Chewbacca, the overlooked hero of the Star Wars films

Cathy has complained that my review of The Last Jedi didn't mention Chewbacca once. Chewie is one of her favourite characters, and although this sounds insulting, she likes it when I remark on the comparisons between them. Like Cathy, Chewie is loyal, dependable, smart, isn't overly talkative, and is very strong.

Trading card pose!

Sadly, Chewie is also frequently overlooked. It's a famous running gag that there is no medal for the wookiee at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope. Surely with all the different edits that have happened to that poor, oft-butchered film, they could have put in a sequence where a medal is dropped round his neck and then CGI-d onto him when he says 'RRRRAAAAWWWRRRR' at the end. (Trivia quiz answer - he is the last character to speak in A New Hope.)

Then in The Force Awakens, he sees his long-time buddy / boss / best friend killed in front of him, but when the Millennium Falcon lands back at the resistance base, Princess Leia, who had hugged him earlier as if they were besties, ignores him and hugs Rey instead. Rey, who she has hardly heard anything about, much less never met. Surely, Chewie deserved the hug more. Cathy was sort of outraged about how he was snubbed here. Although I have suggested that maybe Chewie was concerned about the grievously injured Finn at the time. I'm sure once Finn was in sick bay, Chewie would have got the hug he needed, probably off-screen, because he's a proud wookiee and doesn't want people to see him grieving. (Cathy isn't buying any of my explanations, by the way.)

So, does Chewie deserve more respect from the Star Wars writers? I think so. Chronologically we first see him in Episode III, fighting to protect his home world of Kashyyyk. He is part of Yoda's honour guard, helping the old jedi survive Order 66. In A New Hope, he sets up the deal with Obi Wan to get him and Luke passage to Alderaan. In Empire, Han entrusts Leia to him. In Return of the Jedi, he wears shackles to give Leia a reason to enter Jabba the Hutt's court in a rescue attempt to spring Han.

Throughout the movies, we see him as Han's conscience. In A New Hope, Han gruffly tells Chewie that he knows what he's doing as he loads the rebel money onto the Falcon. Clearly Chewie wants them to stick around and help the attack on the Death Star. In The Force Awakens, he gives away Han's bluffing when Han is trying to lie his way out of a showdown with the gangs he has taken money from.

"I know what I'm doing!"

He's not just Han's conscience though. He is loyal to a fault. When Han starts running down a Death Star corridor after a squad of stormtroopers, he doesn't hesitate and follows them. In the Special Edition of A New Hope, Han finds Jabba and various goons at his ship (including Boba Fett on some sort of retainer), and Chewie is there and ready to back him up. Chewie is the pretend captive when Luke and Han go looking for the Princess. He follows Han out of the Falcon to look for mynocks. As I mentioned he ends up in Jabba's dungeon, where he holds onto Han like a protective mother when the two are reunited. There's no question he's going to Endor even though Han hasn't volunteered him and he's clearly annoyed that Han wanted to protect him. And so on, and so forth. No wonder he ends up hunting rathtars.

And he does have key parts to play in The Last Jedi. First he gets Luke's attention by kicking in the door of his hut. That's played for laughs in the film, but lets not overlook his commitment to supporting Rey after Han's death - even to the point of kicking in the door of the last known jedi master at the risk of seriously angering him. Then he shows off some badass piloting skills to evade the First Order TIE fighters over Crait and play as much a role in saving the last few sparks of the Resistance as Rey did. And he even managed to do that with a ship that seems to have become infested with porgs that get in the way at inconvenient moments. It's not the first time he has piloted the Falcon at key moments. He was the wookiee ex machina who saved Rey and Finn as Starkiller Base shattered around them at the end of Episode VII. (He really should have got that hug!)

I think the case is made for Chewie being the overlooked hero. Literally, on-screen in A New Hope and The Force Awakens, and generally in the trilogy. With a Han Solo spin off movie due this summer, we can only hope that Chewie gets to play a major role.

The Last Jedi - stepping out from the shadows cast by the world's biggest franchise?

This post contains MASSIVE SPOILERS for The Last Jedi. Don't read past this picture of the movie poster unless you have seen the film or don't care about spoilers.

Still here, OK, then.

A review in one sentence: Well, that repeatedly went in a different direction than I expected.

Here are six things that struck me about the film.

1) Rey is a nobody, and wow, was that dark!
After The Force Awakens, there were lots of discussions about Rey's provenance. Was she related to the Skywalkers? How would she link in with the rest of the known universe? That tends to be the (much mocked) trope in Star Wars films.

But, no, she is a nobody from nowhere. And how bleak is this - her alcoholic parents sold her for drinking money to the junk dealer Unku Plutt. It's interesting that in The Force Awakens, Finn talks about being taken as a child and indoctrinated into the First Order as a child soldier. My mum commented on that at this time. But this is as bad a situation in terms of mistreating children.

Abandonment and child slavery? The Galaxy Far Far Away (GFFA) is a messed up place. But, equally, this is refreshingly different for a Star Wars character.

2) They killed off the 'big bad' in the second act
I don't really care about Supreme Leader Snoke. I thought he was annoying and a ridiculous baddie, really. Like so many evil characters he seemed to prefer to send his minions to do his bidding for him rather than sort things out himself. So I wasn't too upset when he got sliced and diced by Kylo Ren.

I was surprised though, that it happened when it did. Normally it's the sort of thing saved for a third act showdown, but no, Snoke just got offed and then afterwards we had an epic fight scene, with Rey and Ren fighting back to back against Snoke's elite guards.

3) War profiteering is the real evil in the galaxy
Whoah, Star Wars just got relevant. I really wasn't expecting this theme to ever come up. Star Wars has always been about light versus dark, good versus evil, heroes and villains. But first with Rogue One, and now with this film, the GFFA is starting to become more nuanced. There are grey areas.

The scene in Canto Bight is quite stunning in its own way. Finn sees the glitz and is mesmerised by it. Rose sees through the glitz to the brutality that shapes the entertainment for the wealthy gamblers. Fascism always creates an elite and it is easy to be bedazzled by it. In the first Star Wars film, it was a grubby smuggler's township that was a hive of scum and villainy. In the Last Jedi, the scum have floated to the top by making money off the suffering of others. That's an astonishing message condemning the military industrial complex for a mainstream film to be putting out there.

4) The scoundrel stays a scoundrel 
Star Wars has always been about redemptive arcs. Han Solo in A New Hope, Lando in Empire Strikes Back, and, of course, Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. Arguably the prequels lacked this redemptive theme, which is one reason why they fail to connect emotionally. In The Force Awakens, we see Finn going through his own redemption as he turns his back on the First Order, and that's perhaps one of the reasons it felt like the films were back on track in Episode VII.

So when Finn and Rose meet a thief and hacker in a prison cell, and promise him paid work, we all know how this will turn out. The criminal will have a change of heart and join the rebellion because it's the right thing to do.

Except he doesn't. There is no redemptive story arc for him. He sells out Finn and Rose, and the fleeing remnant of the Resistance to save his own skin. He kind of apologises for it, but doesn't seem very sincere. He doesn't fly back in to save the day like Han Solo. He takes the money and he walks away.

5) The hotshot pilot is a bit of a dick
Poe is a poor leader. He is willing to sacrifice the lives of people around him to achieve an aim. He is reprimanded and demoted by Leia. He doesn't trust the decisions of the leadership and tries to take over the ship instead, trusting in his own gut instincts to fight, rather than to protect the people he should be trying to protect. He inadvertently alerts the code slicer that Finn and Rose have recruited to Admiral Holdo's plan, which gives the slicer a bargaining chip to use when captured. When he cuts a deal the First Order destroy at least 12 unarmed transport ships full of Resistance crew and soldiers as they flee towards Crait. (And, yes, I counted them as they got blown up.) All those people died because of him.

The message here if that it's not enough to be heroic. People die as a result.

Luke Skywalker, of course, was a hotshot pilot. Jumping into a vacant X-Wing seat he totalled the Death Star. In this film, he is also shown to be a failure as a leader. His hubris in establishing a new Jedi Temple facilitated Ben Solo's growth as a Force user, and then his panic at Ben's seduction by the dark side cemented Ben's transformation into Kylo Ren. One of the most interesting parallels in this film is between Poe and Luke - both are legendary heroes, but prideful. Both are hotshot pilots and they end up getting the people around them killed.

6) A background person becomes more than background
Rose isn't anyone special. A tech working "behind pipes all day". She doesn't get whisked into top-ranking briefing rooms or given super top secret missions. She is stunned to be talking to a real life Resistance hero when she first meets Finn.

I think this is probably the first time a committed member of the movement actually steps out of the shadows into the role of hero. If you look at almost every other rebel character, they start out as established leaders (Leia, Poe), or start their story outside the Rebellion but become heroes through great feats of daring do (Luke, Han, Lando, Finn, Rey). Rose is unique - not new to the Rebellion; not a noteworthy person.

Of course, the film still just trashes numerous Resistance troops, from the crews of the doomed bomber squadron at the start of the film, through to the trenches full of troopers outside the mine in Crait. The resistance is whittled down to just a dozen or so survivors huddled in the Millennium Falcon, their only serviceable ship. The death toll in this film is massive.

To sum up
In conclusion, then is seems the directorial team took to heart Kylo Ren's advice to Rey: "Let go of the past. Destroy it if you have to. So you can become the person you were meant to be." They certainly trashed the past. The Jedi failed. Luke Skywalker went from being a legendary hero to a devastated hermit, haunted by what he had unleashed in Kylo Ren, and cut off from the Force. The script literally left you thinking that everything about the Jedi had been left to burn.

The film has garnered some praise and some hate. My feeling is that the directors made a lot of brave choices to take the film in several different directions, upsetting several established tropes from the series so far. It is incredibly hard to imagine a Star Wars film that is revolutionary. Rogue One tried but to me, was a huge disappointment in that regard.

And just to round this post off, here is my round up of random opinions. Feel free to disagree.

Best character: I do still really like Rey.

Best hairstyle: Vice-Admiral Holdo, by several parsecs.

Most annoying character: I'll give this to Poe. He's a tool for most of the film.

Most under-used character: Captain Phasma. Although, yet again, the pre-release merchandise led us to believe some new characters would play more of a role than they ended up doing. The First Order black rolly ball droid had about 30 seconds of screen time, and yet is a pop vinyl figure. (It's no Morroff or Pau from Rogue One, though.)

Funniest bit: Probably Poe winding up General Hux right at the start. Although Rey 'reaching out' to feel the force in Luke's first lesson was very funny too.

Best line: Finn's "Rebel scum!" response to Captain Phasma. Finn also had a great line when the TIE Fighters all peeled off to chase the Falcon: "Oh, yeah, they hate that ship!"

Most jarring line: "Page-turners, they were not." It was very funny but the phrase 'page-turners' didn't seem very Star Wars-y. (But then they were actually books, which is interesting given the idea that people in the Star Wars universe are functionally illiterate.)

Most quotable bit of Star Wars wisdom: Rose, saying "We don't win by fighting what we hate. We win by saving what we love."

Biggest surprise: Ghost Yoda turning up.

Daftest bit: Leia force-guiding herself through the vacuum of space.

Biggest disappointment: They killed off Admiral Ackbar! I was genuinely gutted by this. He was one of my favourite characters as a kid, and probably my favourite of the original Star Wars figures that I had. And he dies ignominiously along with the entire bridge crew, which is pretty much an off-screen death.

Weirdest plot turn: Pretty much everything with the casino at Canto Bight, including the escape on the racing animals.

Thing I'm most relieved to report: The porgs were stupid, but bearable in small doses. And they were in very small doses.


Some more Star Wars posts:
How Rogue One almost killed off my love of Star Wars
What I liked about The Force Awakens
What Return of the Jedi means to me

The day after Star Wars Day: The Revenge of the 5th

I said this a bit on Twitter, but I’ve been reflecting on why Star Wars means so much to me. A lot of it comes down to this: Return of the Jedi was the first film I saw in the cinema after my family came back to this country from Africa.

I didn’t really understand what was going on. I hadn’t seen the first two movies. I knew there were goodies and baddies and I liked the Ewoks beating the Stormtroopers and Jabba the Hutt was disgusting and the fight over the Sarlacc was dangerous and Luke Skywalker was brave and things exploded and spaceships were cool, especially the Millennium Falcon.

And for two hours I forgot that I had left the warm and known environment of Africa behind and been made to come back to this cold, unfriendly place that people said was my home, but wasn’t really.

As a young teenager I saw Empire Strikes Back for the first time and loved it. We taped it off the telly at Christmas and watched it so often we almost wore out the tape. I still remember where the advert breaks were in that recorded copy. (It was a big Christmas premiere for ITV.) I know most of the dialogue off by heart. It edged out Jedi as my favourite film of the trilogy.

It’s kind of fashionable to beat up on Star Wars and the people who love it. They aren’t the coolest films out there. There are clear plot holes and unlikely coincidences and for some reason Stormtroopers can’t shoot straight and their armour doesn’t work against arrows. Yeah, all those things. And I will line up with anyone else to pour scorn on the prequels, although The Phantom Menace probably gets more vitriol than it deserves whereas the third one should be coated in lead and sunk in a very deep hole somewhere.

And, yes, the trilogy is good for jokes and pastiche. I’ve always loved Spaceballs. I really love the Robot Chicken feature length Star Wars episodes. But you can tell Robot Chicken is done with love and affection for the films, not to poke spitefully at the people who love them. (Even if we are all depicted as weedy nerds by the Chickeners.)

I think the reason May the Fourth has taken off in just a few years from geek joke to major Twitter event is down to the attachment people have for the films.  The original trilogy holds such emotional importance for me I turn to them when I’m poorly or feeling low. Return of the Jedi was my first comfort film; the first movie to transport me away from a difficult situation that I was struggling to adjust to. It helped a confused and, I realise now, grieving, little boy to believe the world could be a place where good triumphed in the darkest of circumstances, where evil could be defeated, where heroism would be rewarded, where little people held the fate of the universe in the balance, even if the big people had guns and scout-walkers and speeder-bikes.

Even now I get a lump in my throat when I watch the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where Luke throws away his lightsaber and tells the Emperor that he won’t turn to the dark side because he is a Jedi. Like his father before him.

Faced with that choice I wanted to be as brave as Luke Skywalker. I wanted to be a Jedi.

I still do.