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To my mind, the definitive Star Wars Saga is the six that George Lucas either directed or had a direct hand in. I'm not necessarily saying that everything from the Disney era is lame, but for me the story of Luke Skywalker and the rise, fall and ultimate redemption of his father Anakin are Star Wars for me. Anything else is just bonus material of variable quality, and I haven't even actually seen it all.
Here's how I personally rank them:
1. Revenge of the Sith (III) (2005)
2. The Empire Strikes Back (V) (1980)
3. Attack of the Clones (II) (2002)
4. A New Hope (IV) (1977)
5. Return of the Jedi (VI) (1983)
6. The Phantom Menace (I) (1999)
I know, I know. I probably should rank the classic 1977 original much higher. But the original has perhaps become a bit over-familiar to me over the years, and I happen to think that Attack of the Clones is highly underrated (give or take those lines about sand and wishing feelings away). That whole climactic sequence on Geonosis is great, starting from two Jedi vs. a trio of beasts in a Roman-style arena and then building and escalating into the beginning of the Clone Wars! As you may gather, I actually have a slight preference for the darker end of the Star Wars spectrum. My memories of seeing The Empire Strikes Back as a little kid during the movie's first theatrical run are very vivid, and certain images from that film are permanently etched into my brain. (It's the very first Star Wars film I ever saw in a theater.) And even though the Prequel Trilogy gets so little love, I think George Lucas knocked it out of the park with Revenge of the Sith, bridging the two eras of his saga and sending our Galaxy Far Far Away straight to Hell in a handbasket. Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine totally owns that film lock, stock and barrel! (And I saw ROTS a total of nine times during its '05 theatrical run!) Like so many other people, I was at first kind of disappointed in The Phantom Menace when it first came out, but that's only because its primary function was to set up everything for not only the Prequel Trilogy, but everything that we already knew from the Original Trilogy. As a result, it's more interesting in how it sets everything up and is less interesting as a story in its own right. Likewise, Return of the Jedi has the thankless task of adequately summing everything up and bringing everybody's stories to a satisfying conclusion. (As woefully inadequate as The Rise of Skywalker admittedly was in this regard, even Lucas had mixed results with ROTJ.) In addition, both ROTJ and TPM are perhaps a little too "kid-friendly" for my tastes. But ROTJ does have the final three-way confrontation between Luke, Darth Vader and the Emperor in Death Star II's Throne Room, and for me that sort of gives it an edge over TMP. For me, the real meat of the Saga is in the middle, with the fall of Anakin and the rise of Luke.
Special honorable mention goes to the Rian Johnson-directed eighth chapter, The Last Jedi. Johnson really tried to do something different and subvert fan expectations, and he deserves a lot of credit for that. (Let's face it, there's nobody with a more ridiculously inflated sense of entitlement than Star Wars fanboys.) Alas, J.J. Abrams came back for the ninth chapter and tried to give everybody what the chastened Disney assumed they wanted...
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"Well, it's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid" - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)
"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours" - Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War III Blues (1963)
Last edited by Darth Pazuzu; 1 week ago at 06:35 PM.
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for including Spaceballs in your Star Wars list.