Well, TROS is out, and I've finally
had enough time to digest the many, mostly sad feelings I had about
it. I wrote in my first review of TFA, way back when it came out, that I held many reservations about the capacity of a
Disney-driven new trilogy to break new ground in the Star Wars
universe, especially after it proved so eager to drop the old EU like
a sack of hot potatoes. And in the end, while TFA still holds up
fine and TLJ has a permament place among my all-time favorite movies,
many of my concerns proved prescient. After Rian Johnson left the
franchise (in my own words) "freer than it's ever been going
forward," the Disney Lords just couldn't let a good thing be,
and I, like most, found TROS unable to bear the very, very heavy
loads placed upon it.
The good thing, as always, is that
Star Wars is so large, so inimitably vast, that the good always finds
a way to separate itself from the bad and endure regardless. And now
that we have three whole trilogies to contemplate and compare before
us, spanning over four decades of cinematic history, it's time to
take stock of all that has come before. Here is, for the sake of
posterity, Noah Franc's official ranking of all nine of the official
Star Wars movies. Beware, spoilers abound!
9- Episode II:
Attack of the Clones
Yep, it's still as bad as we all
remember. As someone who ended up seeing this one a lot as a kid,
there are many small things around the edges of the film that I will
always have a soft spot for- Christopher Lee is never boring to
watch- but there is simply no getting over the movie's severe writing
and story issues, coupled with a suffering main cast that at no point
looks like they are having fun with any of this. The prequel trilogy
were the films that (unjustly!) soured me for a very long time on
Natalie Portman- it took half a decade, plus Black Swan, to
finally jolt me back to my senses- and this film's entire middle act
represents the nadir of her performance and the terrible writing she
was saddled with. Bad writing, bad acting, horribly aged effects,
this is arguably the one main Star Wars film with almost no rewatch
value.
Except for Christopher Lee and Yoda
going at it with lightsabers; I will always be there for that.
8- Episode I: The
Phantom Menace
Time and hindsight have allowed many
of us to mellow out and realize that the first of the prequels was
neither The Worst Thing In History, nor even the worst
Star Wars movie. If nothing else, it has plenty of fun stuff in the
production design, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan is easily the most solid
bit of casting in the entire prequel trilogy, and John Williams'
score, though universally excellent in every Star Wars film,
might just be at its best here.
Buuuut it is still pretty bad, with a
lot of terrible dialogue, uneven narrative structure, and poor casting that
drags it all down pretty far into the gutter. Jar-Jar remains one of
the strangest and most inexplicable creative choices in all of Lucas'
career, although the toxic shit the actor was subjected to as a
result is beyond excuse. It unfortunately sets a lot of the
narrative stumbling blocks in place that would hamper the later
film's ability to effectively tell the tragic story of Anakin
Skywalker and his fall from grace.
All that said, there is a fascinating
alternate universe where just a few different choices in how this
first film was structured would have made worlds of difference and
may have even made the prequels pretty great. For a glimpse into
what might have been, I highly recommend Belated Media's amazing
series, What If The Star Wars Prequels Were Good?. I don't
agree with every suggestion he makes, but the results he arrives at
are pretty amazing, and would undoubtedly have made for far more
challenging, memorable, and maybe even great films than the ones we
ultimately got. They are absolutely worth your time.
7- Episode IX: The
Rise of Skywalker
Here, too, I can envision many
scenarios where just a few better, more daring creative leaps could
have made this last film far more palatable to me than it was. It
is, certainly, far more competently made than the prequels from a
purely technical standpoint, it has plenty of individually excellent
scenes, and despite plenty of rough screenwriting, the chemistry
between the leads still shines in a way that of the cast in the
prequels never did, espeically where Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are
concerned.
Alas, the story ultimately veered far
too far into forbidden lands trying to appease the absolute worst
corners of the Star Wars fandom. A nonensicle shoehorning-in of
Palpatine into a narrative that at no point needed him is never
explained or handled in a way that makes a lick of sense. Force
powers, though always fuzzy enough to be fitted to your story as
needed, are stretched to places they never should have gone. The
pacing is relentless, refusing to let up even at places where letting
us breath and sink into the world a bit more would have done us good.
For me, though, the absolute greatest
sin this film commits is one of cowardice, in giving in to the worst
impulses of fandom in ways that drag down and ruin the potential Rian
Johnson practicaly gifted Abrams on a silver platter. The
backwards-bending reveal of Rey as a "Palpatine" is neither
fulfilling for her character, nor does it make any sort of
in-universe logic, and is the worst sort of instinct in fantasy
worlds where everyone of consequence, even in an entire galaxy to
play with, must still somehow be connected with each other. Oscar
Isaac has become extremely clear that he saw Poe as bisexual, and
that fear from the studio executives was what prevented that promise,
yearned for by so many fans, from being fully utilized. The effort
at clearly making all main characters straight while tossing another
stupid cameo bone to the LGBTQ community by Disney is, at this point,
frankly sickening.
The worst example, in my book, is the
in-film disappearance of Rose, who has only a handful of scenes and
makes no major contribution to the plot whatsoever. After Kelly
Marie Tran proved one of the most delightful parts of one of the best
Star Wars films ever, and after her reward for such great work was to
be harassed off social media by MAGA trolls, making her just as
central to the final film should have been a no-brainer. Instead,
like with that fucking Ghostbusters reboot, the studio opted
to "listen to the fans" instead of taking a stand of
consequence.
What a damn shame.
6- Episode III:
Revenge of the Sith
Though it still has much of the same
problems that laid its predecessors low, and features some of the
dumbest moments in the entire prequels trilogy, ROTS still,
somehow, manages to rise above itself. It is a mess on so many
levels, but 'tis a gloriously campy mess. It is, by far, the best of
the prequels, and still has plenty nostalgic rewatch value. This
happened to be the first Star Wars movie I ever saw on the big
screen, and it left a powerful impression on me, one that later
awareness of the film's problems could never wholly dent. Lucas
always had an ability, at his best, to provide images that can stick
in the mind for a lifetime, and he recaptures just enough of that
magic in the last Star Wars film he ever ended up making.
Unlike the two other prequels, where
the action beats usually ended up being dreary, CGI-laden messes, a
lot of the fights in ROTS are coherent and thrilling enough to still
be fun to watch, despite a lot of the effects being dated. While the
lightsaber battle to end TPM is rightfully regarded as a classic, the
lightsaber combat reaches a peak here that would not be matched until
the magnificent throne room sequence in TLJ. For all the problems
with Hayden Christensen's performance and the bad writing that
plagued both his character and Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan (McGregor also
hits his best moments in this movie), once the film has all the
pieces in place for their climactic clash at the end, set in a brutal
battlefield of lava and machines, the result is truly spectacular.
5- Episode VI:
Return of the Jedi
Though it is definitely the weakest of
the original trilogy, and people's mileage regarding the Ewoks tends
to vary widely, ROTJ is still a classic that holds up very well. The
speeder chase and nearly everything in the final throne room
sequence- not to mention the film's opening act in Jabba the Hutt's
hellish lair- are some of the most iconic parts of the entire Star
Wars canon, old and new. Though we had gotten glimpses of the
Emperor in TESB, it was here where we finally met Ian McDiarmid in
all his glory, and villains were never quite the same again.
What really sets this film as the
demarcation line between the really good Star Wars movies from the
"just okay" or downright bad ones, though, is the core
cast. A strong central cast with fun banter and tangible chemistry
is, TROS notwithstanding, invariably part of any great Star Wars
movie, and it is the biggest and clearest deficiency in the prequels
compared to both the earlier and later trilogy. Personal favorite
example of this; Carrie Fisher getting to pull a little role reversal
on Han's famous "I know" line from the previous film, the
sort of tiny detail that is easy to miss, but makes all the
difference in making these performances truly iconic.
4- Episode VII: The
Force Awakens
The degree to which this film relies
on rehashing of many of the same threats and plot threads of the
original trilogy, while not nearly as egregious as TROS, still
rankles me enough to keep me from considering this one to be truly
great. That said, the energy and passion that the actors bring to
their roles is undeniable. It is just too much fun to watch these
people interact with each other, especially the ways that Rey bounces
off Harrison Ford and Finn and Poe form a powerful friendship (that
should have been more, but alas...). Kylo Ren makes his entry into
the Star Wars universe, a character torn between destinies that Adam
Driver never fails to play the hell out of, even when the writing in
this and TROS leaves him a little short.
One thing I especially appreciated
about the newer trilogy was how its production design gave a sense of
size and scale that the original trilogy didn't have the capacity to
create. Shots of the ruins of Walkers, or Star Destroyers, or the
wreckage of the Death Star have an immense hugeness to them that add
a grandiosity to the world these characters inhabit. Rey's
introductory sequence has a lot of this, a quiet, aesthetic embrace
of the surroundings that, in the best Star Wars material, makes
everything feel real and lived-in.
3- Episode IV: A New
Hope
Four decades on, and the magic that
suffuses the first Star Wars movie, the one that changed everything,
is still undeniable. Other films have since surpassed it; we've
gotten better writing, better acting, better effects, and more
thrilling images since then, and there are moments where the acting
feels more stilted than it does later in the original trilogy, like
the actors were still in the process of breaking in the roles that
would go on to define their careers.
And yet. And yet. That opening in
medias res fight sequence in space, with the first-ever reveal of
Darth Vader and our introduction to Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia.
Luke staring into the double sunset. Obi-Wan's quiet description of
the old, fallen world of the jedi. The cantina. The Falcon. The
entire escape effort to save Leia, ending with the first-ever
lightsaber fight in history. That indelible final space battle
around the Death Star. All immortal moments of cinematic magic that
will endure for as long as movies endure.
This movie is so filled with the sort
of things that make movies wonderous acts of imagination that it's
hard to even try counting them all. Other movies have been bigger,
flashier, and in many ways, just plain better. But A New Hope
is the giant on whose shoulders they built their empire, and nothing
can ever take that away from it.
2- Episode VIII: The
Last Jedi
Honestly, picking between either this
or the next one as the "best" film in the Star Wars is a
matter of personal taste. It can go either way and I will not argue
with anyone who would switch them. Ultimately, I gave nostalgia the
edge here, so TLJ comes in at number #2.
This is the sort of film with so many
layers to its screenplay and how its plot is constructed that I can
imagine revisiting it endlessly throughout my life, and always
finding something new to pick up on and savor. Rey, Finn, and Poe
each have strong beginning and end points within the film that both
build on what we already knew about them from TFA, but also provide
clear moments of growth and change for them all; Finn, finally deciding to
not run and embracing the moniker "rebel scum," something
he spent two full films denying; Poe, having had one
trigger-happy idea after another bite him in the ass, finally
realizing what Leia was trying to tell him the whole time and calling
for a retreat; Rey, seeing how futile her notions about Kylo Ren
being "saveable" were, turning away from him and flying off
in the Falcon.
And let's not forget Mark Hamill, who
gives just about the greatest return performance that has even been
given in a sunset role. Here, too, the movie jumps into real, meaty,
metaphysical stuff about what Luke Skywalker has come to mean for
both the people of the Star Wars universe and us as fans. Luke has
fallen far, but still has enough grace and strength left to realize
that, yes, we can place too many expectations on our heroes, but that
there is still meaning in someone standing up as a symbol for
something greater than themselves. Luke's final moments, as well as
the film's final, stunning scene, will be with me for as long as I
live.
1- Episode V: The
Empire Strikes Back
For many, this was the film that made
Star Wars truly great, that made due on the promising start of A
New Hope and really set off imaginations across the globe.
Everything all the other great Star Wars movies does, this one does
better. It's effects and battle sequences hold up remarkably well,
particularly a concluding lightsaber fight that, for my money,
remains the most emotionally tense saber duel we've ever gotten on
the big screen. The main cast is fully into their respective roles,
we finally get a sense of the power and terror of the Emperor, Billy
Dee Williams makes his entrance, and, of course, there will always be
Yoda.
Like LTJ, this remains either best or
second-best because of how it feels the most like its own, special
thing, not too beholden to what came before to strike out in ways
that challenge the viewer. Both end on spectacular final shots, with
much having been lost but the hopeful suggestion that things will go
on and that good can still find a way, even in the face of endless
adversity. No other Star Wars movie has ever hit on just that right
balance, though I certainly hope it could, one day, happen again.
Ultimately, as with all great
storytelling worlds, even the worst of these films can never fully
dim the unending supernova that is Star Wars. I love this universe
so much and I would never give it up for the world. I am all for a
good long break from the movies, but I know I can never stay away for
too long. None of us can.
-Noah Franc
