Okay. Those are all good reasons but “It was the 70s and he wasn’t white” is definitely my favorite.
If you look closely you can see that he is brown and in a movie made in the 70s.
Fucking gold.
if you notice Chewie is in a protective stance, still wearing his bowcaster ammo bandolier, appears to be holding a disguised personal weapon and is actively scanning the crowd for threats. He takes his life debt to Solo seriously and knows this bit of frivolity exposes Solo to assassins.
Not being interested in Leia, Chewie wants to let his buddy get all the credit so he can shine. Solo probably had to stop Chewbacca from stuffing Skywalker into a garbage smasher before the ceremony. He’s just that loyal.
Ocular patdown. He assessed the situation and cleared it of threats.
New head canon.
This is how I will see it from now on tbh
Chewy is standing on a lower step so all three of them are the same height.
He’s too tall for Leia to reach to put the medal around his neck. So he just doesn’t get one.
George Lucas Explained Why Chewbacca Didn’t Get A Medal In 1977
“Chewbacca wasn’t given a medal because medals don’t really mean much to Wookiees. They don’t really put too much credence in them. They have different kinds of ceremonies. The Wookiee Chewbacca was in fact given a great prize and honor during a ceremony with his own people. The whole contingent from the Rebel Alliance went to Chewbacca’s people and participated in a very large celebration. It was an honor for the entire Wookiee race.”
That is such a last minute scramble of an answer. “Fuck we forgot to give the furball a medal and people noticed… WAIT I GOT IT! They actually went over to the Wookies planet and they all partied and it was dope. Chewie didn’t want a medal because he got an awesome party instead. The whole race was honored. It was amazing. You had to be there.”
I mean it’s not the most implausible retcon
Anytime a filmmaker says that things happen off screen they making it up.
If they say it was cut and left on the cutting room floor: then it’s probably true.
There’s a bunch of goofs on IMDB for various Michal Bay films, every goof has a reply along the lines of “there is no reason that [X] couldn’t have happened off screen to [resolve gaping plot hole]”.
Don’t Hollywood types always say “show, don’t tell?”
Seems kinda like when JK Rowling made Dumbledore gay as an apparent afterthought…
This was clearly an afterthought.
Whole starwars lore is an afterthought lmao
True. I was being deliberately over-diplomatic for once 😁
No no no clearly the actor was told to show the emotion of someone who finds the whole show laughable and is already warming to the idea of the much better celebration that’s being prepared on his home planet. You can see the sparkle in his eyes, especially in the remastered edition
I know this is a meme, but I think the simplest answer is filming. Chewy is really tall, if he stands on a lower step, the main cast is all in the same shot.
This IS the answer, everyone else is justifying it after the fact or just making shit up.
So give him the medal, then have him standing where he is in the final shot.
Arguably, that’s actually plausible
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No one claimed the Alliance were free from casual racism. They may be trying, but their personal culture was formed by decades of imperial rule.
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Those medals are for “command staff” only. Han is the captain of the MF and Luke is the acting squad leader of Red Squad (you might notice that the veteran, who missed his shot but survived, doesn’t get a medal, either.)
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Pets don’t get medals!
Except…
Apparently dogs DO get medals, but Chewie gets passed over. Chewbacca has sub-pet status.
I’ve seen the argument that since the average wookiees lives for 400 years and humans around 80, that Han could be considered Chewie’s pet.
Han is the captain. The captain of a ship makes the calls as to what it does, and the Millennium Falcon came back.
I think a better question is why Luke gets special recognition versus the other pilots. I mean, he happened to be the one to make the final shot that blew up the Death Star, but everyone else in the squadrons went in too.
Other than Wedge and one random Y-wing, everyone in the other squadrons were dead.
RIP porky
*Porkins
Did anyone else survive?
Don’t worry, they fixed it in the new trilogy 😬
Damn Specist!!!
