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A lot of people were almost Han Solo. Kurt Russell auditioned for the role, while Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, and Burt Reynolds were also considered for the cocky bounty hunter. And while A New Hope's space opera scale and themes were bewildering for Harrison Ford while they were shooting the movie, they left Al Pacino completely befuddled when he was reading the script. 

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pacino recalled how his friends at Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope production company handed him the script for A New Hope: "...they handed me this script, and I thought, 'I don't understand. I must be out of space myself.' But I looked at this thing and I sent it to Charlie Loughton, my friend and mentor, actually. I said, 'What do you make of this?' He was pretty wise and he said, 'I don't get it, Al. I dunno. I don't get it.' I said, 'Well, I don't either; what are we going to do? They offered me a fortune, but I don't know. No, I can't play something if I don't speak the language.'"

I think that we're safe to infer that Pacino wasn't much of a sci-fi guy when he read the script for A New Hope. Ridley Scott, on the other hand, has spoken about how badly he wanted to direct the first Star Wars film after reading the script. Scott credits Star Wars' similarities to the popular sci-fi and fantasy magazine, Heavy Metal, as the source of his interest in it. It's not surprising that the man who went on to direct Alien was a huge nerd, after all. 

Now, I think we're left to imagine what Han Solo would have been like if Pacino had delivered all of his dialogue like his character in Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, accent and all. 

Get to know, understand, and love the Star Wars franchise more with our Star Wars watch order, guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, and all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars TV shows ranked.