Rank the 11 Star Wars films

[Whill]

In the last two film ranking threads/polls, no one ranked TFA or TLJ as their very favorite film. I seriously doubt anyone will rank TRoS as their favorite film, but I created a new thread because you can't change your poll vote once cast and your top film still could have changed from whatever it was a year and a half ago.

Voting in polls is 100% unanimous (I can't see which film anyone voted for or even who voted) so people can vote without posting a reply with their rankings.

So here we are again, now with 11 Star Wars films. You know what to do. Vote in the poll for your #1 favorite, and if you are so inclined, please also share your rankings. This will be the final thread/poll for this subject because comparing all these films to each other is starting to get silly, and going forward we will get new films that venture away from this story.

~~~

my current film rankings

1. Star Wars: A New Hope
2. Rogue One
3. The Phantom Menace
4. Revenge of the Sith
5. Return of the Jedi
6. Solo
7. The Empire Strikes Back
8. The Force Awakens
9. Attack of the Clones
10. The Rise of Skywalker
11. The Last Jedi
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[Potroclo]

Wow some interesting choices right there. It could be also interesting to discuss why we chose to place them in that order. I have different criteria to classify them, so my list could vary wildly depending on if I'm listing what's the best movie, which one had the most impact on me etc. But I'll give it a try:

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Return of the Jedi
3. The Last Jedi
4. The Phantom Menace
5. A New Hope
6. Solo
7. The Force Awakens
8. Rise of skywalker
9. Revenge of the Sith
10. Attack of the Clones
11. Rogue One

And the why:
1. Best overall story, imagery, characters... just a Classic
2. Would be first if not for the Ewoks
3. Well it did subvert my expectations lol
4. First I saw as a kid, marked for life
5. No need to explain
6. I really enjoyed it for the world building
7. It reignited my long lost love for SW
8. Still entertaining
9. Best of the PT
10. Couldn't stand the romance
11. Thoroughly enjoyed the final battle, but first 45 minutes where pure garbage plot-wise. Still waiting for a first director first version to leak to put it in 3rd position.

To me it's way more complex than that. Most of these films are not even in my head canon... But as a general overview, there you have it.

[MrNexx]

Hmmm... favorite, not best.

***
1. Return of the Jedi
2. A New Hope
3. Empire Strikes Back
***
4. Solo
5. Rogue One
6. The Force Awakens
7. The Last Jedi
8. Rise of Skywalker
***
9. Revenge of the Sith
10. The Phantom Menace
11. Attack of the Clones

1, 2, and 3, and 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are all likely to change position within their groupings, at least a little bit. Only 9, 10, and 11 are 100% fixed.
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[ThrorII]

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars
3. Rogue One
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Revenge of the Sith
6. Force Awakens
7. Solo
8. Attack of the Clones
9. Phantom Menace
10. Rise of Skywalker
11. Last Jedi
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[Whill]

[RyanDarkstar]

1. The Empire Strikes Back - Hoth, the asteroid field, Bespin, Lando...this movie has all of my favorites, though the Jedi training was a little boring.
2. A New Hope - A classic.
3. Return of the Jedi - Satisfying conclusion to the Saga.
4. Solo - Felt like I was watching an RP session. Very enjoyable.
5. The Force Awakens - Despite a lot of reused material, it was fun. Shame the Finn/Poe bromance went nowhere.
6. The Phantom Menace - Fair setup. Would have been better with Lucus' original script.
7. The Rise of Skywalker - Enjoyable enough, despite its many flaws/plotholes.
8. Rogue One - Really didn't like how the trailer promised a completely different movie. Could have used better character development.
9. Attack of the Clones - I liked Obi-wan. That's about it.
10. Revenge of the Sith - The beginning was okay, as was the end, but the middle really fell apart for me.
11. The Last Jedi - Just couldn't get behind any of it, except maybe the Rey/Kylo bonding.
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[MrNexx]

[Treefrog]

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


My reasons:

1. The ultimate reveal of Luke's parentage. The John Williams score of this film is still my favorite of the Saga. I don't have many criticisms of this film.

2. The Sarlacc Pit sequence, and the Luke/Vader/Palpatine confrontation is still epic. The Battle of Endor is still great.

3. I don't have many criticisms.

4. The integration of unused ANH footage was just breathtaking. Also, the way Vader is at the end is exactly how Vader should've been before. Basically, the second half of the film is what Star Wars was when GL did the OT.

5. The best of the PT. The lightsaber duels between Anakin/Obi-Wan and Sidious/Yoda were just phenomenal. My main criticisms have to deal with the dialog, but that isn't new with Lucas' scripts.

6. RoS had many things that made it better than TFA. It rounded out the Poe character better. Actually gave Finn an actual purpose. It was a joy to see the return of Billy Dee Williams and Denis Lawson (even though it was just a cameo). Also, it was good to see an actual story arc, even with all the Convenience issues, which I won't go into. My biggest issues was how JJ made Luke the ability to physically catch his father's lightsaber when Rey throws it into the fire, in complete contradiction to Obi-Wan telling Luke that he couldn't interfere when Luke left Dagobah. JJ continued to completely disregard the rules of hyperspace: lightspeed skipping, and having Lando and Chewie being able to go to the rest of the galaxy to amass a fleet of combat ready starships and lead this fleet to Exogol to confront The Final Order fleet... All in under 16 hours. Allowing Palpatine the ability to "Force Unleash" this fleet. And then there is the whole ISD-Death Star weaponry issue.

7. As refreshing a film as it is, I do have some problems: mainly that JJ changed how hyperspace works. For example, in ANH, Han Solo specifically states that calculating the jump to hyperspace was very complex insofar as entering the wrong information would cause your ship to collide with a star or some other celestial body. JJ instead treats it as basically a timing issue. Another criticism I have of it is the introduction of Capt. Phasma, basically the film reincarnation of Darth Maul in TPM. Cool character concept, but ultimately a dud.

8. As bad as the AotC is, the bright spot of this film were the lightsaber duels of Yoda/Dooku, and Anakin/Dooku.

9. I consider this one to be the worst of the Prequel Trilogy. The Trade Federation was portrayed as an incompetent bureaucracy that was easily manipulated by Palpatine. However, that was nothing compared to the spectacularly reviled Jar Jar Binks. Plus I hated the accents of the Neimoidians and Gun Guns. Completely alien sounding speech would've been preferable.

10. Destroyed Luke Skywalker. Changed him from the hope of the Rebellion and the return of the Jedi, who redeemed his father to an embittered hermit that goes to Ach-To to basically die in obscurity. Additionally, TLJ ruined hyperspace and turned it into a kamikaze weapon. Also, the Canto Bight sequence and the return of the dud, Capt. Phasma.

[Solo4114]

Tough to rank them exactly, because a lot of them are very close to each other, and only a few of them are, in my opinion, outright bad. Most are at least entertaining for a couple hours, even if they don't rise much above that.

That said, here goes.

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars
3. The Last Jedi
4. Solo
5. Rogue One
6. Return of the Jedi
7. Rise of Skywalker
8. Revenge of the Sith
9. The Force Awakens
10. tie for Attack of the Clones/The Phantom Menace

To break it down further:

1. The Empire Strikes Back -- as a story and a film, this is probably the best of the lot. It's well made, characters feel like people rather than line-delivery-vehicles, and the film itself is thrilling but also takes time to breathe.

2. Star Wars -- Obviously, this started everything off and was such a perfect combination of factors that by all rights should never have actually worked. Marcia Lucas' editing is masterful, especially given what I've heard over the years about the raw footage. The production design is amazing, the music is iconic, the whole thing is just great. It's a bit more juvenile than ESB is, but it's still fantastic. Oh, and I prefer ESB's film stock. Otherwise, this'd be tied for #1.

3. The Last Jedi -- I know a lot of people don't like this one. I don't actually care. I think it's amazing. It has a fantastic message, it refuses to be hidebound by tradition, and it has deeper characterization than any of the other films. There are some things I might've changed to adjust the pacing, but overall I just think it's an incredibly well done film that could have opened up the franchise to so much more than it appears the owners want to do with it, and more than what JJ's narrow talents permit him to do.

4. Solo -- I just love this film. It's fun, it feels like the old school adventures, and I love the expansion of the Star Wars universe on film to darker corners than we would've otherwise seen. I love the worldbuilding it does, and although Han doesn't feel like the Han in the later films, I can see how this character could've become that character. It's a shame that LFL's bad gamble on Lord & Miller, and a weak marketing campaign hamstrung this film, because I would have loved to see a series of films in this end of the universe that explore some of the ideas seeded in this film.

5. Rogue One -- Again, I love this film. The action in it is top notch. I love that it just feels like an old fashioned commando film from the 1960s, but set in the Star Wars universe. It doesn't map perfectly onto ANH in my opinion, but it's pretty close, and the film is just a ton of fun with a bit of an edge to it. And I like that they spaced 'em all in the end. Part of me would've loved to see more of these characters, but part of me really enjoys that sometimes war has a real cost to it as shown in this film. Plus, better to go out on a high note than to run the characters into the ground.

6. Return of the Jedi -- This, to me, is the beginning of the turning point towards much weaker Star Wars fare. It's where Lucas' worst instincts begin to really creep in. The people who'd tell him "No, George, that's a really stupid idea" are leaving, and he's getting more insistent about doing whatever he wants, damn the consequences. As a result, ROTJ is entertaining, but misses a LOT of opportunities. The ewoks instead of wookiees thing will forever be a mistake. Luke and Leia as twins is also, I think, a mistake and makes a bunch of stuff from the previous material SUPER CREEPY. The space battle is cooler, and the speeder bike chase is great, and Jabba's palace was cool, but these are individual moments. A second Death Star is just lazy as a threat, and really serves little more than to embiggen what we saw in ANH. Plus, Han Solo feels...not like Han Solo, which likely reflects Ford's own sense of "Ugh. More of this crap? Fine. Pay me." There's still a really strong nostalgia factor for me with this film, though, and it does tie up the OT with a fairy-tale ending. On that note, they should've left it alone and set the sequel trilogy farther in the future, well beyond the time of the OT, with none of the OT actors appearing except as holograms or force ghosts.

7. Rise of the Skywalker. On a superficial level, this is a fantastic, fun film. But scratch the surface and it makes less and less sense, and seems more and more like crappy fan fic. JJ is, ultimately, a roller coaster architect. He's not a storyteller. Or to the extent that he is, he's a lousy storyteller. His instincts are great for throwing you onto a ride on rails that just goes where it goes, hits you with a bunch of stuff rapid-fire, and knows how to get you in the feels, but which ultimately is pretty incoherent and includes A LOT of unearned moments. I had a lot of fun watching this film. I also look at it as a wasted opportunity to do so much more with this franchise. Personally, I think they should have had Rian Johnson direct and write the final film, but really I think they should've tried to wrap things up not in a single film, but in something like 2-3 films. And a bunch of the plot points are SUPER DUMB. Like, Reylo (totally unearned), Ben's face-turn, Rey's true parentage, and the main villain. All of it is just...like....this is the uninspired crap that fans come up with on message boards which just reiterates things that have come before because fans usually lack the ability to think beyond the confines of what they've already seen (that's not limited to Star Wars fans, by the way). Fan fic with a big budget is not what the finale should've been.

8. Revenge of the Sith. I'm not a fan of the prequels. I appreciate the production design in them, but I think they're not especially well told tales. Anakin's motivation for turning to evil isn't earned and is, ultimately, boring. He's evil because he has codependency and abandonment issues. Great. Maybe he just needs some therapy. That said, the film does some stuff right and I've come to appreciate what it does have to offer once you look past the weak aspects. As a capstone for, say, the Clone Wars series, I think it mostly works. But there's a bunch of stuff that should've led up to it, and the film probably should've been split in to two films to really sell the plot points and character developments.

9. The Force Awakens. It introduced some fun new actors, but it really set the stage for incredibly derivative, hidebound material. I think the decision to include the old actors was a fatal flaw that set everyone up for disappointment, and no, there isn't a way to satisfactorily use them without overshadowing the younger actors. At most, they should've been cameos. Realistically, though, they should've just been alluded to as long-dead heroic figures who rode off into the sunset, instead of watching them fade in their twilight years. It's still a fun movie in the roller-coaster-ride sense, but it's poorly constructed as a story. (Typical JJ.)

10. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. They have cool moments, but they are painful to watch. I mean, truly difficult to sit through, Star Wars or no. Meeting Anakin as a 9 year old? WHY THE HELL WOULD I WANT TO SEE HIM AS A LITTLE KID?!?!?! It's just...ugh. It's a waste of a film. You're gonna do a trilogy. You have 3 movies. WHY WOULD YOU DO ONE ABOUT HIM AS A KID?!?!?! There's so much other ground to cover that Lucas just....skips past in the other films, and it's because he spent 2-ish hours on Anakin's childhood as if it f***ing mattered. AOTC is also jumbled and all over the place. The conspiracies are...well, they aren't so much mysterious as they are opaque and poorly explained. The mystery doesn't really keep the plot moving. And the film just ends RIGHT as the actual WARS (as in Star WARS) are beginning. Which only makes ROTS that much more disappointing because it begins when everything ENDS, and Lucas doesn't bother to tell you what happens in between -- you know the points where characters might actually have changed as a result of their experiences, where a good man might have fallen to evil because of the horrors he sees during war, or where a man with attachment issues might become, say, attached to a makeshift family of Jedi and clones who die during the war, hardening him into a monster. You know...INTERESTING STUFF. But no, we had to show Anakin leaving his mom, and then seeing his mom die, and then transferring onto Padme his attachment to his mom, because THAT'S gripping cinema! Also Jar Jar sucks. (Not Ahmed Best, who's actually insanely talented as a physical comic, but Jar Jar the character.)

[Whill]

So much variation. It is so interesting to see the diversity of film appreciation among us.

[Falconer]

Here’s my ranking of my favorite stories:

1. Star Wars
2. Thrawn Trilogy
3. Empire + Jedi
4. Hand of Thrawn
5. Han Solo novels (Brian Daley)
6. Force Awakens
7. X-Wing novels (Aaron Allston)
8. X-Wing novels (Michael Stackpole)
9. Ewoks movies


Notes:

#1 includes the movie, and the radio drama by Brian Daley, and the early Marvel comics, especially the ones written by Archie Goodwin. There’s a lovable, magical innocence and sincerity and sense of swashbuckling mixed with wonder and a wide-open universe to these that makes them all fall so completely in the same headspace as the original 1977 movie, for me. In addition to all its other virtues, it’s the original! Everything else is just riffing off this!

#2 What can I say? It is Luke Skywalker done right and it is Star Wars done right. It delivers on the promise. Nails it.

#3 includes the movies, and the radio dramas by Brian Daley, plus his “Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell” audio drama. A masterful serial, of course!

#4 is beautiful and profound and imaginative. Love it.

#5 perfectly captures the character and the genre of Han Solo.

#6 is an inventive, gorgeous, lovable Star Wars adventure. Feels like a “dark future” but what the heck, it brings so much to the table that I can’t hate it.

#7-#8 Great fun! X-Wings! RPGish! Pew pew! (Include ‘I, Jedi’ uninclude ‘Mercy Kill’.)

#9 Always loved these, and now my kids love them, too. Made in the 80s so they just live and breathe the aesthetics and sensibilities of Star Wars.

[Whill]

[Aelwe]

Ok, here's my ranking:

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Return of the Jedi
3. A New Hope
4. Rogue One
5. Revenge of the Sith
6. The Phantom Menace
7. Solo
8. Attack of the Clones

9. The Force Awakens
10. The Rise of Skywalker
11. The Last Jedi


And my reasons:

1. I think it's the best overall, Star Wars at its finest. When it has drama it does it well, when it has tension it does it well, when it has action it does it well...the designs, the settings, etc. Everything fits perfectly.

2. Very satisfying conclusion to the first trilogy (and even to the prequels), it shows a nice evolution of the main characters, has a great space battle and ties everything nicely, even if not everything makes complete sense.

3. Not as well rounded as the other two, still a great adventure/space fantasy film, can't forget that this one ignited the love of Star Wars

4. Managed to capture the feeling of the classics very well, the story worked and the space battle was great. Would've liked to see the original version of the director though

5. I feel that it works pretty well as a conclusion for the prequels. The plot advances awkwardly at some points but the ending it's dramatic and links beautifully with the originals, even if the execution could've been better.

6. I love how it expanded the universe, gave us a much different look at the Jedi and the Galaxy, that wasn't seen before in cinema. Surely it's not what many fans expected, but still it's a great adventure film and it introduce us to Qui-Gon.

7. It's was a good enough adventure/heist film, still not convinced by the actors, but as a little side/origin story is not that bad

8. I never really liked it, the plot was all over the place, the pacing was not that great, and what it told was not really that interesting compared to the Clone Wars as a whole (Thank God for the animated series). Also, it still feels to me that it had too much CGI to the point of saturation.

And for the last three: I can't really bring myself to like them. I have tried, I've seen them at the theater, I own them on blu-ray, I re-watched them and I just can't. I'm not engaged with the story they're trying to tell, I find that the new ships, the new designs and the new aliens are just too bland and without character, there are too many elements in the plot that don't make any sense, I feel that the way they developed some of the original characters is not coherent at all and it takes away from their "Hero's journey" and I just don't care for the new characters. Oh, and trying to make sense of the new lore just makes my head hurt. There are some good ideas buried there, but the films just don't appeal to me. For all the criticism the prequels got, they still had some spirit in them, some artistry, they were the work of someone that truly loved Star Wars...I just don't feel this in this new trilogy.
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[TauntaunScout]

Ranking these first 3 and last 3 of the below in relation to each other is really splitting hairs and meaningless, but here goes. I can't really say that ESB, R1, or ANH is really better than another. Or that any given prequel is really worse than the other.

The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars
Rogue One
Return of the Jedi
The Last Jedi
Solo
[Caravan of Courage, Battle for Endor, The Great Heep]
The Force Awakens
Rise of Skywalker
Revenge of the Sith
Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones

[Whill]

Moved these from a TLJ thread to this Film Ranking thread...