The thing I enjoy most about this film is how much of the origin aspects of Han himself (where he got his name, how he met Chewie, how he got his blaster, etc) are all taken mostly as they are, not met with some grand operatic sense of importance, and I think that's the film's biggest strength.
It doesn't really attempt to reinvent "Star Wars" in the same way "The Last Jedi" did nor does it attempt to stick to familiar territory like "Rogue One" and "The Force Awakens" did, it delivers exactly what it needed to be; nothing too big, but enough of an adventure to be worthy of the title it ends up carrying, and shows a few new things we haven't properly seen before, added with small dashes of cues and ideas from the Western side of the the franchise (e.i, a train robbery, bandits, stand offs with pistols, gambling, mines, etc).
Is it necessary? Not entirely, but when you get down to it, it is as unnecessary as a seventh or eighth installment into the series, or an adaptation of the title crawl of the original "Star Wars". It's an argument that doesn't really seem to be about the film's quality itself, but rather, the preconceived judgement of it before it even came out or hell even before we got a trailer.
Ignoring that side of things and taking it for what it is, again, it's a really solid adventure. Ron Howard manages to take the idea of a Han Solo stand alone film and turns it into exactly what it should be and has a lot of fun with it, all thanks to Alden Ehrenreich taking the title character and staying true to the spirit of it, not necessarily the actor who played him, not to mention some fun side characters in the mix (even if some do end up not sticking around for as long as they probably should and their presence would have boosted things a bit more in the long run).
The thing that stood out to me the most rewatching it though was how great the score was. As much as I love William's more gentle and somber work on "The Last Jedi" and "The Force Awakens", Powell really sparks things up with a terrific score that captures a perfect feeling of adventure like he's done with his family oriented works and mixes in his own riffs on William's own work, something you can notice a bit more listening to it on its own (like I did) and less than in the heat of the moment during sequences like the train heist and the Kessel run.
Plus, it really is nice to see Ron Howard play around with his more adventurous side again and it pays off greatly in those scenes and even ones of a minor scale (such as a fun card game with Donald Glover's terrific Lando), and while some of the dialogue can get a bit too on the nose in terms of foreshadowing future events (both in this film and where Han ends up going in the future), the writing for the most part manages to flow pretty smoothly without ever hitting any major bumps.
It is a bit too long for its own good (then again, I'm crazy impatient when it comes to movies that are around or over two hours most of the time) and again, I would've loved to have more of a couple side characters introduced early on, but never the less, this film really satisfied me and I'll gladly take more of these movies, since it's clear that Disney isn't stopping any time soon.
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I know some people stayed at home for this one. It will interesting to see the reaction when it comes out on DVD, because it is a fun and entertaining adventure.
Great review. :-)