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When Han Solo welcomed us back
Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens
Writers: J.J. Abrams & Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt Director: J.J. Abrams
Thursday morning. April 16, 2015. A gas station in Primm, Nevada. Two travelers are on their way back from Las Vegas, the aura of sin and regret still hovering around them. One gets out to refill the gas tank. The other stares out the window, no thoughts, just the late nights of the trip catching up to him. Then. Suddenly. He remembers. It’s the first day of Star Wars Celebration Anaheim. The new teaser trailer for The Force Awakens is probably on the Internet.
He has friends at the convention and he himself will be there tomorrow. The trailer was going to be shown and, battling rising levels of jealousy, he pulls out his phone to find the video on YouTube. Service is bad out here, but the one minute and fifty-nine second video starts playing. It’s slow at first, taking its magnificent time to introduce us to the new faces of Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and Kylo Ren. Luke Skywalker’s dialogue from Return of the Jedi fades away as the music starts to swell, the action picks up, explosions rock the screen and send us into darkness…where we hear Han Solo say, “Chewie…” Fade up and Han Solo and Chewbacca are standing on the Millennium Falcon. He finishes, “…we’re home.”
And that is the story of how I, a full grown and somewhat functional adult, cried in Primm, Nevada, because of the words of Han Solo.
I was not alone. (Perhaps I was the only one in Prim, Nevada, crying that day. Well, crying because of Star Wars. Anyway…).
The moment is, of course, actually in The Force Awakens and it has meaning and merit in the story itself, but you cannot deny that this was the teaser trailer that ignited a fanbase. Just a few months prior, in the middle of a Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the first teaser trailer had exploded onto the scene. It was—and still is—a great teaser trailer. Yet, outside of seeing the Millennium Falcon, we still hadn’t heard the old guard speak. New heroes, new droids, new villains (and their controversial new lightsabers) were fine, but what about the characters we grew up with? Was this going to work? Star Wars fans needed their fears eased. The second trailer presented us with that gift. Han Solo and Chewbacca were home…and so were we.
New Star Wars was done in 2012. One good animated TV show was hanging around and there were books and comics that many fans still enjoyed, but the experience of sitting down in a theater and watching new Star Wars was something of daydreams. That is, until 2012 and the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney. A new era was here. Speculation and its harder edged cousin, Expectation, took over the minds of even the most casual fans. What would this new Star Wars be like? What would it feel like? This was the moment we needed.
The composition of the shot echoed the very feeling and look of a promotional photo from the glory days in 1977. Chewbacca on the left with his bowcaster raised. Han on the right, smiling like the smuggler we grew up idolizing. The placement was intentional and a proclamation. The down time was no longer. The discussion and rancor around the prequels were in the past. This was going to be the Star Wars you loved.
Interestingly enough, seeing the moment in the trailer was so invigorating that a major plot point was initially glossed over. If Han and Chewbacca were now home…where had they been?! It was a sign post of what was to come in this new era of Star Wars. Following the fall of the Empire, our heroes weren’t going to be following the path we might have expected or wanted. Star Wars was introducing new heroes, yes, but it was about to challenge our old ones.
Han had run away. He and Chewbacca weren’t even on the Falcon. They were returning to it. Within the context of the movie, we had learned that Han Solo, war hero (or was it infamous smuggler?) was cut adrift and running far away from the realistic responsibilities that had followed him, Leia, and Luke after toppling the Emperor and his minions. It was a surprisingly wonderful take on the saga. Star Wars was now saying that, yes, you are going to have great victories in life, but that doesn’t stop the challenges. That doesn’t keep you from making mistakes and being weighed down by regrets. Yet Han Solo and Chewbacca stepped back onto the Millennium Falcon and, though Han didn’t fully understand it right then, they were back where they belonged. You can’t—and don’t—have to run forever. Han and Chewie were home, but it wasn’t just them. We all were.