1. Empire Strike Back - it’s beautiful realized, it took what New Hope gave us and ran with it, brought in modern film making techniques (I consider A New Hope one of the last classically shot films, though edited a bit more modernly). ESB is like Prizoner of Azkaban in The Harry Potter fills to me, it’s the only Star Wars that feels like it’s not only a good Star Wars movie, it’s actually a great FIML period. The Vader/Luke fight is the most beautifully lit and shot scene in all of Star Wars and ranks up there against all the other great scenes in cinema history. Other Star Wars movies have great scenes, but not other Star Wars comes close to ESB.
2. Return of the Jedi - a very problematic film, very poorly directed and the DP did a pretty horrible job at times when compared to ESB. But even with that... that climax was insane. So good in fact it really does retroactively fix A lot of the films issues. It’s like a gymnast who makes several mistakes during her routine but absolutely nails the landing.
3. The Force Awakens: It was fun, it made me like Star Wars again. Yes it retreaded a lot, but I loved the idea of Finn’s charecter. Loved the looks and high production JJ out into it. It was a film with tons of flaws, did not stick the landing, butt I left the movie wanting more Star Wars.
4. A New Hope - I respect this film more than any of the others for what it did to cinema. That doesn’t mean I actually like it though. It meanders, it’s slow, it’s poorly acted, it’s cheap looking and feeling. It’s poorly shot, poorly lit, and its shot style is an inbetween modern and classical Hollywood, but honestly the worst of both. To slow, to little camera movement, very little use of depth and verticality. It’s basically a classically shot film in its dna and that hurts it in my mind, as the story cries out for the style of ESB. That’s why this is below TFA for me. Still I rewatch it and enjoy it. Everything needs a starting point and this was a great one.
5. The Rise is Skywalker - It has a lower grading curve due to TLJ basically showing us what a very bad film can be. Saying that, JJ did an amazing job on directing this crazy mashup of 2 films and recovering some semblance of sense. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, it’s none stop, it’s funny and it has some really good scenes. I left feeling happy with Star Wars again. That’s a win.
6. The Phantom Menace - i hate it in every viewing, it’s my worst movie going experiance in history (walked out in disbelief about how bad it was). Somehow with time SOME of the film has aged better and feels nice... but I think that’s just because the other films are worse?
7. Revenge of the Sith - it’s bad, the people in this thread ranking it high make no sense to me. It still has all the bad directing and scripting if the prequels, most of its “good” scenes are poorly shot, half the film feels pointless, the other half is action packed but shot so laughably bad it feels silly to even think this film is in the same series that have us Empire Strikes Back. Lucas ruined this film. A good director could have made this film good, even with the same script.
8. Attack of the Clones - it’s bad, but it has some cool scenes. Lightsaber vs blaster in the rain, accustic bombs, obiwan being cool. Bad acting, bad GC, bad direction, bad sets, and bad casting made this the Cleveland Browns of Star Wars.
9. The Last Jedi - fuck this film.