apropos of nothing

Chewbacca Was Not the Original Wingman

Courtesy of Spike TV


Spike TV has gone all-out in the bus-stop-poster department to promote their ongoing airing of the original Star Wars trilogy. Since Spike is supposed to be the Man Channel, the slogans tend to focus on things like Princess Leia’s gold bikini and how embarrassing it must have been for Anakin Skywalker to be called “Annie.” Vaguely annoying, perhaps — there are so many other action movies out there with crude macho overtones; do we really have to invent them for a movie where they don’t actually exist? — but they really cross the line with this one. “Chewbacca: The Original Wingman.” Hardly, friends.

You don’t even have to be a dork to know that Chewbacca was Han Solo’s co-pilot, not his wingman, although maybe you do have to be a dork to point out that the trilogy’s most prominent wingman was Luke’s fellow X-Wing pilot Wedge Antilles, who flew with the Rebel Alliance during both Death Star missions and the defense of the Hoth base. Wedge (and Han Solo and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon) pulled the most important wingman move of the series by holding off Imperial TIE fighters as the Death Star closed on Yavin, allowing Luke — and we’re sorry we didn’t realize the Spike-style crudeness of this metaphor until we started typing it — to shoot his torpedo down the Death Star’s exhaust port, thus impressing the shit out of Leia. Luke was, of course, ultimately unable to “hit that” because “that” was his sister. Luke Skywalker’s genetic heritage: the original cockblock. —Ben Mathis-Lilley

Chewbacca Was Not the Original Wingman