SOLO

It's kind of bizarre, given the turbulent scenes behind-the-camera on Solo - where original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The Lego Movie, 21 & 22 Jump Street) were unceremoniously fired from a film they'd been shooting for six months, only to then be replaced by a gun-for-hire director in Ron Howard - that the result is quite easily the most entertaining and genuinely fun Star Wars retread released since the awful Lucas-directed prequels. There was word from the set during production that Lawrence Kasdan (writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark) had poured a good amount of effort into the script, along with his son Jonathan Kasdan - and they did not want to see it reduced to a comedic improv-inspired action film. Lord & Miller were reportedly encouraging improvisation and shooting multiple takes of sequences for options in the edit room in order to gain a more spontaneous feel. The Kasdan's apparently wanted the material to be treated with a classicist's eye, in line with the 'intergalactic western' tone of the piece. Soon after, Kathleen Kennedy announced the directing duo were out at Lucasfilm and that another director was being headhunted. That director was Ron Howard, long regarded as a steady and affable hand on a film set and bringing with him, decades of filmmaking experience to the table. Thing is, Howard's strength is in his interpretation of a good script - give him a Frost/Nixon, a Parenthood or an Apollo 13 and you'll have box office gold. Give him The Dark Tower or Angels and Demons and well....

In Solo, our hero Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) is a young tearaway, living on the streets of Corellia and scraping a living through petty crime and theft. He dreams of being a pilot and - along with the object of his affections Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), plans an escape from the Imperial empire-occupied hellhole. Plans go sideways and a few years later, Han's a soldier in a battleground befriending Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and his motley crew, who are pulling a train job for the villainous Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). Solo decides that he'll work with them to try to earn enough coin so that he can be reunited with Qi'ra and maybe buy himself some happiness. That's the setup.  Yes, there is foreshadowing of famous moments in Star Wars A New Hope and the film could certainly be accused of relying on nostalgia and fan service button-pushing to ring every last drop of goodwill from the audience - but what the hell is wrong with that? The story is so tight you could bounce a coin off it. Alden Ehrenreich is tremendously winning as Solo, so much so that you DO buy him as Han Solo - perhaps not as Harrison Ford  - but certainly as that character, so no mean feat. Clarke, for the first time since Game of Thrones, feels comfortable in a role she is cast perfectly for and Donald 'Childish Gambino -I'm-everywhere-doing-everything' Glover is clearly having fun as Lando Calrissian. Fleabag's Phoebe-Waller Bridge is also brilliant (in a mo-capped performance) as droid L3-37. Kasdan's script really is the star here. Staying very much within the lines, it is epic, crystalline, straightforward and - most importantly - cracks along at a great clip. Rogue One was a fan favourite precisely because it gave the Star Wars audience what they wanted: a fun, straightforward adventure that bathed in the original trilogy's style and tone. When JJ Abrams (The Force Awakens), Rian Johnson (The Last Jedi) & Gareth Edwards (Rogue One) tackled their own versions of Star Wars, they strangely failed to re-capture what seems to have been previously lacking in the Disney-led reboots - a nostalgic sense of fun. Howard's broken the Skywalker-centric plotting open wide enough to make the larger universe feel much more engaging and absurdly entertaining. Despite Han Solo's destination being set and an obvious inevitability to the story, there's enough uncertainty in its plot twists and possibility for adventure within the greater universe on display, to make taking this ride a hell of a lot of fun.