We knew early on going into ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘ that Han Solo’s funeral wouldn’t be included and now director Rian Johnson shares why. Previously, both cast and crew have shared that as the film picks up right where ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ left off that there wouldn’t be any room to spare for the Rebels to say their last goodbyes. This still seems to be the exact case when Johnson is speaking about it. In fact, he makes a direct reference to another film in the franchise when making this point.
“[There was no debate of showing Han Solo’s funeral], just because pacing-wise it didn’t have a place. It’s tough in Star Wars because I always think about the mourning that Luke gives to Ben’s death, which is all of four-and-a-half seconds before, ‘Come on kid we’re not out of this yet’ and then boom, you’re into ‘Yay, woo-hoo! Don’t get cocky!’ There’s the moment for it, but it’s not long. We don’t have time for our sorrows, commanders. That’s kind of the thing of Star Wars; you don’t really linger on grief because you’re moving forward.”
The film was able to show the hurt felt by our heroes from the loss of Solo, but we didn’t get a funeral. Honestly, we already had too much going on with the stretched space race mixed with the Canto Bight side plot, not even mentioning the whole Luke Skywalker redemption story that was going on.
Luke’s quiet response fully emoted what you could tell he felt though General Leia Organa had a scene that tried to convey this as well:
“I think we do it a little more in this movie than typically is done. I really held onto that moment of Leia before they come out of hyperspace, just that moment of feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders… It was never something where there was an organic place for it like, ‘Oh it would go here.’ It was always something like, ‘We wanna get this right up on our feet and going from the start.'”
While there wasn’t room for it in the film, it does sound like it was able to occur off-screen. Han Solo’s funeral will be included in the novelization of ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi.’ I almost feel that this is a moment which would have been better left off at this point, but we’ll see if they had time for one prior or after the First Order attacks.
Do you agree that there was no room in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ to include a funeral? Was Johnson’s need to start off with jumping right into the action preferable to not saying goodbye to one of the greatest heroes of the franchise? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Collider
