Every Star Wars Movie In Chronological Order
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Star Wars is one of Disney’s biggest franchises, so we decided to help fans out with this guide on how to properly watch all the big screen releases!
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The Star Wars movies have a complicated timeline. With sequels and prequels and spin-offs coming at us from every different direction, it can be difficult to keep track of the chronology of these movies. We’ll be following a couple of chapters of the Skywalker saga and then, all of sudden, the Death Star is back or Darth Vader is alive or Princess Leia’s in her twenties again.
It’s been even more confusing since Disney removed “Episode” from the titles of its movies. Now, there isn’t even a numerical system to keep track of these darn things. So, to save you some anguish, we’ve put every major Star Wars movie, from The Phantom Menace to The Rise of Skywalker, in chronological order.
Updated on April 22nd, 2020: Last year, the Star Wars sequel trilogy mounted by Disney came to a close after a tumultuous five-year stint at the forefront of modern blockbuster cinema. Star Wars fans were drastically divided by these movies, but this was mainly because it switched hands between so many creative voices.
Most fans would agree that a sequel trilogy overseen in its entirety by J.J. Abrams or by Rian Johnson would be better than a trilogy that was started by Abrams, taken in a wildly different direction by Johnson, and then finished by Abrams steering the ship back in its original direction. But the Mouse House was adamant to bring out a new movie every two years, so they got Episode VIII into development before Episode VII was finished and Episode IX into development before Episode VIII was finished. Unsurprisingly, this left fans polarized about the sequel trilogy overall. Despite Abrams disregarding a lot of plot points that Johnson established in The Last Jedi. Abrams stuck the landing as well as anyone could’ve expected. We’ve updated this list with saga’s latest addition, The Rise of Skywalker.
12 Episode I: The Phantom Menace
A lot of fans who’d waited 16 years since Return of the Jedi for a new Star Wars movie were disappointed by the first movie in the prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace. The original Star Wars trilogy had defined their childhoods, so George Lucas had a lot to live up to.
It would’ve been impossible to satisfy those fans, but showing young Darth Vader as an adorable, bright-eyed little boy and bringing Jar Jar Binks into the mix certainly didn’t do him any favors.
11 Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
The second prequel movie confirmed fans’ fears that George Lucas would be relying heavily on new CGI technology. The bad omens started to appear in his Special Editions of the original trilogy, in which he made Greedo shoot first and crowded up Mos Eisley Spaceport with a hundred different creatures. But the arrival of the Clone Army on giant CGI ships in a CGI gladiatorial arena on a CGI planet made it abundantly clear we were in for a mostly computer-generated trio of movies.
There are also some cheap slapstick gags in this movie, like C-3PO’s adventure in the Battle Droid factory, and far too much time is spent on the least romantic romance ever written. It was such a shame, especially since Lucas did such masterful, groundbreaking work with practical effects and miniatures in the original trilogy.
10 The Clone Wars
The Clone Wars is, so far, the only animated Star Wars movie to get a theatrical release, and unfortunately, it falls flat. While the TV series it’s based on is fun and colorful and action-packed, the movie is none of the above.
Both tell the story of the three-year break between Episode II and Episode III in which Anakin and Obi-Wan were kicking ass on a constant basis, but the movie’s plot is boring and the animation is bland.
9 Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Easily the best of the prequel movies, Revenge of the Sith sees Anakin Skywalker complete his journey from Jedi Padawan with a friend in the Galactic Senate to fearsome Sith Lord under an evil tyrant’s thumb. It’s almost on par with the original trilogy, at least in terms of iconic moments. It opens with one of the saga’s most thrilling space battle sequences and only gets better from there.
This movie has General Grievous, Chewbacca’s home planet, Yoda exiling himself to Dagobah, and of course, Anakin and Obi-Wan’s emotionally charged lightsaber duel on Mustafar followed by the masking of Darth Vader. All in all, the fans who stuck around after the disappointment of Episodes I and II finally got the prequel movie they wanted to see.
8 Solo: A Star Wars Story
The modest box office returns of this movie terrified Disney. It showed them that the Star Wars franchise isn’t invincible and audiences won’t always turn out in droves to visit a galaxy far, far away, and warned them that they’d have to be more careful with Star Wars in future. Brand recognition alone won’t cut it.
While Solo: A Star Wars Story does make some mistakes — the ham-fisted backstory of the Solo name, the forced social-justice-warrior droid character, the disingenuous meeting of Han and Chewie etc. — this was still a welcome addition to the Star Wars canon. It’s a fun, escapist, intergalactic adventure, and that’s all we should be asking for.
7 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
We’ve had two “Anthology” movies in Disney’s Star Wars franchise so far and they’ve both been set between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy. But since this one tells the story of how the Rebels stole the Death Star plans from the Empire and literally ends with the beginning of A New Hope, this one is set later in the saga’s timeline.
The crown jewel of this spin-off is its jaw-dropping finale in which every single character is wiped out. Given that this is a Disney movie, to say that the massacre ending was unexpected would be an understatement. It gave a lot of fans faith that the Mouse House wouldn’t tone down the dark side of the Star Wars saga too much.
6 Episode IV: A New Hope
As hard as it is to believe, no one had any faith in Star Wars when George Lucas first pitched it. The studio gave him a shoestring budget for what they saw as a weird little space movie, cut his pay in exchange for what they saw as worthless merchandising rights, and swept the movie under the rug by tagging it onto their more in-demand upcoming releases just to get theaters to even show it.
But then it took the world by storm and that cultural phenomenon has continued to attract new fans to this day. Lucas then capitalized on his merchandising rights and turned Star Wars into one of the most recognizable and profitable global brands. Who’s laughing now?
5 Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Many fans still rank The Empire Strikes Back as the greatest Star Wars movie ever made. It has a classic narrative structure tying everything together: its opening act breaks up all the main characters with a conflict on Hoth, the second act sees them all go on transformative emotional journeys, and the third and final act brings them all back together to show how they’ve changed.
So, it’s basically the perfect movie in terms of its writing. Its cliffhanger ending means it doesn’t work too well as a standalone piece, but it’s not a standalone piece. It’s part of a saga, and it’s easily the best part of said saga.
4 Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi
It’s hard to round out a trilogy, especially when the other two parts are as groundbreaking and beloved and timeless as A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. But, sickeningly cute Ewoks aside, Return of the Jedi did a fine job of giving us the endings we were expecting, with the Rebels defeating the Empire, Leia and Han finally getting together, Luke finding his own inner happiness, and peace being restored in the galaxy.
The movie also gave us an ending we weren’t expecting, with Darth Vader achieving redemption, and it accomplished all of this loose end-tying in a suitably fun and cinematic way.
3 The Force Awakens
J.J. Abrams started the Disney-controlled sequel trilogy off on the wrong foot with The Force Awakens. Initially, Star Wars fans were ecstatic about the familiar faces, music cues, and scene transitions, but the story of an evil empire led by a black-masked villain being manipulated by a powerful emperor whose planet-destroying superweapon is blown up by a rebel force was more than a little derivative.
With Episode VII setting up such an uninspired storyline, there wasn’t much hope for Episodes VIII and IX. But at the time, Star Wars fans weren’t concerned about that. George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away was back on the big screen, so die-hard fans didn’t care that the plot ripped off A New Hope and nostalgia dominated narrative decisions, making the story timeline feel inconsistent and incongruous.
2 The Last Jedi
Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi is both the boldest and most controversial entry in the Disney era of Star Wars. Johnson’s determination to break down the Star Wars mythos while also following on from the threads established by J.J. Abrams in The Force Awakens, particularly setting up Luke Skywalker as a grouchy hermit who’d given up the fight for good, made The Last Jedi a tough pill to swallow.
From Leia’s Force flight to the unnecessary detour to Canto Bight, The Last Jedi was filled with moments that rubbed Star Wars fans the wrong way. Abrams had gotten a lot of backlash for sticking to a familiar formula, but that was nothing compared to the ruthless feedback Johnson got for trying something new.
1 The Rise Of Skywalker
There was really no way that The Rise of Skywalker could’ve satisfied Star Wars fans. After Rian Johnson broke down a lot of J.J. Abrams’ ideas from The Force Awakens in The Last Jedi, Abrams decided to cherry-pick Johnson’s ideas from The Last Jedi when he made The Rise of Skywalker. The resulting movie is riddled with plot holes, as well as plenty of plot points that just go without an explanation, like the return of Palpatine.
Any hope of the sequel trilogy having cohesion went out the window when The Rise of Skywalker singularly failed to acknowledge the messages and developments made in The Last Jedi. The character arcs of Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo Ren all ended in a disappointing way. Viewed as a complete piece, the sequel trilogy is an inconsistent mess. Lucasfilm should’ve started the trilogy with more vision for where it would go. As it stands, they hired J.J. Abrams to throw a bunch of ideas at the wall in The Force Awakens, then hired Rian Johnson to throw some new ideas – including contradictory ones – at the same wall in The Last Jedi, then hired Colin Trevorrow to throw more ideas on the wall, then parted ways with Trevorrow when they didn’t like his ideas, then rehired Abrams to look at the wall and decide what had stuck. Of course, he mostly chose his own ideas to stick with.
Abrams sidelined Rose Tico after praising Johnson for casting Kelly Marie Tran and crammed in shallow fan service (like Chewbacca receiving an arbitrary medal) wherever he could. George Lucas literally gave Disney some story treatments for a sequel trilogy during the sale of Lucasfilm. At the very least, they could’ve used those treatments as a jumping-off point, or a guiding light.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/every-star-wars-movie-chronological-order/