This is the correct answer. A New Hope and Return of the Jedi are quite good as well and Rogue One is amazing, but Empire stands alone at the top and it’s not close.

Finally some sanity. It's 5 and it's not even remotely close.

Rogue One was good, but it wasn't exactly Empire.

It's almost correct, in the sense that Rogue One is the prologue (postlogue?) to Andor, which is the best SW media even tho it's not a movie.

Absolutely. Star Wars is at its best when it gets away from the goddamn Skywalker.

Watching through them all with my daughter, started at 1, just finished 5. It's full of errors, like Obi Wan saying that Yoda had trained him and that he (Obi Wan) was as rash and impatient as Luke was. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that the people making episode 5 hadn't even seen episodes 1 or 2 and barely paid attention to episode 3!

As one of those infants, yeah. ESB is a technically superior film. RotS is in the top spot purely for nostalgia reasons.

Good effort, Crewman.

Exterminate! Exterminate!

There is only one good Star Wars film, ESB.

Order 66 and how everything came together was cool

Grievous, lots of Jedi doing Jedi things, the hot start with Anakin and Obi-wan going in alone to save the chancellor, did I say Grievous?

I didn't mind 7 at all.

It's just 8 and 9 that retroactively made it shit.

6 is where it started to turn into a toy advert.

1 is better than 2 for basically every single reason you can think of. At the end of the day, 1 is simply less boring than 2.

No, you're uninvited from the may the 4th party, and the revenge of the 5th follow-up party.

The Battle of Endor is definitely the best space battle in a Star Wars movie. People give ROTJ crap because of the Ewoks, but to me they’re a non-issue, especially by prequel/sequel standards.

I enjoy that 6 is non-stop fight scenes, its my favorite one to watch, followed by R1 then 3. 5 is objectivly the best movie, 8 & 9 are the worst...

I'm surprised to see Solo so high. It was definitely way better than 8 or 9 and I 100% agree with you that the movie was punished for the sins of 8. Han meeting Chewbacca and getting the Falcon was great. The Parsec Run was made well and I'm glad they included it.

For me, the movie just has too much fan service. Han getting his gun, his vest AND his name in the movie was too much for me. Maybe it sounds nitpicky, but it was so much fan service that I felt disrespected as a viewer. It is almost like they wanted to bribe me with nostalgia so I like the movie, and that backfired. The overall pacing of the movie was alright, but every 10 minutes they had to add a "oh remember this from Star Wars?" moment and that was too forced for me.

My List is 5, 3, 4, R1, 6, 1, Solo, 2, 7, 8, 9

I'll watch 3 again on Friday just to prove you wrong

Edit: turns out I had just enough time between meetings this afternoon. Still pretty meh. It's no 2, but it still doesn't hold a candle to the original.

5, 6, 4, 3, 2, R1, 7, 1, Solo, 8, Holiday Special, 9

Empire is the best. It has solid writing, a clear vision, and is surprisingly tight in its execution. Just look at the duel between Luke and Vader, where every action they take communicates something about the character, it's not just mindless action filler. Hell, they even avoid the incompetent stormtroopers problem, as they only miss shots that are actually difficult.

RotJ has some silliness and the emperor's plan is idiotic, but it's still a satisfying end to the trilogy, even with the damn ewoks.

3 is improved over 1 and 2 but still has weak writing, spotty acting, pacing problems, and a lot of little issues that add up.

Rogue 1 is a mess. The droid is mildly amusing, Donnie Yen is full of wasted potential, and Grand moff Shrek is jarring, but everyone else is bland and forgettable. It's only saving grace is a cool fight at the end, but that doesn't excuse the boredom leading up to it. At least AotC was interesting in its incompetence.

7 is an empty husk. It wants to echo a new hope, but it doesn't know how to do that without just undoing the original trilogy. It's Star Wars designed by committee and sanitized by the marketing dept.

Bad mouthing TPM is beating a dead horse. Darth Maul is cool. Episode 1 pinball was fucking awesome. And everything else sucks.

The best thing I can say about Solo is that it was forgettable.

Last Jedi thought it was brave for giving us unsatisfying answers to the questions that TFA probably shouldn't have asked. Too bad it wasn't brave enough to do anything interesting or different with the actual plot, like having Kylo or Rey actually switch sides during the cliche "join me" scene. Wouldn't want a scene of him coming back to his mom looking for redemption and her needing to deal with the conflicting emotions that come from wanting her son back, but knowing that he killed his father. No, we couldn't do that, it would be too unexpected and different. And it wouldn't leave time for angry milking, the pointless casino quest, and unjustified paranoia driving a conflict that in no way serves the plot, and all the other time wasters that make up this piece of shit.

Yes, the Star Wars Holiday Special is better than RoS.

RoS barely qualifies as a movie. It's like someone took random pages from ten different scripts for possible sequels and shuffled them together. The Room, Troll 2, and Plan 9 From Outer Space are all smarter movies with better stories. The only things separating this shit from those movies are a huge budget and the Star Wars IP.