JJ Abrams had nothing to do with Han Solo dying. It was pre-determined by Harrison Ford, as a condition of him doing the film. Furthermore, I have no doubt that Disney got an agreement from Ford to do TFA, prior to purchasing Lucasfilm. And it was at that point, that Disney agreed to his demand to kill him off.
So, JJ and Arendt were instructed by KK when they hired, that Han would die at the end of the first movie. Just as they were instructed to do a stealth re-boot of ANH, only updated with new names and modern diversity sensibilities. This is a direct transcript from KK's first meeting with Abrrams and Arendt, "JJ, Michael, we just spent $4B to buy Star Wars, and we intend to get our money back--many times over. Toward that end, it's imperative the first film be a gargantuan success. So we're just going to re-boot ANH, only with different names for the characters. You see, we're not going to tell anyone it's a reboot, as that would murder us at the box office. But ANH is such a wonderful film, that broke every box office record when it came out. And we don't intend to try to re-invent the wheel. That was a 35 years ago, and we have a whole new generation to tap into. Don't worry about the fanboys who will recognize it as an obvious reboot--they'll give us their money for anything we slap the Star Wars label on to. Additionally, we would prefer that the role of Luke be played by a female, to jibe with modern sensibilities. But she's going to be stronger with the Force than Luke or Anakin or any man ever was--she will possess a facility with the Force immediately upon learning of its existence, with no training whatsoever. Also, Harrison Ford will reprise his role as Han Solo, but will be killed off nobly at the end of the film. So JJ, Michael, if you agree with our vision, we'd like to welcome you onto the team.". [She slides the contracts across the table to them--the two men squinting to see them through the blinding light of the interrogation lamps in their faces.]
The Wook
I somewhat doubt the veracity of this transcript. Pretty low SWIQ.
Firstly Arndt was hired as the writer almost as soon as the franchise was bought from George Lucas in October 2012. He said he had problems with it then, particularly bringing Luke earlier into the film, because he then dominated everything storywise, including the impact of Hans death scene and his relationship to Kylo, and the newer characters just got pushed into the background.He then wanted far more time to complete the script than KK could find for him, because they had already planned for a 2014 release and needed to move quickly. Movies of this size take massive planning and coordination in advance.
And ,truth be told, there were already bigger problems. Nobody really wanted to direct this movie because of the incredible pressure that would be focused on them. JJ was finally brought on board simply because he had done such a reasonably admired update of the rebooted Star Trek and ,as a Star Wars fan ,it was thought he could probably do the same with TFA. But there was no way he could get the script finished and production teams rolling for it in time for a 2014 release so it was knocked back to Dec 2015.
He and Kasdan REPLACED Arndt and had to make so quick decisions about what to do with the script, the biggest problem being Lukes presence and backstory. So they cut him out to focus on the new characters and Han, as Harrison had made it abundantly clear he would only do it one more time (and for a sack of cash!!!) .
So the reason TFA is so much a "mystery box" and copy of ANH is that they really didn't have the time ,the knowledge or chance to do much else with it. Production dates were already locked in and so they banged out the basics of the story in less than six weeks.The entire production was then focused around those choices, both the good and the bad .Which is why, on repeated viewings its got so many weaknesses and daft things wrong with it. Remember even Harrisons accident was actually welcomed and embraced as an opportunity to review and rewrite the script!
The truth is this is going to be a continual problem for the entire franchise going forward now, and both Disney and Lucasfilm have got this huge, very expensive franchise tiger by the tail, just swinging it around for now to stop it biting them.The capital investiment in SW is huge,just look at what they are planning for the Disney worlds alone.And they are horribly aware all this can come back to ruin them if they get more than a single film wrong badly wrong.
And ,unlike Marvel, which already has this massive character and narrative universe basically premapped for them with decades of comic scripts, storylines and concepts to cherry pick from, the Star Wars universe has virtually none.
At the end of Jedi all we got was the text book happy ending.And after ,well yes, we had a few decades of often fairly mediocre and none cannon stuff written but nothing REALLY OUTSTANDINGLY GREAT. Lucasfilm chucked Georges original outline treatments going forward (but I guess we may see elements creep back in later after this trilogy is done) and needed to start from scratch again. And thats a fairly terrifying place to be given the huge expectations of the audience.
And this is the critical difficult for Lucasfilm and Disney. They are desperately trying to drive the series forward without having an overall concept and overview of where they are going with it. Hence we have had the "Rogue One" and the "Han Solo" movies rolled out because they are isolated ,relatively safe bets to take with the Star Wars PAST that really don't influence its future and were still probably good enough ideas to ensure a reasonable BO return. BUT remember they really nearly did drop the ball with R1, the Han Solo movie seems to be a dancing around the edge of Sarlacc pit and they have already said they don't know where they are going after IX is done.
Personally I am hoping that Rian had had enough time to do something "interesting" with the script. His strength seems to be taking ambiguous decisions with particular moments and ideas in a script and then making ambivalent character motivations and decisions, so that its highly difficult to guess where the overall story is going. And he had a pretty open field to play with after TFA.
But the curious thing is that despite all the hints and winks we've had about TLJ there really doesn't seem to have been any of the problems that seem to have affected the others. No rumours of massive rewrites, of huge costly reshoots, no great disasters on the sets or of people suddenly sacked and replaced. There is not even ANY real solid evidence of what and where the story is going at all , unlike TFA at this stage.
And that alone gives me alot of hope.
(except for some rather disappointing vehicle designs).