The more details we learn about Han and Leia’s marriage after the original trilogy, the more depressing it all sounds. Or is that just me?
To clarify, I can completely understand why these two got married in the first place. The Han Solo of the original trilogy is dangerous and exciting — plus he’s a looker (as is Leia, of course). He had to be a far cry from the sort of suitors that Leia ran into growing up. He fulfills all of the “maybe I can be the one to change him” fantasies of my late teens, all of which were proved deplorably wrong later in life. (Thank goodness I didn’t make the mistake of marrying any of those types — but I came close a couple of times, as many people do.)
Their decision to wed makes a lot more sense if we assume that the big age difference between Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford is about on par with the age difference between the characters they play. After all, marrying a cute-but-reckless intergalactic smuggler and adrenaline junkie with a gambling problem seems like a fun idea when you’re 20-ish. But after a decade or two goes by, and you realize you’re a lot smarter and more emotionally stable than he is, and also you have a kid together, and also you’re kind of busy being a political leader and he isn’t stepping up to the fatherhood plate at all … well, let’s just say I can see where things might’ve gone wrong.
Anyway, in the kick-off to the couple’s wedded blisslessness, Han Solo apparently built a kitchenette for General Leia Organa on the Millennium Falcon. Perhaps he hoped that would make the place feel a little homier for her. Here’s a cross-section from the larger image of the Falcon’s interior:
What’s really unbelievable is that the Falcon didn’t have a kitchen before Leia married Han. Actually, no it isn’t. I would totally buy that Chewie and Han would subsist on nothing but dried jerky, astronaut ice cream, and stubbornness. I also have a theory that the two of them expect Chewie’s wife to do all of their laundry every time they visit for Life Day. (Don’t forget — that Star Wars Christmas Special is still as canonical as this new kitchenette!)
Some people were mad about the idea of Han building a kitchen for Leia because it seems kind of sexist. (Personally, I think it sounds exactly like something Han would do, which … doesn’t mean it isn’t sexist.) Here’s what Jason Fry, the author of the book in which this map of the Millennium Falcon appears, had to say about that, via his Tumblr:
The idea wasn’t that Princess Leia – General Organa, for Pete’s sake – would obviously need a kitchen to potter around in, or feel the instinct to hang up her blaster and start cooking for her new husband and his Wookiee pal.
That wasn’t the idea at all. As I imagined it, the galley isn’t there for Leia to cook in – it’s there so someone else could use it to make something that Leia might want to eat … [Ed. note: No mention is included as to who this “someone” might be. Chewie? Han? Ha! Ha ha ha.]
Leia’s a military leader, so I don’t see her as finicky. But she grew up as a member of the royal house of Alderaan and served in the Imperial Senate. Those months eating Corellian TV dinners and reheated Wookiee goulash on the Falcon had to rankle – and I imagined that later they’d become a humorous bone of contention between her and Han. Plus the Falcon is Han’s home – as we all cheered to hear him tell Chewie back at Celebration.
That all checks out for me, although life on the Falcon still sounds about as luxurious as living out of a camper trailer — kitchen or no kitchen. It’s hard to imagine Leia fitting in to Han’s life in the grand scheme without both of them making some compromises, and I have a feeling that this kitchen was Han’s big compromise. I get how he would see it as a pretty romantic gesture to extend as a wedding gift, but I’m not too convinced that Han made very many “compromises” after this one … especially if it didn’t elicit the response that he wanted.
How do you think Leia would’ve reacted to her new kitchen?
(via Slashfilm, image via Movie Pilot)
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