This Is Han Solo's Best Line Ever
Ah, Han Solo. As portrayed by the legendary Harrison Ford, the scoundrel turned smuggler turned reluctant fighter for the Rebellion (and, later on, the Resistance) may have had a heart of gold, but at times, it could be pretty tough to find it underneath that surly exterior. Sure, he was pretty handy with a blaster, and when the chips were down, he was a guy you'd like to have by your side — but if there's one thing he could hurl with even more precision than laser bolts, it was witty zingers.
Before meeting his famously shocking demise at the hands of his son Ben, AKA Kylo Ren, in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Han always seemed to be in the thick of the action during the struggle between the opposing forces vying for control of the galaxy, even if he often carried the distinct air that he would have, at any given time, preferred to be anywhere else. But even though the guy was usually in the company of Jedi Knights, royalty, and protocol droids capable of over six million forms of communication, it was he who always seemed to get the best lines in the Star Wars series. We decided to take a deep dive to try to determine: what is Han Solo's best line ever?
Not such a great save
Well, there are only about a thousand excellent candidates, so let's start at the beginning, with 1977's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. We first meet Han and his loyal first mate Chewbacca when the pair are hired by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker to bring them to the planet Alderaan aboard their ship, the Millennium Falcon, at the request of Princess Leia. But when they arrive, something is missing: Alderaan, which has been destroyed by the Empire's Death Star space station in a devastating show of force.
The crew determine that Leia is being held captive aboard the Death Star, and when the ship is hauled in b the space station's tractor beams, Luke and Han — after a pitched battle with Imperial forces — disguise themselves as Stormtroopers and set out to find Leia while Kenobi attempts to locate and disable the tractor beams so that they can make good their escape.
Han and Luke manage to infiltrate the detention block, but they arouse suspicion after they're forced to blast a few more unlucky Stormtroopers. When a superior officer radios the detention block to see what all the commotion is, Han proves that sometimes, his way with words can just fail him.
"Everything's under control, situation normal!" he reports, a little too cheerfully. When the stern-sounding fellow on the other end of the line asks what happened, Han stammers, "Uh, had a slight weapons malfunction... but, uh, everything's perfectly alright now, we're fine, we're all... fine... here... now. Thank you. How are you?"
The look on Han's face as he realizes how utterly guilty he sounds is absolutely priceless, and when the commanding officer informs him that he's sending down another squadron of Stormtroopers, Han protests with a lame excuse about a "reactor leak." Finally, he's asked for his operating number, a request to which he responds by annihilating the control panel with his blaster. "Boring conversation anyway," he mutters to himself.
An astute observation
Miraculously, Han and Luke manage to locate and rescue Leia, but the hot water they're in only gets hotter after they do. With the Empire's security forces seemingly swarming them from all sides, Luke, Han, Chewie, and Leia employ a desperate strategy: they retreat into the Death Star's trash compactor, which is exactly as pleasant a place as it sounds.
Sure, they're out of immediate danger from the Stormtroopers, but they now have a couple more problems: there doesn't seem to be any way out, and there's something in there with them. It's a slithering, tentacle-y beast that lurks beneath the filthy surface of the water pooled inside the trash compactor, and it very nearly does in Luke before inexplicably retreating.
At that moment, however, the reason for its retreat becomes clear: the trash compactor is kicking into operation, and the walls are beginning to close in. Everyone begins scrambling to find something to brace them with, but to no avail — and as it begins to look like our heroes' fate is sealed, Han blurts out a timely observation: "One thing's for sure, we're all gonna be a lot thinner!"
Fortunately, C-3PO and R2-D2 manage to deactivate the trash compactor in the nick of time, just barely saving Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewie from undergoing the Death Star Diet.
A simple instruction
Of course, we all know that the Death Star was eventually destroyed by a "one in a million" shot from Luke, who could not have picked a better time than during the Rebel assault on the space station to learn to use the Force. But in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, our heroes were faced with a new Death Star, one which was being built under the direct supervision of Emperor Palpatine himself — and one which was being protected by energy shields being generated from a base on the forest moon of Endor.
Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, and the droids hatch a plan to disable the shield generators, but they must first land on Endor without the Empire taking notice. Using a stolen Imperial shuttle, they make their approach, and as Han begins to transmit a stolen clearance code to Imperial commanders aboard the Star Destroyer guarding the moon, Luke starts to freak out just a little.
"Vader's on that ship," he says, prompting Han to try to deflect his concern while at the same time remaining cautious. "Now, don't get jittery, Luke," he says. "There are a lot of command ships. Keep your distance, though, Chewie. But don't look like you're trying to keep your distance."
Chewbacca growls a response that actually sounds for all the world like, "How the hell am I supposed to do that?" Han's response is simply perfect: "I don't know, fly casual!"
The ruse ends up working, and our heroes are able to safely land on Endor — all thanks to Han's concise instruction, and presumably, that half-day "casual flying" course Chewie completed during his time in Wookiee flight school.
Dropping truth bombs on the new guys
Of course, Han Solo isn't all wisecracks and sarcastic asides — and this was never demonstrated more clearly than during the events of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, in which we were introduced to a much older, much wiser Han (who was nevertheless the same scoundrel he had always been in many ways). When rogue Stormtrooper Finn, desert scavenger Rey, and BB-8 — a droid owned by Resistance soldier Poe Dameron — are caught in the middle of a First Order airstrike on the desert planet of Jakku, they flee the scene in an old freight ship which they find sitting dormant in a junkyard... the Millennium Falcon, Han's old ship. It's not long before Han and Chewie stumble upon the freighter, and as Finn and Rey tell Han their story, the old smuggler reveals that any trace of skepticism he may have had about the ancient forces pulling the galaxy apart has long since dissipated.
BB-8 has stored in its memory a map revealing the location of the exiled Luke Skywalker, but it's incomplete. Han reveals that at one time, Luke had been planning to rebuild the Jedi order, but that an apprentice (whom we later learn is Han's son Ben/Kylo Ren) had turned on him, leading Luke to effectively exile himself.
Rey's eyes brim with excitement as she asks Han, "The Jedi were real?" The world-weariness evident in Han's response lets us know to just how great an extent that long-ago struggle against the Empire had changed him. "I used to wonder that myself," he says. "Thought it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo... magical power holding together good, evil, the dark side and the light. Crazy thing is, it's true. The Force, the Jedi, all of it. It's all true."
This incredibly poignant response may be one of the longest uninterrupted thoughts Han had ever given voice to in any Star Wars film up until that point. He may have been verbose, but classic Han was nothing if not concise — as illustrated by the one line of dialogue for which he is perhaps most fondly remembered.
What a softie
In one of the more famous cliffhangers in film history, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back ended with the fate of Han Solo completely up in the air. In the flick's second act, Han, Leia, and Chewie attempt to find refuge with Han's old buddy Lando Calrissian on Cloud City — but Lando betrays the trio, as Darth Vader arrives first with an offer of Imperial non-interference in his operations in exchange for giving up his friends. Vader plans to use the trio's suffering as bait to lure Luke to Cloud City, where he will then manipulate the budding Jedi into a duel, which Vader hopes will end with Luke encased in carbonite.
Of course, it's not clear whether it's possible for one to survive that process, so Vader selects Solo as a test subject (over Calrissian's futile objections). Knowing he may be facing certain doom, Solo finally admits his feelings for Leia, albeit non-verbally; he grabs her and kisses her before being ripped away by Stormtroopers. Moved by his display of emotion, Leia declares, "I love you!", setting the stage for Han to utter his coolest line ever: "I know."
Hey, it's not Shakespeare, but this is Han Solo we're talking about here; he may be a man of few words, but he has a way of making sure that every word counts.