was Han Solo a bad guy?

[Sadishist]

He smuggled glitterstim via the Kessel Run to make credits for himself. Think of drug dealers today and how many lives they ruined by heroin, crack, meth, etc. Why is he a hero? What he did was more heinous than Vader. Edited April 5, 2014 by Sadishist

[ScarletBlaze]

Yes he may have started out like that but he began to change and winded up helping the Rebels. People make mistakes. When someone makes a mistake and changes, their past actions should not be held over their heads constantly. People should try to accept the fact they are changing.

 

Who hasn't made a mistake? Consider putting yourself in the shoes of someone like that and then consider if you are tyring to change whether or not you want people to constantly remind you about your past actions or would you rather have them give you a second chance.

Edited April 5, 2014 by ScarletBlaze

[StarSquirrel]

He smuggled glitterstim via the Kessel Run to make credits for himself. Think of drug dealers today and how many lives they ruined by heroin, crack, meth, etc. Why is he a hero? What he did was more heinous than Vader.

 

Vader cut children into pieces, blew up planets, murdered god knows how many of his own officers and enslaved countless beings of numerous species including Han Solo's own partner Chewbacca (who Solo saved from said slavery). Anyone with half a functioning brain wouldn't even begin to compare the two

 

Solo wasn't a bad guy. He was on the run from the empire after going AWOL (Solo used to be an Imperial officer) and freeing Chewie, so he would pick up any work he could. Since most legitimate work was watched by the imperials, he inevitably joined with less-than-legitimate people to find work. It really wasn't his choice, he was just surviving.

 

That said, read his Wookieepedia page and you'll have an appreciation for his circumstances and true nature.

 

I should also mention, he never sold, used, or promoted the spice. He did the job he was paid to do, there are far worse people involved in that trade than the guy who transports what his crimelord boss tells him to. Han knew what Jabba might do if he tried to bail on him, ya know kill him or freeze him in carbonite...

Edited April 5, 2014 by StarSquirrel

[Ycoga]

He smuggled glitterstim via the Kessel Run to make credits for himself. Think of drug dealers today and how many lives they ruined by heroin, crack, meth, etc. Why is he a hero? What he did was more heinous than Vader.

 

Smuggling is illegal (generally) but not always immoral. Consider the case of a man (Jim) that smuggles brandy during prohibition so that his favourite aunt can have her bedtime hot toddy. Aunt is pleased. It's illegal, but no case can be made that it's immoral, because there are smiles all around and no-one got hurt. However there is IMPLIED immorality because a law got broken. (You could make a point that it's the law which is immoral in this case because it will try to make an example of Jim who has done nothing wrong except break a liquor law - a law which history has shown was due to change anyway, making the prosection of people under it unjust. Similar claims can be made for laws that criminalise sex and love of homosexuals, for example; but that's beyond the scope of this post. Another consideration is the age of consent, which differs between countries, yet carries punishment specific to the relevant jurisdiction. what's illegal at 17 in the US has been legal in Spain for 3 years by then. Hence, another example of the difference between legality and immorality. My last example will be the legislated role of women in different countrys, where in some they have more rights than in others).

 

Point2 is that, today, when prohibition is no longer in effect, the circumstance above can never occur. Liquor is legally sold today, so Jim never needs to smuggle the brandy to his Aunt. Therefore, the law has changed, reducing the implied immorality. Result? All-round happiness.

 

Point3 is that, if you remove the illegality of glitterstim, Solo would not need to have smuggled it. You can't claim that all glitterstim users are destroyed by it - we don't have that evidence. If glitterstim were legal, like in point2 above, the implied immorality is reduced.

 

I don't see the connection between Solo making smuggling runs and the lives potentially ruined by drug usage today.

 

To answer your question, Solo is a hero because he was on the winning side at the end of the movies.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Ycoga

[DarthDymond]

He smuggled glitterstim via the Kessel Run to make credits for himself. Think of drug dealers today and how many lives they ruined by heroin, crack, meth, etc. Why is he a hero? What he did was more heinous than Vader.

Is drug dealing bad? Yes. Is it worse than straight up mass murder? No. (And that's setting aside the question of just what real-world drug Spice is most analogous to.)

 

Han Solo's character arc was one that starts out with him as a morally grey, if not outright "bad", character, who is a smuggler, who shoots first, who would say "better her than me" or "screw this I've got my money, I'm outta here", but who then goes through actual character development over the course of the movies (the lion's share of it in Ep. IV) and comes to the point of being a genuine hero who's willing to put his life on the line for a noble cause.

[StarSquirrel]

I don't see the connection between Solo making smuggling runs and the lives potentially ruined by drug usage today.

Actually the one correct thing said in that OP was spice is actually the SW equivalent of recreational drugs and they are addictive and they do cause fatalities.

 

That still doesn't make the drug mule guilty for what dealers, producers, and users do with it. Also note that without people like Solo the Rebellion would never have made it off the ground much less toppled the Empire.

[Ycoga]

Actually the one correct thing said in that OP was spice is actually the SW equivalent of recreational drugs and they are addictive and they do cause fatalities.

 

That still doesn't make the drug mule guilty for what dealers, producers, and users do with it. Also note that without people like Solo the Rebellion would never have made it off the ground much less toppled the Empire.

'I don't see the connection between Solo making smuggling runs and the lives potentially ruined by drug usage today.'

 

There's an implied connection but... I'm not interested in implications in this thread. To draw a clear conclusion, clear arguments must be made. What's the connection between Solo's smuggling and addictive drug usage today in real life?

Edited April 5, 2014 by Ycoga

[Beniboybling]

Calling him more heinous than Vader is perhaps an exaggeration... but yes, he is effectively a drugs smuggler.

 

Or at least was, you forgot the part where he becomes a hero of the Rebel Alliance and the New Republic. People change, and Han's journey from a hired-gun in it for the money to a true rebel is central to the plot of the OT.

 

That said the way spice is portrayed in Star Wars makes it seem much more akin to the far less harmful and recreational drugs prevalent in our own society like cannabis, LSD, ectasy etc. whereas more dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine are represented by death sticks. Look em up, they're nasty and Han doesn't smuggle them.

 

P.S. You might find this article an interesting read.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Beniboybling

[Beniboybling]

Actually the one correct thing said in that OP was spice is actually the SW equivalent of recreational drugs and they are addictive and they do cause fatalities.

 

That still doesn't make the drug mule guilty for what dealers, producers, and users do with it. Also note that without people like Solo the Rebellion would never have made it off the ground much less toppled the Empire.

To be quite honest Star Wars has taken a very amoral stance on the use of drugs, I think what that guy said is spot on, the main reason we frown upon Han for his drug smuggling is because its illegal, not because of the bad things it causes. Much likes most drugs in real life, most spices in Star Wars are OK if not fine if not used in excess and in reality is no worse, if not better, than alcohol. Yet if Han Solo was transporting alcohol we wouldn't bat an eyelid.

 

I don't want to drag real world morality debates into this, I'm just pointing out that in the Star Wars universe, much like (though to a greater extent) in the real world, spice is not frowned upon as something terrible, and neither are its users and dealers. Which is partly why I feel the Original Trilogy doesn't make a massive thing of it, and Han is not a bad guy.

[Little_Judas]

 

The Smuggler (the one from SWTOR) begins her adventure smuggling weapons for a extremely violent crime lord.

I know he turned out to be a patriot, but you can bet those weapons weren't solely for patriotic business, if they were at all.

 

 

Does this make the Smuggler a villain. No, she became a hero with a fancy medal and everything.

You don't have to be a saint to be the good guy in a story.

[psandak]

For the most part Han Solo does what he does (before joining the Rebellion) out of necessity:

 

 

He was a street urchin on Corellia before being whisked away by pirates

He eventually got out of that situation by joining the Imperial Navy, only to find that the Empire can be as cruel as pirates or worse.

He frees Chewbacca and is now a wanted man. How do wanted men survive? Usually by engaging in "extra-legal" activities.

So he puts his piloting skills to good use and becomes a smuggler. Yes one of the things he smuggles is drugs (spice) and he looks the other way when he does because he's in it for the money. That makes him a greedy SOB, but not necessarily a "bad" guy.

 

 

Read the Han Solo Trilogy.

[ItachiZaku]

A criminal is a criminal.

[Khevar]

A criminal is a criminal.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

[Sangiban]

He's obviously lightside, but, taking a branch from Mass Effect, he's more on the renegade end.

[DarthDymond]

A criminal is a criminal.

The whole rebellion are criminals, they're openly committing acts of treason, terrorism, arson, etc. etc. etc. against their lawful government.

[Beniboybling]

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Ha, just what I was thinking.

[Bejarid]

He was on the run from the empire after going AWOL

 

Wrong. Solo wasn't on the run from the Empire (until after he'd joined the Rebellion, even if only sorta-kinda joined) and he didn't go AWOL; he was dishonorably discharged from the Imperial Navy after striking a superior officer who was about to whip then-enslaved Chewbacca to death. Having morals is apparently a firing-offense in Palpatine's Empire.

[ImmortalLowlife]

A criminal is a criminal.

 

You'd be surprised what you'd do when you don't have any choices. Until you've been at rock bottom, you don't know how far you'll go.

[Babooon]

A criminal is a criminal.

 

Well wouldn't that technically make Luke and Leia criminals and just as much of a bad guy as Han? Leia was leading a rebellion against the established government, which Palpatine didn't establish illegally technically. And Luke blew up a government sponsored "space station", which probably cost millions if not billions of credits and years to build, not to mention all the military lives he took when blowing it up.

 

Just saying.

[wilsonstone]

You'd be surprised what you'd do when you don't have any choices. Until you've been at rock bottom, you don't know how far you'll go.

 

True in real life and fiction. Take some other science fiction 'heroes' for example.

 

The Crew of Firefly: They actively commit crimes in order to "keep on flyin'" in their ship. Sure, they've drawn the line at stealing medicine that was needed for a community of sick people on some crap planet, but they're not above theft in general and even murder. Yet from the show's perspective they're the good guys.

 

Blake's 7 : On that show they even said once that only one crew member, Cally, was the only one onboard the ship that wasn't a convicted criminal. While Blake himself may have been falsely convicted the others were not and admitted it. Even after the character of Blake was written out of the show for the last few seasons the crew looked to Avon for leadership. He became the shows hero and as cool a character as he was Avon was a cold blooded sociopath, and on occasion has threatened his 'friends'. He even tried to kill another main character once.

 

Farscape: Again, a ship...(a living ship!) full of characters that were convicts, mostly. Of course most of them were wrongly convicted, but you could aruge that Han Solo was wrongly discharged from the Imperial Navy. (sort of, I guess).

 

Its interesting that each one of those examples has characters that are supposed to be criminals but the establishment they're fighting is always some horrible totalitarian regime that does things to people so heinous the criminals look all the better for fighting them.

 

So I'd agree that Han Solo may have done some illegal things out of desperation, but that doesn't actually make him a 'bad guy'.

[Drudenfusz]

When we meet Han Solo in A New Hope the first time he is quite a shady character, sure. But you know what, characters in stories have character arcs (at least the more important ones), and he changes over the three original Star Wars movies, the Han Solo in Episode VI is no longer the same he was in Episode IV. So, when we see Anakin's fall (look how innocent the kid is in Episode I), then Han is evolving in the other direction. So, was Han a bad guy before he met Luke and Leia? Yes! Was he still a bad guy after the event of the movies? No! People change, and they do so not just in stories...