Force Unawakened: Why Have Millions of Geeks Stayed Silent & Passive About the Fate of a Cherished Character?

With Force Awakens finally out of theaters and available on DVD, not to mention a new trailer for Disney's latest Star Wars spinoff debuting today, I wanted to expand on a point I made in a January rant: Not only was Disney's treatment of Han Solo [*see update below] inexcusable and shocking, it's even more shocking -- and telling -- that the Internet has remained almost totally docile about that fact. In an ironic twist, Disney has turned geek culture's obsession with spoiler alerts against it, silencing any collective outrage before it even begins.

Even worse, the tradition of spoiler alerts have caused geeks to even censor their own internal thought processes. Surely some of us hated the shabby way Han Solo was treated in Force Awakens. But since our own cultural mores prohibit us from outwardly expressing that anger in any online forum, we self-police our dissent until that dissent has been silenced -- even in our own heads. 

Think about it: Han Solo has been a beloved geek culture icon for five decades. But with little objection or protest, his new corporate owner escorted him offstage like so much excess baggage -- and hardly any geek said a word.

Like I said back then -- and even now, I feel obligated by the Internet to robotically add SPOILER WARNING before saying this again: 

I am not categorically opposed to the idea of killing off Han Solo, actually, but the way Abrams does it is unbelievably reckless and uncaring. And on a far more basic level, it’s just bad storytelling... Han Solo is killed in Force Awakens by a son we know little about, after a long period of estrangement we don’t witness, for reasons we are not shown. His death is not the necessary end to a long story arc, but a jarring unearned plot twist that is shocking only in its total arbitrariness. It gets still worse after Han’s murder, because the impact of his death is barely touched upon. One of the franchise’s most beloved characters -- and in the story, one of the rebels’ most legendary figure -- is mourned onscreen for a minute or two at most. And the story keeps rumbling along, scarcely undeterred.

But then again, so does the franchise. And so old Han Solo is treated like an irrelevant impediment to the overall corporate momentum, and brusquely sent to seed. In the process, we see movie geek culture for what it is: Like Leigh Alexander said about gamers, not really a culture, but a corporate consumer market, and an easily controllable one at that. 

Update, 1:15pm: Some readers have pointed out that Harrison Ford himself requested Han Solo's death. Even if so, for reasons explained above, his death didn't make much sense in the story, and was cavalierly handled and lightly mourned. Contrast how Solo's death is mourned in Force Awakens with this scene, one of the most famous in geek cinema:

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Comments

[Shockwave Yareach]

One - the actor doesn't want to play the role anymore. So he got written out in a suitable fashion that pushes the story along. It reveals Kylo to be capable of any atrocity, since he did what he did. This he is now more badass than even Vader.

[Wagner James Au]

THIS is what a "suitable fashion" really looks like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_8nY_LQL3w

[Galatea]

Hmm. I remember the cheesy, overdone award scene at the end of A New Hope, and shudder at the thought of seeing a cheesy, overdone funeral scene in The Force Awakens like the referenced one from Star Trek.

Vader gets a kind of funeral scene in Return of the Jedi that's decently done, but the scene is really about Luke. I suppose you could have Leia do some sort of similar, private ritual. She wouldn't have a body to burn, like Luke had, but she could improvise something. But Leia gets little focus in the new movie...

[Iggy]

Sometimes a character needs to go for the sake of deepening the story. You know, "Murder your darlings" and all that.

Solo, unlike Spock or Kirk, had not gotten so long in the tooth that he needed to die. And I say that as a TOS Trek, not Star Wars, geek. Kirk's death in ST Generations came as the anticlimax in a pretty awful film, and Spock's "death"and funeral in the much stronger Khan was melodrama. At the time, we all speculated that Nimoy was tired of Spock. He'd written that book after all, the one he later recanted. We figured he'd made is money and walked.

We who loved Han's character were shocked, but most of the Star Wars geeks I know, an admittedly small sample of SW geekdom globally, like how it helps set the path for Kylo Ren. Now that character can blossom into the badass he should be, not a petulant tantrum-throwing baby.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

He's not Kylo Ren, he's Ben Organa-Solo. He may have changed his name, like his grandfather did at one time, but he's the same person. Maybe he's lost to the dark side forever, but maybe even when all hope fails and he kills his father...there's a chance he could be redeemed like his grandfather Anakin.

And who should try that? His teacher, Luke Skywalker...Jedi Master.

[Adeon Writer]

Ha. Somehow I managed to avoid knowing Han Solo dies until now. No fault of your own of course, I put off watching Ep 7 for far outside what was reasonable.

[Lordsirm]

Actually, when I saw how Han Solo was killed so unceremoniously, my first thought was that someone from The Walking Dead must have written it.

[Orca Flotta-Solo]

I was shocked how stoic the audience in cinemas accepted Han's death, both times I watched it. Those heartless bastards. :) Then I did some soul research and found out Han's death left me stone cold as well.

I blame Disney and JJ Abrams for it. Han Solo had to be disposed, same as the introduction of Rey and Finn had to be told. So director wunderkind JJ did it quickly and without much attention to detail or any effort. You could see in every scene that "This ain't the movie I really wanna make!" So let's get this shit over with and then start new adventures without all the ballast.

Out with the old, in with the new!

[Captain Jacqueline Sparrow]

@ Adeon Writer: Now it's the right time to watch it, as a good quality (no cam) version has just become available on a certain bay on the dark side of teh interwebz.

=^.^=

[Bixyl Shuftan]

I have yet to see the movie, though the more I've been hearing, the more it might be better to just re-read the "Thrawn Trilogy" instead - https://foodonthetablesite.wordpress.com/2015/12/28/the-best-star-wars-story-that-will-never-make-the-movies/