Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Essential, and watch it immediately before A New Hope if you are placing it at all. It ends minutes before that film opens, with the same transmission in the same corridor, and the two play remarkably well back to back.

It is the first Star Wars film to be about the war rather than about a family. There is no Jedi protagonist, no lightsaber duel between named characters, and the Force is something a blind man believes in rather than a power anybody wields. The Rebellion here is a coalition that assassinates, that argues in committee, that includes people who have done things they cannot justify, and the film's best scene is a man explaining quietly that he has been doing this since he was six and has nothing clean left.

The production was famously difficult: Tony Gilroy was brought in for extensive reshoots and restructuring, and much of what was in the trailers is not in the film. What came out of that is coherent, and the last forty minutes, a beach landing shot like a war film with an orbital battle above it, are the best large-scale action in the franchise.

The two reservations are a thin middle act and the digital recreation of a deceased actor's face for a significant role, which was a first at this scale and which many viewers find difficult. The Vader corridor sequence at the end is thirty seconds long and justifies the film on its own.