zombie84 said:

Or would you rather have Chewbacca killed by a moon colliding with him? Honestly, what stoner thought up that one? "Duuude...what if Chewie gets hit by a moon?? Woah, far out!"

I can kinda understand what they were going for with Chewie's death. Up til that point the good guys kept getting into all sorts of dangerous situations without suffering any long-term consequences; the idea of killing off a major character was meant to inject some aura of true danger and uncertainty into the mix.

I think they went too far with actually killing Chewie off, though. They could have done anything short of killing him or any other major character from the films and still acheived their goal.