Sometimes least favorites are more fun than favorites. As a wee one, my youngest son had a unique system for expressing his favorites. Unfortunately, it sort of negated the whole point. When it came to foods/meals he had a tier system: pizza, ice cream, and french fries landed on the “first favorites” tier. Items such as “big chicken” and cake were “second favorites.” This went on and on until you arrived at broccoli, which I suppose he just couldn’t morally support as a favorite of any kind.
Today, I’m discussing that broccoli category, but specifically in reference to terrible lines in favorite films. Like catching a gnarly piece of gristle amidst a mouthful of your favorite meal, clunkers can distract from the overall experience. Sometimes a film goes awry due to the overall premise or bad casting or smelly acting. As a writer, I find it least tolerable when a compelling moment is spoiled due to lazy or inept writing.
There is one particular moment in one of my all time favorite movies that has haunted me for the last forty years, and I simply can’t keep quiet on the matter any longer. The film is The Empire Strikes Back. This was one of the first (if not the first) films I ever saw in the theatre. The year is 1980, Camp Bowie Ft. Worth, Texas. I’ve yet to turn six years old. My feet dangle above the sticky floor as I teeter on the edge of my bouncy-folding-movie-theatre seat. The opening credits finish rolling up the screen only to give way to a menacing Imperial Star Destroyer in the process of launching several probe droids to scour the sector. Of course one of those droids crashes into the frozen surface of Hoth, where our hero, Luke Skywalker, straddles his unwitting tauntaun (poor wretched beast).
Anywho, we all know how things progress from there. In a short while, Luke finds himself in peril and his presence is soon missed back at the frozen rebel base. Naturally, as night begins to fall Han Solo is perturbed by the absence of his good buddy, Luke. Being the petulant bad boy we all know and love, Han hatches the terrible idea of heading out into the unforgiving elements in search of Luke—despite the base being locked down for the night, and the near certain odds of freezing to death as a Han-Solo-Sicle. So, some poor schmuck (I assume the deck officer), earnestly attempting to prevent Han’s death, states the simple fact of the matter, “Your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!” (By the way, tauntauns are indigenous to Hoth, so you know, it’s not like riding a camel into the frozen tundra. It’s about to get damn cold.)
And then comes the line I can’t excuse, no matter how hard I try. Maybe Harrison Ford is to blame, rather than some caffeine-addled writer struggling to survive between Chinese takeout orders. Maybe ol’ Harry improvised the worst clunker of my childhood. Maybe. But I gotta think there is a lazy writer to blame. (May they rest in peace, if they’ve already passed. I would image this terrible line has haunted them much more so than it has me.)
In the heat of passion for his friend in jeopardy, Han responds to the earnest schmuck of a deck officer as he mounts his tauntaun in order to ride into the teeth of the ice beast that is Hoth with the words, “Then I’ll see you in hell!”
That’s the stinker. I mean, really, is that appropriate here, Han? This guy is on your side. He’s being rational. He’s informing you that you’re a rash idiot prone to poor decisions. And he is doing so in quite a tactful manner I might add.
At the same time, I can understand the hot-burning personality of Han Solo. He’s impetuous, and we love him for that. I’m totally fine with Han choosing an almost certain death over doing nothing to save Luke. He’s a true antihero. But still. Just because Han has accepted his own condemned fate of burning in hell, doesn’t make it fair at all to assume the helpful deck officer will meet him there. Why is the deck officer condemned to hell? Because he refused to leave the entire base at risk? Because he didn’t join Han in his death wish? The obvious answer is that the deck officer did nothing to deserve eternal damnation.
You only tell someone you “will see them in hell” when your intent is to lump that person into your own wretched lot. The phrase is a method of saying, “Obviously, since we are both bound for hell, I’ll see you there. I might be bad, but you’re even worse, you SOB.” This is not one of those instances, and the writer knew it. I know they knew it. But they couldn’t be bothered to think of an alternative that would hit as hard as a known expression that ended with the word, “hell!” (Perhaps they were trying to borrow from the gravity of the classic moment from the Planet of the Apes when Heston aptly applied the h-e-double-hockey-sticks expletive.) For whatever reason, they went with the clunker. And my childhood (and adulthood) has been all the worse for it.
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