JJ Abrams Turned Han, Luke and Leia into Losers

Ahhh, Luke, Han and Leia, our childhood heroes. When we last saw them, they were in a moment of great triumph. Against all odds, they’d just destroyed the galactic empire. In one fell swoop, they proved their innermost personal philosophy to be right and true. At the same time, their victory justified us, because we had cast our lot with them. From that moment forward, we’d use the lessons they'd taught us to guide our own development. It’s for this reason, that many of us were so excited to see Episode VII. What was next for our great heroes? What further accolades had they won in the intervening time? Surely the championship trophies they’d accrued in the last thirty years were sufficient to require several industrial sized buildings to display them all!

Er....well, not according to JJ Abrams. According to him, our heroes are and always have been MAJOR LOSERS!

So what happened after all the heavy lifting got done in “Return of the Jedi”? The Emperor was dead and our heroes had the universe presented to them on a silver platter, ready to be molded into a new and better society. Did they succeed?

Nope, they totally blew it.

Turns out, Han Solo is such a terrible father that his kid becomes basically the worst person in the whole galaxy. He’s running around slaughtering villagers with a poorly constructed lightsaber (our venerable triumvirate couldn’t even teach the kid to make a lightsaber).

Luke Skywalker is such a bad Jedi teacher that he scurried off like a coward to live in hiding for 30 years. His one student? Yeah...the same kid who is slaughtering villagers. But you know, that’s a good lesson Luke, if you make one mistake don’t try to fix it, just run off and live on an island for 30 years and cry into a corner while another empire takes over. Wow...what a grand hero.

Also, Leia and Han can’t get along and they’re both too stubborn to make it work. So much for the power of love folks, divorce is a totally acceptable alternative, even if it means your kid turns into a homicidal maniac who slaughters innocent villagers with a lightsaber that he didn’t put together correctly. As long as YOU have free time to hot rod around the galaxy or be a general in a terrorist group, who gives a crap about the emotional problems of your kid? If I wanted to see all this, I would have just stayed at home.

Look, I realize that it’s not “marketable” to have 60 year old actors as the leads in major films. I also realize that some of those actors have been pushing to have their characters killed off for decades. But how about having a little respect for the source material? I mean, when did the greatest freedom fighters in the universe turn into a bunch of incompetent, selfish wimps? Did it happen just about the time JJ Abrams took over? Ahhh...I see.

The way I remember it, Han Solo was THE MAN. It’s kind of pathetic to see him hot rodding around in his old age. Look, he can still be THE MAN and have EVOLVED.

E—VO—LOU—TION!!!

In real life, Jack Nicholson was a bad ass at 30 and he was a bad ass at 60, but he wasn’t the SAME kind of bad ass! That’s where the creativity comes in. You can’t use 60 year old Harrison Ford to play 30 year old Han Solo. In the first meeting somebody should have said, “so is Han Solo still a cocky rogue?” Everybody goes, “YEAH!” Then they think about it for two seconds and say...but wait, wouldn’t it be even MORE bad ass if he was in charge of like six planets and spent all his time talking about all his great exploits like a TOTAL BOSS? That guy should walk into a room and people should pee their pants because they all know this motherfu#$er shoots first!

And you know what, why not have him still be with Leia? That would have been the daring choice, yeah, those two are still together. They’re still the people they were in the trilogy, but they’ve grown, they’ve become BETTER! That’s good writing, that’s good storytelling. Why not do that?

Also, I don’t understand why you spend 5 billion to buy the rights to certain characters and then kill them. That’s just knee-jerk cheap lazy storytelling designed for temporary impact instead of longevity.

Way to go JJ Abrams. You should have just had Luke, Han and Leia wake up after the 2^nd death star blew up only to find out it was all a dream and that they were just three drunk losers sitting around on a bar on Tatooine, every now and then Luke and Han get into a fist fight over Leia as Chewbacca buys her shots and slips her out the back. Then they wait for their next support check from the empire so they can feast on Domino’s pizza. That’d make a great merchandising tie-in by the way.

Ya blew it...people are going to start figuring that out when they get over the special effects (which are pretty cool I have to admit...too bad the story needs to be trash compacted, and where the hell is Lando?).