Chewbacca

Chewbacca the Wookiee was the co-pilot of the Millenium Falcon and an all-around can of furry badass.

Just The Facts

  1. Is seven-feet tall, or 0.00000000055540162996097 Rhode Islands.
  2. Born on the planet Kashyyyk. Close relatives include Mallatobuck, Lumpawaroo and Attichitcuk. Participating in a spelling bee in the Star Wars universe is about akin to being waterboarded in ours.
  3. Has been known to rip people's arms out of their sockets for beating him at holo-chess. By comparison, this makes John McEnroe fit somewhere between Mother Theresa and the purple Teletubby.

Movies

Chewbacca has remained an enduring character for over 30 years. This stems from the fact that while he is absolutely adorable, he could also hit your head for a home run, using your leg as a bat and your torso as a tee. Chewie's extraordinary life has been well documented in hundreds of novels, comics, video games and legends of the Yeti. Since we will not admit to ever having read the majority of these actually very enjoyable stories, we will instead focus on his appearances in the movies.

In A New Hope, Chewbacca is introduced and spends most of the time just standing around imposingly, enduring insults from an uppity princess and being passed over for a medal at the end of the Battle of Yavin. However, he did win the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1997 MTV Movie Awards, though that's kind of like losing an Oscar but winning a county pumpkin carving contest. Only with a Jewel performance.

In The Empire Strikes Back his super-sensitive hearing is tortured by a blaring alarm, or possibly an MGMT song, it's hard to tell. He gets a small bit of revenge by squeezing Lando's throat until his head is about to pop off like a champagne cork. He also repairs C-3PO for some reason.

In Return of the Jedi, Chewbacca once again dons the disguise of a prisoner, because it's believable that an arm-socket pulling, killing machine is just that easy to capture. During the Battle of Endor, he teams up with the Ewoks--a pairing whose cuteness ranks up there with baby ducks engaged in a pillow fight (until you realize that pillows are filled with duck feathers, then it gets a little weird). They also turn out to be vicious little fuckers who kick the Empire's ass in a not-at-all subtle reference to the Vietnam War. They also allow Chewie to tarzan his way onto an Imperial Walker and help turn the tide of the battle, even saving Princess Leia's life again. Walking carpet that, bitch.

Not The Movies

The man behind the throw-rug is Peter Mayhew, who received the part simply because he was terrifyingly gigantinormous. Apparently, he and David Prowse, the man behind the Vader Asthma-shield, got their pick of which characters they would portray. Lucas was looking for two tall men and fuck any other requirements. And Mayhew picked Chewbacca over the Dark Lord of the goddamned Sith!
In the first draft, Chewbacca was apparently the offspring
of the unholy union between Nosferatu and a gerbil.

Sadly, in the 1999 novel Vector Prime, Chewbacca was killed (Spoiler alert!), although it took dropping a moon onto a fucking planet to do him in. Regardless, the incident resulted in tears, death threats and absolutely no sex for the fanboys who were shedding tears and mailing death threats.
Say it with us... Noooooooooo!