Solo: A Star Wars Story

Skippable, and better than its commercial failure suggests. Nothing anywhere else depends on it, and it answers questions that were more interesting unanswered: how Han got his surname, how he met Chewbacca, how he won the Falcon, and exactly what the Kessel Run boast meant.

The production is the story everybody knows. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directed most of it in an improvisational style, were removed late, and Ron Howard reshot a very large share of the film. What reached cinemas is tonally consistent and noticeably safe, and it is impossible to judge what the other version would have been.

What works is the middle. The train heist on Vandor is the best action sequence in any of the standalone films, practical and legible and genuinely tense, and the stretch with the crew of thieves has a warmth the rest of the film lacks. Donald Glover's Lando is a precise piece of casting and Phoebe Waller-Bridge's droid is the funniest thing in it.

Alden Ehrenreich had an impossible job and does not impersonate Harrison Ford, which is the correct choice and the thing most viewers could not get past. It underperformed badly enough to end the standalone film programme for years. Watch it as a heist film and expect nothing to depend on it.