#but so much of the movie to me are its kinetic‚ sweeping (e)motions

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unknown // The Karate Kid (1984) dir. John G. Avildsen // @babyangel-jpg // Report to Greco, Nikos Kazantzakis // John Dryden // “the trick of finding what you didn’t lose” from Complete Poems, E.E. Cummings

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Ranking a Saga: Nick Tries to Review all of Star Wars

I have done quite a bit of writing on Star Wars throughout the years. Whether it’s through rankings or countdowns or episodic reviews The Clone Wars or Rebels, I have long used this blog as a way to share my thoughts on the Galaxy Far Far Away. That being said, I have actually written very little about my opinions regarding the films themselves. What better time to do so than this week with a new Star Wars movie arriving tonight?

While I had originally hoped to do lengthy reviews for all seven saga films, Rogue One, and the theatrical Clone Wars release, due to time constraints, we will instead be doing another ranking with medium length reviews for each movie. (Yes, I love lists.)

As always, feel free to voice your opinions. Tell me how wrong I am about everything or better yet share your own Star Wars lists. I would love to see them.

9. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Watching the theatrical pilot for Star Wars: The Clone Wars is like watching a talented high school quarterback be assigned to play for a major NFL team. It’s taking something that in its own small, minor scale would be perfectly acceptable and potentially even good, and forcing it into a realm where it has no business belonging. This is the unfortunate task faced with Dave Filoni and his crew. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a movie that should not be a movie, in fact it barely functions as one to begin with.

I do not hide my love for the still flawed but at the same time charming, engaging, and compelling animated series that this film would spawn. It’s for this reason that the failings of The Clone Wars feel all the more painful.

Hastily edited together out of the initial five episodes for the series, quite simply everything about The Clone Wars is a mess for a film. Despite the best efforts of Director Dave Filoni, The Clone Wars cannot escape its slipshod construction. It moves along in hurts and jolts and switches focus too quickly to attain much of any narrative momentum.

It also hurts that the animation itself, while perfectly serviceable for a CG animated series for the late 2000’s, is stiff, clunky, and oddly flat. Environments are sterile and lacking in texture. Characters move in jerky motions and lack facial expressions. In a year that would bring us kinetic and gorgeously detailed CG animation from films like Wall-e and Kung Fu Panda, watching The Clone Wars is an ugly and even depressing affair.

The only passing grace for this film are the creative and at times epic in scope battle sequences, but when the film itself is this lacking in cohesion and heart it is hard to raise anything more than half-interest.

Score: D

8. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

By far the weakest of the so far released Saga films, Attack of the Clones acts as a call to action for all those who have issues with the prequel films. While it has dropped the bizarre racial stereotyping of its predecessor, George Lucas’s second installment in the series’ second trilogy is filled with strange decision making and a convoluted plot structure.

Trying to understand the narrative of Attack of the Clones is often very difficult. While it is relatively easy to tune out and simply enjoy the spectacle of it all, the attempts to meld space opera with noir and political intrigue prove unfortunately more convoluted and stale than intriguing. In particular, the circumstances surrounding the creation and implementation of the clone army stretch credibility.

While The Phantom Menace made extensive and competent use of combining miniatures and digital effects, Attack of the Clones falls back on computer generated images to detrimental effect. While it serves the sweeping battle sequences and wide arrange of alien creatures well, the pervasiveness of digital additions to the film’s world becomes distracting when it oversteps its bounds. In particular, the decision to make the armor for each of Temuera Morrison’s clonetroopers digitally rendered is an unnecessary decision and it gives a slightly uncanny feel to the clone army itself. Even worse are the completely digital environments which feel detached and weightless in their interactions with movie’s cast.

Ultimately though, the biggest failing of Attack of the Clones is Anakin himself. While Jake Lloyd may have struggled in The Phantom Menace he at least succeeded in turning Anakin into something of a likable character. While Hayden Christensen is a talented actor and he certainly improves by the time Revenge of the Sith arrives, it is hard to relate or even sympathize to the manner the character is presented in Attack of the Clones. He oscillates between arrogant, angry, and uncomfortable without giving us much to fall back upon. If we are meant to feel for his temptation and fall from the Light, then there needs to have been somethings there worth saving in the first place. By the time Attack of the Clones closes, we don’t have much of that.

The same can be said for the much maligned romance at the film’s center. While the concept is compelling in and of itself, Lucas’s writing and staging of the scenes can’t help but feel staged and forced. Both Natalie Portman, who was one of the previous film’s highlights, and Christensen struggle in finding a chemistry in the material that feels natural and the end result is something that at times approaches unwatchable uncomfortable in its presentation.

That being said, once the film’s political powder keg explodes, Attack of the Clones evolves into something intense and actually quite fun. Both the unique arena sequence and the Battle of Geonosis are visually stunning and entertaining action set pieces that are bolstered by a swashbuckling and charming performance by Ewan McGregor. While it does close out in the most disappointing lightsaber duel of the saga, it still ends on a relative high note given the meandering and detached mess that preceded it.

Score: C-

7. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

While still one of the weaker films in the saga, The Phantom Menace receives significantly more ire than perhaps it deserves. Much of this is perhaps due to the initial hype and disappointment that it brought with it during its release in 1999. Some of this is understandable considering that it does mark a significant step down in terms of quality from 1983’s Return of the Jedi and an even further one from the first two films. However, when viewed in context of both Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars animated film there is something about The Phantom Menace that feels inherently more watchable and even entertaining.

Much of this is that despite the fact that the film’s structure is strange and lacking in cohesion, it does move along at a pretty steady speed and provides us with a wide variety of locations and faces. There is also something about the aesthetic of the whole thing that feels significantly more in line with the original Star Wars than both the other prequel films would provide. It also helps that Lucas’s action direction, even if it does tend to the over complicated and unnatural, is visually arresting and engaging. Both the podracing sequence at its center and the stellar lightsaber duel between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul are representative of the sort of fast moving fun that make the Star Wars films what they are.

Unfortunately, this is about where the praise for The Phantom Menace ends. I have already spoken at length about the rampant presence of racial stereotyping in the film and one does not have to spend much time discussing the flaws behind Jar Jar Binks or Jake Lloyd’s performance of a young Anakin Skywalker. The fact of the matter is, much of the negative aspects of the film have been so ingrained into popular culture that even discussing them at length would feel almost unnecessary. Jar Jar is annoying. The acting is stale. Etc.

However, perhaps the biggest detriment to the Phantom Menace as a whole is the lack of a direction when it comes to its characters. Of the cast on display only Liam Neeson and Natalie Portman are given characters with much of anything to do and while they may lack depth or charisma, their portrayal are competent and engaging enough to avoid boredom or disinterest. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the cast. Although there is nothing inherently poor about his presence in the movie, Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi is given next to nothing to do in the film and in the process his sudden importance at its conclusion feels half-baked and insincere.

Ultimately, The Phantom Menace is a disappointment, but it remains a watchable and at times entertaining movie, especially in contrast to the worst of the saga.

Score: C+

6. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

The second of the two so-far released Star Wars films released by Lucasfilm since Disney’s heralding of the franchise is also the weaker. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story represents the first live action, theatrically released film in the Galaxy Far, Far Away that centers itself outside of the main Skywalker saga. It styles itself as both a prequel and spin-off and strikes out to capture some of the genre-bending style that has been Marvel Studios’s secret success. Telling the story of the theft of the Death Star plans, director Gareth Edwards styles Rogue One as a science fiction war epic filled with intense battle sequences and clever camera work.

When Rogue One is at war, the film is a success. Edwards’s strong visual eye, especially when detailing scope and scale, is the movie’s true secret weapon. Rogue One is a gorgeous film to look at and more so than The Force Awakens finds a way to inhabit the aesthetic of the Original Trilogy while also updating it for a contemporary audience. The blending of practical and digital effects is close to seamless (outside of the infamous digital recreations of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher). As an extension, the battle sequences whether they be urban shootouts in the ancient city of Jedha, storming the beaches of Scarif, or capital ships crashing into one another in high atmosphere, are stunning to behold and perfectly capture the chaos but also emotion of galactic warfare.

Similarly, when Rogue One functions as an allegory for the battles of oppressed people against fascist or totalitarian governments it is effectively stirring and even emotional. Sacrifice for freedom is a key theme of the franchise and Edwards and screenwriters Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy, John Knoll, and Gary Whitta are keenly aware of this.

It is unfortunate then that so much of Rogue One is so starkly impersonal and flat. Throughout the film’s runtime there is an undeniable texture of ideas and concept that are intriguing. There are different political factions, sub-cultures that have clear beliefs and unique meanings to the franchise, and characters that are well drawn and conceptualized. These ideas just often feel untouchable or nebulously realized.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film’s central cast of characters. While the ensemble of talented actors do their strongest to bring these rebels to life, many struggle to stretch beyond their initial drawings or conceptualizations. Few outside of the film’s lead, Jyn Erso, possess much of a clear character arc or personal stake in the proceedings, but even those that do experience some form of personal realization do so in a stop gap manner that is hard to follow. At its most basic, Rogue One’s characters lack agency; their wants and desires feel removed from the central thrust of the plot and instead feel like game pieces moved about for a larger force. While this may have been done as a way to ape grunt work in military campaigns, there is still a storied history of war films that explore the personal and human side of battle, especially when the war concerns battles of freedom against totalitarianism. Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor may hint at a lifelong history of war and battle, but we don’t see how this shapes him as a human or why he comes to realize that this has harmed him in the third act. It says something that the most iconic scene in the film concerns a cameo from a villain from a more successful movie. As a result, Rogue One functions as a series of beautifully executed set pieces and ideas, but is told through an emotional distance and relative lack of humanity.

Score: B-

5. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

While it is not flawless, it is refreshing to see the franchise reorient itself so strongly during the closing act of the prequel trilogy. Revenge of the Sith is a film that blends mythos and character and at its best does both rather well.

At its worst, Revenge of the Sith recommits the sins of its predecessors. Hayden Christensen, while as a whole is significantly better than his previous take on the character, still has his moments of woodenness and has a proclivity for overly heightened melodrama. Lucas’s script also continues to struggle in providing dialogue, particularly in romantic scenes, that feels human often resulting in stilted and even sometimes nonsensical phrasings. Overall, there is something also strangely off about the tone in Revenge of the Sith which changes from relatively fun and light hearted space adventure to dark and brooding tragedy often times rather close to each other.

However, Anakin’s eventual fall from grace and the rise of the Galactic Empire carry with them a great sense of dramatic and mythological weight, even if the transition from conflicted Jedi Knight into child murderer does feel a tad rushed. The fact of the matter is, Revenge of the Sith knows how to play into its subject matter. Its story is appropriately weighty and once Grievous falls and Sidious makes his masterstroke the film evolves into some of the most consistently entertaining and weighty material in the saga, easily surpassing its predecessors in the prequels.

While it has come under fire recently for its apparent decision to select spectacle over emotion, the final confrontation between Anakin and Obi-Wan still remains some of the most intense and emotional stuff the series has seen. Its dancelike and kinetic fight choreography coupled with John Williams’s haunting score commands attention and leaves dozens of striking images in the viewer’s brain.

However, it is ultimately Ian McDiarmid performance as Palpatine/Darth Sidious that really makes Revenge of the Sith special. McDiarmid knows how to sell the myth and lore of Star Wars with nuance and restraint while at the same time is not afraid to embrace the hammy and ridiculous side of his character as well. Whenever he is on screen, he owns every second of it and he makes the film equal parts entertaining and haunting.

Score: B

4. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Despite containing some of the most iconic and even emotional content of the series, there is something oddly stale about Return of the Jedi. It still is a consistently entertaining and engaging film, but in comparison to the two masterworks that proceeded it, something feels off.

Some of this might simply be due to the abundance of slapstick humor, the ill-fitting Ewoks, or any number of frequently cited issues with the presentation and script such as an overly long sojourn to Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine. (I do love the Errol Flynn/Flash Gordon style set piece above the Sarlacc pit all the same.) However, perhaps the most unfortunate aspect about Return of the Jedi is simply the fact that two of its principal characters are played by actors who simply do not seem to want to be a part of the film. Both Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford turn in performances that are competent in their own right, but at the same time are a far cry from their work in both preceding films in the original trilogy. A particular exchange between the famous smuggler and princess on a balcony in an Ewok village contains some of the most forced dialogue and line delivery in the saga and it’s more than a tad distracting and disappointing.

However, outside of these individual moments, Return of the Jedi progresses the narrative momentum from both previous films into an incredible three part climax that is thrilling and compelling. Whether it is the sublimely ahead of its time space battle between the scattered rebel fleet and the Imperial war machine or the final temptation of Luke Skywalker by the Emperor, Return of the Jedi draws the viewer into its dense dramatic landscape and rarely lets up. Yes, even the relative silliness and levity of the Ewok forest battle even makes for some amusing breaks of the heavy material surrounding it.

What ultimately elevates Return of the Jedi above most of the rest of the Star Wars franchise is its beautiful conclusion to the central drama of the Skywalker family saga. Mark Hamill and Ian McDiarmid are arguably the two strongest actors in the original six Star Wars films and seeing both paragons of light and dark play off one another in such a way is a rare treat that bursts with scenery chewing pathos. The tempting of Luke through family and eventually Vader’s redemption through love for his son is a beautiful thematic tableau. Vader’s slaying of his Master and his gradual death bed re-transformation into Anakin Skywalker makes for the most emotional sequences in the series. Regardless of the tragedy that has brought the series to this point, Return of the Jedi ends on a moment of unabashed peace and unity and it’s both serene and appropriately celebratory. Whether you are a “Yub Nub” fan or a fan of the Special Edition’s galactic victory revelry (I’m the latter), it is hard not to smile as our heroes embrace one another and an old generation sees its sins rectified. Score: B+

3. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

Director JJ Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan stated that the one emotion they wished to elicit in audiences while viewing The Force Awakens was delight. In that they delivered in spades. While the film may tread into some dark and even tragic material, what The Force Awakens does first and foremost is return a sense of fun, adventure, mythos, and character to Star Wars’ presence in the world. It makes for a breathless, endearing, and entirely involving viewing experience that only manages to win one over with each consecutive watch.

Much of this is due to the embarrassingly talented and engaging ensemble cast assembled in the film. Not since The Empire Strikes Back has a Star Wars film been this densely populated with genuinely relatable, exciting, and intriguing characters. It’s what makes the movie breathe, live, and thrive and in the process turns it into premium blockbuster entertainment and one of the finest installments in the series to date.

Daisy Ridley’s Rey easily finds herself fitting into the archetype of a loner elevated from poverty into extraordinary circumstances. She makes for the sort of every woman that made the original Star Wars narrative so appealing and was lacking from the prequel trilogy as a whole with maybe the exception of a childhood Anakin. In contrast, John Boyega’s Finn is a boundless source of energy, outward conflict, and humor. Boyega is about as charismatic and energetic character as the franchise has ever had. From his first traumatic introduction through the eventual end of his journey, Finn’s struggle for purpose and arguably redemption adds a level of unpredictability but also flawed humanism. Boyega clearly has a large amount of affection not only for the role but for the film and the universe itself. It’s hard not to fall in love with Finn from the second he appears on screen. Pairing off with him is Oscar Isaac’s underutilized by seductively charming hot shot pilot, Poe Dameron. Isaac owns every scene he is a part of with each spin of his fighter, smirk, and cheer.

Opposing the trinity is Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, whom Abram’s and Kasdan craft into a fractured and unstable meta-symbol of legacy and male fragility. It turns Kylo into an entertaining and uniquely frightening villain that is not sympathetic, but understandably human. It makes the character’s slips towards the Dark scarier in their closeness to real world insecurity. This is not a fall of mythic proportions such as Anakin but one instead fueled by uncomfortably familiar emotion.

Of the returning cast members, Harrison Ford not only turns in his best take on the galaxy’s most notorious smuggler since The Empire Strikes Back but arguably his most lively and enjoyable performance in over a decade. Like much of the cast, Ford seems to be enjoying the role and luckily, unlike Return of the Jedi, he seems to have found what makes the character of Han Solo not only fun but interesting and human. The same can be said for Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa. Fisher has not lost her ability to appear both emotionally torn but also commanding at one moment, and she, like Ford, effortlessly slips back into her old role.

As it is most likely clear by this point, The Force Awakens is a film that thrives by its incredible cast of characters. Star Wars at its best is a series that works best when the mythology, despite how compelling it may be, takes a back seat to the human, robotic, and alien beings at its center. This proves doubly the case for The Force Awakens. While its central plot mostly serves as a means by which to challenge, test, and reveal its characters, it also functions as one of the most structurally weak points of the movie. Those familiar with A New Hope will find a fair share of structural similarities with the beginnings of both trilogies. Most of these center around the mostly ill-advised inclusion of Starkiller base, a third string Death Star that functions as little more than a staging ground for the film’s final act. However, while this overt reverence for the past can prove distracting and unwarranted, it does not prove as detrimental to the film as a whole as some critics and fans have claimed since its release in 2015.

Score: A

2. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Viewing Star Wars, or A New Hope, is almost an exercise in examining an indelible piece of pop culture history as much as viewing a movie. It is hard to overstate just how drastically this film has shaped the world and cinematic culture since it was first released to record breaking crowds in 1977. While it may seem inconsequential when viewed in the pure breadth and scope of the behemoth franchise that it has spawned in the 40 years since its premiere, A New Hope laid the groundwork for one of the most enduring pieces of science-fiction/fantasy in the world all the while telling a uniquely entertaining and compelling movie in its own right.

As its own artifact, A New Hope is this strange sort of mad genius cooked up within George Lucas’s often baffling but uniquely talented creative space. The sheer amount of consequential but essential world and character building that A New Hope carries within its opening act is a gargantuan feat and it does so with the same sort of on-the-nose optimism and sense of adventure that pervades the entirety of the picture. Whether it’s the thrilling opening clash between Leia’s rebellion and the Empire or through Obi-Wan’s melancholy explanation of the history of the Jedi to an eager Luke Skywalker, Lucas’s script is busy crafting a myth and its one that’s worth listening to.

A New Hope’s secret success has always been its distillation of the hero’s journey into a unique narrative. Lucas imbues his take on this classic storytelling trope with his own creative flourishes and iconic imagery: the long arm of the Empire represented as the never ending Star Destroyer filling the screen, Luke’s desire for adventure represented as an almost self-imposed prison in his aunt and uncle’s farm before it is torn away from him, and of course the cantina that represents the steps into a larger new world filled with oddities and danger. A New Hope’s iconography is memorable and steeped into pop cultural memory for a reason.

In terms of performances, outside of Alec Guinness’s stoic but appropriately haunted Obi-Wan Kenobi and Peter Cushing’s deliciously twisted and sinister Grand Moff Tarkin, A New Hope functions moreso as a stepping stone for future development than an acting showcase. This is not to say that the acting is poor. Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker is impatient and impetuous, but he serves as a more than adequate focal point for the film’s young audience. Harrison Ford’s Han Solo may not yet be the cocky romantic that audience’s will come to love him for, but his devil-may-care swagger makes for a magnetic secondary protagonist. Carrie Fisher is given relatively little to do here, but right off the bat brings with her Leia’s brash confidence, knack for heroism, and utter impatience for those around for her who are holding her back from her mission.

Above all, A New Hope is simply a joy to watch. It’s buoyed by an infectious sense of wonder, adventure, and optimism while at the same time hiding a hints of tragedy and even canny political awareness. It’s an appropriate blockbuster for the ages and likely will feel its legacy stretch out for decades to come. Score: A+

1. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

If A New Hope was the film that laid the foundation of what Star Wars could become, The Empire Strikes Back is the movie that catapulted the series from creatively executed novelty into myth. Director Irvin Kershner and writers Leigh Brackett (to this day the only woman to write for a Star Wars feature) and eventual franchise regular Lawrence Kasdan escalates George Lucas’s original story of a hero’s journey into a layered, philosophical, and beautifully realized story of character and familial drama.

What sets Kershner apart from Lucas from the start is his sinister and almost dreamlike visual style that pervades throughout the film. To this day, The Empire Strikes Back makes for the most visually evocative film in the franchise with its dizzying moments of space flight, incredible battle over the snow drifts of Hoth, majestic and appropriately hazy skies of Bespin/Cloud City, and of course eerie and murky swamps of Dagobah. Kershner establishes a smart language through the movie’s cinematography that establishes the franchise and its characters not only as more mature beings but with those that are battling their own struggles of aging and adulthood.

Appropriately, The Empire Strikes Back is a story of growing up and challenging its central cast. Luke discovers that his path to adventure leads not to one of heroism and uncovered legacies but to an inheritance that is tempered with trials and a dark and tragic family legacy. Leia finds her attempts to guide a galactic rebellion clouded by her own personal feelings. Han Solo can’t bring himself to leave because he has discovered that he is maybe addicted to heroism but is also hopelessly in love with the princess at the war’s center.  Kasdan and Brackett move these characters into scenarios that routinely challenge them and in the process mines series, and even career, high performances from all involved. Harrison Ford in particular is both a dashing romantic while also remaining a cocky and oddly insecure criminal.

Similarly, while A New Hope may have established Star Wars as a cultural icon, it is The Empire Strikes Back that has left its indelible mark on the franchise as a whole. Whether through the development of the Empire into a multifaceted fascist machine spanning worlds and star systems, introducing the Force as a mystical and philosophical belief system more in tune with Buddhist and Hindu spirituality than as a magical tool through the instantly iconic character of Yoda. (Frank Oz is one of the unsung performing heroes of this series), having Billy Dee William’s bring a sense of moral ambiguity but also undeniable cool to the franchise with Lando Calrissian, or John Williams’s most mature and instantly iconic score of the franchise, The Empire Strikes Back inspires more iconic Star Wars elements than one often realizes.

However, what the central piece that draws the entire film together into pure classic territory is the onyx clad Sith Lord at its center. While Darth Vader carried a presence throughout the previous film, James Earl Jones and the general creative team in Empire establish the character as not only a sinister force to be reckoned with but one with a twisted sense of humor and a dark personal pathos. It solidifies the character as one of the most, if not the most, iconic villain in film history.

The Empire Strikes Back is a triumph. It is intelligently engaging, artistically realized, beautifully acted, and at the same time strikingly funny and entertaining. It is and likely always will be the zenith of Star Wars entertainment. I doubt anything will ever top it.

Score: A+ ----------------------------- So how did I do? Agree? Disagree? Let me know.