For Some Reason I Decided to Rewatch the Star Wars Films

And then I ranked them, because what else was I supposed to do?

god help me

It only took 2.5 weeks, but quarantine has officially killed my spirit. I'd like to thank both Corona Virus and Disney+ for pushing me to my limit and doing something I thought I'd never do. Re-watch Star Wars. I believe the first time I watched Star Wars was in 3rd grade and I was way too obsessed with it through 5th grade. I was so obsessed with that shit that I would challenge boys to see who was more of a SW expert. My ass straight up, when asked to write a paper in 5th grade about someone who is courageous, wrote mine about Luke fucking Skywalker. Other mf's were writing about MLK or their grandparents who escaped Vietnam or Obama and here my fat ass was writing about Luke. Luckily I grew out of this phase in middle school and was totally over Star Wars by the time the sequels came out when I was in 10th (?) grade. Honestly I think I was just annoyed by all the nerds that were about to piss themselves out of excitement for the new movies. I did sort of start to re-enjoy SW again after seeing Rogue One (which I only saw for Ben Mendhelson and stand by that fact), and especially after The Last Jedi (we'll get to this later obviously). And I was content with the last movie even though the whole world collectively lost their shit over it. So for some reason (jk I know the reason but won't be divulging this information for fear of the slander from others) I took the time -- idk like 5 days- and re-watched this shit. Nine fucking movies.

Before I get into the ranking I would like to provide you with a few series wide observations. Overall, I think I like the newer trilogy best. Mostly because the quality of film making is like 30000000 times better, but also because all three of the films were, for the most part, pretty solid. I don't know if it's totally fair to make comparisons based on visual quality just because the prequels were always going to look like shit. It's not their fault that CGI still looked like trash, but they could've at least tried building some legit sets/ filming on location, and for that I do fault them. I also want to say that this was my first time in 10ish years re-watching the first 6 movies, and they were not at all how I remembered (aka they are total shit but I remembered them as the shit back in the day). The other benefit to the new trilogy is that plot is way more of a focus than in the other 6. I realized that in pretty much all of the earlier films that their either was zero plot period, or if there was it was revealed in the last 30 minutes, and also the opening word shit things were super vague/ had nothing to do with their films. Two out of three of the new films set up the plot within the first 10 minutes. Also the men of Star Wars are extremely problematic, and again, not at all how I remembered. As a - now former- Anakin stan, I have to say that he's absolute trash. And so is my second true love, Kylo, who was a lot yell-ier and bitchier than I'd thought. To close, I'd like to inform you that I did not let the beautiful (?) men of Star Wars influence my rankings. Also I don't think any of my ranking choices are particularly controversial, so this probably won't be that interesting, but I didn't suffer through 1000 hours of this shit for nothing, so I now invite you to commiserate with me as I rank the 9 Star Wars films:

(FYI: in case you weren't able to pick up on context clues, I won't be including Rogue One or The Clone Wars but we might have to talk about them later...)

9. Episode I: The Fuck is a Phantom Menace

I'd like to start by saying that I always knew this movie was trash. I used to not like it because it was boring as fuck, but upon revisiting it have discovered that it is 2+ hours of terrible terrible terrible heinous material that I will never be able to unsee. This shit is Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt 2 level bad, in that I laughed the whole way through in order to attempt to cope. As I may have mentioned earlier (I don't feel like checking), the original 6 films have no understanding of what plot means, and the prequels have legit zero fucking plot. Example: this movie literally only exists to introduce Anakin and Obi Wan, and because of that, what could've been a fully developed 5 minute story was stretched into 2 hellish hours of pre-Y2K graphics as well as 20 minutes of fucking hover car drag racing. I don't remember asling to watch fucking galactic Lightning McQueen. Jesus fuck. Moving on, I once was subjected to a documentary about the freak ass hardcore SW fans I had to watch for a film class and when they got to the prequel part there were so many fans that were talking about how let down they were by this movie. One guy in particular legit camped out for tickets, saw it opening night, was confused at how terrible it was, and proceeded to see it like 5 more times because they couldn't believe it was actually that bad and thought that maybe seeing it again would make it better. Another anecdote from said documentary was that even though Jar Jar was meant to be harmless comedic relief, fans hated him so much that they decided he must be the sith lord, because there was no way a character that terrible wasn't evil. I wasn't able to come up with a coherent paragraph to summarize my feelings on this movie, so please enjoy a series of thoughts I had while watching this trash:

(lol but first here's some pictures)

- I know that white men ain't shit, but these padawan hairstyles are fucking terrible

- Blade Runner had better graphics and that shit was 17 years older than this

- Star Wars is known for some bad humor but the fucking potty talk from the Jar Jar people is inexcusable. The fact that "yousa doodoo" is cannon really bothers me.

- Natalie Portman is terrible in this. I feel like she read the scripts, realized that her shit acting wasn't going to make the film any worse so she just phoned it in and collected her coin.

- Literally all of this drama could've been avoided if they'd fucking listened to Mace Mother- Fucking-Purple-Saber Windu when he said he got freak vibes off of Anakin.

- Ewan McGreggor do be really cute in this tho...

- 10 years later Darth Maul still scares the fucking shit out of me. TB to when i used to have this recurring nightmare where he was hiding in my dad's closet and I couldn't look at the closet door for like a year.

- Anakin's "Yippie" count totaled to 4.

8. Episode II: Anakin is a Horny Little Bitch Boy

It was at this point that I started to regret re-watching the series. Up until this point I was still living in a world where I remembered Anakin as being the dreamy tortured villain of my 9 year old dreams. Unfortunately I now have to live with the fact that he is the worst Star Wars character. Absolute worst. He's so terrible that I didn't even find him hot this time around. This bitch is horny the second he walks on screen, and continues to perv out on Natalie Portman for the remaining 2 hours of the film. He's also a total dick, like he was lucky enough to be stuck with Ewan McGreggor as a buddy and he still had to act like an insolent little wank the whole time. Like episode 1, this movie also has zero plot. The summary is basically, Anakin likes Padme, and the clones are introduced, and then there's some weird gladiator scene. And that's literally it. Maybe there was more to it and I was just blinded by Anakin's atrocious behavior, but the whole point of this movie is just to make Anakin a fucking pig that I'm supposed to feel bad for because he has "emotional trauma", and also to introduce the clones/stormtroopers, who by the way didn't show up till the last like 10 minutes. Oh, and we also got treated to some heavy handed visual allusions to Nazism (this will be important later). Finally we concluded act two of the Greatest Love Story Ever with Anakin and Padme's bootleg wedding.

Thoughts:

- We have now upgraded to low rent Blade Runner graphics, congrats guys!!

- I don't know why they didn't kick Anakin out of the Jedi because he's been problematic since day one

- I just found out that this premiered at Tribeca and I have now lost all respect I potentially had for that organization

- CGI yoda is so wrong to me

- Bella and Edward have better chemistry than Anakin and Padme, and they're fucking Mormons

- Based on their anti-government sentiments I have concluded that Anakin is a Libertarian

- The padawan-master dynamic is giving me big-little vibes #thesehandsdonthazetheyhug

- I know he has a gf, but major incel alert!!!!

- I love how there are some non-human characters that they were able to transform with makeup and others that were too ambitious so they had to use cgi which ended up looking less realistic than just using makeup.

7. Episode VI: A Jim Henson Joint

So you're probably wondering how one of the original 3 managed to rank below one of the prequels. Well that would be because this film was a shitshow of puppetry fuckery. This was literally the only film of the trilogy that had its plot already laid out by the first two films. All they had to do was unfreeze Han and kill Darth Vader, like that's it. They could've drawn those two events out and made it into a real event, but instead they were just like "let's spend about 15 mins attending to our only plot objectives, and then for the rest of the 2 hours lets just put Leia in a sexist costume and then have her play with some freak ass puppets". I think what happened here was they let the success of the previous two films go to their head, so they tried to pull out all the stops for the finale but it ended up just feeling like a joke of an afterthought/ and obligation to the studio rather than the story. With Empire Strikes Back, you could tell that they knew people loved star wars and they now had the ability (money) to make a more ambitious film, which by those standards would imply that Return of the Jedi would be even better, but they let that shit all go to their heads and they made a fuck up movie. I feel like everyone just forgets how terrible this one is because a) it in no way compares to the horrifying prequels and b) nostalgia can make anything seem great, as seen with my former love/attraction to Anakin as I remembered him from 10+ years ago.

Apparently the only thought I had while watching this movie was:

- "Delusions of grandeur" has now been said twice within 23 minutes

8. Episode III: Anakin is an Angry Little Bitch Boy

This movie... this right here used to be my everything. It had everything, politics, a traumatic love story, hot and emo Anakin, a fucking fire planet, but upon revisiting it I realized it's just absolute and total shit. To explain this I'll provide you with a fictional account of the films allegorical inspiration. Also keep in mind that pacing is not a concept to the writers of this film, bc all of this happens within a span of what feels like a week. Berlin, 1930something: you're a young (and hot) jewish politician who befriends an older wiser and a little sus, political leader named Reltih. Even though your Jewish co-workers/ boss think he's up to no good, the two of you keep getting closer and he eventually appoints you as his personal assistant even though the group of Jews you work with is supposed to do that. So one day you and good ol' Reltih are having a conversation, and he keeps bringing up how how untrustworthy the Jews are and how he knows the ways of the Nazi's (I should mention that the supreme Nazi lord who was once thought to be extinct has recently returned and you and the Jews are trying to figure out who he is), and low key the ways of the Nazi are starting to sound a little nice to you, annnnd the more you think about it the Jews are sounding a little bad too, especially after they wouldn't let you be a master because you accepted Reltih's position. After your conversation you realize "OMG Reltih isn't just some guy in charge of the government that happens to know a lot about the Nazi's, what he happens to be is the Supreme Nazi Lord, Hitler!!!!" So you go and tell your Jew co-workers this and one of them (the bitch who wouldn't let you be a master) is like "k let me go check this out". You walk in on their meeting and when your co-worker is like "hey let's arrest him", you instead chop his arm off and then on Hitler's orders you go kill a bunch of kid Jews in training on your way to the Nazi's secret base. At the base your boss--who was supposed to have been killed when all the good guy soldiers turn out to be Nazis and kill all your co-workers-- shows up and the two of you fight and he's all "you were my brother!!!" and you're like "I hate you". Oh and also right before this you choked out your pregnant wife, nbd. Now doesn't this sound fucking stupid, yet also familiar. That's because this is literally the entire plot of this fucking movie. I feel like that about sums this film up, so here's my thoughts.

- It only took 6 years, but the graphics are finally starting to look acceptable

- This whole pregnancy thing is making me think SW is pro-life

- I love how Anakin went from a Libertarian in the last film to a full blown government supporter

- this is pure incel trash and I love it

- Anakin's character fell apart so fast

- Padme should've walked her ass to the planned parenthood the second he choked her ass

I'm realizing now that this is way longer than I thought, so I guess I'll have to make a pt 2, but before that I'd like to take the time to extend my star wars related thanks to two things

1. Obi Wan/ Ewan McGreggor: for actually trying to salvage this fucking mess. I should also mention that Ewan was the only actor that could pull off the "humor". God bless this man.

2. The Clone Wars: for also salvaging this mess. The show actually made sense of all the bullshit from the first 2 films, and I honestly wish we could just replace the films with the tv series. Aside from actually caring about plot/character/tone/etc, The Clone Wars also gave us something truly great: the one true hot Anakin (this is fact. Sorry Hayden Christianssen)