“Star Wars” movies, ranked
There’s a new Star Wars out, and the fanboys are mad as hell! What else is new.
The galaxy's most fickle fan base unfailingly has a lot to say about its various plot points, which alternate between adulation and blasphemy, depending on how sacred you rate the text of the original films — for better or worse, a trilogy that looms large over all of its offshoots. Truthfully, that’s a little heavy a burden to place on a space opera: The Star Wars films run the gamut from pleasantly disposable to essential viewing for anybody who calls themselves a cinephile, and maybe there are one or two that suck. So, as Episode IX presents itself to be torn apart by the opinions of the internet, I figured I might as well do my part and give mine.
Obviously, there are spoilers.
11: The Phantom Menace (1999)
Look. If you’re going to make a trilogy of movies focusing on the fall of an entire government, kicking it off with the petty political malevolence that topples the first domino makes perfect sense as an idea. Some of the banality-of-evil aspects of Episode I play better today than writer-director George Lucas, or anybody, probably ever foresaw. But the whole thing is too mired in bureaucratic minutiae, too bereft of stakes (nobody thought Liam Neesons was making it through this thing alive, did they?) and a bit too stately to ever take flight.
Very little about this movie has aged well, from the writing to the acting (here we pause to note, however, that while Lil’ Anankin Skywalker is plenty irritating, the fanbase did Jake Lloyd so unnecessarily dirty after this. He was a kid, people.) to the racial caricatures of the aliens. (The Trade Federation dudes may, in hindsight, be worse than Jar Jar Binks.) The podrace and the final duel with Darth Maul remain among the saga’s more remarkable set pieces, but you could honestly skip this movie and lose nothing but preamble.
There's nothing wrong with making a movie no one wants. You might get to surprise people with one of those. But if you're making a movie nobody needs, you at least better make it interesting. This side-yarn detailing Han Solo's origin story is only that in fits and spurts, and due to its much-documented behind-the-scenes turmoil, it's hard to put a finger on why. Is it a miscasting of Alden Ehrenreich as the young smuggler, unquestionably the most thankless role in the history of the galaxy's call sheet? (Yes and no: He's rakishly charming, but you-know-who's shadow looms large.) Is it a tonal clash between directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, whose penchant for subversion and improv got them both hired and fired, and steady-hand relief pitcher Ron Howard? (Again, yes and no: Howard's nobody's idea of a hack, but his straight-and-narrow style suppresses the tantalizingly batshit echoes of Lord and Miller's movie that keep popping up.)
Whatever it is, Solo never quite gels; more to the point, it doesn't seem to know what to do with the parts that do work (Donald Glover as the young Lando Calrissien; DP Bradford Young's luxurious cinematography; Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Lando's droid; the Kessel Run heist that began Han's legend in earnest) except treat them like checks on a list. The sum total isn't terrible going down, but it's the only installment that leaves no lasting impression and seems painfully unsure of what it was even supposed to be in the first place. That's about as devastating a missed opportunity as you can think of. Given an almost entirely blank canvas to fill in, the filmmakers ended up with Star Wars by numbers.
9: Attack of the Clones (2002)
Not as bad as it gets a rap for, mainly because it’s a lot of fun. This movie came out in between the first two Lord of the Rings installments, and the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if all its digital trickery wasn’t Lucas engaging in some kind of passive-aggressive dick-measuring against Peter Jackson. Visual thrills abound, and if the performances lack something of a soul — while Hayden Christensen gets more crap than he deserves for these movies, he was clearly not ready to play a sulky, teenaged Anakin Skywalker — Clones still has a kind of wish-fulfilling charm about it. Star Wars has sometimes buckled under the weight of its own legacy, including here (you mean to tell me ... the forbidden love that destroyed the Jedi and crumbled the Republic ... came down to some low-key stalking and a bit about sand?!), but you get the sense that this cheesy, bodice-ripping shoot-‘em up is the movie Lucas always saw in his head.
8: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
The best of the prequel movies by default, even if Lucas still overthinks his way out of sticking the landing entirely. With his pregnant wife in mortal danger, young Skywalker is manipulated into burning down the Jedi Order, all in the long-shot hope that embracing the dark side might teach him the “unnatural” power he needs to save her. A tad operatic, but not a bad idea. The execution, however, is too broad to truly land, and the actors’ mileage varies way too wildly when it comes to delivering the most crucial script of the entire series. (Christensen improves while Natalie Portman regresses, though in fairness she has absolutely nothing to do except give birth and die. Uh, sorry, spoiler.)
It all comes down to an epic battle on a river of fire and a legitimately affecting moment between master and apprentice as the latter burns for his sins. (“You were the chosen one!” is the big monologue, but it’s Ewan McGregor’s miserable, resigned delivery of “I have failed you, Anakin” that gets me every time.) It’s an objectively thrilling scene, as is the long-awaited moment when the mutilated Skywalker is finally entombed in Darth Vader’s armor. But it doesn’t help that the trio of scenes Revenge of the Sith hinges on are either genuinely unsettling or unintentionally hilarious, with no in-between. Truly, this is a film that deals in absolutes, for better and for worse.
7: Return of the Jedi (1983)
My favorite of the original trilogy when I was a kid. As an adult, it’s easy to see through the cracks in its execution — Harrison Ford clearly wants to be far, far away from this particular galaxy by now — but Lucas lets his creature-feature flag fly in a way that remains winning even when the story itself has nowhere to go (this was not the first time a Death Star would be prominently featured, nor, remarkably, the last). For all the movie’s faults, it’s fun to watch the effects department one-up itself, from Jabba the Hutt to the Rancor to the Sarlacc, finally peaking with the withered grotesquerie of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). And it nails its big finish, when the dying Darth Vader unmasks to look on his son with the sad, pathetic gaze of a man wondering what might have been.
6: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Chastened by a harsh online reaction to The Last Jedi's narrative choices, J.J. Abrams reassumes directorial duties for the Skywalker Saga finale and awkwardly steers the ship into safer, much less interesting waters. Plot twists are untwisted, souls are saved and an old evil is brought back from the dead to much fanfare but curiously little impact beyond a nostalgic titter. The movie is loud, it's fun, and it doesn't stop moving, but there's not much there beyond hero worship and homage. Is this really the Star Wars we wanted?
In a sequel trilogy that was explicitly focused on passing the baton, it's curious that the ending should cede so much ground, literal and metaphorical, to what came before. Seemingly every good choice Abrams makes — rousing space battles, a new bounty hunter played by old muse Keri Russell and a hero moment for C-3P0, of all people — is negated or off-put by a bad one. Kelly Marie Tran is rudely sent to the bench after a heartfelt debut in The Last Jedi; an unchallenged Adam Driver goes through the motions as Kylo Ren, and the late Carrie Fisher is oddly though not unlovingly shoehorned into the narrative from beyond the grave. The idea that these new Star Wars characters venerated the old guard as much as we did was a fun, meta wrinkle in The Force Awakens, but the whole idea was that the veterans would eventually get off the stage.
The ending is, to be fair, actually quite moving, and briefly relieving, with an implication that old things may finally be allowed to die and the galaxy can move forward. But its final line, shot and setting make clear that the Skywalker lineage, in one way or another, will never be allowed to expire. The audience demands it, and the customer is king. Abrams set out with The Rise of Skywalker to deliver the Star Wars everybody wanted; he gave us the Star Wars we deserve.
5: The Force Awakens (2015)
The afterglow of this movie was so strong you could have convinced me it was better than Empire, and I did think for a while that it ranked above the original. But, as Rogue One and The Last Jedi took the saga in weirder, newer directions, you could kind of see the long-awaited Episode VII for what it was: A tremendously fun cover of a near-flawless original.
Yes, it’s the same movie as A New Hope in the broader sense, but give J.J. Abrams credit for making such a joyful film out of the first Star Wars under the Disney umbrella, wherein he reintroduces the galaxy’s original figureheads, ushers in a diverse trio of newcomers (Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac) and turns Adam from Girls into a worthy heir to Darth Frickin’ Vader.
There’s is, sneakily, a little bit of a slap-in-the-face quality to this movie. It pays the appropriate lip service to Lucas’ creation, while seemingly validating everyone’s suspicion that his unchecked instincts had run the ship so far aground that the next guy up had to start from square one. But, of course, Abrams’ fealty to the story beats of the original only goes so far, as the film takes a murderous turn in the final act that’s still stunning in hindsight. For the first time in a Star Wars movie, you left the theater feeling that no fave was safe.
I know, I know, it’s probably too low for everybody but me. But if anything keeps the original Star Wars — the only one to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination as well as an acting one — out of this particular top three it’s that it feels so comparatively quaint. The movie is so introductory in hindsight (I can only imagine seeing this in 1977 as a self-contained film and not the midpoint of an entire saga) that it’s tough to square it up against the sprawl of what came before and after, though I’d imagine it’s a refreshingly narrow tale when viewed chronologically. Other directors would tell more interesting, essential stories with these characters. But for all the indulgences that would lead his vision astray down the line, George Lucas built an entire galaxy in the span of two hours that was teeming with heroes and villains just waiting to be discovered. Nobody has pulled such a thing off before, or since.
Star Wars has a well-earned reputation as a kids’ franchise; despite being ostensibly about a war, the movies have all been conspicuously bloodless, even the one where a bunch of children get murdered. Enter Rogue One, a movie that dove headfirst into the grit and grime of Star Wars through one of the few unexplored kibbles of franchise lore: How the Rebels ended up with the all-important Death Star plans.
The result is a gorgeous (director Gareth Edwards has the most distinct visual style of anyone in the saga) and harrowing movie, one in which our ragtag group of appealing new characters is picked off one by one over the course of the film’s kamikaze mission. The film is ruthlessly efficient in its mercilessness, especially when it comes to the Rebel redshirts who are fed to Darth Vader in its horrifying closing moments. Ironically, though, Rogue One is also sneakily one of the funniest Star Wars movies, particularly in the case of Director Krennic (a wonderful Ben Mendelsohn), an Imperial official whose greatest enemy isn’t the Rebellion but his own inescapable status as an disrespected middle-manager. War is hell in the galaxy, but office politics are somehow worse.
There is Star Wars before this movie, and Star Wars after this movie. That’s not hyperbole either; this is the single most divisive film of the saga, one that inspired an online backlash so ferocious it’s rumored to have triggered the reshoots of Solo and the hiring of safe bet J.J. Abrams to land the plane on The Rise of Skywalker. Last Jedi’s reputation as a childhood-ruiner certainly smacks of fanboy tears, though it does have an admitted affinity for killing its (and your) darlings: here, Luke Skywalker is a bitter old recluse with no taste for the Force, and The Force Awakens’ dashing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is revealed to have a conspicuous blind spot for collateral damage. These ain’t your dad’s Star Wars heroes, in other words.
This is a movie that cares very little for what came before, preferring instead to blaze a trail on its own. Accordingly, your opinion of this one probably lines up exactly with where you land on its biggest narrative feint: Jedi goes out of its way to dismiss every dangling plot thread from The Force Awakens as red herrings in a way that might leave modern audiences feeling slighted. Seemingly teed up for some kind of grand inheritance, Rey (Daisy Ridley) is fumbling with the weight of both destiny and anonymity as she struggles with the idea she might not be as important as she thinks. The patricidal Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) cuts a more sympathetic figure, violently reaching out for a connection he’ll ultimately push away.
But there’s a freedom to the way writer-director Rian Johnson plays with those expectations, taking the characters to their presumed destinations through unexpected routes, finding connections that might otherwise not have been there in a more simplistic story. Star Wars has always been about good and evil, this is the only one that examines how, why and if those labels get to be applied, and the ripple one person’s actions can cause across an entire galaxy. The focus would disappointingly close for Episode IX, but for one tantalizing moment, Star Wars’ horizons were actually as broad as they claimed to be.
1: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Still the gold standard, for all the reasons you’ve heard. The writing is tight. The acting is committed, the imagery haunting. If you’re watching the movies in the order of their release, you see the story begin to expand with the first glimpses of Yoda, Boba Fett and Emperor Palpatine, not to mention Darth Vader’s soul-shattering revelation to Luke Skywalker at the end of their lightsaber battle in Cloud City. If you’re watching chronologically, though, it’s the kick in the ass you dreaded was coming.
Most sequels give its characters an opportunity to rise and meet new challenges, but Empire’s innovation was leaving its heroes to be totally and utterly owned by a superior foe that saw them coming a mile away. By the end of this movie, Luke is beaten and maimed, Han Solo is betrayed and captured, Leia bereft at the loss of her love. Even then, Star Wars was too optimistic to let you think the Rebellion wouldn’t bounce back, but this is still the only movie in the saga to end on a force stronger than hope: Doubt.
