Han Solo

I know.

Who?

Captain of the Millennium Falcon and cockiest space pilot in the galaxy. Han Solo is every boy’s hero, cruising from star system to star system with his hairy BFF, getting into scrapes, shooting the place up, performing occasional acts of random heroism and being rude to women until they fall madly in love with him.

Why?

It’s damn near impossible not to. His hair is great, his Bogart-cowboy-hipster outfit is legendary, his wisecracks are second to none and his lop-sided grin has broken a million hearts on a thousand worlds. But there’s more to it, somehow: in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, Lawrence Kasdan’s crackling, old-Hollywood dialogue combines with Harrison Ford’s insouciance as a performer to elevate Han to a place few other movie heroes ever reach, creating a vital bond between character and audience.

Ford’s importance to the enigma that is Han was thrown into sharp relief by the arrival of spin-off story ‘Solo’, in which Alden Ehrenreich tried to make the character his own and failed spectacularly, despite being a perfectly serviceable actor. To many of us, Han’s ultimate end in ‘The Force Awakens’ came as a real body blow: losing him was like losing an old friend – a friend with a really, really cool spaceship.