Star Wars Movies Ranked

Star Wars Movies Ranked

It’s been seven years, but we finally have a new Star Wars movie. Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu has hit theaters. Which means, it’s time to stop and rank all 13 Star Wars movies. Let’s get started!  

13. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: This film I think is a massive disappointment and misfire on multiple levels. It’s not outright bad, it still has some charm to it. But the film as a whole I think makes it the weakest Star Wars film we’ve gotten. Right out of the gate, I think this film showcases the worst aspects of George Lucas’ abilities as a director. You get the overreliance on CGI and green screen that’s distracting and in places where it shouldn’t be. Shots of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman on grassy fields look completely fake even though it’s easy for them to shoot on a grassy field. There’s also the infamous dialogue of romance between Christensen and Portman that’s so cringy and doesn’t make you buy into the romance between Anakin and Padme even though the audience needs to. Beyond that, on a plot level the film doesn’t work as it’s a mystery that the audience already knows what’s going on and who’s behind it because we know where this story is going. You know that the assination attempt on Padme isn’t going to work because it’s a prequel and we know where the story goes and what happens. On a basic level, I think the idea of doing a murder mystery in the world of Star Wars with a queen isn’t a bad idea for a movie. It’s a bad idea for a prequel film because we know the fate of these characters. There are some positives here with this movie. The third act is very fun as you’re seeing all of these Jedi in this battle arena battling monsters and droids. That’s very fun. Rewatching this movie, it brought out a sense of nostalgia because one of the LEGO games I’ve played the most is LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, and the opening level is the third act of this film. 

12. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker: I feel like a lot of people are going to put this movie in last place. To be honest, they’re not wrong if this is #13 on this list. I rank Rise of Skywalker above Attack of the Clones because I find it more watchable. I enjoy spending time with these characters, I think the actors they got are all very fun and charming in their respective roles. As just a Star Wars movie I think it’s totally watchable, but it’s so disappointing and frustrating as the conclusion to the Skywalker Saga. This film had so much potential because it was designed to be this cultural event celebrating Star Wars but ultimately it was the victim of Disney not having a clear vision for what they wanted to do with this trilogy. This film feels like it has to rush through everything and all of its interesting because The Last Jedi did a terrible job of setting this movie up. There’s ideas where they want to go deeper into Finn’s action of going from stormtrooper to the Resistance sparked something in others. That’s an interesting idea but it’s completely wasted and rushed over in this movie. There’s also some very lazy and stupid ideas in here from General Hux being a spy working against Kylo Ren to Rey having the ability to force heal injured creatures. There’re ideas that make very Star Wars fans moan in disappointment. I think ultimately, the film was hurt by releasing the same year as Avengers: Endgame. Both movies were designed to close out an era of their respective franchises, and Endgame did it better on every single level. 

11. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace: One of the most frustrating Star Wars movies of all time. There’s some great sequences and moments in here, of course John Williams’ score is absolutely fantastic. “Duel of the Fates” is one of the best pieces of Star Wars music we have. And then there’s all of the other stuff that people have been making fun of ever since this film came out. Most notably, Jar Jar Binks is a complete misfire of a character. He’s not funny and he doesn’t fit in the world of Star Wars. If Jar Jar Binks was the side character in a Star Wars tv show on Disney+ aimed for kids he could’ve worked and fit in nicely. But when he’s in a movie that’s supposed to introduce Anakin Skywalker and start building the relationship with Obi-Wan it feels so out of place. Beyond that, the film has some big pacing issues. Where it starts off very exciting and fast paced with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan on their mission, which leads into a 20-30 minute sequence. And then there’s large gaps of time where there’s either senate hearings or there’s Anakin trying to convince him to do pod-racing. What makes it frustrating is that all of the issues are easily fixable. George Lucas very easily could’ve added more action in the middle act of the film and removed Jar Jar Binks. But like I said, there’s still some cool moments in here. The pod racing scene is very fun, the third act has some cool lightsaber action, and the score is fantastic. It’s a film that I wish could’ve been much higher but ultimately disappointed thousands of fans across the world. 

10. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: I know a lot of people will probably rank this movie much lower on the list. Honestly, I’m not really going to argue with people that put this in the bottom three Star Wars movies. For me, I have so much nostalgia for this movie and the tv show that I find this movie entirely watchable. I just enjoy spending time with these characters with this animation style. Rewatching the film, it brought out a lot of nostalgia and remembering all of these scenes and sequences. That’s the main reason why I have it ranked higher than most people. But, I can also acknowledge that this isn’t a very good movie and it’s very weirdly structured. If you don’t know this was not originally planned to be a movie. This was originally the first three episodes of the tv show, George Lucas saw them and thought it would be a good idea to turn it into a movie to help promote the show. You have three episodes of the tv show edited together to make one movie and you can feel that. You can feel where each episode ends because our characters will stop to reflect the lesson they learned that episode. Despite Ahsoka going on to become a great character and a fan favorite amongst Star Wars fans, this wasn’t a great introduction for her character. She comes across as very annoying and like they didn’t fully figure out what to do with her. 

9. Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu: The first Star Wars movie that we’ve gotten in seven years. Unfortunately, this film simply didn’t live up to the hype and shouldn’t have been the film that we waited seven years to see. This move isn’t bad, it doesn’t offend you the way that The Last Jedi offended a lot of people. But it also doesn’t reunite Star Wars fans in the same way that The Force Awakens did or even the first couple seasons of The Mandalorian. The film is an enjoyable enough film that allows for both our title characters to get their moment in the spotlight. Grogu gets a bunch of very cute moments that had my audience laughing at multiple different points. There’s a lot of cool action moments for Mando to do his thing and be awesome at it. Something that was great about the film that I forgot to mention in my review, the score by Ludwig Göransson is awesome. That shouldn’t be too surprising considering he’s the top composer working today. But overall, the film is fine. It’s never really boring and there’s plenty of fun moments. But this movie could’ve and should’ve been so much better. The biggest issues with the film goes back to the script, where the story isn’t great and it lacks momentum because you don’t care about the villains. You sort of forget that the Hutts and bounty hunters are even out there because they pose no imposing antagonist threat. The third act feels meaningless and doesn’t even feel like a third act because there’s not really a conflict that Mando is trying to stop. I think kids will enjoy this film and get plenty of entertainment out of the action and humor. But I don’t think this film is going to feed the hunger for Star Wars movies that fans have been feeling. 

8. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: This is an interesting one because there’s so many people that declare this a top tier Star Wars movie. You can look at several lists and see people claim this to be their favorite Star Wars movie. For me, I found it to be a better film upon rewatch but I also don’t think it’s top tier Star Wars. This is easily the best of the prequels, I think George Lucas’ direction is the best in this movie in terms of the prequels. You get this grander sense of just how big this movie is almost instantly when we have Anakin and Obi-Wan on their mission. The back half of the film does have some great moments. The Order 66 sequence I think is so well directed and makes you disgusted and frightened by what is going on. It’s those sequences in the back half that prove that Revenge of the Sith is easily the best of the prequels. With that said, while there’s some great moments and sequences in here with a fantastic John Williams score, there’s also plenty of problems here. I don’t think Anakin’s turn to the dark side was handled super well. It feels like in one scene he’s good and on Obi-Wan’s side and then the next he’s killing Mace Windu and children. This problem easily could’ve been fixed if Lucas started Anakin’s turn in The Phantom Menace and not in this film. Have Anakin’s downfall take over place in three films, not just 45 minutes in this film. It’s a film that has some great moments here, I think it’s easily the best of the prequels when it comes to the direction and acting. But, it’s a deeply flawed film that I don’t think I can put higher up on this list. 

7. Solo: A Star Wars Story: This film is ranked between two of the more frustrating Star Wars movies. Simply put, I think Solo is an enjoyable Star Wars adventure that I appreciate isn’t a super big movie. It’s not about the empire trying to destroy planets and there’s no Jedi in this movie. I think it accomplished its goal of just trying to be a fun Star Wars adventure that’s unassuming and inoffensive. Considered the massive production troubles this movie had with the swapping of directors, it’s a film that actually comes together very nicely. If we didn’t know about the behind the scenes drama, I don’t think people would notice the reshoots because they did a great job of making this movie feel like one singular voice. I think our lead actor, Alden Ehrenreich does a good job of being Han Solo. If we just compare this performance on its own terms and not try to compare him to Harrison Ford I think he does a really good job. The film does have some issues, I think it has the common sequel problem of answering questions we didn’t want answers to or providing stupid answers. We learn how Han got his last name, because he was flying solo. It’s also hard to connect with Emilia Clarke’s character because we know they don’t end up together. There’s some weird messaging in here in regards to Lando’s assistant robot that feels so out of place in Star Wars, it was distracting and cringy to me. 

6. Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi: This is a movie that has been causing debates and wars ever since it came out. No matter where I rank it on this list, somebody is going to get mad at me. It’s number 6 on the list, if you saw my review I went positive on it. I do think this is a good movie but I can also acknowledge that this is a deeply flawed film that’s 100% understood why so many fans felt betrayed by this film. For all of the movie’s faults, I sort of appreciate the fact that Rian Johnson swung for the fences and did something different. We can debate whether his ambitions were justified or not. I like that he didn’t play it safe and was purposefully trying to step on people’s toes. I think this is also the best looking Star Wars movie that we’ve gotten. From beginning to end, there’s all of this gorgeous imagery and the CGI is impeccable so everything looks incredible. Mark Hamill delivers his best performance as Luke Skywalker in this movie, it’s interesting to see him at a different point in time where he’s having to deliver a very different performance. With that said, I think some of the choices they made with Luke were a big mistake. Making him this looser Jedi that’s reclusive on the island isn’t what you want to see from Luke Skywalker like at all. They don’t do a good enough job of fleshing out what happened and what turned him to be the Luke we saw. There’s other moments in here like the Rose stuff and the casino planet feel so unnecessary and pulls away from the more interesting stuff in the film. Overall, The Last Jedi is a good movie that I think has some major flaws that hold it back.  

5. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: Like Solo, Rogue One is infamous for having major production issues where they changed directors and Tony Gilroy came in to fix the movie. You watch the first teaser they released for this movie and almost all of the footage is absent from the film we got. This is an example of a time where reshoots and production troubles can actually fix a film and make it better. They had this idea of taking the opening crawl of A New Hope and turning that into an entire film. They made a really fun movie that has stunning visuals thanks to Gareth Edwards, our director who’s known for having a great visual style. Tony Gilroy wrote the Jason Bourne movie so you have that spy espionage side of things. The first two acts aren’t perfect, they definitely do feel choppy and like you can feel the reworkings and reshoots. But you have moved into the third act and this is one of the best Star Wars third acts of all time. You get all our heroes dying off one by one and the audience knows that our heroes win in the end. But there’s still this tension as you see just how close it was to failing. The Darth Vader hallway scene is one of the best Star Wars scenes of all time. I wish we got more Darth Vader scenes like that where it’s Darth Vader going for menace and at his full power, and somebody who is a massive Darth Vader fan, it puts a big smile on my face. And I think this film has aged very well due to Andor that fleshed everything out surrounding this film. This is one of the best Star Wars movies that we’ve gotten and easily one of the best of the Disney Star Wars era. 

4. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens: The Force Awakens I think deserves the crown of being the best film of the Disney era of Star Wars. Despite this trilogy maybe not landing the ship the best way with Rise of Skywalker, I still think The Force Awakens is a great movie that’s a whole lot of money. I think JJ Abrams is a great director when it comes to directing action blockbusters where he makes movies that are thrilling and exciting that are never boring where there’s always an action sequence or a joke happening to keep you entertained from beginning to end. I don’t mind the fact that it copies the formula of A New Hope, but it does the formula well so it’s never been something that’s bothered me. One thing I appreciate about this film is that it’s more practical than the prequels. The prequels infamously had an over reliance on CGI (like we’ve talked about), and it made the scenes and sequences look different and weird. This one was shot on practical locations so it’s a big battle on a planet of them sneaking around a ship. It looks big and real compared to the different locations in the prequels. The characters across the board I think are really fun and I enjoy spending time with them. Where you get the new character with Rey and Finn interacting with our legacy characters with Han and Leia. This is also one of my favorite legacy sequels of all time. We’ve gotten a lot of legacy sequels over the last 11 years since this film came out and the legacy sequel craze started with this film after it made $2 billion. Despite this trilogy not ending on a high note they sure did end on a high note. 

3. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi: Easily the best concluding chapter of any of the Star Wars trilogies. This is the one that has the most satisfying payoff with the least amount of flaws. It might be the weakest of the original trilogy, but it’s still a great movie. It’s a film that concludes everything very nicely where our heroes are victorious in the end. You get the payoff to Luke’s journey from farm boy to Jedi saving the galaxy. What this film is able to do really well is that it’s able to balance the fun side of Star Wars while also drawing big emotions. The film is very fun and fast paced where it starts off exciting and it never really lets up until the credits roll. But once you move into the third act and you get the redemption of Darth Vader it’s able to pull at the heart strings as you see Vader’s complete arc that started in A New Hope. It does that better than any of the other films in the original trilogy. A New Hope is probably a better movie, but it doesn’t have those emotional moments that this film does. You also get a great space battle in here being over 40 years old has aged very well. The simple reason for that is that they used practical effects. When you have the starlighter pilots flying around it looks very good because they didn’t rely on CGI or computers. It might be the best space battle in Star Wars. It’s a very cool sequence where it’s very clear what the mission of our heroes is. I know some people think this is where Star Wars fell off because of the Ewoks, if that’s too goofy for you fair enough. I think this is a great movie that’s very fun while also being emotional and a great example of how to close out a trilogy. 

2. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope: One of the most important and influential movies of all time. It’s one of those films that if it didn’t exist, it’d be so interesting to see where cinema and pop culture would be if this movie failed and the franchise never continued. Part of the reason why it’s so important is because it helped define what a blockbuster was. Between this film and Jaws, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg crafted a modern pacing to films that didn’t really exist prior to this film. The film starts off with a great action sequence and it never lets up until the credits roll. It’s able to establish the world, the characters, and the conflict but always keeps the film moving so the audience is never bored watching this film. The film also does great world building that immediately sucks you into this world and makes you want to learn more about it. We understand the rules of the universe and the Jedi and the Empire, and the connections between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. We go to all of these planets and you feel like you can still have more stories on the planets. This film is so iconic for many other reasons from the set of characters where Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2, and C-3PO are just such iconic cinematic characters that have stayed relevant in pop culture for now nearly 50 years. John Williams’ score is also fantastic and filled with iconic music themes that are so woven into popular culture. A New Hope is one of the best Star Wars movies but it’s also just one of the best movies, period. 

1. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back: This isn’t just THE BEST Star Wars movie, it’s also one of the greatest sequels of all time, and one of the greatest movies of all time. Rewatching this film solidified itself as something truly special in cinema as it’s a sequel that changed the course of sequels moving forward. Ever since this movie came out, many sequels have been criticized for going bigger and bigger than the original but not living up to it. The Empire Strikes Back is a perfect example of a sequel that goes bigger with the story and the conflict but it also improves the original, which is already a fantastic film. This film acts as the origin story for Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi where he trains with Yoda and so you get the continuation of Luke’s character arc. As soon as you think he’s mastered being a Jedi, he goes up against Darth Vader where he fails. We get one of the greatest movie plot twists of all time that’s so important for movies and popular culture. Maybe the greatest movie twist of all time if you ask me. I think what helped this movie make it better is that you had George Lucas write the first draft of the film, but he doesn’t really get script credit because somebody else wrote and somebody else directed it. This film is proof that it’s what he should’ve done with the prequels and how those films could’ve been much better and closer to the quality of the original trilogy. I love the dynamic between Han Solo and Princess Leia here. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are absolutely fantastic together. As it is a Star Wars movie, you also get a fantastic John Williams score. This is my favorite John Williams Star Wars score. “The Imperial March” is one of the greatest pieces of music ever put to film. When you put all of the pieces together, you get a truly fantastic film, sequel, and blockbuster. I love this movie like most people do.