The Star Wars franchise is one of the most beloved franchises in movie history as well as one of the biggest money-making franchises in history — second only to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — bringing in nearly $10 billion globally over its over four-decade existence (Marvel has now reached about twice that, but took about twice as many films to pull it off).
While Star Wars is a massively popular franchise, it’s a mixed bag in terms of quality, film by film — from the highly acclaimed “Empire Strikes Back” of the original trilogy to the much-mocked “Phantom Menace” of the prequels, and all the mediocre to descent installments offered by various directors over the decades.
So with the J.J. Abrams trilogy finally wrapped up, how do the 11 films produced in the franchise shake out in terms of quality storytelling and filmmaking? Below are all 11 of the canonical, live-action Star Wars films ranked from worst to best. (The following text is based on a video on the same topic; video below.)
11. Phantom Menace
“The Phantom Menace,” the first of George Lucas’s prequel trilogy, is definitely the worst of all the Star Wars films. Now, I know some think “Attack of the Clones” should go here — well, those people are going to be shocked where I put “Attack of the Clones.” A lot of people say “The Last Jedi” has supplanted the regrettable “Phantom Menace” as the worst. While I hear you — “The Last Jedi” is indeed hot garbage, a truly terrible film, marked by plot holes and head-desk stupidity, “Phantom Menace,” is still dead last.
The reason it’s the worst of all the films is because George Lucas makes a few critical errors. First, he thinks that the reason that kids like Star Wars is because they want to see kids. This is one of the crucial mistakes made by a lot of filmmakers who try to make kids movies. The most brilliant studio churning out kids films, Pixar, doesn’t make this error. Pixar understands that their films should not focus most of their attention on small children. Kids don’t actually want to watch kids — kids want to be like adults, so they want to watch what adults do.
Making Jedi Anakin 6 years old is a bad choice, but then making him significantly younger than Padmé is just weird — and it becomes even weirder in the future movies. Everything in “Phantom Menace” with young Anakin is almost unwatchable. Liam Neeson is fine; Ewan McGregor is fine, but they are both criminally underused. Instead, Lucas chooses to focus far too much screen time on a way-too-young Anakin.
Another fatal issue in the film is that it is exorbitantly long. I remember seeing it in the theater, being really excited for it, but then actually walking out on it — not an auspicious beginning to the prequels. As mediocre as the other prequel trilogy movies are, “Phantom Menace” is the worst.
10. The Last Jedi
As I already noted, I don’t have a very high opinion of “The Last Jedi.” In fact, I think it’s a flamingly bad film. Now, there could have been a moment where the film could have developed into something truly good, even profound for the Star Wars universe. That moment is when Rey and Kylo look like they’re going to team up, which could radically change the history of Star Wars — the dark side and the light side suddenly fighting on the same side, a universe-shifting moment. Then Ryan Johnson, because he’s an idiot, scraps that whole tantalizing potential direction.
Johnson also gives the audience the ridiculous Luke Skywalker hologram face-off with Kylo Ren that turns out to be a big hoax. That takes place during another idiotic choice by the overrated director: He basically restages the battle of Hoth, except he put it on a salt planet — which forces him to tell the audience that it’s a “salt planet” 10 times so people don’t think that it’s just the ice battle of Hoth all over again, when that’s obviously what it is. The other terrible choice in the salt planet version of the Hoth battle is that Johnson should’ve killed Finn and — what’s the name of the person everyone forgets? Oh yeah, Rose. That would have at least given the film some stakes.
Most unforgivably, though, is that “The Last Jedi” utterly destroys Luke Skywalker’s character, the most important character of the original trilogy. But this is a function of one of the problems with the Abrams trilogy as a whole: it is based on destroying all of Star Wars fans’ favorite old characters.
9. The Force Awakens
People are going to think this is controversial. It’s not. “The Force Awakens” is a bad film. The reason it’s a bad film is not because on its own it is such a bad film. The reason is because it takes all of the audience’s favorite old characters and just murders them in front of their eyes, literally murders them. It takes all the characters you grew up with and loved, and who made your childhood. It takes Han Solo and turns Han Solo into a loser divorced dad flying around the universe with Chewie like Cheech and Chong smoking dope in the Millennium Falcon, and then has him murdered at the hands of his own son because Leia is too cowardly to go confront her own son.
While J.J. Abrams does try to fix this with some lens flare in “The Rise of Skywalker,” the fact remains that “Force Awakens” is a criminal act against the Star Wars legacy. Abrams decided he was going to kill off all of the olds in order to build characters who are significantly less interesting than the old characters in the first place — and kill off your childhood in the process. It’s a cynical move. When I first walked out of the theater, I thought, okay, that was all right. But since then, as I’ve thought more about the movie, the angrier I’ve gotten about it. Now, in my view, it ranks among the worst of the Star Wars films.
8. Attack of the Clones
I’ve heard many people say “Attack of the Clones” is the worst of the prequels, but as I’ve argued above, it’s only the second worst. Why? Because Christopher Lee is great and, while Count Dooku’s character is poorly written, he is the secret hero of the Star Wars prequels. Count Dooku is not wrong. He is a separatist from a Senate that has been taken over secretly by a Sith Lord. He’s the only one who knows this, and he has worked to move outside of a trade federation that is instituting tariffs against planets he doesn’t wish to see tariffed. He’s a free trade libertarian. Beyond that, he has a pretty good lightsaber battle with both Ewan McGregor and Yoda. The basic plotting of the film is also more interesting than “Phantom Menace.”
Now, “Attack of the Clones” does have some of the worst romance in the history of film. I mean everything involving Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman is a horror show. It’s death to anyone who loves movies and anyone who loves, well, romance. “You are smoother than sand, my lady,” is one of the worst lines in the history of film. “I hate sand, it’s coarse.” Just barely worse than the preceding line. It is this film that, more than any other, destroyed my perception of Natalie Portman as a decent actress. I still think that she is wildly overrated.
But even with the horror show romance, “Attack of the Clones” is still a better movie than “Phantom Menace” because at least you start to get flashes of what’s going to happen in “Revenge of the Sith,” which as we’ll see, I think is actually a pretty enjoyable movie.
7. Solo
Now we move into the Star Wars films that are at least watchable — movies that you would actually rewatch if you were flipping through channels and happened to catch a glimpse of a scene. Catch a moment from “Phantom Menace” or “Force Awakens” or “Attack of the Clones,” you’re not likely to keep watching. You see something from “Solo,” maybe you’ll stop.
A lot of people are really down on “Solo,” but I’m not sure why. I think “Solo” is entertaining; it’s fun and it doesn’t sell out Han Solo’s character the way that the sequels do. Han’s hero’s journey from the original Star Wars is from a mercenary and rogue, who only cares about himself, to a self-sacrificing general in the resistance, who’s going to get married at the end and have Jedi babies with Leia. That’s the full arc of his hero’s journey, and it’s part of the reason’s he’s iconic. But in his sequel trilogy, Abrams reverts Solo back to a rogue who only cares about himself.
But “Solo” doesn’t do that. Instead, it is the start of that journey. The problem with the film is that it partly gives Han the hero’s journey before the hero’s journey. He has to start off with being a dissolute rogue who is cynical and nasty. But that has to be the hero’s journey beginning in Episode 4. “Solo,” of course, precedes that episode. In “Solo,” Han already has sympathies towards the rebellion and he already is showing some aspects of self-sacrifice. In that way, “Solo” is an inverse of Han’s hero’s journey.
Another miss in the film is the Kessel Run sequence. Simply put, if you take a shortcut in the Kessel Run, it doesn’t count as doing it in “less than 12 parsecs.”
Those two misses aside, the movie has some amusing moments and aspects. One of them is the droid, which is one of the better droids in all of the Star Wars franchise. All those factors together make “Solo” the seventh best — or fourth worst, however you want to think about it — of the films.
6. The Rise of Skywalker
So people hated “The Rise of Skywalker” because they are wrong.
“Rise of Skywalker,” half of the movie, is just throwaway nonsense. The beginning of the film is effectively the Millennium Falcon hopping and skipping planet to planet in a really useless J.J. Abrams mode. What is truly good about the film is that it actually goes back to respecting the legacy of Star Wars.
“Force Awakens” killed off Han Solo in a pointless way simply to fulfill the new trilogy’s “kill off the old to make room for the new” plan. “The Last Jedi” then goes even further and kills off Luke Skywalker as a good character — and then kills off the idea that the Skywalker family matters at all, because apparently random kids just get the Force, which undercuts the entire trilogy.
“Rise of Skywalker” retcons all of those terrible choices by acting as if Ryan Johnson’s mess of a film never existed. For the final film of his trilogy, Abrams decides that he is going to retcon the entire history of his trilogy. He makes Leia into a full-fledged Jedi. Luke goes from trashing Jedi traditions, burning ancient books, and throwing away lightsabers, to once again valuing all things Jedi. We also retcon Han Solo into a hero who really did care about his son and was willing to self-sacrifice. And we make the biggest retcon of all, which is the most important one: Ray is actually Palpatine’s granddaughter.
Now, naturally Disney screwed this up and they tried to retcon the retcon afterward by suggesting that Palpatine is actually a clone. But in the end, Rey is the granddaughter of the most powerful Force being in the galaxy. That retroactive choice completely solves the Mary-Jane problem of Johnson’s flamingly bad movie and addresses a huge problem in “Force Awakens” — that Rey picks up a lightsaber and suddenly beats the hell out of Ben Solo, who’s been training for 20 years and has Skywalker blood.
The final film in Abrams’ series also brings back all the old music from “Return of the Jedi,” which is a satisfying choice. Also brought back is a lot of the old scenery from “Return of the Jedi,” a fantastic choice. Thus, Han is given a better goodbye, which was necessary because the way he was dismissively killed in “Force Awakens,” Luke is given a better send-off by having him Force raise from the grave his old X-Wing in the same way that Yoda did. Because it actually respects the franchise’s traditions, “Rise of Skywalker” comes in at the top of the Abrams trilogy and sixth overall.
5. Return of the Jedi
Two-thirds of this movie is fantastic, and one-third of it as silly. Everything that is Luke and Darth Vader-related is strong. The final throne room stuff is fantastic, with the dynamic between Palpatine, Darth Vader and Luke being the best aspect of the movie. And the music, of course, is terrific. Han becoming a more responsible human being is quite satisfying, as is the entire speeder scene on Endor, the second Death Star and the plot to trap the rebels. Even Lando flying the Millennium Falcon makes some sense. As a concluding installment in the original trilogy, “Return of the Jedi” really works.
So what’s not great? The Ewoks and the final space battle, which doesn’t feel as if it has tremendous consequences — at least it’s not as impactful as the final “New Hope” battle.
Another weak point of “Return of the Jedi” is the Jabba sequence at the beginning. What exactly is Luke’s plan? He has Lando in there undercover, but Lando never actually does anything significant undercover. Then Luke sends in the droids to be captured for no apparent reason, followed by Leia, who tries to make the trade with Jabba for Han. Finally, Luke shows up, but he doesn’t actually just brandish his light saber. Instead, he proceeds to get himself thrown into a Rancor pit, which presumably Lando knew to warn him about… In other words, the beginning is fun but it makes no sense. With that said, “Return of the Jedi” as the conclusion of the trilogy is very moving and it definitely works despite its glaring weak points.
4. Revenge of the Sith
I rewatched “Revenge of the Sith” recently and concluded that, in retrospect, it’s a good movie — and the last two-thirds of it is really good. At the point that Palpatine becomes overtly maniacal and issues Order 66, the movie turns into a rather powerful film. The whole sequence where we witness all of the Jedi getting shot down and killed is really effective. The Anakin turn at the end actually works emotionally in large part because Obi-Wan is so devastated. While Christensen still can’t act, his complete embrace of the Dark Side plays out in a way that is gripping. The final lightsaber battle between the despairing master and his bitter padawan is excellent and concludes in an appropriately shocking manner.
The big flaw in “Revenge of the Sith” is that the rationale for why Anakin becomes Darth Vader isn’t satisfying. The question becomes why he still works for the Empire afterward. We are told that he falls to the Dark Side because he wants the power to be able to save Padmé. But Padmé dies. The emperor made him a promise, but immediately fails to fulfill that promise. So why does Anakin still align himself with the emperor?
We all know that the Sith apprentice inevitably tries to kill the Sith master. So why doesn’t Anakin just kill Palpatine right away and take control of the galaxy, if that’s really what he’s up to? Instead, Vader becomes a functionary in the galactic regime of Palpatine after his wife dies because Palpatine fails to do anything to save her.
3. Rogue One
Ready for this one? “Rogue One” is the third best Star Wars film. I know a lot of people want to put “Revenge of the Sith” or “Return of the Jedi” in the top three, but at this point, I believe “Rogue One” has earned this spot. “Rogue One” is actually a really well-made film. In many respects, it’s fascinating. It has just enough tips of the hat to the original Star Wars trilogy to draw you in. Also, the ending of it is quite shocking. The contrast between this film’s death toll of the major characters — all of them die — compared to the original trilogy, where only Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Darth Vader ultimately die over the course of three films.
I remember watching this in the theater for the first time and being stunned. They just set the audience up with all of these characters who we all like — and then they kill all of them? This is because “Rogue One” is actually a war film in the guise of a Star Wars film. It’s about human sacrifice and what people are willing to do in order to accomplish a mission, including giving up their lives at a young age.
“Rogue One” also features that famous final scene where Darth Vader finally lets loose, which is one of the best scenes in the entire franchise. Adding to its power is its parallels with the opening sequence in “New Hope.” Director Gareth Edwards masterfully aligned those two scenes, but with a powerfully violent twist that matches the tone of his quite good film.
2. A New Hope
There’s some controversy over whether “New Hope” should be considered more highly than “Empire Strikes Back,” if nothing else because the sequel wouldn’t exist without all the first film establishes. But “New Hope” is in and of itself a very good movie. Now, I know these movies hold up because I’ve shown them to my young children, and they love them. I’ve also shown them some of the new movies, and they simply aren’t as gripped by them. “New Hope” is creative, interesting and obviously follows all the beats in Joseph Campbell, thus it is famously reflective of his “hero’s journey” concept.
The first film also has some of the best lines in movie history, stuff that everybody quotes all the time. It has features legitimate, seasoned actors, like Alec Guinness, alongside newcomers, like Harrison Ford. The opening of the film is so good. I actually use the initial sequence as an explanation of how politics ought to work in a campaign, because it is all about the villain, Darth Vader. Lucas is wisely patient about introducing Luke; that’s because you first have to establish the bad guys before you establish the good guys. It’s a good lesson for people who are running in politics.
1. The Empire Strikes Back
This is not a question. This is not a theory. It’s not an opinion. It is a simple fact. “Empire Strikes Back” is the best of the Star Wars movies and one of the best movies of all time. My father assures me that when people saw this in the theaters, they literally could not believe they had to wait until “Return of the Jedi” came out for confirmation that Darth Vader was telling the truth. People doubted it even after watching “Empire Strikes Back.”
It’s a brilliant movie. One of the things that’s great about the movie is it’s really about how Han Solo is competent. And one of the things that Disney has done with the Star Wars universe that’s truly foolish is they’ve decided that basically all the male characters are radically incompetent in the original Star Wars. But in the original trilogy, almost everybody is good at their job. Princess Leia is competent. Han Solo is competent. Luke Skywalker is increasingly competent. Darth Vader is competent. You know what makes for interesting plots? Competent people.
“Empire Strikes Back” is all about how Han Solo is shockingly competent at all the things he’s attempting to do, as well as how he’s a rogue torn between growing love for a woman and admiration for a cause and his old, self-serving life. The writing is by far the best of franchise; Lawrence Kasdan does a beautiful job with the script. Also, everything involving Yoda is just tremendous. Then there’s, of course, the phenomenal score from John Williams. “Empire Strikes Back” is obviously number one on the list — it is just is not close.