Jabba the Hutt: Misunderstood Hero

I was watching Return of the Jedi last week (well, only the first 30 minutes) and I realized the Jabba the Hutt was getting a raw deal. One the surface of it, he is the vile gangster that they portray him as. I mean, he has Han in carbonite, Leia in that slave outfit, and wants to put Luke to death, but if you really dig into it, he’s just a misunderstood business-slug.

First off, Hutt’s are your stereotypical gangsters/criminal masterminds (there are more stereotypes in Star Wars than in Harry Potter) and Jabba is portrayed as such. However, you have to look at where he was. He wasn’t in some Core World or even a planet that has some natural resources; he was in the desert world of Tatooine.

Tatooine is a backwater planet that the Empire and Old Republic don’t even bother with, leaving it as a lawless wasteland. Jabba pretty much installs himself as local warlord and pretty much everyone is happy. I mean, you have moisture farming and pod-racing and the surge that is the Sand People is pretty much contained (as long as you don’t do something stupid).

Now, Jabba needs some cash inflow, so he does some things that people in more civilized cultures would consider crimes. The biggest would probably be the smuggling of spice, but maybe he was handling it like the Godfather and the Heads of the Five Families handed the drug trade. It was there and needed to be dealt with, so why not profit from it but run it like a business and keep it away from schools and kids. I mean, there are going to be losers out there who want to get high, let them kill themselves, they are a drag on society anyway.

So anyway, Jabba needs to hire smugglers to get the stuff where it needs to go and hires Han Solo. Solo sees an Imperial cruiser, gets skittish, dumps his cargo and bolts. The problem is that Jabba needs his money or the cargo. All Solo has is a Wookie. So Solo bolts and takes off. Now, Jabba’s a nice guy, but he needs to make an example out of Solo, so other smugglers don’t walk all over him. Jabba outsources the job to some bounty hunters and goes back to making sure Tatooine enjoys high employment and relative safety.

Now, Vader catches Solo first and encases him in carbonite. Jabba had nothing to do with this. When Boba Fett delivers Solo to Jabba, he’s in a quandary. He can either unfreeze him and kill him (I mean, the guy did run) or keep him in carbonite. Keeping him alive and in carbonite makes him lasting example and gives Jabba the out so he doesn’t need to kill him.

Then, Leia comes in, disguised as a bounty hunter and tries to break Solo out. She doesn’t even try and negotiate, just comes in, unfreezes him, and tries to sneak him out. Now Jabba needs to make an example of her. So, instead of killing her, she just makes a dancing girl out of her.

Then we come to Luke. That brash asshole using force to get past Jabba’s guards and a mind trick on his major domo to get an audience with Jabba. Then, he tries to use the same mind trick on Jabba to get Solo and his friends. No bargaining, just demands. Then he pulls a gun on him. Jabba does the only thing he can; he hits the trap door that will drop Luke into the rancor’s pit. It was either that or he gets a blaster hole in his gut. Luke ends up killing the rancor and I bet those things aren’t cheap.

At this point, Jabba has had enough. He’s got a business to run. So, he gathers up Luke, Solo, and Chewy and decides to take them out to the Dune Sea and kill them. He gives them a chance to bargain for their lives, but they decide on insults and more demands (“Free us or die”, yeah real productive). Of course we know what happens, Luke and his terrorist buddies escape, but not before killing scores of people (including Jabba), destroying private property, and descending Tatooine into lawless chaos.

Jabba was just doing what he needed to do to survive and run a successful business. He’s got to deal with people coming in and making demands, trying to steal from him, and trying to kill him. This was an out and out hit job orchestrated by Luke Skywalker and his little cadre of ne’er-do-wells. He never wanted to “bargain for Solo’s life”, but wanted to kill Jabba and take what he wanted. He’s no better than the Emperor.

Luke’s little vendetta caused a lot of people jobs. I mean, I don’t know what “dancing girl” pays, but its better than living on the streets, turning tricks in the alleys of Mos Eisley’s or stripping at Anchorhead’s local “gentleman’s clubs”. If you’re a kid growing up on Tatooine and your only discernable skill is “hired thug”, you always had a job waiting for you at Jabba’s Palace. Well, not anymore. Thanks to Luke, the unemployment rate was due to skyrocket on Tatooine.