I shouldn't be surprised how much TPM gets hates on, yet I am. I wish people could watch it without the internet hate that it's gotten over time. It's a flawed film, but people go way, way over the top.

Visually, the film is gorgeous. Just about every frame looks amazing, but in particulat Theed is a perfect Star Wars location, Coruscant is brilliant realised, and Darth Maul was underutilised, but visually every bit as striking as Darth Vader, especially with his double sabre ignited.

The trade federation are an unusual enemy, and the Nemoidians were problematic, but the battle droids and the droid fighters were pretty cool (remember, this is before the droids were turned into the "Roger Roger" comic relief they would later become - they were basically a competent force by Star Wars standards), and the ring ship and droideka designs were unique and inspired.

Phantom Menace also gave us probably the best light sabre fight of the series. Obi Wan and Qui Gon vs Maul had the acrobatics of later prequel fights, without going completely over the top the way later movies would, and it had actual consequences (Qui-Gon is debatably the only protagonist to die and never come back in a light sabre duel (Mace Windu is basically executed and his companions don't really count as protagonists in episode 3)).

And, of course, John Williams was arguably in career-best form with Duel of the Fates.

Seriously, rewatch TPM and imagine what could have been. Tone down Jar Jar, and age up Anakin so you can cast an older, more competent actor than Jake Lloyd (plus a lot of what he does would seem less ridiculous) and you have a middle of the road Star Wars movie, with good and bad parts. It's a long way from the abomination the internet has convinced itself it is.

1 hour ago, Knave Squawk said:

A New Hope // The Force Awakens // Return of the Jedi // Empire Strikes Back // Rogue One // Willow // Attack of the Clones // All the cartoons and cartoon movies // Ewok Movies // Phantom Menace // Revenge of the Sith // Christmas Special

I haven't seen the new one yet but I'm trying to squeeze it in this week. I expect it to be top 3. Attack of the Clones fares better than the Ewoks only because of Mace Windu's fight scenes. Willow counts. #suckitup

THX-1138? American Graffiti? C'mon, man.

7 minutes ago, MacchuWA said:

I shouldn't be surprised how much TPM gets hates on, yet I am. I wish people could watch it without the internet hate that it's gotten over time.

I saw it in the theater. Only saw it a second time because I was convinced I must have been too harsh and that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

It's just bad. Now that Star Wars is a Disney property, you and Elsa can let it go.

The Empire Strikes Back

The Last Jedi

Rogue One

Revenge of The Sith

Return of The Jedi

A New Hope

The Force Awakens

Attack of The Clones

The Phantom Menace

V above all else

Rest is quite subjective since I don't religiously watch them on a yearly basis

I know this is probably going to sound like heresy to many of you, but I rate the prequels about as good or better than 7 and 8. If we take the worst (in my opinion) Star Wars movie to date and remove "I hate sand", the love scene, and the deus ex astromech from Attack of the Clones, it's actually pretty good and has a coherent plot that it follows, as well as some good battles. In TLJ I have to ignore everything space battle-related (the plot that moves the entire movie) and the same deus-ex astromech to watch it. I rate it better than AotC is because its highs are higher, and to me its lows are comparable.

IV V VI R1 III I VIII VII II

1. New Hope

2. The Last Jedi

3. The Force Awakens

4. Return of the Jedi

5. Empire Strikes Back

6. Phantom Menace

7. Revenge of the Sith

8. Attack of the Clones

9. placehloder for SOLO

10. Rogue One

ROTJ

ESB

TLJ

ANH

R1

TFA

ROTS

AOTC

TPM

Revising my list:

V, IV , R1, VI.

8 hours ago, MacchuWA said:

I shouldn't be surprised how much TPM gets hates on, yet I am. I wish people could watch it without the internet hate that it's gotten over time. It's a flawed film, but people go way, way over the top.

Visually, the film is gorgeous. Just about every frame looks amazing, but in particulat Theed is a perfect Star Wars location, Coruscant is brilliant realised, and Darth Maul was underutilised, but visually every bit as striking as Darth Vader, especially with his double sabre ignited.

The trade federation are an unusual enemy, and the Nemoidians were problematic, but the battle droids and the droid fighters were pretty cool (remember, this is before the droids were turned into the "Roger Roger" comic relief they would later become - they were basically a competent force by Star Wars standards), and the ring ship and droideka designs were unique and inspired.

Phantom Menace also gave us probably the best light sabre fight of the series. Obi Wan and Qui Gon vs Maul had the acrobatics of later prequel fights, without going completely over the top the way later movies would, and it had actual consequences (Qui-Gon is debatably the only protagonist to die and never come back in a light sabre duel (Mace Windu is basically executed and his companions don't really count as protagonists in episode 3)).

And, of course, John Williams was arguably in career-best form with Duel of the Fates.

Seriously, rewatch TPM and imagine what could have been. Tone down Jar Jar, and age up Anakin so you can cast an older, more competent actor than Jake Lloyd (plus a lot of what he does would seem less ridiculous) and you have a middle of the road Star Wars movie, with good and bad parts. It's a long way from the abomination the internet has convinced itself it is.

I agree in most points. From my perspective the Gungans are not worse in any sense then Ewoks (RoTJ), Space Worm (TESB) or Jabba (RoTJ again). Neither of these worried me in any of the films so why would people hate Gungans? In comparison to Rogue One, for example, the characters were well streamlined and we knew their motivations. Qui-Gon Jinn was the best Jedi in the films, second only to Luke Skywalker. The big fight scene (the threesome) and the small fight scene (first contact between Qui-Gon and Maul), both were amazingly well done (and acted). Actually, I find less to criticize in The Phantom Menace then I have in Return of the Jedi or Empire Strikes Back. I'm not much fan of the pod-racing but it was cool!

Let's try ranking Trilogies (a leap, given that 9 isn't really done at all, but hey>)


Original
Sequel
Prequel

On 17/12/2017 at 7:09 PM, DashBarrelRendarRoll said:

Like Estarriol said, prequel what?

ESB, Rogue One, ANH, RotJ, TFA and that recently released Marvel film.

This.

III is actually better than VIII, but we're not counting prequels at all.

16 minutes ago, Ravncat said:

Let's try ranking Trilogies (a leap, given that 9 isn't really done at all, but hey>)

Original
Sequel
Prequel

I'm going with

Original
Prequel
Sequel

...I'm no huge fan of the prequels, by any means, but they did some decent set up and exposition around the characters of Palpatine and Obi-Wan which adds to the original trilogy. It adds as much to the Original Trilogy's story as it takes away (Midchlorians, Whinakin). By contrast, so far the Sequel Trilogy has pretty much only taken away from the Original Trilogy, instead of adding to it.

I've said it multiple times since last year, but Rogue One confirmed for me that I would prefer to see more stories set in and around the Original Trilogy timeframe*. You don't need to pack them with original cast and characters or cameos, just show events from the Rebellion era from different perspectives, and continue world and universe building. Rogue One did this all right. The OT aesthetic was fully realised there, and it had some of the best set and character designs and practical effects since the originals.

*I reserve the right to alter this opinion following Young Solo

I would honestly like a break from this whole time period. There is so much room to explore the Old Republic, sith-Jedi Wars, hyperspace Wars, foundation of the Jedi order, mandalorian Wars, and all kinds of other eras.

1. the empire strikes back

2. a new hope

3. the force awakens

4. return of the jedi

5. rogue one

6./7. revenge of the sith / the last jedi - it's really tough to decide right now, although I imagine that TLJ will eventually rank just above ROTS for me

8. the phantom menace

9. attack of the clones

double post

12 hours ago, KelRiever said:

I happen to really love Rogue One. I liked the conversations on the U-Wing, I loved the whole build up to Scarriff, pretty much that movie front to back is pure awesome.

The only reason movies like The Last Jedi and Rogue One fall just shy of Empire and Star Wars, is only because you really can never capture that original moment, when nothing ever had been done like it in the universe of movies, and people caught onto the thing world wide like fire. If (and it wouldn't make sense chronologically, but if) movies like The Last Jedi and Rogue One had come out in 1977, I have no doubt those movies would have done just as well as the original.

But that can't happen, of course. And because it can't happen, Star Wars and Empire will always be the beginning of everything, and therefore in my book can't ever be dethroned from 1st and 2nd place respectively.

This. It's really hard for me to rank anything other than OT at the top, since they've become such a part of me, and a part of the world. However, there are so many things I love about the Disney era SW films.

12 hours ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

I wonder how much you can tell us about the eight Rangers and the interpreter from Saving Private Ryan. How much they unpacked from being basically two-dimensional American soldier archetypes. That one guy was from Brooklyn. We know this because of his accent and it says so on the back of his jacket. There's another guy who is Jewish, which we know because it comes up several times. Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore served together before D-Day. Um, there was a medic, and a sniper who likes Jesus because he has a cross. What else do we know about these guys, and without Googling did you realize there were only seven of them and not eight?

The idea that a war movie needs some kind of establishing period for its characters is fairly ridiculous. I mean, you might not like war movies, and that's okay, but calling it a flaw in the film that we only learn the basic information required for the protagonists is just fundamentally misunderstanding the genre space in which Rogue One operates.

great, I just lost most of my response to this

but here's the long and short of it:

Saving Private Ryan works because you can take the atmosphere seriously and feel the suspense of having everymen trying to survive a horrible situation

I felt Rogue 1 failed because it fails to do anything I could take seriously, apart from the Deathstar. The imperial military, in spite of killing a few barely established characters, is a complete joke and Rogue 1 does nothing to reverse this opinion. Jyn and Donnie beat up armored stormtroopers with basically a truncheon and a stick, respectively. "Deathtroopers" are complete pushovers with an incredibly stupid name. Star Destroyers and apparently be rammed into one-another at a lazy speed at still someone cut through each other like one's a hot knife and the other is butter. Shots of random rebel pilots going "I can't shake them/AAAHHH!" didn't make ROTJ into a "War movie", even if TIE pilots were always more credible threats than storm troopers. We at least have Vader being a badass, but he doesn't come in until the very **** end after everyone else is already dead!

Of course, none of this takes into account the other stupid impossible-to-take-seriously stuff, like pointless references to not-war-movies, a random hentai monster, and some of the corniest writing I have ever had to hear. None of these do the film any favors.

This is why about the only thing I enjoyed was Krennic. Yes, he was a mustache twirling bad guy through and through, but he also cared deeply about his life's work and expected to be rewarded for his due diligence. I felt for him because Tarkin and Vader walked all over him, and he was way too far down on the ladder to ever merit palpatine's attention. His death was the most callous thing I've seen in a while, destroyed by his own life's work by an attack that wiped out an entire planet ordered by somebody who didn't give two ***** about him. He wasn't even directly executed, he just happened to be caught in the initial shot.

But disregarding Rogue 1's missed opportunities and incompetence, Star Wars needs to establish its outlandish characters because the setting is too **** goofy for a "War movie". Empire Strikes Back takes great pains to make us continue to care about Han/Luke/Leia while thrusting them into actual peril that they do not triumph over, but merely escape from. The characters are what make the Empire Strikes Back such a memorable film.

but even then Empire puts in a lot of work to have us take the empire more seriously. Storm Troopers are basically not there before Cloud City, and are replaced instead by intimidating AT-ATs (intimidating before Rogue 1 had them all wiped about by a few X-wings) and the briefly shown + cool looking (if also stupidly named) Snow Troopers. We get a massive Imperial fleet dominated by a super star destroyer, and we put Vader in the spotlight, getting **** done and intimating even his allies. We even got Boba Fett (before Return turned him into a joke) and other cool bounty hunters to feature instead of the normally silly Storm Troopers just to further the air of tension.

All this effort was made to show us a new face, more intimating face of the Empire, one that doesn't do **** like this:

this allows the audience to invest in the movie and feel suspense for the uncertain fate of the characters we enjoy, even as we excuse some of the sillier, easily parodied scenes

anyway, that's just Star Wars. Other fantasy properties, such as Lord of the Rings (Fellowship of the Ring if we want to look at a specific film) put in some **** effort to humanize its large cast of broad fantasy archetypes and to make its antagonistic forces feel like a legitimate, credible threat. "War movie" is not a good enough excuse. You are allowed to expect better.

of note: TLJ also failed to make the First Order a more credible threat for very much the same reasons as R1, so there's that.

I don't know how anyone can rank R1 last... I mean the Vader scene alone is worth the price of admission.

And all of a sudden, I'm back to disagreeing with fickle. I knew it was too good to last.

1 hour ago, Jo Jo said:

I don't know how anyone can rank R1 last... I mean the Vader scene alone is worth the price of admission.

that's not a movie, that's a scene

a **** good scene, but you can see it on youtube for free and only a few minutes of your time

which is sad, because Vader could've carried the empire in Rogue 1 like he carried it in ESB but no he only appears twice

I mean Tarkin was great, horrible cgi excepted, but he's there making the Death Star a scary, callous force of destruction. Vader would've helped the rest of the empire be threatening before the rest of the cast was dead. If the decimator had pounced on the rebel much earlier and Vader was a constant actual threat, I'm sure I would've been far more invested.

Vader and the Devastator are definitely my second favorite thing about the movie and about the only non-deathstar threats I could take seriously.

Serious threat:

Seriously lame:

Serious threat:

Seriously lame:

this ISN'T to say we needed more Vader (even if he'd be welcome), but he was the only thing in the movie that would have lent a desperate "war movie" like feel to the story. The Deathtroopers could have filled in this role if Erso's leak had been discovered sooner and they had been sent by Krennic after Bodhi.

Gotta say, every single...every single scene above... I loved.

NH

ESB

R1

RotJ

FA

TLJ

RotS

CW

PM

meh, I'd far sooner see the Last Jedi's hyperspace bullet over the ISDs (which had far more stakes given that actual characters were involved instead of just a bunch of imperial goons and the crew of a hammerhead we don't know at all) and probably even Force Awaken's battle at Maz's castle, silly as that was, over Stormtroopers being a joke

If you don't want to see Stormtroopers being a "joke" anymore, then I suggest you stop watching anymore Star Wars.