Star Wars Movies Ranked By Your Fan Ratings

It’s a nearly never-ending debate, or just a fun question to open conversation with new friends that also appreciate the adventures of a long time ago in a galaxy far away: How do you rank the Star Wars movies? With seven episodes now out there, it can be a tough list to make. After all, how do you rate these films, especially when they each share so much, but also have so many unique elements to them?

Well we’re going to let you rank them this time around, and show you what order you’ve placed them in via your fan ratings in the Comicbook.com movie database based on Memorial Day weekend 2016. We’ll let you know where they fall, but also give you the easy one-click star rating so you can help change this, and we’ll update it at a later date to see how things have changed with additional ratings.

This isn’t the critics, this isn’t experts, this is you. Here’s how you think the Star Wars movies are ordered in quality.

#7: Attack of the Clones

The lowest rated Star Wars film is Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. The movie still comes in with an average rating of over 3 out of 5 stars, so it has that going for it. What do people like about Clones? Well, it gave us a massive, lightsaber-filled battle, and setup the basis for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the amazing animated series. There are also lines about “sand” and “slaughtering them like animals” that I’ll be honest, I probably quote more than anything else in the Star Wars canon.

#6: The Phantom Menace

Yup, you probably guessed this, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is the next-to-lowest rated film in the Star Wars live action series. The movie is lambasted by fans most often for Jar Jar Binks and the underuse of Darth Maul. Fans of the movie point out the cool ways Anakin’s story match Luke’s thematically (and later, Rey’s), the first real shot of a true Jedi master in Qui-Gon Jinn, the pure visual fun of the Podrace, and yes, the awesomeness (albeit short) of Darth Maul.

#5: Revenge of the Sith

The top-rated film on the list from the prequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. In the composite rankings, largely influenced by critical response, this would’ve actually broken the top four (yes, critically and a lot of fans argue this movie is better than one or two of the original trilogy, sorry haters!). Revenge of the Sith finally fulfilled the promise of the prequels: showing exactly how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. If you want maximum emotional impact from this film, rewatch it after watching the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which fills in a lot of the blanks between episodes 2 and 3. That introduces you to, and makes you really fall for, the Jedi who die in Order 66, as well as many of the clones that turn on (and slaughter) them. 

#4: Return of the Jedi

Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi is middle of the pack for you, the fans, and lowest-rated of the original trilogy. Still, a 4.62 (at press time) isn’t bad at all on a scale of 0-5. Return of the Jedi had a tough act to follow in Empire (yeah, guess where that is on this list), but obviously had a lot going for it, like the big final showdown between Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and the Emperor, Chewbacca driving an AT-ST, and carnivorous teddy bears banging the skulls of their enemies like drums, presumably after devouring them while other humans watched and celebrated. Seriously, when you think about what the Ewoks may’ve actually done there, that movie is dark.

#3: The Force Awakens

Coming in at third place is the newest movie in the Star Wars universe, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s also the first film to not have “Episode __” in its official title, though it is also acknowledged as “Episode VII” in the opening crawl. Interestingly, in our composite ranking, it’s actually the top rated – that’s primarily the critical response; the movie did pretty well for critics, and, you know, broke over 30 box office records. The direct sequel to this film, featuring most of the same cast, will hit theaters in December 2017.

#2: A New Hope

The original Star Wars is the second highest-rated film in the so-far seven-film series according to you. Perhaps surprisingly, however, it actually out ranks the top film (which you can obviously guess by now, if you hadn’t already) in our composite ranking, which takes critical response into account as well. The film, rechristened Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope once it was assured this was more than just a one-off movie, is where it all started. The Jedi, the Stormtroopers, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, even mention of the Clone Wars and oh yeah, Darth freaking Vader all came from this movie. Need we say more?

#1: The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back is the top-rated fan vote with a 4.83/5. The movie, the second to be released, but exact middle chapter of the currently planned 9 films in the episodic structure of Skywalker family movies, is widely regarded as the best film in the series, and you don’t disagree. As Kevin Smith’s film Clerks famously said, it ended “on a series of down notes,” with Han Solo captured and frozen in carbonite, Luke Skywalker finding out the truth about his father and having his hand cut off, the Rebels without a main base after the attack on Hoth; basically everything that was able to happen badly did. It gave real, intense emotion and a feeling of worry to this fantastic world, and showed that scifi could really play with the big boys in the world of serious drama. It’s still the gold standard in Star Wars.