This Is Not the Post You’re Looking For: A Ranking of Every Star Wars Film

And now for a post that will sure spark zero arguments in the comments: a ranking of every Star Wars film in order of a) how much I like them b) how well crafted a film it is and slightly less important, c) how much it adds to the Star Wars universe. My criteria are entirely based on my own taste and no one else’s. I fully expect people to take offense at where I’ve ranked movies they hated or loved, but friends, that’s what the comments are for. 

I’ve been a Star Wars fan since some vague time in the ’80s when I watched A New Hope with my older brother and we played pretend with lightsabers and poorly shot blasters. I remember the excitement and the crushing disappointment in the ’90s when the prequels were coming out. I watched The Phantom Menace in theaters but didn’t go back for Episodes II or III for at least a decade. I’ve watched the new trilogy as it’s come out in theaters. My opinions on them all are endless, and I’ll admit to being more critical in general of the prequels and sequels than I am of the original trilogy. The hazy mist of nostalgia, perhaps?  

This list focuses solely on the theatrical releases, so it does not include the two Ewok movies, Caravan of Courage or Battle for Endor or the Star Wars Christmas special as those were all made for TV. (Battle for Endor would be so high on this list though.)  It also does not include The Clone Wars because I’m gonna be super honest with you right now, I didn’t know it existed and I thought it was only a TV show. That’s still a glaring hole in my Star Wars fandom, which I plan to fix soon. 

Spoilers for every single movie (including/especially the new ones) in this franchise abound. 

11. Solo

This film was a poor choice from the start, and it’s probably confirmation bias that by the time I saw it in theaters I absolutely hated it just like I knew I would. But seriously, this film did itself zero favors. Alden Ehrenreich has nothing on Harrison Ford and is constantly upstaged by everyone else onscreen, especially Emilia Clarke — whose story seems so much more interesting — and Donald Glover as a young Lando Calrissian, whose movie I would actually probably watch.

The movie introduces cool characters (like everything Thandie Newton) that it almost IMMEDIATELY kills off. And isn’t it more fun to hear that he made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs (which they finally explain is a measure of distance, not time, but doesn’t that make the accomplishment actually less impressive?) than actually watching him do the Kessel run? It answered questions I never really needed answers to, like where Han got his last name and how he won the Falcon.

You could argue that Rogue One does the same, but I would tell you that Rogue One is a better written, better-crafted movie BY FAR. Did we really need another movie helmed by a white dude who fails his way up? Who refuses to use the proper name of companions? This movie had no idea what to do with the fact that Han was more of a scoundrel before Luke met him, because the audience only knows his heart of gold, and they waffled on both.

I would rather invite Jar Jar to live in my home with me than watch this movie again, even to accurately rate it for this list. As the most useless installment of this saga, it rightly belongs at the bottom. 

10. Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Anakin comes hard out of the gate as a young asshole and doesn’t relent the entire way through this film. He casually mentions that he thinks fascism is the best system of government, and this young, former ruler of an entire world and now senator representing that same world to the Galactic Senate doesn’t even argue the merits of government and representation, and instead thinks “why yes, this is exactly the whiny teenager I should marry and have children with.”

It also features Amidala looking at all of the options before her and leaving F****** JAR JAR in charge of representing Naboo before the Senate, which leads to Palpatine being given unlimited power. Also, R2-D2 continuity errors abound: since when can he fly? Why does he spend the next six movies never flying again?? This movie asks more questions than it answers (which is . . . normal for a middle movie, I guess) and also has the worst version of Anakin Skywalker that exists in any multiverse.

9. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

I had a long conversation at a party over the weekend about which version of Anakin was worse: Revenge!Anakin, Clones!Anakin, or Jake Lloyd. We didn’t end up agreeing, but it did make me realize that since these movies are all Anakin all the time, my answer to this question would predict how the trilogy would stack in the rankings.

To me, Jake Lloyd > Hayden Christensen in general, and Revenge!Anakin > Clones!Anakin by a country mile. The writing on all of them is absolutely atrocious and the only breath of fresh air is one who actually carried the trilogy, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan. I don’t know that anyone could have delivered those lines on Mustafar as believably as he did. I know Yoda battles in Attack of the Clones, but the battle with Dooku isn’t remotely as exciting as battling Palpatine on the floor of the Galactic Senate. I just love watching that tiny guy popcorn around with his lil saber. A slightly less annoying Anakin and a cool Yoda lightsaber battle push this over Revenge for me. 

8. Episode I: Phantom Menace

I’ll be 100% honest, most of my nostalgia for this movie is because of the Weird Al parody “The Saga Begins,” but at least it has an overly long pod race instead of anything that Hayden Christensen brings to the table.

Among its many detractors is the fact that it is the prequel that most heavily features Jar Jar Binks, and it also has Watto who probably ties for worst character ever created but is thankfully not as heavily featured in the film as Jar Jar.

The midichlorian count and Anakin basically being evil Jesus (in that he doesn’t seem to have an actual physical living breathing father) were weird reveals. As previously mentioned, I don’t hate Jake Lloyd, but he’s also not very good. Also, remember that time that Star Wars jumped all over its on big reveal about Padme/Amidala? How much cooler would that reveal at the end have been if they hadn’t told us about it beforehand?

Speaking of Amidala, this is also the last time she seems remotely plausible as a person with agency and a woman with eyes. Freaking Anakin over Obi-Wan Kenobi? Okay. 

7. Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker

This one is so fresh it’s hard for me to talk about. I cried at this movie for almost half of the run time, but even while crying I could tell I was being manipulated into it by J.J. Abrams and his epic nostalgia.

I appreciated the end of Ben Solo’s character arc over the movies because I think that’s the only way it could have ended, but I hated that they brought Palpatine back in such a clunky manner, and I hated even more that they made Rey his granddaughter. Yes, that was a problem created by The Last Jedi killing Snoke and leaving a vacuum in the Big Bad category, which is why having artistic direction over the whole trilogy was so necessary and why the fact that they didn’t seem to at all is so vexing.

One of the beautiful things about The Last Jedi is that it confirmed that, like Anakin, Rey’s power grew out of nothing, that it was hers alone, an echo of Anakin’s but straining towards the light. Instead, it’s passed down to her by the darkness in her family tree, and that’s honestly the most boring story they could have written for it. God forbid a woman have power of her own, it must have been given to her by a crusty white man.

But perhaps this movie’s biggest offense was completely erasing the beautiful movie that had come before it: Kylo Ren confirming Rey’s parentage, the rebellion being so depleted that it fits onto the Millennium Falcon, the entire character of Rose Tico, to name the most glaring problems. 

6. Episode IV: A New Hope

Whiny Luke is still better than any iteration of Anakin, but man do I not want to hear him talk about Tosche Station anymore. This is the movie that set up the franchise, and I’ve already swapped it once with the movies around it. It’s brilliant in the context of the times and the budget they were working with, but it hasn’t aged as well as the later installments.

That said, if you want to feel some very unexpected feelings about everything surrounding this film, I highly recommend From a Certain Point of View, a collection of short stories told from the points of view of background characters. It adds so much to the tapestry of this film.

5. Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

For 16 years of my life, I thought that this movie was the end, and I really liked that ending.

When I was very small I wasn’t really ready for redemption stories like Anakin’s, and I’m glad it’s a story I was raised on. I liked that even though I spent my first time watching through rooting for his comeuppance, what actually happened was this beautiful story of sacrifice. But I also like that he died for his sins, that he paid a price but also saved himself.

I liked Anakin’s redemption, his love for the son he didn’t get to raise, his sorrow that he’d let his anger and grief rule his life for far too long, and ultimately, his becoming one with the Force instead of dying in defiance of it. I also loved the Ewoks, Han and Leia’s story, and Luke becoming a badass. 

4. Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Of all of the rankings, I feel the least strongly about numbers 4 and 5, which could swap either way and be perfectly accurate. I liked both of them a lot and find them really rewatchable, but picking one over the other is just splitting hairs.

A lot of people complained that The Force Awakens was just A New Hope rewritten with a girl, but if Rey had rolled out of the opening scene even 1/10 as whiny as Luke was, I wouldn’t even be making this list because Star Wars would have been canceled as a franchise. I have no problem with her being inherently good at using the Force. So was Anakin, which a certain subset of people conveniently forgets.

I wish future installments had made Han Solo’s death mean more, but that’s certainly not this movie’s fault. 

3. Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

As previously stated, the biggest problem with the new trilogy is the lack of anything resembling a narrative arc. Absolutely no one was steering the narrative ship from movie to movie and it shows, which makes it both easier and harder to separate out the individual movies for ranking.

That said, The Last Jedi is the one that feels the most unlike a Star Wars film, and is, therefore, the most interesting to me as a watcher. It took the formula established by the previous trilogies and made something new, in a way that I didn’t know a new thing could be made, while still paying homage to the established tropes of the genre.

The child at the end, shown to be using the Force to move a broom around, reinforced Rey’s parentage and the idea that anyone could potentially use the Force. That power in the universe had been wrenched from the hands of the rich and powerful of the prequels and given to the hands of the urchins like Luke (who was still a child of the rich and powerful), like Rey, like this stablehand on Canto Bight.

Given Leia’s line about the rebellion rising again, I really thought that’s what would happen in the third movie, that the rebellion would be born again, numbers swollen by ordinary people who had simply had enough of fascism. I was really sorry to be completely wrong.

2. Episode V: Empire Strikes Back

If I’d ranked these movies as a child, it would 100% have been Return of the Jedi first, because Ewoks and happy endings, but as an adult, it’s gotta be Empire. It’s a movie where the rebellion simply cannot win, and that just makes it more interesting than the other two.

It was a movie I wasn’t used to seeing, and I can’t imagine watching it when it was originally released and having to wait three years to find out how Han gets out of the carbonite.

It’s a movie that takes big stakes and makes them small, that takes time out of a heist movie to have one of the main characters in the trilogy meditate in a bog with a puppet. It’s a movie that isn’t afraid to show its heroes failing, as they sometimes do. Also, Rosebud and The Manchurian Candidate would probably like a word, but “Luke, I am your father” is the most game-changing reveal in popular cinematic history. Fight me. 

1. Rogue One

Yes, I know it’s a tragedy. Yes, I know it’s a prequel, and we go in knowing exactly how it will end. I would have liked to know these characters more. I would LOVE the backstory for Jiang and Chirrut. I would have liked a more balanced character arc for Jyn, who flipped pretty quickly from “I would never” to “I will die for this cause.” None of these criticisms kill my adoration for it.

For all that no one in this film is designated as Force-sensitive (except, loosely, Jiang and the obvious insertions of Vader and Leia), this movie seems to be the one movie on this list that is most moved by the Force. Rogue One strives for the balance between the dark and light sides of the Force without having a conversation about it.

Rogue One also features the most diverse cast in the entire Star Wars universe and is just a dream on camera. It’s a beautiful story about sacrifice that isn’t about being redeemed or forgiven because no one remembers their names afterward. It’s a sacrifice that is simply about doing the right thing because it’s the right thing, and changing the fate of a galaxy because of it.