I’m Han Solo—at least that’s what the new Star Wars personality test told me when I took it. A friend of mine told me that The Blaze did a story on a new Star Wars personality test by www.Zimbio.com which was actually more sophisticated than I thought it would be. The questions are involved and pretty good about bringing to the surface the raw nature of a person’s personality as related to the Star Wars film series. For instance, while taking the test I thought I’d come out as Obi-Wan Kenobi—whom I personally admire for his love of wisdom and the philosophic chess matches he tends to play on a galactic scale. But Han Solo has always been my favorite character and that trait emerged during the test even though I was consciously aware of avoiding it. So it was a pretty neat test. At the end of The Blaze article linked below it was revealed that most of the staff at The Blaze including Glenn Beck, Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe had taken the test and were enthusiastic about their results which they promised to cover on air. I thought this remarkable because it provides insight to all that I have been saying lately about the cultural impact of Star Wars and the future of our society. There are few things which can unite minds quicker than Star Wars does in discussions with other people and it’s not just nerds anymore—but mainstream acceptance. NFL football used to be that topic item breaker that anybody could discuss with any other person in business or other affairs, but quickly Star Wars is overtaking it. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t know about Star Wars who is under 55 years old and doesn’t have an opinion about the film series.
I took the test while on the road at my sister-in-law’s house with many family members present so we all took the test and had a good time with the results. I was surprised how many of them came back as Yoda, and the young men who took it mostly came back as Boba Fett—which was remarkably accurate. There were no Darth Vader’s in our group which says a lot about the quality of our family. That much didn’t surprise me—but the number of Yodas did—my wife included. It could not be ignored how many of our family members instantly understood what the test was and the intent which reflected the response of The Blaze staff. Star Wars is something that touches just about everyone as good memories of their childhoods flood back to them upon the mention of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia.
I remember what it was like to be a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. Star Wars was everywhere—it was on the radio, it was at the stores, it was on television, it was in comics, magazines—it defined popular culture from about 1977 to 1985 when it began to subside just a bit. Even popular films like Back to the Future and ET the Extra Terrestrial made frequent Star Wars references—so it was a huge part of that 8 year period and anybody who was a child during that period knows what I’m talking about. That doesn’t mean that everyone was an open Star Wars fan. Many of the kids in my school made fun of kids who openly loved Star Wars—kids like me who had Star Wars notebooks, wore Star Wars t-shirts, and drew pictures on my homework papers of Star Wars space ships. I didn’t care what other kids said, once I got past the 7th grade, I was never picked on for Star Wars again because I had so many fights at school that kids stopped trying. The more they made fun of me the more I rubbed it in their face. I had a Star Wars shirt for every day of the week—my favorite was a Han Solo shirt that I never got tired of wearing. I wore it so much that it fell apart. I developed a rivalry with another kid in Junior High school at Lakota who was a Star Trek fan and hated Star Wars. We actually had fist fights over Star Wars and which movie was better. It got so bad that I shoved the kid right into the principles office as he was trying to escape me after I was waiting outside his bus in the morning to catch him with a confrontation before class started. He had previously declared during lunch period that Captain Kirk would beat Han Solo any day of the week—so I was going to teach him otherwise. I’d give him some real life Han Solo through me—and as he was running away from he thought he’d get safety inside the principles office—which he didn’t. I took the fight straight there shocking all the other kids in the hallway and the adults alike when I grabbed hold of the Star Trek lover by the back of his shirt and threw him right into the front door with the principle and secretary standing right there. Nobody had been so audacious before—and nobody knew what to make of it. Nobody understood that I loved Han Solo that much because the character represented everything I wanted to become when I grew up—and calling him names was the same as calling me names—and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
My brother and I had so many Star Wars figures that we set up our basement with elaborate hand-made models featuring Star Wars toys. Every Christmas and birthday was an opportunity to increase our holdings for these gigantic Star Wars set-ups. On Friday and Saturday nights our friends would come over and we’d build new Star Wars buildings and ships late into the night staying up until 3 and 4 AM in a world of our own making inspired by Star Wars. My parents couldn’t afford to give me a Millennium Falcon like many of my friends had, so I built my own out of a cardboard box. That creation was destroyed during my late teens—and I never got over it. During the Christmas of 1995 my wife finally bought me a Millennium Falcon when Kenner re-released the old toys with minor updates in anticipation of the Special Editions to the films which occurred in 1997. The world we created in that basement had so much reverence for me that I wanted to do little else but create my own world in the context of that one. We had entire areas around our set-ups in the basement sectioned off with black felt to simulate the darkness of space and on the ceiling was white felt to simulate clouds. We had our own power supply, there were floating asteroids, and epic worlds re-created to model scale. It was the happiest place for me on earth.
I was never shy about my admissions. Star Wars represented limitless possibilities and an escape from oppression and Han Solo was the kind of guy who was full of confidence and a never say die attitude. He was the model of a man who I would grow up and become. Many other kids one-on-one loved my enthusiasm, but would never admit it in the light of day. But privately most of them felt as strongly as I did, they just didn’t show it publicly. I carried this love into my adulthood and it never really subsided. With my children I raised them on Star Wars, and now with the Disney acquisition of Star Wars, my grand children will benefit—and with everything I just described, the cultural impact under Disney’s guidance will far eclipse my experience. There will be more toys, more clothing, more music, video games, posters, magazine articles-virtually everything in our society will be touched by Star Wars and a whole new generation will find solace within the story lines. Unlike me—who had good parents who really cared and behaved in a traditional sense–kids today have broken families, step parents and lack structure as a result of progressive social engineering policies. The strongest thing to a real family a lot of modern kids will have is the characters of Star Wars—which as sad as that may sound—is absolutely true.
The character of Han Solo was never intended to be a hero in the way he turned out. Fans of the films were supposed to yearn for Luke Skywalker, not Han Solo, but I could never relate to Luke’s naïveté. I wanted to grow up and become the space pirate Solo who is more like a character out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged than any other creation ever put on-screen. A lot of people thought this was destructive, but it has made me into an interesting adult—one who thought I’d be more like Obi-Wan Kenobi than Han Solo as more mature years are now upon me. But upon seeing the test results I was actually relieved to see that many of my core values are still intact after all these years and I can honestly say that I’ve lived my own Han Solo type of life and behaved in a very similar way when pressed. The difference between being a young person and an old person is the experience. People are drawn to certain types of things based on their core personality—something this Star Wars test is attempting to uncover. When I was a kid I hoped that when faced with perilous situations that I would behave with the same valor and skill that Han Solo did in Star Wars. Now as an adult, I no longer have any doubt. With a string of car chases, crashes, narrow escapes, and perilous follies of virtually every type now behind me, I can rest easily now knowing I measure up to the highest hopes I had as a child.
It is for that reason that this Star Wars test is flooding office buildings and places of business with a fury. Most of the adult population had similar hopes for themselves, and they want to know how they measure up after all these years. Now with some of the social stigma of fandom removed, people want to know how far they have fallen from their childhood dreams. For me—not far at all. I would have considered Obi-Wan Kenobi to be a concession—an honorable one—but a concession. Han Solo, out of all the characters in Star Wars was my target, and now as a grown man who has grandchildren of his own—I have hit the bull’s-eye, and for that I am very, very proud. Setting those high standards actually made me a better grown-up than Han Solo—considerably. But under pressure—and when it really counts—it is good to know I’m still more like Han Solo than Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And I was there……………….Han shot first!
Take the Star Wars Test for yourself and see who you are most like. CLICK THE LINK BELOW.
http://www.zimbio.com/quiz/Ukldm8Pi5Ub/Star+Wars+Character
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 