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Star Words: Episode V, Part 7
Feb. 6th, 2020 03:10 pmHan's rescue of Luke offers a memorable, if not very pleasant, situation for our consideration. If your tauntaun has just frozen to death, why not slice it open and use its residual body heat to keep your friend from succumbing to hypothermia? Though we never get more than a glimpse of the creature's entrails, we can all-too-easily visualize the disgusting scene. Gross, but effective. Aso, it has spawned such lovely novelty items as this sleeping bag. 
Anyway, the moment is made all the more memorable by Han's muttering commentary. While Luke moans various phrases in his unconscious state, his friend nervously wields his lightsaber (the only non-Jedi to do so in the original trilogy), grunts apologies and explanations, and finally heaves him into place with a very famous line.
"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!"
This little quote has it all. Worldbuilding (tauntans are smelly creatures, even more so when their guts are hanging out) humor (the exhausted, wry delivery of the line is pretty perfect) and a solid sense of being inside the scene (even though we can't actually smell the creature's stench, the idea is just as evocative as the howl of the wind and the impending darkness of night). It's an iconic bit of Star Wars trivia: what beast smells even worse on the inside? And so on.
I might also note that it's a very light touch. There could have been multiple references to a tauntaun's stinkiness, starting from their first introduction and included in every single Hoth scene, just no one's missed this very important setup to Han's quip. Perhaps even later, a wrinkled-nose comment from Luke upon viewing the swamps of Dagobah -- "Whew! and I thought tauntauns smelled bad!" Ugh. What a heavy-handed mess that would be. The best jokes are the ones that don't try too hard. Just a line or two, and we get it. There is an overall economy to the storytelling in these movies that I very much appreciate. It feels like the filmmaker actually respects the intelligence of his audience.
Next, the aftermath of Luke's rescue....
Anyway, the moment is made all the more memorable by Han's muttering commentary. While Luke moans various phrases in his unconscious state, his friend nervously wields his lightsaber (the only non-Jedi to do so in the original trilogy), grunts apologies and explanations, and finally heaves him into place with a very famous line.
"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!"
This little quote has it all. Worldbuilding (tauntans are smelly creatures, even more so when their guts are hanging out) humor (the exhausted, wry delivery of the line is pretty perfect) and a solid sense of being inside the scene (even though we can't actually smell the creature's stench, the idea is just as evocative as the howl of the wind and the impending darkness of night). It's an iconic bit of Star Wars trivia: what beast smells even worse on the inside? And so on.
I might also note that it's a very light touch. There could have been multiple references to a tauntaun's stinkiness, starting from their first introduction and included in every single Hoth scene, just no one's missed this very important setup to Han's quip. Perhaps even later, a wrinkled-nose comment from Luke upon viewing the swamps of Dagobah -- "Whew! and I thought tauntauns smelled bad!" Ugh. What a heavy-handed mess that would be. The best jokes are the ones that don't try too hard. Just a line or two, and we get it. There is an overall economy to the storytelling in these movies that I very much appreciate. It feels like the filmmaker actually respects the intelligence of his audience.
Next, the aftermath of Luke's rescue....
