My current rankings for my preferred watchable versions of the films are:
- Star Wars (Despecialized)
- Rogue One
- Revenge of the Sith (Q2 edit)
- The Force Awakens
- Return of the Jedi (Despecialized)
- The Empire Strikes Back (Despecialized)
- Attack of the Clones (Q2 edit)
- The Phantom Menace (Q2 edit)
Now, that isn’t on a scale of amazing to horrible. I actually feel that The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are decent films if edited properly. And I have to put Q2’s Revenge of the Sith near the top of my list because I’ve watched it so many many times when I needed my Star Wars fix and so often picked that to watch of my then-six choices.
The reason why Sith bumps out Awakens at present is due to TFA being a standalone film that–on its own–is derivative and fan-service-y. Hal’s “Gentle Restructure” edit helps that though and might push it above ROTS soon after Hal fixes certain issues v1.0 has. Also, the release of the rest of the Sequel Trilogy might retroactively make TFA a better movie given added context.
My all-time ranking of the official releases (past and present) are:
.1. Rogue One
.2. Return of the Jedi (1983)
.3. The Force Awakens
.4. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
.5. Star Wars (1977)
.6. The Empire Strikes Back (Special Edition)
.
.
.9. Revenge of the Sith
.10. Star Wars (Special Edition)
.
.
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.1138. Return of the Jedi (Special Edition)
.
.2187. The Phantom Menace
.
.
.
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.3263827. Attack of the Clones
with the bottom three listed being eye-rollingly, butt-numbingly, unwatchably awful.