It's only railroading if the players feel railroaded It's more of an "emotional truth" that has little directly to do with the GM's intentions or preparations, and everything to do with how the session plays out in actuality.

If your GM gave you a chance to be awesome, and allowed you make the decisions about how to play your PC, then he did his job. The rest is just window dressing.

If you want examples of "good" railroading, look at the OT. Falcon was railroaded into the Death Star. The main characters had no choice in getting caught (unless you count letting the TIE fighter escape and tell the Empire where they are).

In fact, looking back, most of the OT would be considered a "railroad" by a lot of gamers. Deliver plans to Alderaan. Caught by Death Star. The battle of Hoth. Attack the Death Star. Twice. They did have some character agency, (Dagobah, Cloud City, Jabba's Palace) but a lot of railroading. But the railroading was to get them into a situation, and the characters had a lot of leeway in how to deal with the situation.

Nah, I have to disagree with that. A tractor beam isn't a "railroad." It's a plot complication.

Remember Han Solo's attitude towards being pulled into the Death Star? "They're not gonna get me without a fight!" I had a group of players who had that attitude when they were detained by an Interdictor. It didn't go well for them, primarily because they made the choice to fight instead of just trying to talk their way through the customs inspection If only they'd had an Obi-Wan with them, who might've whispered, "You can't win. But there are alternatives to fighting."

When a GM throws a hydrospanner into the works in this way—by presenting a complication to a situation that the players assumed was straightforward—it creates tension, allowing the players to creatively seek resolution. The arrival-at-Alderaan/Death-Star-capture might be a bit of a contrived coincidence , sure (Star Wars is full of those! And thus, so are my games ). But a railroad? No...the characters in the film are constrained only by the limits of what's within reason (and sometimes not even then!): their situations shaped, while still retaining malleability, by what several in the Star Wars mythos have called "destiny."

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TL;DR: just because there's a story that "wants" to happen, doesn't necessarily make it a railroad. To juxtapose a couple quotes from Obi-Wan himself,

contrast ...there are alternatives...

with, You cannot escape your destiny.

If you want examples of "good" railroading, look at the OT.

I'm not sure we can apply railroading to a set of movies. There is no player agency for actors.