Grab hold of your lightsabre – something Wookie this way comes. Yes, it’s time for the annual Jedi jamboree that is 4 May, better known to geeks across the galaxy as Star Wars Day. A play on the Jedi Knight phrase “May the Force be with you”, the occasion sees Star Wars fans come together to honour the legacy of the science fiction saga that began with the original George Lucas movie in 1977.
Star Wars has gone on to become the biggest brand in nerddom – growing even more inescapable when Disney paid Lucas $2bn for the franchise in 2012. This year is shaping up to be particularly significant with the release of the first new Star Wars movie in six years, The Mandalorian & Grogu, which beams down (sorry, Star Trek reference!) on 22 May.
But while there is a lot about Star Wars to celebrate, it has had its low points, too, especially after Disney attempted to make good on its investment by flooding the market with dubious spin-offs, sequels, prequels and even prequels to the prequels. Some of these new takes on George’s marvellous mythology have held their own. Many have been about as much use as a Stormtrooper in Speedos. Read on for my countdown of the best entries in the series – and the one that should never have seen the light of day.
5. The Mandalorian
Spring 2020 found Star Wars at a low ebb. It had struck rock bottom the previous Christmas with the conclusion of the dreadful JJ Abrams/Rian Johnson“sequels” trilogy, starring a keen Daisy Ridley and a visibly disinterested Adam Driver. Those movies, which kicked off in 2015 with The Force Awakens, tried to recreate the magic of old-school Star Wars but ended up as desperate-to-be-liked cover versions of the Lucas films.
But in March 2020 came the unexpected miracle that was the UK release of The Mandalorian, the cheap and cheerful tale of a gunslinging bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal behind a faceplate) and his cutesy sidekick (Grogu, aka Baby Yoda), which reconnects with the Sunday matinee vibe of the 1977 Star Wars. That first film tapped into George Lucas’s childhood love of Flash Gordon, and The Mandalorian has a similarly pulpy heart – drawing in particularly on showrunner Jon Favreau’s passion for cheesy westerns.
Alas, The Mandalorian lost the plot in series three in a very literal sense (there was no storyline). It remains to be seen whether things can get back on track with the movie spin-off. Either way, we’ll always have Mando seasons and two.
Streaming on Disney+
4. Star Wars: A New Hope
The very first Star Wars film was a cinematic big bang that along with Jaws, helped create the blockbuster era. Some 50 years on, it holds up remarkably well. That’s partly due to John Williams’s evocative score and the ground-breaking special effects. However, it’s the cast that really make it. A baby-faced Mark Hamill brims with aw-shucks charm. And then there is the zinging screwball chemistry between Harrison Ford’s deep space desperado Han Solo and Carrie Fisher’s wise-cracking Princess Leia – sci-fi’s answer to Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.
Streaming on Disney+
3. Rogue One (A Star Wars Story)
Better than the original? Put down your blasters and let me make the case for this spin-off, a rare bright light in the Disney Star Wars era. To begin with, Rogue One benefits from director Gareth Edwards brilliant grasp of scale – never before or since has the jaw-dropping vastness of an Imperial Star Destroyer been so impressively depicted on screen. We’ve always known these ships were huge – here, for the first time, we actually feel it.
The film also benefits from a radical reworking of an apparently muddled original screenplay, courtesy of ace Hollywood script doctor Tony Gilroy. Bringing some of the cynical energy that characterised his work on the Bourne movies, he fleshes out the tragic arc of Rebel agents Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as they hunt for the Death Star blueprints. Pacy, profound and with a heartbreaking ending, here, finally, is the Star Wars we’ve been looking for.
Streaming on Disney+
2. Andor
After the triumph of Rogue One, Gilroy fancied a second chomp at the Star Wars cherry. Given free rein by Disney, he produced the two-season masterpiece that is Andor. Chronicling the events leading up to the founding of the Rebel Alliance, this is Star Wars with a prestige TV twist. A prequel to Rogue One (itself obviously a prequel to Star Wars), the show reintroduces Luna’s insurgent-in-the-making Cassian Andor while telling the parallel story of how future Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) walks away from her life of privilege to lead the rebellion.
So far, so Star Wars. Where Gilroy goes above and beyond is by leaning into George Lucas’s warning about the speed with which fascism can subvert democratic institutions. In Star Wars, Lucas was talking about Nazi Germany. Fast forward to the present day and Gilroy is looking to the modern world and the rise of extremist politics all around us. In a universe of brain-numbing binge-watches, here is a genuinely subversive call-to-arms beamed into our living rooms – by Disney of all people.
Streaming on Disney+
1. The Empire Strikes Back
The 1981 sequel to Star Wars is remembered across the cosmos for one of the most misquoted lines in cinema history – “No, I am your father”. Spoiler alert – this is Darth Vader’s admission to a stunned Luke Skywalker that he is both his sworn enemy and his dad. That familial bombshell aside, Empire is a best-in-class example of the “downbeat” sequel – a movie that takes everything you loved about the original and turns it on its head by letting the bad guys win.
Luke loses an arm and is confused about his childhood. Han Solo is frozen in Carbonite – ie turned into a human fishfinger. Leia snogs her brother (not that anyone knew it at the time – Lucas had not yet decided to make Luke and Leia twins). In other words, Empire Strikes Back has left its characters in the perfect pickle in one of the most compellingly grim and gritty sequels in cinema history.
Streaming on Disney+
The Rise of Skywalker
Like a pulsating supernova at the centre of the galaxy, the list of the worst of Star Wars is ever-changing – it all depends on the mood of the individual fan at any given time. You could opt for the Jar-Jar Binks tunnel of horror that was 1999’s Phantom Menace. Or the subpar snooze-fest that was Disney series Obi-Wan Kenobi, which squandered the long-awaited return of Ewan McGregor as Darth Vader’s monkish mentor.
But the film that has come to symbolise Disney’s shambles of a stewardship is undoubtedly the last in its “sequel trilogy”, the atrocious Rise of Skywalker (2019). From resurrecting wicked Emperor Palpatine without any explanation (“somehow Palpatine returned” goes the opening “text crawl”) to the terrible dialogue (“they fly now?”) and the fake-out non-death of Chewbacca, this is not only the worst Star Wars, it’s one of the sorriest blockbusters of the past decade.
Six years later, Disney is now cautiously bringing Star Wars back to the cinema with The Mandalorian & Grogu. Burned by past experiences, fans will worry the film is merely a big-screen remix of the Mandalorian TV series. No matter how mediocre it proves, it is hard to imagine it rivalling Rise of Skywalker for sheer, planet-destroying cackhandedness.
Streaming on Disney+