Lucasfilm artist gives us a peek at an alternate Han Solo intro for The Force Awakens

One of the great joys of concept art is the sense of possibility. As a film begins to take shape, these are the people responsible for dreaming up the endless variations on how something could look, and sometimes what doesn't end up getting used is just as fascinating as what winds up on the big screen. 

Christian Alzmann is a Visual Effects Art Director for Industrial Light and Magic, and he's worked on everything from the Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Alzmann frequently shares peeks at his concept art online to show fans the process of developing a film's look, and over the weekend he shared a particularly interesting glimpse at The Force Awakens. According to Alzmann, this is how we might have originally seen Han Solo on the big screen again for the first time in more than 30 years. 

The Force Awakens makes it very clear that Han and Chewie have had a rough go of things in the years since Return of the Jedi. Han and Leia had a son, he turned to the Dark Side, Han and Chewie left, they lost the Millennium Falcon, and by the time we meet them they're on the run from people they owe money to yet again.

In the finished film we meet Han because he managed to track the presence of the Falcon in his current, much less glamorous ship, but it could have been just as interesting to find him this way. The question is where Chewie might be in this image. Surely Han can't actually outdrink him. Perhaps he was off in another corner, flirting with Maz Kanata...

For more Star Wars concept art, head over to Alzmann's Instagram page.