favorite film from each trilogy?
new hope
attack of the clones
rise of skywalker
Empire
Sith
Force
The same here.
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MovieChat Forums > Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Discussion > favorite film from each trilogy?
The Phantom Menace won for a weird tiebreaker reason. All three prequels present new lore, including explorations of politics, the culture of the Republic, and the Jedi, as well as giving us the story of Anakin's rise and fall. Well, they try, and basically just do all of those things so poorly that they are all remarkably frustrating. I was bored for long stretches of Revenge of the Sith, Attack of the Clones feels like aimless filler, and Phantom Menace is often goofy and has midi-chlorians (ugh) and Jar-jar (ugh-ugh). But you know what it also has? Duel of the Fates. John Williams scores all these films really well, but Duel of the Fates is such an epic track. For that reason, I'll go with TPM.
A New Hope narrowly edges out Empire for me. I think it's because it's just a more focused, complete story and script. With that said, Empire dives deeper into the Force and presents great challenges and wonderful moments, so it's very close. But ultimately, A New Hope took samurai movies and Flash Gordon serials, King Arthur, Joseph Campbell, and cowboys, and mashed them all together into one of the most unique aesthetics and "vibes" of any film period. It gave us a lived-in world very different from the standard all-chrome sci-fi. It invented simple-yet-awesome concepts like lightsabers. And it took an age-old, mythological-level story and gave it the action-adventure treatment it deserved.
The Force Awakens might bungle up the intervening years between Return of the Jedi and itself (deadbeat Han, Luke the Lost, and the nonstarter New Republic), and while it might be filled with "mystery boxes," the reality is that those mystery boxes at least had potential. The remaining films in the sequels fumbled the setup, but the set-up was at least fun, if just kinda hacky, and characters like Finn should have been great. No payoff isn't TFA's fault.
As a bonus, I was going to do the best of the "off-shoot" Star Wars films/TV shows, but I've literally only seen Rogue One and the two Ewok TV movies, so...