the best star wars

I liked the original "Star Wars" movie, the one now subtitled "A New Hope." For all its flaws, it had a memorable and mythic story, the ending was tremendous, and it suggested deeper things beneath the surface.

But let's be honest. In many cinematic terms, the movie was hardly remarkable. It had some truly accomplished actors like Alec Guiness and James Earl Jones, but most of the others were adequate; and the writing was awful. The whole "Spare us your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader" speech is a classic example of turgid dialogue. Han Solo brags that the Millennium Falcon made the Kessell Run in under 12 parsecs, when a parsec is a measurement of distance not time. We're meant to believe that Luke has never been off Tatooine, yet he can pilot a single-man spaceship during a firefight and not panic or freeze.

The movie was good, but I wouldn't say it was the best Star Wars movie. That title clearly goes to "The Empire Strikes Back." When it first came out in 1980, I was 10, or nearly so, and I hated the end of the movie. Since then I've come to appreciate that it's one wicked ending, the writing was topnotch, all the acting was solid, and whoever came up with that fight scene between Darth Vader and Luke clearly had been doing some thinking about how a Jedi knight might fight.

It's by far the best Jedi fight scene we've seen in four movies. Remember how surprised Luke was when things started breaking off the wall to fly at him? You could almost hear him think, "Hey! You can't do that!"

"Return of the Jedi" sucked, and not just because it had a new Death Star. It was awful, for one simple reason: Ewoks. An earlier version of the movie script had the Wookie homeworld being threatened, but the Evil Emperor decided there was more money to be made marketing the Ewoks. The movie should have been called "Attack of the Care Bears."

I once wrote a mock term paper showing conclusively that "The Return of the Jedi" was more accurate historically than "A New Hope," which was a story put forth by the New Republic to make its hero, Luke Skywalker, look good. (Not only did the revisionists make the Death Star fully built, they also gave Luke sole credit for its destruction.)

"The Phanton Menace" was just awful: flat, one-dimensional characters; too much mindless action and overreliance on CGI special effects. Jake Lloyd, who played Anakin, wasn't up to grown-up repartee but didn't have other children to act like a child around either. And Lucas couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted an innocent boy who would become Darth Vader, or a brooding and angry boy who already was warped and destined for evil things.

This is the only Star Wars movie we don't have a copy of, that I have no desire to have a copy of, and that I consider worst than "Return of the Jedi."