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It seems a little indulgent to start yet another Star Wars topic, we already have four on the go. However the saga is a saga and it's worth looking at all the different films compared in one thread.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/24/every-star-wars-film-ranked-solo-skywalker

I'm sure everyone will disagree with some or other placement on this list.

How in the world is:
A) AotC consider the "best" of the prequels. It is clearly the worst and
B) the Xmas special abomination was even considered. It should be ranked so low that it drops off the list. Seriously, it out ranks the Prequels on that list

Well, at least Empire is first.

TESB is really good. If I had to pick my top one I would go with TESB.

To a degree, though, it can't be separated from Star Wars.

I mean you can't understand SW5 without SW4. You can understand all of SW4,5,6+ without SW1,2,3.

You can understand SW7 without SW4,5,6 but it lacks a great deal of resonance.

Suffice to say, the guy who wrote that list and I disagree.... but that is what makes such lists great!

I do love Christopher Lee in AotC. I especially like how he lays out exactly what is happening, and Obi-wan is too self-righteous to realize it because Dooku is bad so he must be a liar. Obi-wan was blinded by their own self-righteousness and hence that small scene revealed why the Jedi would ultimately fail.

Ranking the Christmas special above the prequels is harsh...

 insaniak wrote:
Ranking the Christmas special above the prequels is harsh...

I started laughing so hard when I got to that part. What a massive slap in the face to the prequels.

For me:

ESB
Rogue 1 (Now THAT'S a space battle!)
ANH
TFA (Since it's a rehash of ANH I can't in justice place it any lower.)
RotJ

AotC
RotS
TPM (Duel of Fates keeps it from falling off the bottom here, unlike what comes next)




the made for TV movies/specials

































There is no episode VIII.

force awakens better than return of the jedi..... yep.. nope

For me, there's the original trilogy, then Rogue 1 as an honorary member. For canon, I guess there's also Star Tours (original) and the Ewok movies, although they probably don't hold up.

In the fan fiction category, I'd place the prequels above the sequels, although TLJ is a great experience in the not-even-fan fiction section with oBSG's opening ep and Space Raiders.

It put Rogue 1 as worse than TLJ. Yeah i don't believe that.

For me it's...

6
5
8
7
4
Rogue 1

Caravan of Courage
(I do not remember ANYTHING from the other Ewok movie but it CANNOT be worse than the prequels)

1,2,3, xmas special - All equally trash.

The other movie had Wilford Brimley and an Ewok on speed. I remember it quite fondly.

You know what, Obi Wan was good in the prequels. ONLY Obi Wan. His performance might be the only thing to edge them out over the x mas special. But thats like Agent Smith from the matrix sequels. Agent smith is great but the rest of those movies are trash. It doesn't make them good movies.

I don't think I could rank them all individually, since they're such a mixed bag, and my reasons for liking each are different as a result.

But I would go with ESB on the top, because it's awesome, and because of the original trilogy is the least damaged by George's Special Editionising.

Then 'Group 2' would include ANH, TFA, TLJ and Rogue 1.

Group 3 would include RotJ and the prequels and Ewok movies.

The Christmas Special is best forgotten.

Whilst I'm a bit of a leftie the Guardian has been spiralling into self parody for a while now, and how the chuff is TLJ 'better' than R1, lazy phoned in about to go on holiday article poor show Bradshaw poor show

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Whilst I'm a bit of a leftie the Guardian has been spiralling into self parody for a while now, and how the chuff is TLJ 'better' than R1, lazy phoned in about to go on holiday article poor show Bradshaw poor show

Lazy phoned in 'article' designed to generate clicks and ad revenue.

For pure spectacle, scale and giganticism, The Last Jedi scores heavily and it is a very enjoyable and watchable episode – although disliked by some fans for the way it treated the return of Luke Skywalker, whose cameo at the end of The Force Awakens had been so weirdly moving. Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron and John Boyega’s reformed stormtrooper, Finn, are solid male leads and Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose is a scene-stealer. But the movie belongs to Adam Driver’s tremendous, mercurial villain, Kylo Ren.

That's so untrue its hilarious.....

Love the passive aggressive "Disliked by some fans" - yep apparently that's the only people who don't like it.

Finn is a solid Male lead? Er not in this film - here he is the "token stupid black guy whose bumbling fails to amuse at every turn"

Rose is a scene stealer - well she is a stupid character who cocks up absolutely everything she attempts - so there is that.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
TESB is really good. If I had to pick my top one I would go with TESB.

To a degree, though, it can't be separated from Star Wars.

I mean you can't understand SW5 without SW4. You can understand all of SW4,5,6+ without SW1,2,3.

You can understand SW7 without SW4,5,6 but it lacks a great deal of resonance.

If I had to choose one Star Wars film on its own, it would have to be Star Wars. Empire Strikes Back is better, but only as the middle one in the trilogy - it clearly doesn't have a beginning or end.


Hmmm ...

4, 5, 6, R1, S, 7, 8, 3, 2, 1 for me.

I always had the whole OT as one thing, it's a single story and while I might prefer this or that part of it it really needs to be taken as a whole. The same for the latter two of the prequels(the first isn't so much bad as just utterly, utterly disposable - all the actual information and plot that matters is fed to the viewer in a fraction of the time in the first half of AotC).

So, ANH/ESB/RotJ ≈ Rogue One > I know it's a film list but sod it, Rebels and TCW TV shows go here > AotC/RotS >>>> TFA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TLJ.

After I had a think about it:

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. Rogue One
4. The Return Of The Jedi
5. The Force Awakens
6. Revenge Of The Sith
7. The Last Jedi
8. The Phantom Menace
9. Attack Of The Clones

There might be some odd choices in there but I can explain it all.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
After I had a think about it:

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. Rogue One
4. The Return Of The Jedi
5. The Force Awakens
6. Revenge Of The Sith
7. The Last Jedi
8. The Phantom Menace
9. Attack Of The Clones

There might be some odd choices in there but I can explain it all.

Pretty much, the last 3 are interchangeable based on your tolerance for munchkin Anakin, woody Anakin or purty ladies who just can't act (Natty P gets a pass as I think by AoC she'd twigged she'd signed up to a turkey and deliberately stopped giving a poop)

Well, my own ranking is probably going to ruffle more than a few feathers, but here goes!

1: A New Hope- The original and, to my mind, the best. Two things put this ahead of the rest for me. One is the 'innocence' of it being the first film, blissfully ignorant of the behemoth it would become. People could be called normal things like Luke and Ben and Owen, and you could call Jedi 'Wizards' and droids 'robots' and not everything was a Noun-Thing. There were mysteries that had a magic to them, blank spaces for the imagination to run wild that some of the others lacked later on.

Second because as far as I'm concerned, it's the best actual 'story' in a self-contained sense. Yes, it's an archetypal tale with characters who slot neatly into the established roles of the young hero and the wise mentor and the evil villain and the princess in the tower, so on and so forth, but it takes you on that thrill-ride and makes sure you have enormous fun along the way. It dumps you into a universe that is full of wonder and magic and larger-than-life heroes and villains, and gallops from scene to scene wasting no time and managing to deliver the whole spectrum of human emotion in around 2 hours.


2: The Last Jedi- Yes, I know. It's the Worst Thing Ever, apparently. But I bloody love it. and somewhat ironically, for the exact opposite reason I love ANH. It doesn't settle for the tropes and archetypes and sets out with the ambition to do something different. I know a lot of people don't like that, but I think it's glorious; we've had 40 years of the same themes and ideas being repeated again and again (and to a certain extent, TFA implied more of the same was coming) and at this point, I'm ready for something new.

It also gets a lot of points for some of the best acting ever put to screen in a SW movie, Hamill, Driver and Fisher absolutely smash their respective roles out of the park, giving us the best Luke and Leia performances we've had and Driver making a strong case that Ren is going to be a far better antagonist even than Vader.


3: Rogue One- Putting the 'war' in Star Wars, and doing so with immense style. The best space battle in cinema history, a third act that surpasses all previous SW battles in its authenticity, scale and composition, a compelling if a little one-note cast and of course the excellent Vader and Tarkin cameos. Mendolshon is great as Krennic too. There's not really much more to be said about R1, it's just a damn good film.


4/5: I struggle here to pick between The Force Awakens and The Empire Strikes Back. TFA has everything I love about ANH, along with Ford's stunning final turn as Han, and looks absolutely beautiful, with some truly impressive visual sequences. Empire on the other hand is downright iconic and features some of the best Star Wars scenes and moments. However, TFA is perhaps a little unoriginal (though again, I'm fine with that up to a point, and for my taste it was different enough to not just be a rehash) and around those amazing scenes in ESB there's a lot of padding. The first and last acts are great but I do feel it sags in the middle, which stops it getting higher on this list. Both are great films, but up against incredible competition. Being my 4/5th favourite Star Wars films still puts them both well above most other movies...

6: The Revenge of the Sith- The best the Prequels get. There's a lot to criticise here, but also a lot of positives compared to AotC and TPM. The opening sequences is still one of my favourite bits of Star Wars, the score is one of the best, and there are some good performances from McGregor, McDiarmid, Jackson and (briefly) Lee. The visuals have aged reasonably well and even when there's gaping holes in the script and plot, the film is still by and large far more exciting than the other prequels.

7: Return of the Jedi- And it would've gotten higher, if it weren't for those meddling Ewoks... And therein lies the rub. The battle of Endor/Death Star II is superb, Luke and Vader's final duel is superb, Han's rescue is great... But it keeps coming back to teddy bear aliens beating up Stormtroopers, which has aged dreadfully in the visual department and is a dumb idea to begin with. They occupy so much of the second half of the film that it takes away from the rest, I think.

8: Attack of the Clones- And now we're into 'not good' territory for these last two. There is some stuff to enjoy here, mostly Lee as Dooku and McGregor as Kenobi (actually, most of the Obi-wan stuff in the film is actually fairly watchable), but there's also the Anakin and Padme stuff that falls so incredibly flat and the dumb Yoda/Dooku saber fight (the preceding Force duel is great though). The Arena Battle is kind of fun, but imagine if it had been made with a similar tone to Rogue One and we'd actually got to see more of the battle...

9: The Phantom Menace- Yeah, it's not good. Aside from the Duel of the Fates, which is iconic, but the rest of it is nonsense. Lots of wasted potential too, especially Qui-gonn who showed a lot of promise as a character.




Again though, aside from the bottom 4, the rest are still above most other movies in my estimations and I will continue to love Star Wars as long as they're making it in some form or another. I think it's highly unlikely that a SW film will come out in which I don't find something to like (in future that is... I don't believe the stupidity of the early spin-offs will be repeated... ).

I'd probably rank them something like this:

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. The Last Jedi
4. The Return Of The Jedi
5. The Force Awakens
6. Rogue One
7. The Phantom Menace
8. Revenge Of The Sith
9. Attack Of The Clones

But I've honestly never found much value in ranking the Star Wars films. Almost all of them have caveats. Empire is only best in context of 4 and 6. Rogue One is only as low as it is because I don't care for more or less the entire second act but I have on multiple occasions jumped to Act 3 before watching A New Hope as one of the best standalone battles in the franchise. RotJ's ranking corresponds more or less directly with how recently I've seen it. After watching it usually ends up on the top of the list for a while until I decide it deserves to be lower for reasons I never agree with when its actually on the screen. The Top 5 are more or less inseparable for me, with parts of Rogue One being better than the whole list.

 Paradigm wrote:
2: The Last Jedi- Yes, I know. It's the Worst Thing Ever, apparently. But I bloody love it. and somewhat ironically, for the exact opposite reason I love ANH. It doesn't settle for the tropes and archetypes and sets out with the ambition to do something different. I know a lot of people don't like that, but I think it's glorious; we've had 40 years of the same themes and ideas being repeated again and again (and to a certain extent, TFA implied more of the same was coming) and at this point, I'm ready for something new.

IMO even if you want to step away from the tropes and archetypes TLJ is still a bad movie. In fact, its biggest flaws are things like poor pacing, nonsense plot decisions driven by technobabble nobody cares about, etc. Maybe it had ambition, but ambition doesn't prevent you from failing. And TLJ is a failure.

As for my ranking:

1) ANH. Yes, even better than ESB. Aside from the historical influence and originality it's the complete story, along with a final battle that still holds up 40 years later and is a lesson in how to do things right.

2) ESB. A close second, but second. People rank it as #1 for a reason.

3) R1. Sure, sometimes you have to turn your brain off a bit and just go with it, but it's still an entertaining ride. And the final battle alone makes it worth it, the Star Wars fight we've all been dreaming of now possible with modern technology.

4) ROTJ. Ewoks let it down, and rescuing Han feels a bit like two separate movies spliced together to fit the standard film length.

10) Prequel trash. At their best they're mediocre and a pretty spectacle, at their worst they're unwatchable. And there's a whole lot of worst. Maybe if you cut out the best few moments and the most important plot explanation you can salvage a single watchable movie out of the whole mess, but that's probably optimistic. Just read the wikipedia plot summary so you know the other half of Anakin Skywalker's story.

Not included: fanfiction trash. Getting Disney to sell your fanfiction doesn't make it a real Star Wars movie. ROTJ was the end of the story, period.

Lots of odd made up fan fiction being presented here so let's get a real list of films to help clear things up:

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. The Return Of The Jedi

There, done.


While I've been entertained a bit here and there by the others they all have felt unnecessary and in the end just muddle the story. I'm also pretty sure that it has been proven that the Prequels cause cancer in lab rats.

Top to bottom order, not including Ewoks, Solo or Holiday special (didn’t see them):

5, 4, 6, R1, 3, 7, 1, 2, 8.

Personal list would be
1. Empire (goes without saying)
2. New Hope (a good story from beginning to end but not the home run that is Empire)
3. Return of the Jedi (sorta missed the mark with pacing and the zogging ewoks but still good stuff. Scenes with Luke, Vader, and the Emperor really made the movie work)
4. Rogue One (great cinematography and a decent plot despite it stepping on the toes of old fluff)
5. Force Awakens (Good cinematography but somewhat a beat for beat retelling of New Hope. The copy and paste of the formula really took away the wow factor)
6. Revenge of the Sith (Prequal CGI cluster F but the actors salvaged the movie despite terrible writing and a sub par plot)
7. Last Jedi (Better cinematography than Sith but half the plot was total garbage and really took me out of the movie. Sith at least had me engaged from start to end despite it being poorly written dialog and overuse of CGI).
8. Phantom (everything about the plot, writing, Jar Jar, and overuse of CGI where bad but the fight with Darth Maul was so badass that it made the move almost worth it).
9. Attack of the Clones. (Really nothing of great value to be had here other than the meme gold mine).
(Haven't seen Solo)

 Vankraken wrote:
Personal list would be
1. Empire (goes without saying)
2. New Hope (a good story from beginning to end but not the home run that is Empire)
3. Return of the Jedi (sorta missed the mark with pacing and the zogging ewoks but still good stuff. Scenes with Luke, Vader, and the Emperor really made the movie work)
4. Rogue One (great cinematography and a decent plot despite it stepping on the toes of old fluff)
5. Force Awakens (Good cinematography but somewhat a beat for beat retelling of New Hope. The copy and paste of the formula really took away the wow factor)
6. Revenge of the Sith (Prequal CGI cluster F but the actors salvaged the movie despite terrible writing and a sub par plot)
7. Last Jedi (Better cinematography than Sith but half the plot was total garbage and really took me out of the movie. Sith at least had me engaged from start to end despite it being poorly written dialog and overuse of CGI).
8. Phantom (everything about the plot, writing, Jar Jar, and overuse of CGI where bad but the fight with Darth Maul was so badass that it made the move almost worth it).
9. Attack of the Clones. (Really nothing of great value to be had here other than the meme gold mine).
(Haven't seen Solo)

This is pretty close to my list as well. Actually, probably exactly what order I'd use.
Although I am still torn on TLJ as to whether it is better or worse the RotS.

-

And it’s the same as mine; except TLJ gets bumped to the bottom and the rest below it are moved up a slot.