How do you rank the Star Wars movies?

I watched all of the Stars Wars "trilogy of trilogies" as they came out. I will say this on behalf of episodes 4-6, who reputation varies widely depending on who's got the conch. When I first watched them, they were OK entertainment, but they just didn't have the same blend of action, entertainment, enthusiasm, and ... hmm ... sense of "newness" (that is, something unlike what we'd seen before in the theater) that I felt watching the first three. When my son got old enough, we watched them again several years later. And in retrospect I saw a lot of political subtext in them, where we do see shades of gray separating the Republic and the Empire rather than the stark black/white contrast we as viewers expect in these heroic epics.

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The first six Star Wars films are heavily rooted in world history. One faction of baddies are Stormtroopers, and there's a republic that is turned over to a senator in war that turns himself into an emperor and he takes control of the government. It's all full of historical homages and parallels on purpose. Plus, the Original Trilogy came out during the Cold War, so seeing any sort of political undercurrent is bound to happen. There's also the quintessential "evil British people" thing.

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What I can say for the prequels is that I respect that Lucas actually had a vision and he told a story consistent with that vision (good corrupted to evil). He wasn't trying to make mediocre movies. By the time we get to Revenge of the Sith, Lucas had almost figured it out.

That's fair. He knew what he wanted to do even if it didn't turn out so great. Some of the Prequel Trilogy is shiny. The problem is a lot of it is grimy. I wonder if he worked on it too much? I'm a semi-professional filmmaker and I've sometimes edited a script so many times that it seems like it makes sense to me, and yet other people read it and are bamboozled by what half of it means. I get the references and subtext, except stuff was removed and replaced, and then the meaning is lost to someone who has never seen it until draft like 25. No I don't know if that's what happened in this instance. I'm kind of throwing darts.

The way that's relevant here is that Lucas had a vision and knew what it all meant and then he couldn't quite leap the mental hurdles to get the final point across to everyone and it stumbled. Lucas knew where he was going and didn't stray too much. He just didn't get there very effectively.

I wanted so desperately to love the Prequel Trilogy, which I think was a mistake. Wanting to watch a film hoping it's good is fine. Hoping it's the best film ever is folly.

I think he set the bar too high. He wanted to outdo himself. He wanted a technology demonstrator. He wanted a masterful counterpoint to explain a villain as a victim.

James Cameron has surprisingly pulled off this trick several times, but he has done by repeating his love-story wrapped in an action-movie schtick (i.e., his sights are low, he's repacking the same story again and again). But he does entertain. Cameron gets an A+ for know how to make a billion dollars selling mac and cheese. Lucas had been out of the game for too long and then got off the bench and would up going to the most expensive film school in history.

Prudentially, his smarter play was immediately selling that film school to the Disney Empire. Artistically, the smarter play would have been a collaboration among equals and not yes-men. If he was dead set on being in the director's chair, he should've directed a non-SW passion project or two to get back in the saddle.

1. Star Wars
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Return of the Jedi
4. Revenge of the Sith
5. Attack of the Clones
6. The Phantom Menace
7. Rogue One
8. The Force Awakens

The Mandalorian seasons one and two were both enjoyable and The Book of Boba Fett was ok but thats all I've seen of Disney Star Wars.

Well, there's only four... kind of:

1. The Empire Strikes Back - A
2. Star Wars - A-
3. Return of the Jedi - B
4. Rogue One - B-


All the rest: F for forget they exist.

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The first three were good, the rest either sucked or I didn't watch them.

Episode 4, then 5 and 6.
The rest do not matter.

Rogue One wasnt bad. It's better than the others that are not the original 3.

I think we have enough voting members here to make official only the original trilogy even counts as Star Wars, with a possibly honorary mention for Rogue 1.

Top 10 material
Empire Strikes Back... that finale is everything. Stuff that cinema is made of.
Star Wars... undeniable.

Memorable set pieces
Revenge of the Sith
Return of the Jedi

Can do without them
The Phantom Menace
The Force Awakens
Attack of the Clones

I am only interested in seeing Rouge One out of those left.

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Phantom Menace is okay, because it put so much effort into the podracing section, and never took itself too seriously (aside from the immaculate conception).


It's still C-tier, but better than at least 3 other Star Wars movies.

When my friends and I eagerly went to see The Phantom Menace (in our late 20s), we couldn't have been more excited. And as soon as we saw a lightsaber our hearts just leapt. Never mind the huge jump in powers of the Jedi, who were now clearly superheroes, never mind the ridiculous Trade Federation guys, never mind Jar Jar Binks, never mind the dialogue which was unquestionably worse than anything Harrison Ford ever whined about, never mind the stilted delivery from ostensibly very good actors, never mind the fact that CGI Yoda looks a LOT less real than Puppet Yoda, never mind the fish-people and their ridiculousness, never mind the utterly annoying and stupid kid who was apparently going to become Darth Vader, never mind the mind-numbingly dull, overlong, and made-for-merchandising pod-race, never mind Annakin saving the day by mashing his fists down and accidentally hitting a button instead of doing something cool that showed early Force tendencies, never mind the confusing and incredibly drab pseudo-political B-story, and never mind the soul-crushing Midichlorian hand-wave of everything we believed The Force to be from the first three films. We got Star Wars!!!
The first time we saw it.
And mostly the second.
The third time we started looking at each other uneasily throughout the film.
But it wasn't til after the fourth viewing, in the theater, that we actually said to each other, "Wait... does New Star Wars actually suck?!!! Like really suck?!!!
But it was actually when we went to see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in the theater, on my third viewing when I brought my biggest Star Wars Fan friend with me and he said, "This is what New Star Wars should have been... sighhhh..." that we became utterly certain.
There's a lot of ret-critiquing going on these days about The Prequels as people who were kids when they came out reach the age that they are adults with a large presence in the discourse, but this is dishonest, it is nostalgia-salvage. The Prequels suck. Full stop.
The Phantom Menace is terrible. Just terrible.
Attack Of The Clones is actually RiffTrax bad.
And Revenge Of The Sith only receives the "Well, it's the best of The Prequels at least," treatment because, Oooh! Dark! It is also a bad movie that I could mock for days.
I understand that a lot of people were kids or young teens when those movies came out and they were the Big Thing (though that is really due to the popularity of the first three films), but at some point we all just have to be grown-ups and admit that The Prequels are terrible and that it was Lucas, not Disney, who ruined Star Wars. Disney just pissed on its grave.

Ouch.

I agree that they're all objectively bad movies, I still hold that Lucas was getting closer to competency in the last film. I don't think that's because it's theme is darker, but because he had two films as a warm-up after a long period of not sitting in the chair.

“You deserve an extra for including Spaceballs in your Star Wars list.”

Thank you, gbgoodies. Glad you appreciated my inclusion of that Mel Brooks’ classic. I did that as a bit of a joke, but Spaceballs is surely the greatest parody of Star Wars that we are ever likely to see.

Mark

1. New Hope
2. Empire Strikes Back
3. Rogue One
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Force Awakens
6. The Ewok Movie
7. The second Ewok movie
8. Last Jedi
9. Attack of the Clones
10. Phantom Menace
11. Solo
12. Revenge of the Sith
13. Rise of Skywalker
14. The Star Wars Holiday Special