Finally got to see a matinee of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” the other day so have now seen all three trilogies comprising nine total films within the main Star Wars universe.
Like many kids of the 1980’s, Star Wars was a pretty major part of my childhood.
The first “Star Wars” movie (later rebranded as “Episode IV: A New Hope”) came out in 1977 when I was four and my memory is that I didn’t see it until my parents took me to Regina to see a double-bill of “Star Wars” and “Empire Strikes Back” sometime around 1980 when I was seven.
After that, I became a bit of a Star Wars fanatic – in the days before VCRs were widely available, I remember my parents renting a VCR from a local store, creatively called “Video Rent” in a package where you got a VCR (with a corded remote control!) and maybe four movies for a weekend?
When “Star Wars” was one of those movies we rented (and we rented it more than once), I remember basically watching it on repeat all weekend (and we worry about screen time for kids today?) So I’ve probably seen it dozens of times in my life.
“Star Wars” was one of the first movie franchises with all sorts of toy and merchandise tie-ins and I still have many of my action figures to this day (though, as with my collectible hockey cards, I actually played with them instead of keeping them in pristine condition so they’re not very valuable.)
There was a lengthy gap between the first three movies which ended with “Return of the Jedi” in 1983 and “The Phantom Menace” which was the first film in the prequel trilogy in 1999 and I went from being a 10-year old fanatic to a 26-year old who was closer to fatherhood than childhood.
The prequel trilogy movies got worse reviews than the originals but it was battling the insurmountable forces of nostalgia.
There was another decade-long gap between the prequel trilogy and the final trilogy which finally concluded with the release of “The Rise of Skywalker” which is also getting terrible reviews (though honestly, I think a lot depends on whether you go in like a child and just watch for the battles and spaceships and light sabres or if you focus on the (many) plot holes and happy coincidences and Macguffins.
So again, a site like Rotten Tomatoes is good for seeing how the wider population ranks the movies but here’s my personal ranking (with Rotten Tomatoes rank in brackets – and it looks like I pretty much match up pretty well with how everyone else sees it other than me weighing the first trilogy a bit higher overall.)
- A New Hope (3)
- Empire Strikes Back (1)
- Return of the Jedi (5)
- The Force Awakens (2)
- Revenge of the Sith (6)
- The Last Jedi (4)
- Attack of the Clones (7)
- The Rise of Skywalker (8)
- The Phantom Menace (9)
