In order of preference
THE GOOD
The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: A New Hope
Rogue One
THE NOT BAD
Return of the Jedi
The Force Awakens
THE BAD
Revenge of the Sith
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Shameless Plug (previous thread): My Connection to the Star Wars films.
I am continually surprised that anyone could rate Attack of the Clones as anything higher than ‘Burn immediately, apply brainwash to all afflicted’. It is quite possibly the worst movie I have seen (took my son - he was the right age).
I had previously thought the annoying kid from Phantom Menace was the least convincing acting performance ever - and then we saw Teen Anakin. Admittedly, the dialogue, plot and character he had to play didn’t give him much chance. The Phantom Menace was stupid, but fun in part, Revenge of the Sith was fast-paced with plenty of cool scenes and a sense of a story. *****Attack of the Clones *****was just - weirdly pathetic.
Mind you, it did have the best special effect throughout the entire series - when the bomb exploded in the asteroid belt (my local theatre had good sound).
[ol]
[li]Star Wars[/li][li]Empire Strikes Back[/li][li]Rogue One[/li][li]The Force Awakens[/li][li]Return of the Jedi[/li][li]Revenge of the Sith[/li][li]The Phantom Menace/Attack of the Clones[/li][/ol]
If I’m being honest with myself, Empire Strikes Back is objectively a better movie; the performances are more nuanced, the SFX are better, the writing is better. Still, ANH gets the lead for being the first and setting everything in motion.
I bounce back and forth between Rogue One and The Force Awakens for the numbers 3 and 4 slots. Both are flawed, both have some wonderful moments, and both helped give the franchise a well-needed kick in the pants. Saw Gerrera and the captured Imperial pilot (who mysteriously goes from crazy/brain-damaged to competent with no explanation) drag Rogue One down from what should have been something like The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare (or even The Dirty Dozen) in space.
The Force Awakens suffers from the same flaws as so many JJ Abrams movies, but the pacing is pretty good, the action is well-executed (especially the aerial sequences; I still get chills watching the X-Wings throwing up rooster tails as they come in over the water on…wherever the bar was), and Daisy Ridley is magnetic on the screen. Still, it is so derivative that it can’t get rated any higher.
Return of the Jedi gets worse on every re-watch. The entire first act is completely and utterly ridiculous. I can buy Luke planning this overly convoluted rescue attempt because he’s still young, but there’s no way Lando, Chewie or Leia would have gone along with it. One or more of them would have said, “look, we’ll handle the planning, you just show up and do your Jedi shit.” Leia going along on the ground assault makes no goddamn sense whatsoever (also, did nobody think to give the droids a coat of green paint, if not actual camouflage?). Still, it closed out the story reasonably well, and there are some genuinely touching emotional beats here and there.
The prequels are in their own category in the bottom three, and I basically rank them on how often I can stand to re-watch them. There was an Imax release of Attack of the Clones that had to cut some time due to the then-limitations of the medium, and it became a slightly better film for it. Still, I can occasionally re-watch Revenge of the Sith, whereas I never go back to the first two. The entire focus of the prequels should have been the fall of Anakin Skywalker, and instead we had clones, and midichlorians, and blockades, and something resembling political intrigue, and one movie where it seemed like Lucas said, “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. We have to get to Darth Vader.” The only emotional depth in the entire prequel trilogy is when Obi-Wan cries out, “You were my brother!” and I attribute that solely to Ewan McGregor’s skill as an actor. He was clearly getting no help from the script or the director.
I’m a big Star Wars fan and really into the universe so it’s hard to decide exactly what criteria to review/rank them on. But my comments:
A New Hope: Holds up quite well by today’s standards I think - it’s a perfect encapsulation of the hero’s journey, includes a lot of cool places and designs, and has great timing too… stuff like Han coming to save the day near the end never gets old. Second only to Empire I think.
Empire Strikes Back: Another one that holds up quite well. Something that’s struck me upon further viewings over the years - this one lacks a complex plot, and in a way, is great because of it. The rebels leave Hoth, and the plot splits up between the Falcon crew and Luke. Luke goes to train with Yoda. Meanwhile the Falcon’s hyperdrive breaks so they’re forced to find help and end up getting captured, so Luke tries to rescue them. The whole movie just the repercussions of the broken hyperdrive! But that lets everything focus more on character moments and emotions and is one reason why I think Empire is the best movie.
Return of the Jedi: Like most people I agree it’s the weakest of the OT. The scene in Jabba’s palace is fun, but I agree with carlb that you best not think about the actual plan too much. We get a second Death Star, but at least the surrounding setup is different (with the important action happening on the Endor moon). The final showdown between Luke, Vader and the Emperor is appropriately great. I think the movie would’ve felt a lot stronger had they just gone with Wookies instead of Ewoks.
The Phantom Menace: It’s crap, but as I said in the other thread, I do actually like how little it ties in with the others because it’s easier to ignore. Just handwave the midichlorians away with the “they don’t cause the force they just are drawn to it and serve as an indicator” explanation and you’re set. The lightsaber fight is cool and I like Maul, but I do blame him for the start of the “we have to constantly have cooler lightsaber fights” trend.
Attack of the Clones: I can see where some people are coming from in saying it’s fun, and I do think it does the best job of fitting Lucas’ vision for a serial-type swashbuckling adventure. But it’s just so stupid and makes a horrible Star Wars movie. I hate pretty much everything about Jango and how he retcons Boba Fett’s backstory, I hate how the Clone Army comes about and what the Clone Wars turn out to be. Obi-Wan’s mission to Kamino seems interesting in the moment but doesn’t really go anywhere except for “oh we have these clones now and we’re gonna use em.” No one ever follows up on Sifo-Dias or whatever, and we never know if Palpatine was planning to use the army for himself and had to readjust, or it was his original plan all along, etc. Dooku is cool but ultimately wasted. I hate Yoda fighting with a lightsaber.
Revenge of the Sith: Better but still stupid. Grevious was poorly used and feels shoehorned in. Anakin comes off as far too whiny and his shift to the dark side too sudden, likely because the movie is too stuffed elsewhere.
The Force Awakens: Far too much of a rip off… I was fine with some of the early stuff, but as the movie came on and it just kept repeating story beats from A New Hope I started getting sad. There’s definitely some potential in the new characters, but it feels like lots of setup that future movies will need to handle to be worth it. The First Order was very poorly introduced and situated. There certainly aren’t as many cringey moments as the prequels and it’s a better film by most standards, but at least the prequels introduced new stuff (even if a lot of it was lame).
Rogue One: More wasted potential, I think. The biggest problem is that none of the characters are introduced well or have enough interesting about them, so I didn’t really care when they all died. It’s overstuffed as well (Saw Gerrera has no point; too many different planets in the middle of the movie). The Vader scenes near the end carry most of the movie for me.
If I had to rate/rank them, it’d probably be:
10: ESB
9: ANH
8:
7: ROTJ
6:
5: TFA, R1
4: ROTS
3: AOTC, TPM
2:
1: Holiday Special
With the disclaimer that I have never been anything more than a casual Star Wars fan at best:
Episode 1: TPM
2/10. I don’t think I’m suffering from nostalgia blinding me because I had high expectations. I just expected a movie that would be entertaining. I have never gotten through it without dozing off, usually through the pod race scene. I can’t remember any characters I particularly cared for in this movie, including Obi Wan and Qui Gon, although I did enjoy some of the fighting. Darth Maul seemed to do very poorly; maybe there’s a reason most people aren’t using double-ended lightsabers.
Episode 2: AOC
6/10. Probably my favorite of the prequels and the one I’m most likely to want to watch again. If Anakin and Padme had had shorter scenes together, I’d probably have enjoyed it a lot more. I enjoyed the fighting and action scenes in this movie in particular. Obi Wan seemed to have more development, and we saw more of how the Jedi council works. The whole clone army thing was… confusing and it seemed a bit stupid that they accepted it so easily, but hey, still a fun movie. Watching the clones roll out to fight the droids was exciting.
Episode 3: ROTS
5/10. Not unwatchable or anything. Still enjoyed the fighting. But a lot of characters seemed to be doing things just because the plot demanded it, including dying. Anakin’s fall from grace would have had more impact if I’d been more interested in his character after the previous movies, and the murdering of the padawans felt particularly obnoxious when compared to the fact that we’d been forced to watch Jar Jar and pod racing just two movies earlier. I did feel bad for Obi Wan’s grief over what happened to Anakin. There were also a lot of other Jedi with no distinguishing characteristics (within the movie canon) other than looks who died, which is too bad, I guess? If I knew them from other media I might have cared more.
On the prequels overall, I feel they all suffered from poor villains… and also terrible villain names. Darth Maul? Darth Sidious? General Grievous? Wasn’t there a Greedo guy too? Darth Vader is definitely a villainous name too, but he isn’t named “Darth Strangler” or “Captain Cruelty.” :dubious:
Episode 4/ANH:
7/10. An enjoyable movie, even if it’s never been one of my absolute favorites. I don’t mind Luke’s attitude that much, since I enjoy the rest of the universe and characters enough to make up for it. Obi Wan, original Vader, the droids, Leia and Han… plenty of characters who are still distinct in my memory despite it being years since I saw the movie, probably more years than since I’ve seen the prequels. So… while I don’t go back to watch it for fun myself, in general, I’m not going to be upset it’s on.
Episode 5: ESB
9/10. Definitely my favorite of the series, and the one I’m mostly likely to watch myself overall. More development of the characters, Luke’s hero journey, Yoda I like… Good action and “I am your father!” There were various interesting settings, and it felt like a fun adventure the whole way through. I feel weird writing so little about the movie I enjoyed the most, but I don’t have much to say aside from “Fun ride!”
Episode 6: ROJ
5/10. It’s my least favorite by far of the original trilogy. The plot felt like a retread of the first film, and the whole thing with the Ewoks just made the Empire seem like a bunch of bumbling morons as opposed to the huge threat they felt like in the previous movie. Since I wasn’t super into the Leia Han romance, it wasn’t a big plus for me, although “I love you,” “I know,” was a pretty classic piece of dialogue. I seem to recall that response was actually made up by Harrison Ford for his character? There were still some fun scenes, but I think the movie largely benefits from better movies that came before, giving the characters more context and depth (something ROTS seemed to fail at, at least for me.)
Episode 7(?): TFA
3/10. I found this movie almost as awful as TPM. I didn’t really like anyone in it. The story felt like yet another retread of ANH. Rey suffered from something I feel a lot of strong female characters suffer from… she doesn’t seem to go through a journey like Luke to get her power, nor is there a long mystical explanation for why she’s so great like Anakin, she’s just sort of amazing from the get-go. If she were given more depth of development and more struggle to gain strength, I’d enjoy her character more. As she was, I don’t really recall much about her character.
Kylo Ren as a villain was unintentionally hilarious. I had no idea why he turned evil, although my impression was more bratty defying his parents than any major event or reason. I picture an adolescent in his room listening to the Evanescence of a galaxy far far away. I’m pretty sure him stabbing Han Solo wasn’t meant to be funny either. The best part of the movie for me was briefly following an emo Kylo Ren twitter afterwards. Still… I didn’t fall asleep watching it.
What about Rogue One?
Also, TFA continues the bad villain names, one of the villains is Captain Phasma. Which sounds both childish, and also somehow sexual.
Ah, sorry, should have mentioned that I haven’t seen that one yet so I can’t review it! (Phasma definitely qualifies as another unfortunate name.)
I haven’t seen the prequels and probably never will as what little I’ve seen was… not good.
A New Hope: A really fun movie that offers us a tantalising glimpse of what appears to be a huge, fascinating universe. Relatable, cool characters, great action and special effects that still hold up well. The pacing is sometimes a bit slow. 8/10
The Empire Strikes Back: The good guys lose ! A darker tone and the most gorgeous landscapes in the trilogy (Hoth, Dagobah, Bespin), the first appearance of the Emperor, whom even Dark Vador seems to fear (!), a fantastic battle again and a huge twist (spoilers needed ?). Oh, and Han solo gets to use Luke’s lightsaber ! 9/10
Return of the Jedi: As I said in another thread, I rate it higher than A New Hope, as it never seems to come to a crawl. Plus, I really don’t mind the Ewoks. The many varied creatures in Jabba’s Palace recapture the feeling of being in an enormous universe. Add the parallel space/ground battles and of course the final confronttion and resolution. Reusing the Death Star gizmo was lazy but its work-in-progress look was a nice, well done touch that sort of redeems it. 8,5/10
The Force Awakens: After the triumph of the original trilogy and the Prequels debacle, the stakes were ridiculously high. On a more personal note, it was my first Star Wars since 1983, and my daughters’ first ever in the cinema. I came out… satisfied. The feel of the original movies was both respected and slightly tweaked, not an easy thing to do. And they had the guts to off Han ! It does feel too much like a rehash, though. Still, on the whole : mission accomplished. 7,5/10
Rogue One: So, the rebels can be nasty, too ! It’s the closest to The Empire Strikes Back in terms of tone, dark with a good helping of moral ambiguity and a touching father-daughter relationship. Great characters (even the droid), including one who had the potential to be a new Han Solo, a wonderful land battle and a genuinely moving final scene, something that is actually rare in the other films. 8,5/10
Star Wars – 9/10. Just the way space opera should be.
Empire Strikes Back – 8 Good film, but doesn’t have the impact of the original.
Return – 6. First half was an 8. Halfway through it took a nosedive.
The Phantom Menace – 4. Bad idea from the start because you knew there was no chance of Obi-Wan dying in any battle. And Darth Maul was the least interesting villain in the history of film.
Attack of the Clones – 3. Completely forgettable.
Revenge of the Sith – 3. Even more forgettable.
The Force Awakens – 7. Basically a remake of the first, but since they were remaking the best, it worked.
Rogue One – 5. A movie designed to answer a question that no one with any sense would have to ask. Marred by the worst truck ending* in film. The creaky contrivances of the film – both from its start and in its ending – made it no better than mediocre.
*“Suddenly, everyone got run over by a truck.”