Warning: Spoilers Off applies to Moments pages.
Previews
- From the first teaser, the shot of an Imperial Star Destroyer emerging from a cloudy vortex, accompanied by a squadron that includes a new type of TIE fighter.
- The Millennium Falcon is brand new in this film, with Imperial black color schemes on the outside and grey/white color schemes inside. It's a stark contrast with the ship's "piece of junk" look a mere decade later, and it's all the better for it.
- Han flipping the Falcon upside down to smack a TIE fighter with the hull and make it crash against an asteroid.
- The movie has been described as a Space Western, more directly than A New Hope already was. Appropriately, there's a shot showing Han facing Enfys Nest and the Cloud Riders gang, with his hand ready to unsheathe his blaster from his holster and fire at them. Like a gunslinger would in a Western movie of old.
- The teaser's music seems unfamiliar at first, but when the title comes up, it reveals itself for what it is: a fantastic remix of the classic Star Wars fanfare. Add in the slick editing work and irresistible plot hooks and you have the trailer that returned hype to Solo.
- Chewie giving one poor mook a one handed piledriver, nearly embedding the guy’s head into the ground.
- One clip has Chewie reroute auxiliary power to the rear reflector shield, showing he knows his stuff when it comes to flying. Qi'ra instantly gives up the co-pilot seat to someone far more suited to the role, Chewie gets settled in, Han grins at him and the Star Wars fanfare starts up.
Film
- At first, it seems Han is merely using a rock (and a bluff that it's a detonator) as a threat. Lady Proxima isn't even fooled by it. When she calls him out on his bluff, he improvises and uses it instead to break the sun-proof window, distracting the light-sensitive Lady Proxima long enough to escape.
- Sure, the battle of Mimban is full of War Is Hell and we don't get to see the other side, but it's quite refreshing to see a battle from the Empire's viewpoint this time around, especially with the classic Imperial March rearranged for the scene. Also props to the Mimbanese for clearly giving the Imps one hell of a fight.
- The reveal of Beckett, in the trenches at Mimban (disguised as a high ranking officer) dual wielding blasters and effortlessly taking out enemy soldiers all while twirling said blasters between shots like a true classic Western gunslinger. Even Han is momentarily caught in awe just watching him, amidst the shelling and blaster fire.
- The Conveyex heist. A daredevil attack on a Cool Train that would have succeeded, had the Cloud-Riders gang not invited themselves.
- The Traintop Battle between Beckett and the vibro-polearm wielding Enfys Nest. The latter is not afraid to defy Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight.
- L3-37 leading droids to freedom results in the miners being freed, which culminates in a truly epic battle between the miners and the guards. Sadly, it gets her killed, but she considered it her true purpose.
- As the battle escalates, the guards shift their attention from the attacking miners to the Falcon's crew. More and more heavy weaponry is brought out, until an anti-air gun makes its appearance. Han and his crew look doomed, as their small arms fire won't do jack against artillery pieces. Then a furious Qi'ra charges out screaming with several grenades and proceeds to napalm the guards' defenses.
- L3 is shot and severely damaged, and Lando rushes out to try and save her in an epic long shot following him rushing through the battle and dodging obstacles. Seeing the prison guards closing in and Lando taking a shot to the shoulder, Han rushes out to help him and L3 get back to the ship. Seeing this convinces Chewie and another Wookiee that Han is truly worthy of their assistance. The Life Debt may or may not be canon again, but Han earns it with this act.
- Han catching Lando's trick in the Sabacc game that allows him to win the Millennium Falcon.
- The simple fact that for all of Han's legendary luck, he appears to be genuinely good at the game.
- FRICKING MAUL finally makes another appearance in the live-action films a long time after The Phantom Menace, complete with a small leitmotif of the iconic "Duel of the Fates" theme accompanying the scene. And he's played by Ray Park and voiced by Sam Witwer (Clone Wars), no less. Even better, this was a complete surprise.
- Han shoots first and, this time, it seems unlikely that it will be edited out anytime soon.
- The entire Kessel Run. What can top a risky flight through a dense asteroid field (plus an encounter with a huge space slug) to escape an entire Imperial fleet? A flight through an uncharted maelstrom in space filled with carbon mountains the size of planets crashing into each other, countless smaller debris, dangerous black holes, and very low visibility. Not to mention a gigantic beast the size of a Star Destroyer that looks like a Cthulhu-expy hiding within the darkness. And Han braves through all that, all while having highly unstable unrefined coaxium that could blow up any second on the ship, managing the legendary run in less than twelve parsecs through skills and sheer dumb luck. He really wasn't kidding when he said he wanted to be the best pilot in the galaxy.
- The movie does not dick around and plays it up for all its worth when we finally get to see Han and Chewie pilot the Millennium Falcon for the first time. Han even pulls off one of his Signature Moves: using the Falcon to whack a TIE fighter straight into an asteroid.
- The way Han defeats the Summa-verminoth deserves elaboration: there was no way that even the Millennium Falcon can outrun the gigantic beast, so Han launches the only escape pod they have and use it as the decoy for the Summa-verminoth to follow, leading it into the massive gravity well where it is eventually dragged down and killed.
- When the Falcon is about to be dragged down as well with no way to escape, the crew comes up with a desperate plan to inject a tiny amount of coaxium directly into the main engine to give it a tremendous boost. And it works. The Falcon's engine stopped dead for a few seconds, before kicking back on and rocketing the ship out of the gravity well in a sparkling blue trail of light toward the exit. And for the icing on the cake, with the carbon mountains closing in from both sides and threatens to crush the ship, Han pulls his signature move of flying sideways before jumping to lightspeed, split-second away before the carbon mountains closed the exit.
- The moment when Han first lays eyes on the Millennium Falcon. The camera pans lovingly over the ship and then swings back down to a shot of Han and Chewie standing below the iconic cockpit as Williams' classic theme reaches a crescendo. Our heroes meet the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, and it is as breathtaking a moment as one could hope for.
- The first jump to hyperspace. Normally, we see inside the cockpit as the stars stretch into starlines, then an exterior view of the ship vanishing from our reality amid a whirling starfield. This time, we see the stars stretch, then the mottled blue corridor of hyperspace, and the camera pans around to Han's face, grinning wildly, clearly soaking in this trip and loving every second of it. All the wonder and awe of Star Wars reflected in blue light on Han Solo's face.
- Combined with a Crowning Moment of Funny but Han managing to (mostly) fit his stolen speeder through a tiny gap between buildings during the opening chase scene.
- Han managing to bargain with a feral Chewbacca and then the two of them manage to escape their cell by faking a fight for the watching guards.
- Lando mentions that Beckett had previously encountered legendary bounty hunter Aurra Sing which ended with Beckett pushing her off a cliff.
- The final fight with Dryden Vos. Han's the one with a ranged weapon, but he knows he's outclassed. Han keeps trying to get a clear shot, Dryden is sneaking closer to get the drop on Han, and Qi'ra's in the middle trying to intervene. It's surprisingly tense.
- While it's also the Tearjerker moment seeing Han has to confront Beckett for the latter's betrayal. Han manages to pull the trigger and shoot Beckett first while he also held the blaster in his right hand ready to kill Han if it wasn't for him not learning from his mistakes.
- Chewbacca's sheer strength is on full display here, giving us a reminder of how lucky everyone around him is that he is a Bruiser with a Soft Center. When we meet him, the Imps treat him like a monster kept to throw helpless victims at and during that sequence he throws Han around like a ragdoll and somewhat easily breaks a metal pillar. When Han and he are running in opposite directions, instead of the classic gag of the two falling and having to compromise we get Han being dragged on the ground by Chewie who doesn't even seem to notice. There's also his opening the train hatches, ripping a mook's arms off, giving away his weapon to a random slave before attacking a group of guards barehanded, and finally the simple fact that during the last act everybody uses him to carry those 110kg (that's 243 lb for the non-metrics among us) of coaxium around.
- During the Kessel breakout, seeing that the bad guys are shooting at his beloved ship, Lando comes down blasting Guns Akimbo. When Han shows up, he tosses one blaster to Han who doesn't miss a beat and starts firing back. Bash Brothers indeed.
- The epilogue of the novelization, revealing that Enfys delivers the coaxium to none other than Saw Gerrera, even meeting a young Jyn Erso. The two young girls promptly let each other know that people underestimating them will be their greatest strength.
- Most Star Wars movies are about fighting the Empire, so there's a heavy focus on its military side, and they have to manage the risk of it coming off as weak because the heroes keep winning against it. Solo is not about fighting the Empire, which lets the movie show it from a ground-level perspective: a fanatical galaxy-encompassing authoritarian nightmare that might be horribly corrupt and somewhat-dependant on the goodwill of the cartels, but still has the manpower to show up and ruin your day anywhere. The Empire sends one Star Destroyer to Kessel, and the heroes decide they'd rather take their chances with the Maelstrom.
