Rate and Rank The 'Star Wars' Films

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The only ones that matter:


  • Empire Strikes Back
  • Star Wars Original 1977
  • Return of the Jedi


  • Star Wars: A New Hope (Various special editions and re-releases)
A simple story told well, with a satisfying storyarc, iconic characters, groundbreaking concepts and technical advancements in visual and sound effects way ahead of their time. Have to specify the 1977 original Star Wars as opposed to the various re-releases and special editions however because some additions have not made this a better movie, and in fact have detracted from it to the point that almost consider them 2 seperate films. Han shot first. That is all there is to it. If it is the re-releases, then this ranks below ROTJ, but the original SW is second only to Empire Strikes Back. And considering that this series has not produced a really good SW film since 1983, and even further effectively been all downhill since 1980, tells it's own story.


Best of the Rest

  • Rogue One

The ironic thing is, that the best of the rest from the entire SW canon of films is the one film that is completely unnecessary. For 40 years the couple of lines in the crawl of the original 1977 SW movie was more than enough to satisfy; the plans were stolen and the empire is trying to get them back. Noone spent 40 years clambouring for a dedicated movie to explain how exactly that all unfolded. So given that Rogue One is a completely unneccessary movie to be by far the best of the entire canon outside of the original trilogy should be recognized as quite the achievement - as well as a damning indictment of the remaining films in the canon.


Then a long step down to...

  • The Force Awakens

Not great but better than they deserve to be:

  • Revenge of the Sith
  • Rise of Skywalker

Neither of these films are particularly good, however the blame for that cannot be attributed to these movies alone and taken in context. Both suffer from following absolutely abysmal middle chapters in their respective trilogies which left them in such a hole that these 2 films were left with a hell of a lot to cover, and while not fully delivering both try to do as best as they can on the way to wrap up their own cycles, so deserve credit for at least being better than they deserve to be, and while neither are particularly good, both could have been much worse.


The rest are in a dumper truck of absolute garbage, in chronological order:

  • Phantom Menace
  • Attack of the Clones
  • The Clone Wars
  • Solo
  • Caravan of Courage
  • The Battle for Endor

All of which are a steaming pile of garbage, but the undisputed champion, the worst of the worst is reserved for:

  • The Last Jedi

Considering that the 2 Ewok movies are included as well as the animated Clone Wars pilot movie, all of which had a theatrical release at the cinema, so they count as Star Wars movies, and all of those are above TLJ highlights just how bad it is. Dreadful writing, complete lack of character development, nonsensical and entirely pointless subplots and much more add up to making this the dumpster fire of the series. The only thing worse in the SW universe than TLJ is the Holiday Special, but as it did not have a theatrical release it doesn't count.



Need to rewatch the classic trilogy and prequels, and haven't seen the animated Clone Wars films.

So here I'll just rank the sequels and spin-off movies:

Rogue One
The Force Awakens
Rise of Skywalker
The Last Jedi
Solo

For the record, Solo is the only one in that bunch that I dislike.
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Fave Directors: Nolan, R. Scott, Scorsese, Spielberg, MacTiernan, Zwick, Tarantino.