"Star Wars" Trilogy: Han and Leia Banter Quiz

Answer: a scoundrel

Remember that Leia doesn't call Han a scoundrel until the romantic interlude when the Millennium Falcon is parked in the giant asteroid slug in "The Empire Strikes Back" ("ESB") . In an interview with Rolling Stone that appeared in the July 24th, 1984 edition of the magazine, actress Carrie Fisher related that she liked the scenes "whenever Harrison and I yelled at each other" best.

She also commented, wryly, "George [Lucas] always had to remind me, 'Stand up! Be like a princess!' because I would act like Jewish Princess and lean forward, slouching and chewing gum."

Answer: Maybe you would like it back in your cell, your highness.

Luke is the one who asks C3PO if he knows of alternative escape routes. Leia's complaints don't stop there. "This is some rescue!" she continues sourly, "When you came in here didn't you have a plan for getting out?" Not a bad question, sweetheart.

Answer: That doesn't sound too hard.

Leia can't resist taking another potshot at Han's easily bruised male ego by noting "They let us go. It's the only explanation for the ease of our escape."

Answer: be well paid.

Solo sums up the logic he has followed in rescuing Leia by saying "I ain't in it for your revolution, and I'm not in it for you, Princess. I did it for the money." She responds by offering him disdainful assurance with the line "You needn't worry about your reward. If money is all that you love, then that's what you will receive." For once, Solo, shamefaced, has no come back: looking out for Number One always worked for him before the whole Dark Side-crossed princess mess complicated his life as a galactic smuggler.

Answer: anything or anybody.

Han looks even more contrite as he listens to this scalding critique of his character. To impress Leia, Luke does his best to draw a distinction between his stellar motives for rescuing her and Solo's self-serving ones with his next line, "I care."

Answer: do you think a princess and a guy like me?

Sorry, but if you missed this one the rest of the results will make you wish you had tried another category. Luke offers an emphatic and jealous sounding "no" in response to Han's question. Of course the irony of this scene is that a twin brother makes an even less suitable partner for Alderraani royalty than a Correllian pirate.

In the Rolling Stone interview, Fisher confirmed that Princess Leia's love life is indeed, excuse the pun, star-crossed. She said of Leia "Because she's a princess, she would have some kind of problem with whoever she dated.

She can't marry out of her solar system or something."

Answer: there was more to you than money!

This scene has been called the happiest in the history of film. Listen carefully to Luke when he calls out to Leia after exiting his X-wing Fighter to hear a blooper so beloved that it survived Special Edition editing. He yells "Carrie!"

Answer: Your Worshipness

Han also calls her "Your Worship," "Worship," "Sister," "Your Highness," "Leia" and "princess" but never "Your Worshipness." Not all of these monikers were scripted originally. Of the three leads, Harrison Ford was the most inclined to negotiate with Lucas, "ESB" director Irvin Kershner and screen writer Lawrence Kasdan to modify his lines to flesh out his character. Ford would complain, "You can type this stuff, George, but you can't say it." In a 1976 BBC radio interview Ford quipped "I used to threaten George with tying him up and making him repeat his own dialogue." Irvin Kasdan's notes in the "Annotated Star Wars Scripts" book reveal that Ford even improvised the classic "I know" line during the carbonite freezing scene.

He was supposed to say "I love you too." What a shame the prequel actors haven't had Ford's pluck: they tend to sound like they are reciting passages from the Hindu epics.

Answer: get all mushy on me

Solo follows with the equally acid "So long, Princess." The "ESB" Shooting Script notes relate that Han came in to say an affectionate good-bye but adopted a "saracastic tone" in addressing Leia after seeing that "she has no warmth to offer him."

Answer: a scruffy-looking Nerfherder

Remember that Leia doesn't call Solo a scruffy-looking Nerfherder until a later scene in the clinic on Hoth, following Luke's rescue from outside the Wampa Ice Creature's lair. Did you know that the slice-open-the-Tauntaun scene was shot in the parking lot of the cast and crew's hotel in Norway during a blizzard? The rest of the outside shots were filmed on the Finse Glacier.

Answer: a good kiss

If you are a dyed-in-the-wool Han and Leia fan, in or out of the closet, you will be aware of the existence of the "You Could Use a Good Kiss" Web site and a host of others concerning Han and Leia.

Answer: flyboy

She calls him "flyboy" in "ANH" (as in "Get into the garbage chute, flyboy!") not in "ESB."

Answer: False

Leia comments to Luke that Solo "certainly has courage" not in "ESB" but in the "ANH" scene in which Han, yelling "aaaaaaaah," chases Imperial Stormtroopers down a Death Star corridor. Did that moment spark the legendary romance or was its genesis later in Trilogy history? Internationally, opinions remain divided.

Answer: we haven't got time for anything else.

When I listen to this dialogue, taped at the Elstree Studios in London, I can't tell if Solo says "WE haven't..." or "I haven't..." The script reads with "we" so I went with that. Watch Solo's lips right before he utters this line to see him mouthing Leia's words about not getting excited.

This has always been my favorite Han and Leia scene: she looks wonderfully furious at his most obnoxious salvo yet; he looks eager for a little romance yet is unable to avoid blowing it (as noted in the script). I missed electric exchanges like this one in "ROtJ," in which Leia's character, a feminist icon in the first two installments, was softened and essentially reduced to Solo's love interest.

Answer: I'm a nice man.

Leia's next line reveals that she was not convinced "No, you're not, you're..." Well, maybe she was convinced. What made this innocent, welding-oriented scene so hot? A much bandied about rumor holds that Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford dabbled in an off-screen romance during the shooting of both "ANH" and "ESB," which made for classic on-screen chemistry. Watch for another blooper: Han and Leia are holding hands during the kiss but one of her arms is suddenly around his neck a split second later. Han says "And I'm not nice?" in Donald Glut's novelization of "ESB", not the film.

Answer: I've isolated the reverse power flux coupling.

C3PO's ill-timed mutterings, and Wicket the Ewok's chronic squeaking, were plot devices employed to keep mushy scenes brief enough not to gross out audiences full of kids. Harrison Ford once remarked that he was impressed that small fry would generally watch the slug kiss without saying "yucky."

Answer: I'm there to see it.

Later, when our heroes are about to get "pulverized" in the asteroid field, as Leia puts it, Han gets his comeuppance. He quips "You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart."

Answer: committee!

Solo's rapid-fire line that prompted Leia's incensed self-definition was "No time to discuss this in a commitee, sweetheart."

Answer: as good as gone, aren't you?

Leia has just failed to interest Han in C3PO's plight--pig-like, bearded midgets are playing catch with the droid's head in junkpile--because he is distracted by his first sight of her out of mono-chrome garb mode. This scene harks back to Hoth where, if you recall, Solo decided to leave the Rebels to repay Jabba the Hutt after the unamed bounty hunter he ran into on "Ord Mantell" changed his mind about staying with the Rebels. Images of a from-the-cutting-room-floor Bespin smooch can be found on several of the Han and Leia sites.

Answer: Someone who loves you.

Solo speaks her name and she says, "Come on, I gotta get you out of here." But, as we all know, Jabba had other plans for the newly reunited pair ("Ha, ha, ha...I know that laugh."). Did you ever notice how, when Han falls out of the carbonite, his shirt is of a different style than the one he was frozen in? Or that the same shirt has a huge green stain on it which mysteriously disappears by the time he's locked up several minutes later? And whatever happened to those ropes binding his arms together when he was frozen?

Answer: to be alone for a little while.

Blech! Never my favorite scene. Leia soon changed her tune (see the next question). Was she suffering from oxygen deprivation up on those tree platforms? Well, it couldn't have been pleasant to have found out that a nefarious Sith Lord, with a head like Humpty Dumpty on a high-tech inhaler, is daddy. Who could forget how he tortured her and committed planeticide on her people.

Answer: hold her

Controvery swirls around the acting in this scene. Some fans and critics maintain that it was among the best of the Trilogy, others assert that it was the dregs. I'm in the latter camp: this dialogue sounds forced and flat compared to the charged Han and Leia banter of "ANH" and "ESB," which silver-haired fans will recognize as having its origins in the B-movies of the 1930s.

Another point of dialogue of minutia: Solo introduces himself as "Han" (pronounced "Hahn" the European way), which is what our heroes call him until they meet Lando.

When Lando starts calling him "Han," rhymes with "man," Leia and C3PO jump on the bandwagon. You can hear the difference in Leia's pronunciations on the "Jose's Star Wars Multimedia Bloopers" Web site.

Answer: get in the way.

Author James Kahn's novelization of "ROtJ" reads with "stand in the way" but Solo says "get" in the film. Solo is about to discover that Luke and Leia are siblings. Did Lucas have this neat denoument to the Trilogy love triangle in mind all along? Nobody seems to know, but probably not. One clue is that an "ESB" trailer featured Leia and Luke smooching (a kiss not shown in the film) as a voice intoned "an epic of romance." Moreover, the dialogue in this scene is not in the original "ROtJ" Shooting script: it must have been improvised during shooting in the "Tall Trees Redwood Grove" in Humboldt County, California. Were those hover-bike speeders the right vehicles for that terrain anyway? The question still gives me pause, two decades hence. Why didn't any of the hapless Stormtroopers think to fly above the trees before meeting with combustible ends? For more information about the shooting of "ROtJ" see the "Blue Harvest" web site. "Blue Harvest" was the name of a fictional movie the crew of "ROtJ" was told to claim it was shooting to keep rabid fans from mobbing the sets.

Answer: True

"Star Wars" legend has it that parts of a wedding scene were scripted and story boards were drawn up for it. However, Lucas is said to have ultimately scrapped the concept of a pat nuptial conclusion to the Trilogy because it was essentially Luke's story, as seen through R2D2's eyes, and he didn't want to take away from that. On the subject of Star Wars marriages, did you know that shortly after completing her work on "ROtJ", Carrie Fisher began an ill-fated ten-month union with music icon Paul Simon?

Answer: 15 years

In 1976, when "ANH" was filmed, Ford was 34 and Fisher was almost 20. Thus, Harrison turned 60 last year (2002) and Fisher turned 46. Where goes the time, heh? And finally folks, as Fisher told Rolling Stone, no matter what she, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill do in their careers, "Nothing can be bigger than "Star Wars", no matter what happens.

When we all kick off we will be the Princess, Luke and Han." The End.