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As brought up by a recent thread on Lucas' involvement with the EU, a great many fans were quite dissatisifed with Chewbacca's death at the beginning of the NJO; for those of you who don't know, in Vector Prime, Chewie is killed just after he tosses Anakin Solo to safety into the Millenium Falcon, crushed by the world's falling moon, brought down by a Vong bioweapon. Now, some fans who objected to this simply didn't like the idea of the beloved Wookiee dying at all, but others, including several people here, seem to object to the manner in which he died more than the actual event.

Now, Lucas evidently mandated that Chewie had to die during the beginning of the NJO: knowing this, how would you have prefered that he met his end? Personally, I never had any problem with his final moments; saving the life of his best friend's son at the expense of his son and then meeting the end, in the form of a falling planetoid no less, standing tall, although the execution of the event literarily was somewhat lacking.

I'll sum it up for you in as few of words I can:

Chewie goes down swinging.

As I said in the thread, I would have been perfectly happy with him stumbling and a stormie getting in a good shot while he is off balance. It simply seems far more "realistic" than being crushed by a falling moon. If need be, have him knock Han or Anakin out of the way and take a bolt meant for them, thereby fufilling his life debt and letting him die a happy Wookiee.

Better writing would not hurt, either.

Edit: Sonnenburg's "goes down swinging" death would be perfectly acceptable too. Defending a door while his friends run to the ship. Buying their lives with his own, and eventually getting overrun by fifty stormies.

The drama behind it was megastupid to begin with.

Chewie should have died, IN BATTLE taking a dozen with him to buy Han time to umm... pay his parking fee before the meter maid ticketed him!

For a moon to collapse on Chewie in that small period of time, the amount of gravitational force would have to quite appreciable. It'd be a wonder no one picked it up quickly.

Seriously, Chewbacca dying in a hail of blaster bolts while valiantly engaging the enemy would be a far better death than having something fall on him. I don't care how big and impressive the falling object is.

One of the most commonly mentioned problems with the incident in this poster's experience has been that Chewbacca's death was in a galactic backwater of no real consequence. He died saving people from cardboard-thin waxed-mustache villainy on a world that might as well have been anonymous, remembered only by those who already knew him. Ganner Rhysode was given a much more dramatic Horatius-at-the-bridge death in Traitor, and he never even appeared in a movie.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:For a moon to collapse on Chewie in that small period of time, the amount of gravitational force would have to quite appreciable. It'd be a wonder no one picked it up quickly.

IIRC, it may not have actually have been the moon that killed him, although it did impact shortly after the MF was forced to flee. The planet was described as literally falling apart as the planetoid spiraled downward; the massive earthquakes the disruption was causing likely did him in, in retrospect.

Seriously, Chewbacca dying in a hail of blaster bolts while valiantly engaging the enemy would be a far better death than having something fall on him. I don't care how big and impressive the falling object is.

I don't dispute that, at least; nevertheless, in theory (disregarding the author's failings in the execution of the scene), I don't think the canonical death was a particularly bad one.

Let's put it this way: throwing somebody out of the way of a falling object is a heroic death in disaster movies. Star Wars is a war movie, not a disaster movie. You can tell because it has the word "war" right in the fucking name.

Did he die off-camera? Was he left behind, and people looked through a window and saw the planet get owned? That's LAME.

Dead amidst hundreds and hundreds of clipper shear wielding Jawas. He'll reach defiantly to the sky as the swarm of hooded villains dog pile him, pulling him down so they can stuff their desert pillows full of his soft Wookiee fur. His futile fight against that endless enemy will be told on Tatooine for dozens of generations.


...that or in a blaze of glory, saving the life of Han and gang, for the cause of freedom et cetera, like everyone else has said.

Stark wrote:Did he die off-camera? Was he left behind, and people looked through a window and saw the planet get owned? That's LAME.

Vector Prime, pg. 277 wrote: Han saw.
A battered and bloody Chewie regained his footing, stood up high on one pile of rubble, and faced the descending moon with arms upraised and a defiant roar.
The scene receeded quickly, but Han kept his eyes locked on the spot, burning that image of the very last moments of his friedn's life indelibly into his consciousness. And then he saw the beginning to the final cataclysm as Dubido plowed into the city.

Staph infection.

Having a moon fall on him was at the very least....erm, creative


Edit: Fixed some really bad spelling

Mr. T wrote:Having a moon fall in his was at the ver least....erm, creative

Chewie should not go out the same way as an episode of Itchy And Scratchy ends.

Sonnenburg wrote:

Mr. T wrote:Having a moon fall in his was at the ver least....erm, creative

Chewie should not go out the same way as an episode of Itchy And Scratchy ends.

But... haven't Itchy and Scratchy episodes ended in virtually every imaginable way, including one dying under a hail of gunfire... and being turned into ice cubes.

I wouldn't of minded him going down skewered by a few amphlistaffs, after delimbing/killing several Yuuzhan Vong, giving the Vong a deal of respect for the Wookies.

Chewie, taking part in a daring raid with Han Solo, Luke, and several Jedi, finally dies when he acts as the rearguard for the team, giving his life so that the other people can get to the Millenium Falcon and escape the crucial Vong flagship, etc, etc.

As Chewie is fighting off the Vong, the MF escapes into hyperspace, leaving behind a bomb that will destroy the flagship.

Unbeknownst to the escapees, Chewie actually kills the entire Vong crew with nothing but a sharp stick and the bodies of the dead Vong. He later disarms the bomb, and singlehandedly wipes out the entire VOng fleet with his new ship

Death... by snu snu!

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Death... by snu snu!

That would take alot of Space Amazons, I'd think.

I'll tell you how he shouldn't have died...

Being crushed by a fucking moon. That is absolutely retarded.

Chewie escapes from a fight with Han and reaches the MF, everyone thinks everything is going to be ok. but Chewies poisoned from a series of amphistaff blows. His adrenaline held off the posion long enough for him to tear teh limbs and heads off of a cadre of Vong. Chewie is buried in a NR State Funeral in recognition for his past heroism. MEanwhile the sheer violence he used to rend the Vong soldiers asunder becomes legendary amongst the soldiers, who will become excpetionally nervous at the prospect of facing other Wookiees.

Chewies last words: "Now we're even." or something along those lines,

As opposed to his usual Rawr warw Rowar?

I agree with one thing Chewie should have gone out standing over the corpses of several dead Vong. I'd have had him and Han facing certain doom. Chewie would go into a Wookie Berzerker Rage and wipe them all out, just as he roars in triumph a half dead Vong stabs him with a Amphistaff killing him instantly. Han dispassionatley shoots the vong in the face as a good rogue and pirate should and then instead of becomming a whining pussy he rebels earlier and does what Kyp Durron did, leading rogue missions against any Vong target he can find.

I haven't read Vector Prime, but having Chewie slaughter a significant number of Vong to either:
A, Protect his friends,
B, Stop them defusing a bomb,
or C, Because he's a crazy, crazy Wookie.
Would have been better. Hell, what would be a far more tragic blow to the reader would be him dealing with a pair of assassins onboard the MF, then finding out what that beeping is... Moments before the entire ship explodes, killing him alone.

But being crushed by a fucking moon? Least heroic death ever, except maybe dying of a bad flu or old age.

Bah, i thought the moon was okay. And not everybody can go out in a blaze of glory. And aside from the problem of realism and science, being killed by a moon is an original and unique way to go (as far as SW is concerned).