Starring Aldren Ehrenreich, Joonas Suotamo, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Paul Bettany, Thandie Newton, Emilia Clarke, Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Directed by Ron Howard

Disney, out now

Young Corellian Han Solo takes part in a daring raid, picking up a Wookiee co-pilot and supercharged spaceship along the way.

There’s a moment in The Last Jedi where Luke says, ‘This is not going to go the way you think’, and sure enough we got a film that took chances with the franchise, playing fast and loose with established lore and setting up a new direction for the narrative. Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story does the complete opposite – it goes out of its way to ensure that this is as familiar and nostalgic as it can be so that it drops neatly between previous episodes without upsetting things.

Back in the day I would consume literally anything that featured Han and Chewie, from Marvel comics to Brian Daley’s spin-off novels. In many ways Solo is the film that my eight-year-old self would have died for, but now feels a little old-fashioned. The original Star Wars trilogy (like Indiana Jones) unabashedly borrowed from the old Republic (pun not intended) serials, and so too does Solo with its series of action set pieces taking us from planet to planet. Ron Howard is an old hand at this, and delivers a competent two and a quarter hours of thrills and spills, the script by Star Wars stalwart Lawrence Kasdan and son Jonathan throwing in some fan service and inverting the occasional popular line of dialogue.

Composer John Powell has a somewhat thankless job, what with John Williams contributing a sweeping new theme for Han that Powell then integrates across the movie, as well as a handful of Williams’ other Star Wars standards. Amongst this ‘cut and paste’ exercise he does get to showcase a beautiful love theme and I look forward to hearing it away from the movie itself.

Alden Ehrenreich is very good as Han, at times adapting some of Harrison Ford’s facial tics and striking the classic Solo poses. He possesses a confident swagger, and when teamed up with Joonas Suotamo’s Chewbacca they are a joy to watch. The other characters don’t get an awful lot to do, Woody Harrelson’s mercenary Beckett being the most interesting, though his partner in crime Thandie Newton as Val is sadly wasted. Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke is Solo’s obligatory love interest Qi’ra, but her mysterious past is foreshadowed so frequently that the inevitable revelations are hardly a surprise.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the latest Star Wars sarcastic droid (L3-37) following in the line of Rogue One’s K-2SO, the twist here being that she’s female and has a thing for Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian. Even Paul Bettany as gangster Dryden Vos doesn’t feel like he’s being stretched as an actor, a fairly so-so passive aggressive baddie with a cool weapon.

Verdict: Solo started off as the movie that nobody really thought was necessary. Having seen it, I’m still not convinced it was necessary, but if you fancy an amiable heist romp in the company of familiar faces, it’s great fun and probably the best outcome we could expect from a film that went through such extreme production issues. Last Jedi was too different, Solo is too familiar – aren’t we Star Wars fans a difficult bunch!? 7/10

Nick Joy