By George Haerle

For The Daily World

For a film whose existence is completely unnecessary, “Solo: A Star Wars Story” is absolutely worth seeing.

It dials up the fun factor significantly from the divisive but good “The Last Jedi,” focusing a bit more on the swashbuckling and charm that your inner kid may remember best from the original trilogy.

It seems this may be the clever marketing scheme Disney has concocted to appeal to the split factions of Star Wars fans out there. The new trilogy following Rey and Kylo Ren seems to be meant to create new fans and appeal to those who wanted to see the Skywalker/Jedi legend advanced further. But “Solo,” “Rogue One” and other spinoff chapters would seem to appeal to old-school fans who have a love for the expanded universe rather than a single plotline forward.

Despite shake-ups and production issues involving the original directors (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who apparently left the Disney production amicably), Ron Howard stepped in to take the director’s chair and has successfully delivered a whiz-bang space pirate adventure that gives audiences and fans a closer look at the seedy underbelly of the Star Wars universe.

Set between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope,” this film follows Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as a young adult attempting to escape his slummy home planet of Corellia and find a way to save his childhood sweetheart, Qi’Ra (Emilia Clarke). His travels lead him to the outlaw life amongst a ragtag crew of ship-jackers/robbers led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and beyond, eventually meeting Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) and taking his first voyage on the legendary Millennium Falcon.

There’s no replacing Harrison Ford’s original performance as Han, but Alden Ehrenreich’s take on the character should win over many of those who hold doubt. He isn’t trying to mimic Ford’s original performance, but rather trying to play a younger, more optimistic and slightly naive Han years before he became the self-serving and jaded rogue we meet in “A New Hope.” He does a great job as the still bright-eyed version of Han.

And though one could easily watch two more movies with Alden in the role alongside Chewie, it’s Donald Glover’s impeccable portrayal of a young Lando Calrissian that steals every scene he’s in. Glover is spot-on as Lando, and with his more-than-feisty droid partner and co-pilot L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who is also hilariously fantastic here) they could be worthy of their own spin-off down the line.

Woody Harrelson is great as always, and Emilia Clarke is perfectly fine as love interest Qi’ra, though it would have been nice if they’d expanded on her character to give Clarke something more to work with. Paul Bettany’s villain, Dryden Vos, is paper-thin in terms of depth, but Bettany chews up the scenery entertainingly enough that you won’t really care.

Though the story is basically a fill-in-the-blanks origin story for Han, it doesn’t make it any less of a blast. The action scenes are spectacular, and the world is grungy and lived-in like it was in “Rogue One” and the original trilogy. There are some great practical set pieces, creatures and costumes that add to the authenticity of its older feel and a fun, pulpy tone that lands somewhere between pirates or cowboys in space.

Just check your expectations at the door. “Solo” doesn’t try to compete with other Star Wars films; it just tries to deliver on the fun factor. If the new trilogy utilizes the intrigue and fascination of the mythology, “Solo” focuses on the reason we really all watch these movies: that exciting feeling of adventures in space that we love so much.

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“Solo” is currently playing at the Riverside Cinemas, 1017 S. Boone St. in Aberdeen.

George Haerle holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing for media and lives in Cosmopolis.