Han Solo

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Han Solo is the fucking nuts.  I'm sure I don't need to tell you guys this, but it's the god-honest truth. This badass, gunslinging space cowboy doesn't give a shit about anything, and is so unassailably cool that I could probably get away with just posting this dude's name and walking away.  He's that fucking awesome.

The great thing about Han is that he's just a regular guy with no superpowers, and he somehow manages to hold his own in a galaxy filled with giant monsters, crazy technology and angry motherfuckers with lightsabers who can move objects with their minds and set people on fire just by thinking about it.  People are getting Force Choked the fuck out all over the place, entire planets are being blown up by giant universe-killing space stations, Luke is doing backflips in his sleep while bench-pressing Yoda, and in the middle of all this futuristic ridiculous space-insanity is Han Solo, who has little more to offer than piloting skills and a pistol, and he's taking care of business, saving Jedi Luke's hide from certain death, and generally just making everyone around him his bitches.  Not only that, but HE'S the guy who ends up nailing the Princess.  And shit, he just acts like getting with royalty is no big deal - when Leia finally professes her undying love for him before he goes into a Carbonite deep freeze, his only reaction is a sly smile and the words, "I know."

I also appreciate the fact that Han is a "good guy", but he's not so annoyingly righteous that you want to start vomiting blood every time he appears on camera.  While he maintains loyalty to the Rebel cause, there's no denying the fact that Solo is a streetwise smuggler who hangs out in seedy bars, gets into trouble wherever he goes, surrounds himself with shady business associates, and doesn't constrict himself to some arbitrary bullshit code of honor.  He does what he needs to do to get by.  Honestly, one of my favorite film scenes of all time (and the event that perfectly sums up that badassitude of Han Solo) is when he fucking pops Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina.  That alien dude is going off in his messed-up gobbledegook language like, "Yeah I'm going to bring you in fool, Jabba's going to give me a sweet reward for handing you over to him", and then all of a sudden Solo's like POW WAZZAP BITCHES! and frags that fucker in the middle of a crowded bar.  Then he nonchalantly walks out of there and throws the bartender a quarter to clean the mess up, acting like this really isn't the first time he's busted a cap in someone who was annoying him.  Fuck your revisionist bullshit – Han shot first, and we loved him for it because it was badass as hell.

Now, great heroes are only as good as their supporting cast, and Han isn't tooling around when it comes to surrounding himself with badass shit.  For a sidekick, he has one of the most eye-gougingly hardcore warriors inhabiting the galaxy:  the Wookie face-wrecker known only as Chewbacca.  Not a lot of guys out there can say that their hetero life-mate is a seven-foot tall hair monster who shoots a laser-gun crossbow and enjoys pulling peoples' appendages off of their torsos with his bare hands just for the fuck of it, but Han had this massive beast as his own personal bodyguard.  Anytime someone pisses him off, Han just has to wave his hand and Chewie is over there forcibly closing that motherfucker's windpipe with his giant Bigfoot hands until either the dude asphyxiates or Han tells him to lay off.  That's pretty sweet.

 
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He also has a couple of excellent nemeses – Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt.  While winding up on the wrong side of a giant, murderous, disgusting space slug who commands a massive, galaxy-spanning criminal enterprise is bad enough, the infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett is pretty much believed by religious zealot Star Wars fanboys to be one of the most badass motherfuckers to ever strap a bazooka to his wrist and fly a jetpack across the Atlantic Ocean.  I mean, that dude has more gadgets than James Bond wearing Batman's utility belt, but when he steps to Han Solo, our hero doesn't even give a fuck.  Shit, Han didn't even need two eyes to dump that motherfucker face-first into the gaping maw of a giant man-eating worm monster and call it a day.  I'm told that the Fett gets far more badass in the expanded universe stuff, but all I know is that from what I've seen on screen it didn't take much effort for Han Effing Solo to own that guy with a lower-case "p", shoot the tentacle off the Sarlacc, and fly off into the sunset while Jabba's entire operation literally goes up in a giant fireball.  Maybe that's just a testament to how fucking awesome Solo is.

If it isn't sweet enough that he's fighting off intergalactic bounty hunters dispatched by a giant gastropodal Al Capone, judo-throwing Stormtroopers, and destroying the Galactic Imperium alongside the goddamned missing link, Han also pilots the Millenium Falcon – the most badass (and fastest) ship in the galaxy.  This thing is basically a lightspeed-capable piece-of-shit cargo ship that's been kitted out and modified to be totally awesome.  Its retarededly fast, seemingly impervious to laser fire, and sports everything from swivel-mounted gun turrets to concussion missile launchers.  The Falcon is like a modern-day mix between a sweet El Camino, the Spy Hunter car, and something out of a Bond flick, which rocks. And it blows up the second Death Star.  Oh, and takes out Darth Vader's TIE Fighter.

Basically, Han Solo is like the ultimate hero for the average guy.  He doesn't have any special powers or equipment, yet somehow no situation is ever hopeless as long as he's around… he's always got a crazy plan, a trick up his sleeve, or a shady contact that can bail him out at the last moment.  He kicks ass, never loses his cool, routinely fights off the galaxy's most dangerous super-villains, and gets the girl. What's not to like about that?

 
“Never tell me the odds.”

“Never tell me the odds.”