The Ultimate Lesson Of Han Solo: Never Get Involved

In 2018, we will get a standalone Han Solo movie, that is, right now, officially called Untitled Han Solo Star Wars Anthology Film (which is not a great title) and unofficially referred to at Lucasfilm as Red Cup (which is a better title). Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (who are great) will direct Red Cup and it will star Alden Ehrenreich, a human being who will soon be famous, but right now most people have difficulty pronouncing his name. (It will help when Lucasfilm officially announces his casting, which most people presume will be in July during Star Wars Celebration.)

Based on popularity alone, this movie makes a lot of sense. Han Solo transcends Star Wars. He’s a very popular fictional character, so much so that other filmmakers often talk about having a “Han Solo-type character” in their movies. Of course, they are always wrong. It’s almost impossible to recreate Han Solo because the actor playing Han Solo thought Star Wars was stupid. It’s a great formula.

It’s a little odd to get a prequel for a character so tragic, even if we don’t really think of Han Solo as “tragic.” And it’s true he’s not tragic as in the sense of a character whose bright-eyed optimism turns to darkness – Anakin Skywalker is a good example of that. But when we watch young Han Solo gallivanting around the galaxy, we already know that a bunch of terrible things will happen to him in his future. Honestly, if there’s one message Han Solo conveys, it’s to never get involved. When I watch Red Cup, I can already imagine thinking to myself, Don’t do it. Don’t you do it. Nothing but bad things ever happen to you. Go be a smuggler. Being a hero does not work out for you.

I mean, how else is a viewer supposed to read what the Han Solo character is telling us? Let’s look at what happens to Han Solo over the course of the four movies in which he appears:

In the original Star Wars, against Han’s better judgment, he accepts an offer to take Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker to Alderaan. Kenobi warns Solo that they need to avoid the Empire, but with the promise of 17,000 credits, Solo agrees to the job anyway. Yes, that’s good money and a lot of Solo’s work at the time involved avoiding Imperial engagement, but he also knew this was not the average business transaction. Han had just watched Ben Kenobi slice off the arm of Ponda Baba with a lightsaber. He knows he’s getting into something that probably has to do with the Rebel Alliance.

For Solo’s trouble, he winds up captured by the Death Star’s tractor beam and finds himself inside the most notorious weapon the Empire has ever created.

Later, Han does the smart thing by collecting his credits to pay off Jabba the Hutt. As we know, Han later comes back and shoots down a couple of TIE Fighters, clearing the way for Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star. Here, there’s no money involved. This is a true selfless act, and it comes back to haunt Han for the rest of his life. If Star Wars had wound up being a standalone movie, sure, this is fine. Han got himself a medal and all seemed okay with the galaxy. But that’s not how it ended for Han Solo.

Because Solo just had to be the hero, he’s now wanted by the Empire and he’s wanted by the galaxy’s version of the mob. Han Solo is now, probably, the most wanted person in the galaxy, so much so that he has to leave the Rebellion at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back after some sort of bad encounter with a bounty hunter on a planet called Ord Mantell. Of course, Han waits too long to go after rescuing Luke Skywalker from exposure on Hoth (this was nice, even though Han told an innocent Rebel soldier he’d see him in hell, for no reason) and then volunteering to investigate an Imperial Probe Droid (this was dumb). I mean, rescuing Luke… okay. But if things are that dire that Han needs to pay off Jabba pronto, then maybe someone else can go look at the Probe Droid. He already resigned! It’s not his problem anymore! Get out of there! Of course Han waits too long and Echo Base is shut down for any departing flights because the Empire is now attacking.

Never get involved.

Han finally gets his clearance to leave, but he wants to make sure Leia gets to her ship safely. Again, this is a nice gesture, but the end result never works out for Han Solo. So that one decision leads to: Leia being separated from her transport after an ice cave collapses, Han agreeing to evacuate her on the Millennium Falcon (a ship that doesn’t have a working hyperdrive!), then a chase through an asteroid field that eventually leads Han, Leia, Chewbacca and C-3PO to Cloud City.

Oh yeah, Cloud City.

I wonder, when Han was strapped down with a scan grid shooting electrical bolts into his face, if he regretted taking Ben and Luke to Alderaan. Like, maybe he found himself thinking, “Smuggling was pretty fun, in retrospect.” I’m sure he regrets not leaving Hoth maybe a few days before. If he had, Leia probably escapes on a ship that had a working hyperdrive and, by this point, Han has paid off Jabba and is free to do whatever. Instead, he’s being zapped in the face by a scan grid.

Then, of course, he’s used as a guinea pig to test if a human being can be frozen in carbonite and survive. (I’ve always had a lot of questions about this scene. Vader mentions “these facilities are crude,” but that it should work. Was this a thing? In the Star Wars galaxy, did people do this to other people on a regular basis? Yes, I know there’s a Clone Wars episode that sort of addresses this, but I’m talking about when this was filmed in 1979. Was the thought process then, “This is a regular occurrence, it’s just the facilities aren’t the best”? Anyway.) Han survives (yay!) but he gets to spend the next year of his life in a conscious state of suspended animation (oh).

Never get involved.

Han’s friends rescue him in Return of the Jedi in one of the most harebrained rescue attempts ever put to film. Why not just take a couple of X-Wings, maybe 50 Rebel troops, then storm Jabba’s palace and say, “Yeah, we’re taking Han back. Thanks”? (The novelization kind of explains this. Apparently the Empire set up an embargo around Tatooine expecting the Rebellion to do just this. But it’s never mentioned in the movie.) Or, you know, “Send in C-3PO and R2-D2 as gifts, then one by one we will all come in – and don’t forget to make a big spectacle of ourselves! – and put on a little show for Jabba, before being captured.That could work, too.”

So Han wakes up, just to be immediately captured again so he can be fed to a Sarlacc and digested over 1000 years. (The Sarlacc actually injects its victims with some sort of nutrient that will keep them alive, just so the Sarlacc can continue feeding.) Remarkably, this is only the first of two times Han Solo is prepared as a meal during Return of the Jedi. One of my favorite scenes in Return of the Jedi is the look on Han Solo’s face when C-3PO is recounting their story for the Ewoks. The story is basically, “Here are a bunch of terrible things that happened to Han Solo.”

At least by the end of Return of the Jedi, Han seemed pretty happy. The Empire was gone and Jabba was gone. He was free of his debts. And he was in love! That’s nice.

By the time we see Han in The Force Awakens, he’s now divorced (or whatever the Star Wars equivalent of that is), his best friend has been missing for many years, and he’s the proud father to a wannabe Sith Lord. But here’s the thing: Han seems pretty happy smuggling again with Chewbacca! And when do things go bad? When Rey and Finn convince Han to get involved. After Han gets involved, he is stabbed through the chest by his own son, then falls down a shaft into a planet’s core before the planet eventually explodes.

Seriously, never… get… involved.

So let’s sum up: After Han Solo agrees to fly Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker to Alderaan, he is: Captured by a Death Star, almost killed on Hoth, tortured by electrocution, frozen in carbonite, almost fed to a Sarlacc, almost fed to Chief Chirpa, married, divorced, spawns a Sith Lord, stabbed in the chest with a lightsaber by his own son, falls into a planet core just a few moments before the planet explodes.

(Or maybe the moral of this story actually might be: It’s good to get involved… and things probably didn’t go as bad for you as they did for Han Solo. So, at least you have that.)

Anyway, good luck, Alden Ehrenreich, with all that. Han Solo: The Most Unlucky Fuck Ever Who Should Have Never Gotten Involved In The First Place (I hope it’s called this) soars into your galaxy in May of 2018.

Mike Ryan lives in New York City and has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York magazine. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.

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