ST Rank the Last Jedi among the SW films

1.TESB
2.SW
3.ROTJ
4.TFA
5.RO
6.ROTS
7.TPM
8.AOTC
9.TLJ.

 

The Empire Strikes Back
The Phantom Menace
A New Hope
Return of the Jedi
The Force Awakens
<Rogue One>
The Last Jedi
Attack of the Clones / Revenge of the Sith

Seen TLJ twice
AGE: 36
INFJ personality type - would love to see how other INFJ’s rank the movies
I like all STAR WARS movies, no hate here, but I definitely have opinions on the progression of awesomeness. I look at the overall film. All SW movies contain amazing scenes, my ranking comes from an assessment of the total package, characters and character development, settings, cinematography, the tone of the film, etc.

ESB - a dark film with just the right hints of light, beautiful to look at, the scenery and cinematography enhance the story, 3 of 5 favorite SW characters of all time: Luke, R2-D2, and Yoda, packs amazing punches, every single scene on Dagobah is golden in my book, totally believable romance between Han and Leia - such chemistry. Cloud City was handled well also. “No time to discuss this as a committee!” “I am not a committee!” That’s a perfect example of what Empire does so well: character development, humor, and in the midst of an action sequence, seamless layering of multiple things at once. That’s why Empire is at the top in my opinion. “The Force is with you young Skywalker...but you are not a Jedi yet.” < Pinnacle scene in all the SW movies in my opinion. Nothing has yet topped Luke entering the Carbonite Chamber to face Vader. The door closing on R2. Leia yelling it’s a trap. The music. The mood. The lighting. The silhouette. Vader’s breathing. All the build-up up until this point. I could swoon for days on this. I’ll spare you.
CONS: slow opening scenes to start: before Vader and the Imperial March, still not entirely perfect, a SW film could come around and beat this one day, in my opinion, it just hasn’t happened yet.

TPM - a light film with just the right hints of dark, beautiful to look at, the scenery and cinematography enhance the story, 4 of 5 favorite SW characters of all time: Qui-Gon, Padme, R2-D2, and Yoda. I love R2’s introduction to the saga. I support the decision for young Anakin and younger Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon really shines, good job Liam Neeson! The movie does what it sets out to do: set the stage for galactic conflict, you get the pristine world of Naboo, where mindsets need to get shaken up, the slave lifestyle on Tatooine, and the distant government in Coruscant. Innocence, naivete, arrogance, Palps’ master plan forming in the shadows. And whoa those doors opening on Maul in the Naboo hangar. Amazing duel. It all works.
CONS: overdid Binks!!!, middle is a bit slow, solution is to cut out the unnecessary things like Binks stepping in poo, Binks street vendor / Sebulba, Binks tongue getting fried, eopie fart, etc. (Cut midichlorians - talk about them just slows down middle and never gets mentioned anywhere else in saga, so just not needed)

ANH - Classic! From Death Star tractor beam on Falcon to the end of the movie it is nonstop amazing! A solid start to it all. Give credit where credit is due. Without this movie being as awesome as it is, we wouldn’t have more Star Wars. “He’s the brains sweetheart!” Tarkin is a great villain too.
CONS: slow opening scenes after initial opening, why have C3PO and R2-D2 go different ways only to end up being on the same sandcrawler anyways?

RotJ - sweet mother of Palpatine, Luke, and Vader on Death Star, good, good stuff! “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” Gold, pure gold. Jabba’s Sail Barge and Endor Speeder Chase are fun action sequences. I like ewoks.
CONS: slow at times

TFA - Full of zest, good action sequences, makes the slow parts interesting actually, I don’t mind seeing Rey’s life on Jakku, it works
CONS: A bit familiar, you know, blowing up another superweapon base, again…at this point in the saga we need fresh ideas, I know in real life we needed a surefire hit, but the story suffers a bit - had it been more original, would definitely be higher up my list.

<Rogue One> - Part of me doesn’t want to rate it alongside the episodes, but since it sets up ANH so well, it doesn’t feel entirely out of place - I love how it showed just how last ditch effort it was for the Rebels to stand up to the Empire, how it took a Rogue mission to get people encouraged to fight - I really appreciate that about Rogue One. The sacrifice it took to get the Death Star plans for the Hope that it could be destroyed. Fun humor with K-2SO! I loved that Jyn’s dad worked in a way for the Death Star to be destroyed. I absolutely love that. Definitely worked.
CONS: None of my favorite characters in it and probably a good thing since everyone dies, which I’m okay with that decision. Vader, why didn’t you just force pull the plans to you? I think that should have been reworked a bit there at the very end. CGI Tarkin and Leia characters kind of weird...

TLJ - Bold decisions in some spots which pay off, Luke’s character arc works for me (though I have to admit I was not happy hearing Ben’s point of view about what happened in the hut, until we were able to hear Luke’s side of it - then it makes sense), absolutely love Yoda’s role, R2-D2’s role is good too! (but seriously we need to see him and BB-8 tear the place up together in Episode IX) Holdo sacrifice was great, Leia using the Force was great, Luke projection was amazing! Binary sunset ending for Luke - perfect way to go. Slave children and common man theme interesting - harkens back to TPM. Wish we could have seen even better character development for the new folks that the torch is getting handed to: Rey, Finn, and Poe. That leads me to CONS - Maz cartoon conversation and all of Canto Bight, come on what was that??!?! All for it not to work anyways, I know a major theme was trying to convey failure but all it seems to convey is filler. The script and storyline needs some fine-tuning, some sharper decisions needed to be made about the middle of this film. We need better opportunities for Rey, Finn, and Poe to develop if we are to accept that they are the new torchbearers of the resistance. And they need to be doing things together, not separating off into 3 different directions. AotC and ESB have main characters split into two groups, but three - that’s just emotionally ineffective. We need our torchbearers interacting with each other in person. Also, I never was a Snoke theorist for one second, but what a chump, and what a waste! How dare we play Palpatine’s music for this chump? How dare he be so powerful with so little explanation only to fall for such a saber trick? What a schmuck! And what schmuck decision making with his character. We haven’t seen such bad decisions about villains since…

AotC and RotS - I can’t bring myself to rate a single SW film last, so I let these two share the spot, especially since their problems overlap. There is so much wasted potential between the two characters Dooku and Grievous on film, I’m not talking about whatever else they decided to do with them in Clone Wars cartoons etc. Both AotC and RotS would benefit from a more fleshed out villain as a precursor to Anakin being Palp’s right-hand man. We already had one and done with Maul. What if Dooku and Grievous were one, deeper, fleshed out villain? And all that follow the clues monkeying around Obi-Wan had to endure in AotC, really not the best writing decision. Sifo-Dyas. What? Exactly. I get the Jedi were supposed to be confused about what was really going on, but did the audience have to be needlessly confused as well? It could have been handled better. It just barely works as it is, but it could have been done more efficiently, sharper, more effective. It feels like settling for less than best for all of AotC and for the first two-thirds of RotS. I’m not saying it’s the worst thing ever, but a lot like I feel about Maz and Canto Bight in The Last Jedi, there was so much potential for better, smarter, more efficient things for our characters to do and develop then what was chosen. Pros: Hey, at least AotC has great action sequences. I really love the symbolism in the droid factory. And the arena and battle of Geonosis are amazing. And watch out, RotS, Yoda vs. the Emperor in the Senate - pure genius! Mustafar battle was impressive too. Kashyyyk battle amazing. Order 66 packed with emotion. Very well done.

Overall, like AotC and everything in RotS pre-Order 66, TLJ has amazing ideas and scenes, but also like them, it feels like it had the potential to offer more, and didn’t because the basic story needed to be reworked, tweaked, tempered, more time baking in the oven, etc.

 

ESB
ANH
TFA
ROTJ
RO
TLJ

I think that's all

 

1. AOTC
2. ROTS
3. ANH
4. ESB
5. TPM
6. ROTJ
7. COC
8. BFE
9. R1
10. TLJ
11. TFA

 

I don't think the Ewok movies count.

Or do they?

 

It's not even worth ranking. I wish it never happened. I thought I hated it's predecessor so much, now I don't want IX to happen. A total mess. At least Life Day didn't ruin the mythology. And that was buried!

How can this be better, with the characters dying off, from the films that started it all?!

 

Soooo.... last?

 

Bored at work and thought to see how these rankings were panning out. I went through the first five pages of this thread (only stopped due to time) and calculated each of the rankings. I assigned points to each rank, so the top movie would get 9 points down to the last movie getting just 1 point. I included Rogue One in this, hence why 9 points. I then added the points together for each movie to see what we've got. Now, this is very not scientific. First starters, I did this largely by hand so this some room for error there. Also, a lot of people have said just where they would place TLJ (understandably; its the name of the thread), so I wasn't able to pull info from those posts as they don't give context for the rest of the series. Also, anyone who didn't include RO, I went ahead and gave it just 1 point for last place. For anyone who included TCW, Ewok movies, etc., I did not include them in this.

So, the rankings for at least the first five pages are:

1) The Empire Strikes Back
2) A New Hope
3) Return of the Jedi
4) The Last Jedi
5) The Force Awakens
6) Revenge of the Sith
7) Rogue One
8) The Phantom Menace
9) Attack of the Clones

I kind of doubt whether I'll find myself going through the remaining 8 pages of rankings, but if anyone else wants to pick up the mantle, feel free.

 

THE ALMOST COMPLETE, NON-SCIENTIFIC YET "WHO CARES?" ANALYSIS OF THE "RANK TLJ" THREAD
I followed @Link1130 's method that he applied for the first 5 pages. I read through the entire 13 pages and noted every poster's ranking. So just like @Link1130 did (thank you!!), for each post i "assigned points to each rank so the 1st movie would get 9 points down to the last movie getting just 1 point. I then added the points together for each movie to see what we've got." There are 169 different people who posted their SW ranking on this thread, i guess it's too small for it to be precise BUT there are definitely some recurring patterns. Here we go.....some movies are so close from eachother, like 20 points that it doesn't mean a thing, so i decided to have 3 tiers corresponding to the really significant gaps. I remind everyone that this is a generalisation, an average of different opinions. Here what I found:

TIER 1 (around 1000 up to 1400 points, in order of release) :
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return Of The Jedi

TIER 2 (around 780 points, in order of release) :
Revenge Of The Sith
The Force Awakens
Rogue One
The Last Jedi

TIER 3 (around 420 points)
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones

Based on this there's at least 2 strong consensuses :
1 - A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are undisputedly the most appreciated SW movies of the whole Saga (it's a bit different for Return of The Jedi, more on that later)
2 -Whether they are found enjoyable or not, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are mainly seen as the less satisfying SW movies.

For the Tier 2 i just couln't find any consensus, they are all within a range of 50 points, which with so little data doesn't mean a lot. This is why i decided to look at another thing. I counted how many times every SW film was ranked at a specific level by these 169 posters. Here's the result:
TPM 1st(1) 2nd(3) 3th(5) 4th(4) 5th(10) 6th(11) 7th(33) 8th(63) 9th(39)
AOTC 1st(4) 2nd(2) 3th(3) 4th(4) 5th(2) 6th(14) 7th(14) 8th(47) 9th(79)
ROTS 1st(15) 2nd(5) 3th(13) 4th(16) 5th(13) 6th(32) 7th(57) 8th(18) 9th(0)
R1 1st(3) 2nd(1) 3th(12) 4th(32) 5th(39) 6th(32) 7th(38) 8th(8) 9th(4)
ANH 1st(25) 2nd(67) 3th(43) 4th(11) 5th(11) 6th(7) 7th(4) 8th(0) 9th(1)
ESB 1st(106) 2nd(36) 3th(12) 4th(6) 5th(5) 6th(1) 7th(2) 8th(1) 9th(0)
ROTJ 1st((12) 2nd(23) 3th(36) 4th(31) 5th(28) 6th(23) 7th(13) 8th(2) 9th(1)
TFA 1st(1) 2nd(3) 3th(22) 4th(35) 5th(47) 6th(16) 7th(11) 8th(19) 9th(13)
TLJ 1st(6) 2nd(21) 3th(30) 4th(18) 5th(15) 6th(23) 7td(10) 8th(12) 9th(34)

The consensus with ESB/ANH and TPM/AOTC is clearly visible here. ROTJ is almost constant at every level except for the lowest ones. From what people say about the movie, it is NOT a masterpiece on its own merits but it closes the OT so perfectly and the Palpatine/Luke/Vader scenes are so great that it manages to have a high score and get into the Tier 1.

Now Tier 2...
-the less controversial episodes is Rogue One, it is seldom ranked as the best one or the worst so we can assume that most fan think it's either an ok to good or very good SW movie.
-Revenge Of The Sith is mainly lower than R1 but never the worst and it seems to gather a small but significant part of fandom who sees it as one of the best SW.
-TFA and TLJ are the two most divisive, controversial SW movies. For them there is no consensus. Some love them (near masterpiece), like them, appreciate them, find them "meh" or plainly hate them. TLJ is largely more controversial than TFA. As you can see TFA doesn't often reach the top two of the ranking whereas TLJ seems to get more praise from the fans with a lot of them ranking the film in the Top 3...curiously enough, it is also the one who gets the most low-ranking level of all the post-Lucas SW and there's difinitely a part of the fans that think it's the worst SW movie.

So how can this movie be seen by some as a near-masterpiece and and a pile of BS by others? I tried to gather data and find typical profiles but until now i have failed. The people who love ANH or ESB can love or hate the movie. Idem for those who are enamoured with ROTS more than they are with ESB. So far i see no recurring pattern, so i really don't know what this gap is all about.

 

@The PiedPiper of Alderaan

This is awesome!

 

Revenge of the Sith
Empire Strikes Back
A New Hope
Rogue One
Return of the Jedi
Attack of the Clones
The Phantom Menace
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi

 

AOTC
TPM
COC
BFE
HOLIDAY SPECIAL

THE CLONE WARS MOVIE



TFA
RO
EWOKS IN ROTJ

TLJ

ANH
TESB

Now this is the true list.......

 

1. ESB
2. ANH
3. ROTJ (but my personal favorite)
4. TFA
5. RO
6. ROTS
7. TPM
8. AOTC
9. TLJ

 

1. The Phantom Menace
2. Attack of the Clones
3. A New Hope
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Rogue One
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Revenge of the Sith
8. The Force Awakens
9. The Last Jedi

 

IGN Polling info with over 22,000 respondents. Seems like it was setup in such a way where it would have been harder to fake and the demographic would probably skew largely male. So, not really representative of the general audience. Anyway, this group seems to have TLJ pretty clearly in the middle tier of the 9 Star Wars films released so far.

The OT is pretty clearly in the top 3 and the prequels are pretty clearly in the bottom 3. RO, TFA and TLJ seem to pretty clearly sit in the middle. But despite it finishing only 1% behind ANH in favorite choice for the 5th spot its haters really hate it and it sits 3rd from the bottom (above TPM and AOTC) because the people who hate it really hate it.

The staff also have it OT, TFA, TLJ, RO and then the prequels.

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2017/12/21/poll-results-how-would-you-rank-the-star-wars-movies

 

That’s not dissimilar to the rankings here. Those that don’t like it, really, really hate it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Star Wars
SW77
ROTJ
ESB
TPM
ROTS
AOTC
RO
TFA
TLJ

Sitting in the theatre industrial complex paying top dollar for a random diversion on the big screen
SW77
ESB
ROTS
TPM
RO
TLJ
TFA
AOTC

 

@The PiedPiper of Alderaan you my friend deserve more likes for the work you put in.

 

Great work.

I’d say the reason the pattern is hard to pin point is that you have several distinct groups that can cut across the fan base who might all have strong reason to really hate TLJ.

These generalisations are not counting people for whom the film just didn’t work.

Luke fans who can’t/ won’t accept RJ’s take on Luke.

Bloodline only fans who can’t accept a non Skywalker lead.

TFA fans who feel TLJ pours scorn on their theories.

SW fans who feel that RJ is burning everything about SW to the ground with irreverence.

Now, I personally disagree with all of those, but if those factors are an issue, they’re often a major issue, so you’re looking at potential easy last place depending on just how strongly one feels about any or all of those things.

Then you factor in the fact you’ve already mentioned, whereby even those who love the film may not rank it above their decades plus established favourites, and I think it explains why it’s mid tier in the rankings. I think the film has a stack of fans, but the haters really hate it.

 

I find it interesting that 22,000 people have Rogue One over TFA and TLJ, while the IGN staff has it behind those 2.

I always said the media skews its popularity compared to the NuSaga, VII and VIII.

 

yep seems to fit with what we have with this thread...the OT as the most appreaciated SW movies....AofC and TPM as the least appreciated.....and RotS/TFA/RO/TLJ right in the middle and close to eachothers with no real gap to rank them apart when you do an average (i would say that those who loved TLJ really loved it...and those who disliked it really hated it! so it's certainly the most controversial SW movie)

@Blame_It_On_Lucas Thanks i like doing this sort of things when bored during family reunion haha...no actually i wish that was the truth but i was really excited to do it, my wife thought i was crazy coz i was still noting things down after we had turned the night off to sleep But i find it interesting to see how the perception of SW evolves decade after decade. Everyone has a different vision of what SW is, it's sooooo difficult to please anyone and what are the can't and can do's....

@Satipo exactly, the love or hate for TLJ is very transversal amongst the types of SW fans. It's not OT vs PT at all, or old timers vs the new generation, it seems to be more than that, something really personal and subjective. To me it's a good thing that SW can still challenge people 40 years later with that film, it means it's still alive (and bonus for me i'm in the "love it" camp). But yes, There are people who think it's nearly as good as TESB or ANH and others who think it's a disgrace to Lucas' saga...so it's sitting right in the middle. We'll see how the movie is seen in 10 years. If there'll be a consensus around it...these neo SW are still really new, we won't know what they truly mean in popular culture before the next decade IMO.

 

The Last Jedi has beautiful and unique moments in the saga: the last scenes of Luke are gold. Luke and Leia reunion, Luke and Kylo. I love every moment, it was so emotional.

- ESB
- RTJ
- TLJ
- ROTS
- ANH
- TFA
- ATOC
- TPM

 

I suspect, though I don’t know, that R1 is more popular with specifically SW fans than average viewers and media people that review everything and aren’t as personally into SW. It seems like a movie for fans that confused many casual viewers in my world. My brother is the other huge SW fan in my family. He loved TLJ, I hated it, but we agree that R1 is the best of Disney’s SW movies. Obviously I don’t think all SW fans love R1 or even a majority do, but it feels like a film more likely to be liked by hardcore fans than not.

 

ESB
TLJ
R1
ROTS
ANH
TFA
ROTJ
AOTC
TPM