Star Wars: All 9 Skywalker Saga films ranked from worst to best
By Scott Brown
6. Return of the Jedi
When compared to both A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi really falls flat. It’s not that it’s a bad film in the slightest and most of the individual parts work incredibly well. That’s the key though, this film feels entirely like individual parts and comes off as the most serialized film of the series. It honestly feels like three episodes of a television show, two of which are good, one of which is okay.
The entirety of the first act is simply an adventure to save Han from his carbonite imprisonment that occurred at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. It’s a fun adventure that establishes Luke as a Jedi, but it doesn’t feel connected to the next two acts in the slightest. The back half of the film is much more intertwined with the two stories it’s telling, but only one is continuously interesting. Seriously, a good portion of the second act is C-3P0 reciting the events of the two previous films to Ewoks. It’s hard to understand why this is the longest film of the Original Trilogy.
Where the film completely redeems itself is the third act, which is absolutely perfect. It’s exciting, character-driven, and pushes forward the themes the series is known for. The lightsaber battle between Luke and Vader is incredible. The space battle is nail-biting. And even the battle of the forest moon of Endor is fun. Plus, this is the real introduction of the Emperor after only having glimpses of mentions of the character in the previous film.