universe where this could work.

Though I did not wish to see the rest of the trilogy after the death of Han Solo, many people entered the theaters half-expecting the legacy characters to die as they passed on the torch.

However, people were not expecting the character assassinations. They expected honorary send-offs. By assassinations, I don’t mean their deaths; I mean a detrimental alteration of their characters.

Some people refer to this as nerfing. In order to make new characters look better, the older characters are weakened. In something like an anime or a comic book, this typically manifests as a weakening of their powers, but Star Wars doesn’t have characters who can blow up planets with their fingers, so what they did is fundamentally change the characters’ individual traits.

In Han’s case, he was regressed back to being a smuggler. From Abrams’ perspective, he’d returned Han to his original form, but really he made Han out to be much worse because in A New Hope, Han was the charming and competent rogue, a good man driven to dark work by bad times, not an incompetent smuggler.

However, the real trouble with this manoeuvre was that when you bring a character back to where he started, the audience is going to expect him to relearn his lessons. Perhaps Rey or Finn would bring the old Han back to the surface.

Perhaps Han returns to form some other way. But one of the main staples in writing is the idea that when a character starts low, the writer brings him high, and when the character is high, the writer brings him low. This is called a character arc.

It’s about as simple a writing concept as one can find. Not every character has an arc, but the protagonists usually do, even if it’s as simple as repairing a broken relationship of some kind.

The arc usually coincides with the external conflict. The audience knows the story is finished because not only does the external conflict resolve, but the character’s personal journey resolves as well.

This didn’t happen with Han. Han began the story as a rogue, became a hero, regressed to a failed father and smuggler, then died. Does that sound like a satisfying story for a major character who has existed inside four separate films? Hardly.

To make matters worse, the writers teased that there was going to be an arc. Leia and Han clearly have unresolved issues. The fact that their conversation kept being interrupted implied there would be a fuller conversation later.

And to make matters even worse than that, they barely allow the audience or the characters any time to mourn. Chewie is given a few seconds, but that’s the most mourning the audience sees.

At the time, my whole issue was that I figured if Disney saw they could get away with it when it came to Han, they’d be encouraged to do the same thing with the other two original characters.

But, regardless of my own whining about it, many people weren’t upset that he died; they were infuriated by the disrespectful send-off of a character they’d grown to love for decades. Really let that sink in.

People were in love with the original characters for decades, and Disney honestly thought they could move that devotion to three random characters by first destroying all of Han’s development, then killing him as fast as possible. Then those bankers pretending to be creatives were astonished when the Solo movie failed.

It wouldn’t have mattered if the writing in that film had been akin to Citizen Kane. Disney was asking the audience to pick at a scab, and they couldn’t understand why people weren’t willing to do that. Seeing those abysmal box office numbers made my day a little better, though. I’ll cover what happened after Han died in the next review.