Decker V. Solo

Interestingly we've had 2 returning characters played by Harrison Ford from from the movies before time.

Han Solo from the recent-ish Star Wars movie and Rick Decker from the even more recent Bladerunner movie.

But how well do they make that triumphant return?

Han Solo

I'll get this out of the way first. As controversial to some people as this quote of mine is. 'Star Wars; The Force Awakens' wasn't that great.

The reason for this was that it was purely piggybacking of nostalgia to the point where the story was a complete rehash of the original plot.

This Dorkly video illustrates this well enough:

p​And because of this Han Solo never gets a unique role other than the fact that Han and Leia do indeed get together and make a tiny Kylo. But frankly that was a forced and deeply overlooked plot line that holds no baring to the story.

And just in case anybody doesn't believe me, please imagine the movie without Leia, Han and Kylo's relation to each other. Han would probably still be alive but for nostalgic reasons they'd still kill him off because they wrote him in as the opening nostalgic character, probably in an action packed standoff with Kylo and Leia won't even care since he's the bad guy.

None of the small talk about Kylo apparently being Leia and Han's son changes the story.

Compare that to the original Star Wars movie trilogy when it was revealed that Leia and Luke were siblings.

This meant something to the story. Apparently the great secret of Luke's sister was to protect them as children since the Emperor knew that any offspring of Anakin/Darth Vader could pose a threat to the Empire.

One argument that was passed my way when I mentioned this to a friend was "Kylo needed to let go of everything he loved to completely turn to the dark side". To that I say "How does that change Kylo?" and "Why did that relationship have to exist at all?".

When Kylo killed Han nothing changed. He didn't get more intimidating, he didn't suddenly get better at waving his large glowstick. All that changed is a little part of every Star Wars fan died when Solo was flying Solo straight downwards.

And I already mentioned that if Kylo was somebody else he would still be treated the same. The movie just runs about 5 minutes longer because of the waste of dialogue about bringing Kylo home.

It doesn't matter how much I explain it. Han Solo existed to hype up the trailers nostalgically and die in this film.

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Rick Decker was almost masterfully put into Bladerunner 2049.

You could consider this my review of Bladerunner 2049 but I thought this kind of Blog post would be much more prosperous than a mere comparison between both Bladerunner and 2049.

But for the sake of opinion, I'll quickly go over the movies.

You'd think that '2049' would play off the nostalgia left behind by Bladrunner. Not so. I watched Bladerunner the day prior to watching the new Bladerunner 2049 movie in theatres and frankly... there was almost no difference in quality of theme between them.

Both movies were dark yet colourful with boobs, smog, back-end Chinatown style restaurants and a giant corporation that makes replicants. To some who just read the last few paragraphs about Star Wars, the fact that both Bladerunner movies having huge, corrupt companies might set off some alarms of just copying the plot of the movie for nostalgia's sake. Wrong again!

Despite how similar they are, they have different aims. The new company is...

SPOILER ALERT!

trying to design replicants that can procreate to try and keep up with demand and is what the movie revolves around for there exists a replicant that was born from another replicant and because this happens without the aid of the manufacturers it could change the tide of how replicants are used as slaves and how they could be more human than humans.

It's a good story idea and it still aligns itself perfectly with the already established theme on slave androids set in the first movie.

Even the sound design and cinematography perfectly reflects the original movies style.

Mostly silent with sci-fi noises and rarely any upbeat or action packed backing tracks. Also zero over-the-top scenes with explosions and gunfire like almost any scene from Star Wars. Very smooth all the way.

Now let's look at how Harrison Ford, A.K.A Rick Decker fits into this.

SPOILER ALERT!...

AGAIN!

Rick Decker was a Bladerunner (a sort of cop who would hunt down and "retire" rogue replicants). At the end of the first movie, well... that was kind of it. You could assume everything went as usual after that. However in '2049' Rick returns close to the end of the movie as the father of the human, replicant child. He's introduced as the cautious type living in an abandoned "vintage" casino with multiple booby-traps and still being the rough 'n' buff fighter he's half known for seeing as he's both won a few fist fights but has clearly lost plenty of fights against other replicants. And in tradition with Bladerunner, he's a man of few words or even expression which only adds to the overall feel to every scene.

So that's the role of Harrison Ford in '2049'. But here's where things need explaining.

Han Solo was only in the new Star Wars film to be a nostalgic throw back. So everybody could say "Hans back!" even though he dies because nostalgia's overrated.

However Rick Decker is a weird half-and-half situation.

Yes, I do believe that Harrison was brought back for this role just for nostalgic purposes and my reasoning behind this is that anybody else could have filled his role. They could have got any other big-name celeb to come in to fill the role at the end of the movie like a special guest but they chose Harrison instead.

What Harrison does in the film though is very contradictive of that.

While Han Solo was milked for every drop of memberberry juice the character had, Rick Decker is the opposite.

There was indeed a call back to the first movie when they reference Rachael but it actually is relevant. Can you believe it!?

SPOILEROONIE ALERT!

Rachael is the mother of the human/replicant child. If you haven't watched the movie then just assume that Rachael and Rick have history and leave it at that.

She's the only callback the movie has to the previous one.

Other than that, Decker is written like an actual characters. He's not spewing quotes or talking like he's only got one personality.

The main conclusion is he's not trying to profit on the popularity of the previous movie which ultimately makes him a better character. No. It makes him a character.

Han Solo was a character but this time around he was more like a 'Minion' with a bit of lore behind him that doesn't matter at all to this film.

Yes.

I just compared Han Solo to the Minions.

Sue me but I don't care.