In Solo: A Star Wars Story the Millennium Falcon will have a much different look. It’s kind of remarkable the Falcon looks anything like it does even to begin with – its initial design was much more rectangular and, frankly, boring. Thanks to too many similarities to a design in Space: 1999, George Lucas and Joe Johnston redesigned it into the iconic shape we all know. And now it’s going to be a little less dirty and a little bluer. And we will finally learn how Han Solo won the Falcon from Lando Calrissian, which we shouldn’t take lightly because it’s only one of two starships that anyone seems to actually own in the Star Wars galaxy.
(Boba Fett’s Slave I is the other, and even he just inherited it from his father. I wonder if there was a will. “Boba, if things go amiss with this whole ‘cloning myself to make an army’ thing with these Sith lords, I want you to have the ship. Though, everyone seems nice and I’m sure nothing will go wrong. I’ve made a lot of new friends. Love, Jango.” Also, I wonder if Boba left a note. “To whom it may concern, if you are reading this I am currently inside the belly of a sarlacc. Instead of stealing my dad’s starship, please come and help me get out.”)
Anyway, good for Han Solo and Boba Fett for being the only two people in the Star Wars galaxy to basically own their own car. There were always hints that these two had a history of some sort, and maybe it was because they were in direct competition for their galaxy’s version of Uber fares. (As we learned in the original Star Wars, a ride from Han Solo wasn’t cheap.) But this post isn’t about upstanding citizens who actually work hard so they can afford their own ride. It’s about the people who take advantage of their employer and use their work vehicle for personal use. More specifically: the freeloader known and Luke Skywalker.
First of all, I’d love to see the scene in which Luke is offered a job as an X-Wing pilot in the first place. Yes, as we saw in Rogue One, the poor former Red Five was blown up and Rebel Alliance needed a replacement. But there was literally no one else in the ranks to move up to that position, so it went to this kid who just showed up out of nowhere? And I’m sure Biggs put in a nice word for Luke, but you’d think someone would at least watch Luke run some test flights first before an attack on the Death Star? But, okay, fine: it all worked out for the best.
In The Empire Strikes Back – after Luke destroys his snowspeeder and even gets poor Dak killed – instead of heading off with the rest of the Rebel Alliance to the designated meeting point after the evacuation of Hoth, without telling anyone Luke decides to take his Alliance issued X-Wing to Dagobah instead. And then he crashes it into a swamp. Now, look, I know what you’re thinking, Um, Luke is a hero, I bet he gets some leeway. So, try this out: the next time you land some big account at work, or really come through in the clutch that results in your company profiting in some kind of way, go take one of your work’s company cars without asking and drive it into a swamp and see what happens. There is no way your boss will say, “Well, Johnson over there did land the Dubois account, I guess we can let this whole thing about the company car and the swamp go.”
This would be like Huey pilots getting to just bring one of those babies home with them so they can use it to bring their kids to school. Actually, that’s much more reasonable than crashing it into a swamp. There is no way the Rebel Alliance didn’t frown on Luke’s personal use of his X-Wing. We think of him as a Jedi hero. They think of him as someone who took advantage of their somewhat lenient personal use of vehicles policy. (Speaking of Jedi, it’s funny that in the prequels they are always talking about how not having material possessions is this great thing. Yeah, that’s easy to say when they have access to a free fleet of starships that they can use anytime. So tell that to poor Kitster who is still stuck on Tatooine. Jedi are hypocrites.)
And then what does Luke do with his X-Wing? Instead of now going to the meeting location, he flies to Bespin, helps nobody, has to be recused himself, and in the process leaves his X-Wing behind so the Empire can, we assume, confiscate it. And then the Rebel Alliance assigns him another one. That’s actually the next spinoff movie I’d like to see: Luke Tries To Talk The Rebel Alliance Into Giving Him A New X-Wing After He Lost His First One: A Star Wars Story.
Mon Mothma: “Luke, we really need to talk about your personal use of these X-Wings.”
Luke: “I didn’t realize that was frowned upon. Was that wrong? I have to plead ignorance here. But it won’t happen again.”
Of course, it will happen again because, again without really telling anyone, Luke takes his X-Wing back to Dagobah. (He just gives a vague hint; that usually works when using a company vehicle, just giving a vague hint about what you plan to do with it.) Sure, he manages to not crash it into the swamp this time, but that has to be a lot of fuel. If The Last Jedi taught us anything, fuel is a big deal for the Rebels and Luke is just using it willy-nilly to hop all over the galaxy in his own personal X-Wing. I bet Wedge didn’t use his X-Wing for personal use. This is why Wedge became Red Leader and Luke became the dude that could be anywhere right now because he thinks he owns his own starship. I bet this was an internal debate within the Alliance, “On one hand he destroyed the Death Star and seems to have supernatural powers. But on the other hand, we have seven overdue bills we can’t pay because of this guy.” I bet that’s also why everyone liked Han. Not only does he own his own starship, he uses that starship in battle! Everyone else is using rentals and Han is risking his own ship! Han was kind of a sucker.
And how did this all turn out? What did Luke do with the generosity of the Rebel Alliance? As we saw in The Last Jedi, Luke literally ditches his X-Wing in the ocean. At the end of the movie, I bet there is some relief that Luke is now gone. Because think of all the money they will save from not having to give him another starship for personal use.
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