As he ponders what to say next, she gets a hug from Chewbacca, the
wookie, who definitely hasn't changed his hair.
That is how Princess Leia, now General Organa, and Han Solo are reacquainted in The Force Awakens, the seventh Star Wars movie and one which takes place 30 years after the original trilogy.
It's the feverishly anticipated reboot of the universe started by George Lucas, which has expanded beyond movies and pop culture to become modern mythology.
That it will the biggest movie of many a year is a given. Especially as it does what it was meant to. That is, pay its respects to what's gone before — and reward fans' deep affections for it — and set the franchise on course for a new set of space adventures in a galaxy far, far away.
It's hard not to come away relieved by this return to first principles after the digitally dependent and convoluted prequels, which took three films to create Darth Vader.
The Force Awakens may be about life many decades post-Vader, but it can feel like nothing has changed. And that's where this Star Wars disappoints slightly. It's just too Star Wars — as in the original 1977 "A New Hope" movie — for its own good.
Yes, it introduces some strong new characters — with Daisy Ridley's Rey and John Boyega's Finn, both solid new leads — and gives them better dialogue and more personality than their predecessors got in their first outings, while mixing them nicely with the older generation.
But much of the story feels lifted, for the most part, from the first film, with some heavy echoes of its sequels.
Director J.J. Abrams (no, it doesn't stand for "Jar Jar") offered a more compelling mix of reverence and reboot and reinvention on his Star Trek films.
This Star Wars, though, pretty much answers the question, "What if that first film had the special effects we have now?"
The results are pretty spectacular, especially when it comes to the aerial dogfights between those bad-guy tie fighters and good-guy X-wings, the latter led by Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron, Leia's "most daring pilot", who is there to help get the story started, make his excuses, then later, fly around shouting "Yahoo!" a lot.
If Poe isn't the new Han Solo of this, that's because we have the old Han Solo. When Harrison Ford and his big furry friend finally show up, it's certainly a Magic Moment.
So is the aforementioned one with Leia bringing the old gang back together, almost.
Luke? Let's just say he's a little more elusive — but a major plot driver.
Ford is great fun. It's his job to explain the universe to the newbies and pass the baton and, yes, rekindle some chemistry and shared regret with Carrie Fisher's Leia, whose hair bagels of youth have now turned into the full-plaited loaf of her senior years.
Thirty years on, she's still in the Rebel business. Just where Team Leia, the Republic, the Empire of old, and new Dark Side bad guys — the First Order (the ones with the massed Stormtroopers) — all sit in the intergalactic geopolitical scheme of things isn't very well explained.
On the other hand, just how the film's designated new Vader, Kylo Ren, came to be gets its own movie's worth of exposition, which makes us feel we've missed out on a vital chapter or two in the intervening years.
Adam Driver is terrific as the conflicted, fiery-tempered Ren and is further proof that some traits can skip a generation — and that in space, no one gets helmet-hair.
Good, too, is Ridley, whose Keira Knightley-prettiness doesn't get in the way of Rey — convincing as the nearest thing this new movie has to the original Luke Skywalker.
Abandoned as a child on a desert planet where she's eked out a living scavenging parts from a crashed Empire cruiser while living in the wreckage of an AT-AT that clearly lost its way, her few possessions give some clues to her ancestry.
Rey's encounter with a wandering message-carrying droid, BB-8 (who's more Wall-E than R2D2), changes her life forever. Now, where have we seen that before?
But following her destiny requires the help of Boyega's Finn, drafted as a child into Ren's Stormtroopers but who can no longer live as a space Nazi any more.
That leads to sharing the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon with an avuncular Solo, who takes her to meet the film's Yoda-lite, Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o), the owner of a bar catering to space pirates with a band undoubtedly related to those guys in the Mos Eisley Cantina in 1977.
Their reggae stylings, though, do make you worry that Jar Jar Binks is going to turn up on vocals.
But mostly The Force Awakens is playing a familiar tune — right from the first blast of John Williams' still-thrilling theme — and then it pretty much sticks to it all the way.
Yes, there are some surprising twists in the inter-generational space opera and it probably features the best lightsaber duels ever.
But so far as the story goes, this feels more like Old Testament Star Wars to keep the faithful happy enough and reminded of the old magic rather than offering much that will surprise or reconsider what's gone before.
Still, if this spends a little too much time on the planet Deja Vu, it has a great epilogue as a set-up to further chapters. It's the most distinctive, most restrained touch of what's a very good movie. Both Star Wars old-timers and first-timers will find much to like and their expectations raised for further instalments.
Verdict: Yes, the force is strong with this one
Cast: Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher
Director: JJ Abrams
Rating: M
Running time: 135 mins
