Movies & TV

When I was young and much dumber than I am now, I enlisted in the military. One of the tasks of my job was to mess with exploding things like landmines and dynamite and other stuff of that nature. Turns out, lots of people doing other jobs that were known for being dangerous in different ways were really, REALLY, uncomfortable messing around with those exploding things. And it always took me by surprise. Watching infantry nervously pick up crates of demolitions and cautiously loading it onto a truck, cautiously walking around the crates, when not actively loading anything standing very far away... all this caution slowing us down.

So there's the dangerous thing, rydonium. Everybody knows its dangerous and they get really nervous around it. The nervousness makes handling the stuff more dangerous because you're more likely to get so caught up in worrying about "being safe" you second guess yourself at a critical moment. Or your caution about the rydonium has you moving so slowly that other threats catch up to you.

For me, Saw's speech is about embracing the thing as it is and not worrying about the worst possible outcome. Wilmon pulling his mask off isn't about him becoming addicted to gas fumes or becoming an adrenaline junkie, its about embracing the situation as it is. The job was to break into a fuel depot and steal some space gas. You fuck up and the rhydo detonates and you die, you fuck up and the rhydo eats you from the inside, you fuck up and Imperial troops capture/kill you, you fuck up and the guerilla fighters don't get the fuel to keep fighting.

Thing is, worrying about all that doesn't matter, Wilmon just needed to focus on getting the siphoning gas out of the Imperial gas can.