- Some things were so much clearer
- Once you were in my rearviewmirror.
- That’s by Pearl Jam; it was playing on the radio when I got out of the theater; it has nothing at all to do with Han: A Scoundrel’s Fairytale.
- Nope, nothing at all.
- Nosireebob, the typist said as he listened to a recording made in 1973.
- Spoilers from here on in.
- No foolin’.
- I’m the sun and you’re the mayonnaise; shit will get spoilt.
- S
- P
- O
- I
- L
- T
- Spoilt.
- If you’re still here, then let’s go.
- Punch it, Jewy.
- Okay, first off: I did not know that Melissa McCarthy was in this.
- Or that the plot revolved around her returning to college as a grown mom.
- And that there would be little to no war, be it amongst the stars or anywhere else.
- Pss pss pss.
- I have been informed that I watched Life of the Party instead of Vest: A Sideburns Pew Pew.
- Gimme 143 minutes.
- CASUAL WHISTLING NOISE
- Okay, I have seen the correct film.
- Movie.
- This ain’t a “film.”
- Lawrence of Arabia was a film.
- This here’s a movie.
- So, anyway: Young Han Solo is from Corellia, along with Dragonface McEyebrows, and he loooooooooves her and wants to stick it in her BUT SHE IS BAD, it turns out later.
- You would only see the twist coming if you had ever seen a movie before.
- Or read a book.
- Or just weren’t a complete nincompoop.
- But they start off as street urchins working for Space Fagin.
- Not lying.
- There is absolutely a Space Fagin in this movie.
- He’s a lady Space Fagin, and also a giant tapeworm that’s also a dracula for some reason, but: Fagin.
- I’ll just give you the plot because there are no themes in this movie.
- Maybe it’s about how Han learns to not trust anyone?
- But he should have learned that being a child slave on Corellia.
- And he learns to trust Tobacco the Space Monkey.
- Yeah, I’m gonna go back to my first thought: no themes whatsoever.
- PEW PEW.
- So, now Han’s an Imperial trooper or something and he runs into Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton.
- And you, sitting in your seat, say, “Hey, it’s Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton.”
- Which is why you shouldn’t put famous actors in Star Wars.
- Because instead of thinking, “My, what ferocious adventures these rogues are having,” you think, “Hey, that guy knows Bobby.”
- And then Paul Bettany shows up and you start wondering if there are Infinity Gems involved in this bullshit.
- I’m ahead of myself.
- Han is a lot like Rey, or Luke, or–I’m quite sure–Boba Fett in his upcoming dumb-ass prequel in that he can do whatever the plot requires of him at the time.
- Meets an angry Wookiee?
- He can speak Shryiiwook.
- New ship?
- He can fly it.
- Never are we shown him learning these skills, but he has them when he needs them.
- It’s like the creative team rolled for his attributes and then refused to let anyone else see the character sheet.
- (There was all sort of Hollywood machinations going on during the making of the film, including the original directors getting fired and replaced by Ralph Malph, but no one cares. Although the movie was written by Lawrence Kasdan–of Empire fame–and his son, which is sweet. I never wrote a Star Wars with my dad. He punched me a couple times, but never a co-writing credit on a Star Wars. Miss ya, Pop.)
- Fuel!
- Remember fuel?
- We learned in The Last Jedi that ships in Star Wars required fuel.
- Never before had this fact been brought to our attention, but now it’s a thing and Han and his crew have to steal the fuel.
- The fuel is called Plottinium.
- (It’s not, but I’m gonna call it that. Fuck it: Disney doesn’t have a private army. Yet.)
- They gotta get it, and the Plottinium is on a train because it’s not like there’s any other way to transport stuff in the Star Wars Universe.
- Say, a ship that, if under attack, could veer off course and run instead of staying on a track where the robbers would be able to plant bombs and stuff.
- But the plan goes wrong and Thandie Newton and a CG character whose name I didn’t care to listen for die!
- Oh, noes!
- Woody Harrelson is all like, “NOOOOOOO!”
- Because apparently we were supposed to care about Thandie Newton.
- I had not been informed of that fact.
- And the Plottinium gets away with the bad guys, who will later turn out to be multi-ethnic good guys.
- So Han and Chewie and OH, WAIT.
- Woody Harrelson’s name was Tobias Beckett.
- WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF STAR WARS NAME IS TOBIAS FUCKING BECKETT?
- Tobias Beckett is the name of, like, one of Pennsylvania’s representatives at the Constitutional Convention.
- Or your fussy uncle who brings his “friend” Lawrence to family holidays.
- We all know who Lawrence is, Uncle Tobias.
- Stop it with the roommate bullshit.
- Tob Asbeck.
- Kett Siabot.
- Moogoo Gai Pan.
- Those are fucking Star Wars names, Kasdan family.
- Not Tobias fucking Beckett.
- What was Thandie Newton’s name, Ellen Carter?
- Now I’m angry.
- Stop it and get on with whatever this is.
- It’s not a review.
- Clearly not.
- Where was I?
- Oh, right: LANDO!
- Who is Donald Glover in a cape doing a Billy Dee Williams impression.
- AND THEY’RE PLAYING SABACC!
- THAT THING THEY MENTIONED IN ONE OF THE STUPID NOVELS!
- PIUGUH JBIYUWDO{UOUHFG.
- And since they’ve lost the Plottinium, they have to go find more.
- Where could it be?
- Is it under your space bed?
- Did you leave it next to the sink while you were shaving?
- In the freezer next to the banana guacamole?
- No, of course notIT’S ON KESSELKESSELOMIGODKESSEL.
- THAT THING THEY MENTIONED!
- So they go to Kessel, but Kessel is located in some sort of Space Bad Neighborhood and some retconning bullshit about parsecs–THEY MENTIONED PARSECS!–and whatnot and now there’s a “heist.”
- I put heist in quotes because Ocean’s 11 is a heist movie.
- Heist movies require elaborate plans and disguises and things go wrong and everyone is charming.
- They just pretty much walk into the mine and take the stuff.
- Oh, and Lando has a fuckbot.
- Because they can’t give a black man a real girlfriend.
- This is Kessel.
- Stormtroopers be trippin’ now.
- Anyway, the fuckbot dies and Lando is all like “NOOOOOO!”
- Because apparently we were supposed to care about the fuckbot.
- AND THEN THEY MAKE THE KESSEL RUN!
- THAT THING THEY MENTIONED!
- And there is a monster along the way that tries to eat the Millennium Falcon while Han and Chewie try to pilot the ship out of a rapidly-closing exit.
- Because otherwise how would you know it was a Star Wars movie?
- (Oh, yeah: the Falcon is there and all shiny and new and juuuuuuust different enough to require the purchase of a new piece of stamped plastic.)
- YAY!
- They win!
- Only to be double-crossed.
- Betcha didn’t see that coming.
- Oh, you saw that coming?
- Yeah, we all did.
- Han and Paul Bettany and The Pretty One Who Can’t Act shoot at each other–PEW PEW–and there are swords because why wouldn’t there be swords in a galaxy that had learned to control gravity?
- Then, Young Han Solo (I would have paid extra if everyone else in the movie had referred to him as “Young Han Solo” the entire time) gives the Plottinium back to the bad guys who were actually good guys.
- He does the right thing!
- Which, if you think about for more than a second, nullifies his entire arc in Star Wars.
- Ah, well, whatever: WE SAW WHERE HE GOT HIS BLASTER!
- Woody Harrelson gave it to him!
- See you back here in two years for Guards! Guards! A Tale of Gamorrea.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: han solo
“Jenkins!”
“Yes, sir.”
“More Chewbacca.”
“Than the last trailer?”
“Than anything. More Chewbacca than anyone had ever conceived possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And use the Time Warp for the music.”
“Yes, sir.”
Disney, having recently bought Star Wars, has declared the entire Expanded Universe non-canon. In Dead terms, they will now be treating all the novels and whatnot like Enthusiasts treat the Vince years: yes, there was the occasional nugget, but it’s on the whole better left unspoken of.
Now, some of the stuff was good and answered interesting questions about the Star Wars Universe: after the death of the Emperor and the destruction of the second Death Star, wasn’t there still a massive Imperial Armada? Wouldn’t there be a power struggle for control over all those Star Destroyers? As the record shows, however, most of the questions answered in the EU were ones like “Why don’t we clone the fuck out of everybody?” and “Has it really been a week since someone dug up a long-forgotten super-weapon?” and “What if Luke flirted with the Dark Side…AGAIN!?”
Luke played chicken with the Dark Side in every sixth one of the EU novels. (And make no mistake: there’s a metric fuck-ton of this stuff, from the novels to the comics to the video games.) It became wearisome quickly: he was like the boy who cried Sith.
It was either that or tedious, Silmarillion-like backstories for the minorest of characters. There was the 14-volume Remembrance of Banthas Past, in which Uncle Owen takes a sip of blue milk and is catapulted back through his childhood on Tatooine, back when Mos Eisley was a one-dewback town. Or Ewoks in the Mist, the ten-year study of life on the Forest Moon of Endor by famed interplanetary anthropologist D’an Fo’ss.
In the aughts, the EU meandered around, bogged down in a ridiculous war against a foreign culture deemed barbaric that was seemingly immune to the once-thought-universal powers of our heroes. Also, in Star Wars–
I see what you did there.
Plus all the “me-too” stuff. Ocean’s 11 a hit? Time for Han, Leia, and Chewis to pull one last heist in Mos Vegas. Zombies making a comeback? Boom: infection breaks out on a Star Destroyer and Lando is forced to team up with Boba Fett and a mysterious stranger to fight their way out. What if Chewie was a teenage werewolf in a love triangle? That kind of stuff.
Speaking of Chewbacca, he was semi-famously killed off in the Expanded Universe when some vikings from the next galaxy over threw a moon at him. So, maybe, that’s all that needs to be said about its legacy.
So long and thanks for all the clones.
I am now retconning the Grateful Dead. All thirteen of you know that I have, up until this momentous occasion, unofficially declared everything post-Brent to be only dubiously existent. Yes, there’s scattered evidence here and there, but–and I say this impartially–doesn’t it just make more sense to believe that the band mysteriously disappeared in a 1979 plane crash? Well, their plane didn’t crash: a plane crashed into their tour bus. Six of one, half-dozen of another.
But as of now, I declare all of the Land of Welnickia barren and off-limits. Vince is no longer in continuity. He has ceased to be canon: Vince is the Dead’s version of the Expanded Star Wars Universe. (You know the Expanded Star Wars Universe, right? The place where everybody had Jedi babies and the Emporer had hidden so many clones of himself in so many places that by the time they were four novels in, every 13th person on Coruscant was named Not Secretly Palpatine’s Clone. Then a moon fell on Chewbacca.)*
Isn’t life easier now? No more nonsense hype about the 91 Boston Garden shows, no more having to pretend that the oakland ’92 Dark Star was as good as a ’72. ANY ’72. Five less years taking up space in your head.
You’re welcome.
*That really happened, the Chewbacca thing. These guys whose galaxy is even far, farther away than the one our heroes live in, attacked Luke and them and Luke and them fought back or something and then Chewie was helping to evacuate a planet –like you do–and the bad guys threw a moon at him. So now, Chewie’s dead. Except he’s not really, because he was only ever just a pituitary case in a Space Monkey suit
© 2021 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments