ST Harrison Ford (Han Solo) in TFA

Nobody in The Force Awakens is selling drugs.

 

You are not alone here, I was deeply disgusted by Han's recidivism, and I am (or was) a big fan of the character. Regressing Han to his ANH state was deliberate, though it was likely done ignorant of or in disregard of the consequences. I think they thought no one would care. Well, I care, and Luke would care, too.

What's more, Han callously relates that his entire crew save Chewie was killed in the process of smuggling dangerous beasts. He doesn't seem to care in the slightest. This doesn't seem like the Han Solo that befriended Luke Skywalker so quickly.

He also seems to be in even bigger debt than before, now to multiple criminal organizations, and unlike during the OT, he doesn't seem to have any honest intention of paying his debts this time.

"Your game is old". Indeed it is.

 

Noone really says that he’s done the right thing by going back to smuggling, though. It is an immoral thing he’s doing, but that’s part of the tragedy of the Solo family. Ben turned to the dark side and that was a hard blow for Han. To deal with that, he turned to the profession that he, sadly, felt most at home with. He tried to escape the trauma by rewinding.

Ultimately, he redeems himself by confronting Ben in an act of fatherly responsibility.

I wasn’t much of a Han fan before, but TFA made me love the character.

 

What is that Han was doing that is considered immoral? Illegal is not the same as immoral.

 

Well, morality is ultimately subjective, but to me, smuggling lifeforms is definitely on the dark side.
That is, of course, assuming that King Prana wants the rathtars purely for entertainment or food, or as a status symbol - or all three...

 

If you smuggle cattle, that would be transported anyway, perhaps to use as food, in order to avoid tariffs and taxes, that's illegal. But it doesn't make it immoral except to someone who considers all illegal activity to be immoral and vice versa. Like when some regions do not allow gambling. It's usually because it has been considered immoral and those that thought so had influence in creating the laws. Go to the neighboring region where gambling is allowed, you're likely to find that nobody considers it immoral.

Smuggling can just mean doing something that would be done anyway, but doing it unofficially. In order to avoid dilution of your profits.

Doing it officially may demand that you observe all sorts of costly precautions. Again. It's not necessarily immoral. In fact the restrictions may actually have been lobbied by special interests wanting to price out small, independent operators and allow larger corporations to monopolise a corner of the industry.

As for Han's crew. Unless we think that Han press ganged, shanghaied, flimflammed, conned or tricked people into doing something dangerous, there's no reason to assume his attitude towards his crew, who were probably at least as interested in self profit as Han, to be callous. We know that Han is not readily sentimental.

 

I "liked" Han when he was a smuggler in A New Hope who was prepared to smuggle Ben and Luke to Alderann. As did a lot of people at the time.

His reappearance as a smuggler in TFA is not the triumphant return. The triiumphant return is when he cuts through the BS about the Starkiller, boosts the new guy's cred and takes on his biggest challenge in any appearance he's had yet.

Of course we should be ambivalent about his relative fall from relative grace. Leia's disappointment is meant to be shared by the audience. But look at where she is. Still embroiled in war. We are also made aware that this was precipitated by the actions of his son in creating this conflict, and not just a motive free mid-life crisis for part of the the audience's benefit.

What it does though is provide a great redemption arc that would have been difficult to achieve if Han had been the slightly idealised state that is suggested he be in after ROTJ.

 

In my view, disrespecting life is always immoral. That’s not to say that transporting a life form is by definition disrespectful, but to regard a living creature merely as food and waste products - or as a source of entertainment - is.

I don’t mean to derail the discussion, just wanted to clarify.

 

The things he’s smuggling seem to be rich people’s playthings, though - you could argue he’s using his skills to help very rich people cut corners. Thats not the same as drug smuggling or people smuggling.
In Star Wars, smuggling has always been a bit more “fairytale Rogue pirate” than being analogous to real world smugglers

 

it seems to me that they didn't really give much thought to this , they basically had the attitude of wanting to re-set everything so that it was as much like ANH as possible , so Leia is leader of the Rebels again , the FO is basically the Empire complete with TIEs and stormtroopers etc. , and Han is back to being a smuggler .

 

Yeah pretty much my view, the issue here is Abrams wanted to reset Han not that his reversion was an obvious direction for the character to take.

That's not to say Han needed a "happy ever after" story from the OT but there could have been many ways to develop the character without so obviously disregarding his development in the original films. The trouble is this would have meant developing a new version of the character rather than resorting to simple revivalism.

 

Han wasn't evangelical about the force or hiding from his heroic past in ANH. His rehabilitation is what really defines the character in this story and not the role he's simply chosen to seek refuge in since it comes naturally to him. That's hardly a reversal or a reset.

 

How is this redemptive? All evidence is that "El Chapo" is affectionate towards his family, too. He's still a drug lord responsible for the death and torture of hundreds of people, the ruin of Mexico civil society, and the destruction of countless more lives through drug dealing. The President of Uzbekistan isn't "redeemed" from boiling people alive because he dotes on his daughter. Loving your family doesn't make you a good person. It's a pretty bare minimum requirement for having normal emotional interactions. Come on, guys.

I think you're being more than a bit credulous here, engaging in apologism the film really does not support. He was doing huge deals with a group of people called the "Death Gang" whom he knew on a first name basis. Let's not pretend this was a lollipops and rainbows enterprise. He dealt with hardened criminals. Murderers. People like the Hutts, who the Star Wars universe has shown us over and over again are callous slave traders, drug dealers, and all other manner of exploiters. Han will get in bed with all of them unflinchingly. Please ask yourself if you would defend any person in real life who regularly did business with a death squad? Would you try to tell us how it wasn't really so bad then? At what point after constently associating with awful people do we have to admit that someone is probably awful themselves?

 

Oh you're right. I'm thinking about Star Wars all the wrong way.

 

Really though Jabba I think your picking out a specific issue that's much more a reflection of the kind of film TFA is as a whole. It might style itself as stylistically very similar to ANH but actually I think it followed the mold of Abrams previous Trek films much more closely. That style isn't just lighter(includiong character deaths does not alter that) for me but very heavily dependant on nostalgia, in the case of Han I actually think its a strange combination of familiarity on one hand and actually not having watched the originals for along time for much of the public. The idea of Han as a lovable smuggler that TFA goes with it really not the character we see in ANH, he's charming certainly but also far more morally questionable.

That does ironically mean that I think TFA fails to achieve the very thing it was trying for in "rebooting" Han, the version in this film whilst he doesn't really hold up to much thought in terms of his morals and journey post ROTJ also fails to have any real sense of danger about him or much of an arc.

To me it would have been vastly more effective to have had a Han who hadn't reverted to his previous role and the obvious immorality to it but rather had reverted to some of his old cynicism due to post ROTJ events. Abrams Han though never really gives off the feeling of a truly damaged man for me, he's far too chirpy and willing to help.that again seems totally at odds with the position we meet him in.edsx

 

Jabba-wocky: I see it as a redemption because I believe that Han decides to - once again - leave his smuggling days behind him and fully embrace the situation that he was trying to avoid. That was the whole point of him going back to smuggling; that he was running away from it all (Perhaps he was talking more about himself than about Luke when he said he felt responsible...). But here we see him finally facing his son and doing what he can to make things better again.
I really don’t see him returning to piracy after that.

 

I'm real nostalgic about all the times in A New Hope that Han was a forlorn former hero who makes the ultimate sacrifice while trying to show compassion to his errant, misguided son.

It seems to have escaped people that TFA spends a fair bit of time showing how ultimately misguided, futile and hapless Han's return to smuggling is. And how seeking out the iconic vessel from his smuggling past actually binds him fatally closer to the struggle for goodness.

 

I don't think the latter really happens though, Han's smuggling is introduced as an entertaining caper and never actually addressed as a negative, what there is of his relationship with Rey mostly depends on the draw of her working with him on the Falcon and potentially joining him in the future.

On the reverse side I don't think Han is portrayed nearly enough as a forlorn former hero, he's bright and chirpy when we meet him.