Harrison Ford: Han Solo Should Have Died in Return of the Jedi
via Harrison Ford Wanted Han Solo To Die, Would Return For Star Wars VII | The Mary Sue.
The next logical step in a huge Disney/LucasFilm purchase announcement is who will direct and who will star in Star Wars VII. Speculation is running wild since last week but a few tidbits are slowly leaking out. For instance, Harrison Ford is apparently up for returning to his iconic role even though he really wanted Han Solo to die. This is what we get for hiring a smuggler.
The news comes via Entertainment Weekly. According to a “highly-placed source” Ford is “open to the idea of doing the movie and he’s upbeat about it, all three of them are.” The source is including his Star Wars co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.
But Ford, who has admitted to not particularly liking Han as a character in the past, said this in a 2010 interview, “I thought he should have died in the last one to give it some bottom…George [Lucas] didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys.” And in fact, that was the case, Han was meant to die in an earlier draft of Return of the Jedi. So would he insist on going out in a blaze of glory should he return?
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More Star Wars at PJ Lifestlye:
Well, in this economy every sold toy counts.
But Mark Hamill? Hope Disney will rethink about that double-chin pugsy, whose brain dived in alcohol 30 years ago and never emerged since.
If “John Carter” was a disaster for Disney, then sure as F casting Hamill is going to spell Armageddon.
Worse, Carrie Fisher now looks like someone’s overweight Grandmother. I just cannot wrap my head around her as Princes Leia.
So basically, you were fine with Obi Wan looking like somebody’s spry gramps, but an older woman isn’t allowed to have adventures or pursue political careers. I detect a failure of imagination.
Get real: Fisher looks more like Jabba than Leia.
Why yes. I am sexist, judgmental, and crotchety. Your point is…?
What I do want to see is, as I understand it, from this story arc/time-frame, Wedge Antilles becomes an adherent of the Dark Side of the Force. Interesting! He was literally the only “second string player” to survive throughout.
(And an even further aside – I work in the Social Services. We have a client who actually and legally had their name changed to “Wedge Antilles.” Still freaks me out, when I see it on a list.)
Wedge probably voted in 4 states yesterday.
Antidepressants will do that to you.
I love her. She’s funny as hell.
Being the youngest of the bunch, I think a little Weight Watchers will fix her right up.
Hamill, not so much. There is a limit to what modern medicine and Pilates can do.
That’s what CGI is for. They’ll spend a fortune touching them up just like they did Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy for the Clu character.
If the movies are to be what was originally intended, it would fit in.
Well, according to the post-empire books, yes, they are Jedi, but it nowhere implies that they’re old, fat, tired and jowly. Quite the contrary, they are quite active. So how do they resolve that? CGI, as mentioned? Umm.
Mark Hamill is a good guy.
I met Mark Hamill and he was accessible and gracious. I was very impressed with him as a person.
Funny how greedy these socialists are, changing the story yo enhance toy sales…pathetic.
If they cast those extreme lefties, again, I’ll be sitting the new films out. =’[.]‘=
They need to do a Battlestar Galactica-like reboot of the whole thing, starting from 1 and going through 9.
This reboot would have good actors and good writers, in order to fix what was broken.
It would not change R2-D2 and C-3P0, however; they would exist as they did in 4-6 (New Hope through Return).
R2-D2 and C-3P0 would, however, have no part in 1-3 except perhaps ONE of them (not both) being in the background of a shot in 3. Their inclusion in 4 is a random event sweeping them into involvement in something with which they have no prior familiarity.
Same goes for other characters. None of this Jango Fett Boba Fett nonsense. You can’t have EVERYONE being the father or mother or great uncle of someone in 4-6. Ridiculous.
Another problem to fix: No f***ing midichlorians! The Force is either a spiritual light-and-dark warfare manifested in particular persons for no mechanistic reason, or it is technology that we don’t properly understand which has therefore become indistinguishable from magic.
ANOTHER problem to fix: Take to heart Mr. Plinkett’s review of the stupidity of the PLOT and the utter lack of sensible motivations of major characters. The trade federation acts as they do…why? The Jedi act as they do…why? Nobody seems to have any logical reason for doing what they do; it all makes no sense at all. The conspiracies seem written by devious plotters who have no idea how to achieve their own best interests, going ’round their arse to get to their elbow in order to avoid tipping off good guys who seem utterly oblivious to obvious tip-offs and unable to react in a way that would advance their best interests.
YET ANOTHER problem to fix: Don’t start off with a budding romance between a dull-seeming six-year-old kid and a mid-teenage hottie.
AND YET ANOTHER problem to fix: Do Jar-Jar EXACTLY like Lucas did him…and then he gets shot early on in the first movie, shortly after his introduction. (Huge crowdpleaser!)
AND, OF COURSE, THE ABSOLUTELY MOST IMPORTANT REPAIR THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE:
Han Shot First.
I stopped after “Phantom Menace.” I would have to find a severed finger in my popcorn in order to have a worse experience in a theater. That movie was so uttlerly dull that my brain shut down, and by the end there were lasers zipping everywhere and I said, “I can’t remember what they’re trying to do or why! And I really don’t care.”
Maybe things will pick up now that George (lousy director and even worse writer) Lucas is out of it. But if I have to know what happened in the other movies in order to enjoy the new Disney installments, then screw it. I’ll just save the money.
When it comes to cultural icons “Star Wars” is like Ringo Starr. I just want to look at it and ask, “How did you get your status again? I forgot.”
For those who are wondering why Obama won last night, here it is.
The vast majority of so-called “conservatives” WILL have their bread and circuses. On this and a host of other issues, from supporting the leftists in Hollywood to buying Chinese goods, they will NOT be inconvenienced on a mere matter of principle. They have their RIGHTS and they WILL be entertained and coddled, and don’t you dare suggest otherwise!
Interesting that Han was supposed to die in the original script. That would have been a good “bottom” indeed since Han was a popular character. I don’t think it would have hurt toy sales though. On the contrary, it could have meant big sales of special edition Han figures.
Really though I could see him much more flying the Millennium Falcon in the last battle and not making it out in time, just as should have happened to Lando (since if minor contact with the blast destroyed a TIE fighter being completely engulfed should have killed the Falcon). Something quick and startling rather than a drawn out “infantryman’s” death scene with a speech and all that. Just imagine the audience reaction when the Falcon DIDN’T come out of that exploding tunnel.
I suspect the (unmentioned or described) reason the Falcon survived is that it is large enough to possess strong enough shielding to withstand a brief encounter with the blast effects. On the other hand, while fighters also can have shielding, it is probably not near as powerful. Simple space constraints and power-generation capacity would make that so, I’d think.
You do have a point there. Some time back, West End Games had an excellent Star Wars Role Playing Game. It had a very simple an elegant system that was enjoyable to play with.
Some of the ships were naturally in the game. The Falcon, for example, was based on a stock light freighter but heavily modified. I don’t recall the details for any of them, but they had the Falcon with a slightly hardened and armored hull with upgraded shields and guns (it was a smuggling ship after all). The TIE fighter on the other had a very light frame and no shields, most models anyway. Vader’s I think had shields and was tougher.
Still, my main point was that a quick end like that for Han would have been better than having him shot during the battle on Endor and dragging out the whole scene.
I see your point. Or, to use a WWII analogy, TIE fighters are a lot like the Zero – well-powered and with a goodly amount of firepower, but essentially unarmored. Whereas the Falcon is a lot more like the P-38 – heavily powered and armored as well.
Though never quite mentioned (except in passing reference), I always got the impression that the Falcon had been retrofitted with a much larger ship’s drive system than it normally would have had, such that it had a godawful amount of power versus mass.
The fighter analogy would be good for the TIE vs. X-wing.
Again I don’t recall the exact numbers entirely, however, the Falcon had at least half again the normal thrust of its base ship plus a lot of weapons that weren’t used in the movie. This was so much so that it also had less than half the normal cargo capacity.
On thing I do remember though is the “light speed” number, the “.5 past lightspeed” Han mentions. In the West End Games version, you had space maps with routes marked out. These routes didn’t have distances but times. That time was calculated back on a 1x hyperdrive unit. Most ships had 2x to 4x, meaning they took 2 to 4 times as long to travel those routes. The Falcon had a .5 meaning it took half as long.
Long ago, way before the second series, I recall Lucas (*) saying that he was planning six more movies, the frist three what are now known as prequels, and the last three kind of a wistful looking back of somethign by the older characters. Couldn’t see how the latter would sell.
(*) Looking at the site mentioned, it seems it was Mark Hamil in 1983. Can’t tell for sure since videos are blocked at work.
I recall that as well. I seem to remember them saying the movie that came after Return were shelved in part because so many novels had already been written and established the “future canon” of Star Wars that the movies would create a totally different canon. So, rather than create a comicbook style “multiverse” of story arcs, they let it drop and went with the first three.
Along those lines, I recollect that when in my teens – it had to have been ’74 or ’75 – there was already the original book “Star Wars” on the bookshelves, well in advance of even a hint of a movie to come. Written by Alan Dean Foster. And the characters in the cover art were, in fact, pretty close to what we would later recognize as Luke, Leia, Darth, etc.
Though I have frequently heard otherwise, I always wondered if Foster actually came up with the series and then Lucas purchased the rights to it. Supposedly, Lucas wrote the series, but I dunno – Lucas is a film-maker…why would he write that series and have it on the shelves two years before the movie? It’s a bit inconsistent.
I don’t think that happened.
I’m not the only one of my HS friends who remember seeing this book on the shelf at that time. Dunno. As I said, it seems inconsistent though.
Bedamned, it looks like I was more/less correct. Foster wrote it before the movie, based on a sketchy screenplay by Lucas, and never wanted credit for it. OK, mystery solved, they must have hit the shelves well before the movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dean_Foster#Star_Wars
I had an Alan Dean Foster book from Star Wars. The title was “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye”, and it was awful. It came out between the films “A New Hope” and “The Empire Strikes Back”, not that it was called “A New Hope” at the time.
Meh. I don’t see a return to the original actors in any upcoming films.
Let’s face it, Disney is a company that caters to children. Children don’t care about actors from 35 years ago.
It will be all new actors or CGI.