Lit Jabba Desilijic and the Cerebrovascular Insult

In the ANH SE and the works that use that as a characterization touchstone (which is most of them) Jabba's this avuncular gladhanding crime boss with murder on his mind but a twinkle in his eye. He tends to move around under his own power, getting his hands dirty and collecting loyal allies as he scraps his way up from the bottom and builds a criminal empire that weathers decades of galactic turmoil from the Clone Wars to the Rebellion. He's definitely given to mood swings and has major impulse control issues but but he's also canny and clever, a shrewd businessman who's ambitious enough to take on powerful beings from Gardulla to Jilliac but smart enough to avoid punching above his weight.

And then, suddenly, in Return of the Jedi he's devolved into this immobile tower of gristle, who sleeps in his throne room and can barely keep his eyes open and whose chief obsession in life is apparently making a krayt dragon fight his rancor. He's so preoccupied with this childish diversion that not only has he bent nearly all his resources toward the acquisition of a krayt dragon, his rage at Luke scuttling the plan is such that he determines to kill him for it, in spite of Luke being worth a fortune alive and a visit from an enraged Lord Vader dead. And not only has he lost his vitality and his business sense, but gone also is his backslapping myo bukee charm: it's difficult to imagine the Jabba of RotJ inspiring loyalty in a monkey-lizard, let alone his many lieutenants.

So what gives? I think there's only one explanation for such a sudden change in mental and physical health in a Hutt of his age (which is only 600 or so-- barely out of his thirties in human terms): Jabba the Hutt had a stroke.

 

Sympathy reply.

 

Well to be honest I only posted this because I was told to, so. No not really?

But I guess we could use it as a springboard to talk about Jabba's characterization through the years, and the various things influencing it, and whether the RotJ or ANH version is actually the most prominent. And which is or should be the real Jabba, anyway? (Millennials love the CGI Jabba of the SE and the prequels but true gen-X fans know RotJ is the real one!) Then we could talk about Hutt biology and if strokes are even a thing they have. Are they gastropods or pinnipeds or something in between? That one Hutt got half his head eaten, that one time, and he kept on ticking! Someone could come in and scoff that obviously RotJ Jabba is stuck on his dais because he's a puppet, duh, stop trying to overexplain everything. Someone else could come in and be like um this is wrong, in the current Star Wars ongoing comic Jabba is characterized more like the RotJ version, and then I could lament that we don't have Legends/Canon thread tags, because I profoundly do not care about the current Star Wars ongoing. Someone could point out that Jabba actually says mah bukee, not myo bukee, and I could be like oh yeah you're right I had myo in my head beacuse Rav says that in the legacy comics, and then we could go on a tangent about Huttese dialects and whether the mah/myo distinction is temporal or astrographical in nature. Then someone could latch onto the krayt dragon vs rancor thing as emblematic of everything that's stupid about the old EU, and why it deserved to die, and then someone else could get upset at that person and then it could devolve into another round of moaning and countermoaning about disney. We could talk about the various Jabba stories and how delightfully/distastefully weird they are, and then maybe someone could lament that Jabba-centric stories are a thing at all, because he's a misogynist slug (literally), and that's problematic to appear to celebrate, and then someone else could get upset about cultural marxists ruining star wars and throw in a non-sequitor about emasculation and then everyone could stand around awkwardly until a mod intervenes. Then maybe someone could, apropos of nothing, declare that Farscape or Bablyon Five or Power Rangers or whatever other nerd property does crime bosses better than star wars anyway, and then someone could post the video of Diego Luna declaring his desire to touch yabba. The possibilities are endless!

 

You mean the real Jaba?

 

Vader did allmost choke Jabba to death in the Vader comic. That was shortly after ANH.

Maybe his health started to decline as a result of that?

 

off to a good start guys let's keep it up.

 

Wasn't there a Hutt in Legends with a big hole in his head? Mace and Depa ran into him on Nar Shaada.

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Rotta must have died between ANH and ROTJ. The trauma of losing his son made Jabba into a lazy hutt who just hid in his palace all day listening to music and watching his rancor eat people. There, the discrepancy is resolved.

 

I know people who get interviewed multiple times on the same press tour just have the same lines they just keep repeating, but man, I think Diego Luna is really creepy now, just super obsessed with wanting to feel Jabba!

 

Gargonn, from Star Wars: Republic #17 & 18. And gross, omg.

Creepy? I have never related more to a celebrity than I do to Diego Luna in that video.

 

Yeah! Dude was still functioning pretty well with half of a head. I don't think that helps the stroke theory a bunch, unless it's the other side of the brain that controls the functions Jabba seems to have lost.

Conversely, RotJ Jabba has just found some downer marijuana strain. It would account for the laziness, falling asleep in his throne room, not being able to keep his eyes open, mood change, etc.
Jabba the Hutt and the Bong of Bliss.

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Perhaps what we're seeing in Jabba is the hereditary disease described by ALIEN EXODUS? He's reached the point in his life cycle where he should be entering the Varlian pupal stage but no longer can.

 

I think the Jabba we see in RotJ is a Jabba who's already fed up with Han Solo and his friends so he's not really interested in gladhanding. Sleeping in his throne room seems less weird when you take into account that apparently so does everyone.

 

It could be that Rotta is just a terrible child and it has finally worn Jabba down by RotJ.

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Obviously Jaabba defeated Jabba and took over.

 

"Star Wars was a mistake."
- Grand Adm. Jello, 2018

 

From Han Solo's commentary in The Essential Guide to Alien Species:

 

I love that the EU actually offered an explanation for this. Of course that explanation doesn't do much to explain Jabba's bulk and immobility in comics and other stories written before 1997, such as "The Dynasty Trap," which is set pre-ANH and shows Jabba puttering around on a hover platform, large enough to literally eat someone whole.

In the canon comics Grakkus the Hutt goes through a similar personality progression as observed here for Jabba, but in reverse. He's pretty ruthless in his first appearance, gradually becoming more personable over time. (His physical size varies depending on who's drawing him - he was absolutely monstrous in his first appearance, later shrunk down to a size small enough to fit in the Millennium Falcon's cockpit, then re-inflated at some point.)

 

Well, if nothing else, this thread caused me to see this video. I don't know if that's good, but... I just had no idea.

 

double post

 

believe it or not the OP was entirely in earnest

@jSarek that's super interesting, thanks. I don't think it really holds up as an explanation but I had no idea the character shift was acknowledged IU, that's pretty cool.

 

Arrogance, maybe? We're talking about, AFAI can tell, the crime boss on a usefully-distant-but-not-too-distant backwater (Outer Rim, yes, but helpful for easier spice distribution than the more-controlled ports Coreward), who's also a successful member of a species known for being an ancient, dreaded, conquering bunch of spacefarers. Ego is often considered a virtue among Hutts.

Plus, in ROTJ, we're seeing him in his house. I know plenty of RL people who drop their polite masks behind their "castle" doors and act differently (for good or ill - thankfully, none of them are obese gangsters with carnivorous pets ).

Your delivery guy costs you money, so you make an example of him. THEN, his punk-shebs friends dare to crash your house party and threaten you twice - TWICE! AND one of the snot-nosed brats kills your favorite pet. That's just bantha shavit.

From a Hutt perspective, this is both disrespect and a potential loss of face to other kadijics. Plus, Jabba knows Vader is Palps' pet enforcer. Rolling over for Imperial credits and looking weak to your peers (who'll likely be around much longer than the piddly little biped regime and its' arrogant pretentions), instead of avenging a slight to one's domain ? Kriff that noise.

(Of course, we're not supposed to be sympathetic to the misogynist bloat, nor should we be. But in his mind, Jabba's got his reasons.)