Stay the fuck inside and argue about this shit with me!
1.) Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
2.) Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
3.) Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
4.) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
5.) Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
6.) Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
7.) Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
8.) Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
9.) Solo: A Star Wars Story
10.) Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker
11.) Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the movie, not the awesome TV show)
11.) Getting hit by a Correlian Freighter
13.) Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Attack of the Clones is definitely the worst. God bless your correct opinion.
But, Phantom Menace over Sith and Solo … I can’t even.
…I could be wrong…but I feel like these aren’t really a ranking of the Star Wars movies so much as a demonstration of which movies you remember which bits of?
…because there are some arguably inarguable faults with just about all of them when you get down to it…even the cartoon version of the clone wars
…I watched a bunch of that because so many people told me good things about it & never have I had such deep sympathies for the cause of the empire as watching the sheer god-awful profligacy with which the jedi fritter away the lives of their clone troopers through obvious schoolboy-error levels of sucking at being in charge of anything with a military component…or strategy…or tactics…or politics…so…maybe I gave up before they got good?
The entire point of “The Last Jedi” is that the Jedi were kind of extremely bad at their fucking jobs and that “the Jedi needed to die” because their never ending battle with the Sith just perpetuated a cycle of violence that never really come to an end unless someone was willing to not pull out their light sword and fight to the death. Luke bought balance to the Force by not killing Vader, and threw everything back into fucking chaos by almost killing Ben, because his overwhelming fear made him see his own nephew as nothing more but another evil dude to be killed.
The Last Jedi is basically the answer to your criticism, and I’d love to see a Star Wars series that had any interest at all in presenting people in the Empire as not being evil, but last time a director tried that, Star Wars Episode 9: WE TOOK OUT ALL THE SHIT THE INCELS SAID THEY HATED AND REPLACED IT WITH WORSE CRAP happened.
…I might quibble with a bit of the fine detail here & there (& am reasonably sure that I could think of some ropey bits of TLJ without trying too hard) but basically I think I’m with you on that for the most part
…& I’m all in on that last paragraph…the last movie (even the first time I watched the damn thing in a theater & everything) I couldn’t ignore the fact that it was like watching a very expensive & very childish spat between directors play out in a deeply underwhelming sort of a way…maybe even more than the “we listened to the [wrong] fans” thing…but that might just be me?
I mean, it’s pretty obvious at this point that the original director Colin Treverrow wanted to take the film in a different direction (by, ya know, not complete erasing TLJ and trying to build on what Rian Johnson introduced), and the Disney and JJ freaked the fuck out over the fan reaction to TLJ, fired him, and then tried to reverse engineer a response to every single criticism that had been lobbied at TLJ, quite literally.
The thing about movies is that there’s just some shit that doesn’t need to be explained. Everything isn’t a fucking plothole. “HOW CAN REY BE SO STRONG IF HER FAMILY WERE NOBODIES!”. Because the fucking story has to happen. Sometimes as a writer you just have to accept that you can’t fucking explain everything and you have to trust your audience to fill in the blanks, otherwise the story becomes bogged down in unimportant bullshit and you have to spend too much time explaining what just happened or what happpened a chapter or a movie ago, and then the movie you’re writing doesn’t have a fucking plot. See, as example, Episode 9.
…yeah…I’d maybe go further & say filling in too many gaps unnecessarily is what starts to fuck you over in the longer term because as a writer you’re actively constraining your own options for no real return
…I’m a big fan of the Iain M Banks books & one of the many reasons I like them is because he was great at making a world that just “is” whatever way without getting lost in specifics that aren’t there to do something relevant
…plus the ship names, obviously
I always try and put myself in the mindset that I was in when I was young and saw that movie. I fucking loved it. I had all the toys. When I was a kid, I had Darth Maul’s double-sided lightsaber. When I went to Galaxy’s Edge for my honeymoon, I bought the replica. It’s not that I don’t think it’s kind of a shit movie; it’s that I have an immense nostalgia for it and remember what it was like to not be super cynical about everything and just wanting to pretend to kill some droids in my room.
Although, I know that Empire is a better movie than ANH – Star Wars as we called it way back when will forever be my #1. Nothing will ever top the feeling of seeing Star Wars for the first time when I was 9 years old in the theater with red velvet curtains. Anytime I hear the Fox fanfare – I get an adrenaline rush. I know it’s nostalgia talking and I don’t care. It’s why I got into the film business and thank yoda I did. It’s been an amazing job to work on shows – exciting, sometimes fun, most of the times insanely stressful but it’s always been interesting and at this point I don’t see how I could’ve been happy doing any other kind of work. I’m a big fan for sure, although I’ve never gotten into the minutia of it. For me – any Star Wars movie is better than no Star Wars movie. But that said, I would definitely put Solo above any of the prequels.
Empire is the best movie. I hated it as a kid because Han Solo popsicle and the bad guys won.
As I grew up, the opinion changed.
As for the rest… I’m not going to argue. It’s your opinion, etc. Of course mine would be different, but so what.
As a middle aged male, I still have some love for Star Wars, but I keep my distance. The rage of Star Wars nerds (especially entitled white males) actually amuses/disgusts me now.
Rogue One at #4??? Rogue One better than 6/7/1/3???
Either covid got you or you smoked some Godfather OG…
I have a really hard time getting into Jedi. The first 45 minutes of that movie fuckin’ drag, man. They want it to set a tone like the Hoth section did in Empire, but other than rescuing Han, nothing that happens in it really matters to the plot.
I just really dug there being an original story told in the Star Wars universe that wasn’t overly reliant on trying to ring max nostalgia out of the movie.
…I actually found Solo’s solo movie less awkward than I expected…for similar sorts of reasons
…the heist stuff was fun & it didn’t drag too much while trying to get its fan service boxes checked
Same here. I liked SOLO a lot!
…well, now “a lot” might be a bit stronger than I was going for…but “a lot more than I expected” for sure
right. you said “less awkward than I expected”.
I’m in the first scenario. maybe “a lot” is a bit strong and I should have gone with “much”
I wanted to hate whatshisname as young Solo – but I thought he did a pretty good job.
yes, I thought his portrayal of han was pretty good
I just really dug there being an original story told in the Star Wars universe that wasn’t overly reliant on trying to ring max nostalgia out of the movie.
ok but the plot of r1, if there even is a plot, blows chunks. is the purpose of it to entertain you or to make you fall asleep?
Mostly good with this. Phantom Menace ahead of Sith though?
Also I cannot give Solo the boost over TRoS.
AotC is consistently near the bottom of my own list but it gets credit for some of the best fight scenes in the series. Especially Yoda-Dooku.