My ranking is pretty simple:
- Empire Strikes Back
- A New Hope
- Andor
- Return of the Jedi
- Bleh… everything else
Sometimes I try to figure out which I find worse: the Prequels or Sequels. They’re both inexplicably bad in completely unique and interesting ways.
I think the Prequels are probably more damaging overall, because they’re more directly connected to the OT as backstory, whereas the Sequels can mostly just be ignored as supplemental material. The Sequels show more obvious signs of “short-term corporate decision-making” in their production, whereas with the Prequels (at least with Phantom Menace) I get the sense that Lucas was genuinely excited about the weird story he wanted to tell.
After I saw AOTC in the theater, I came to accept that ROTS would probably not be very good - but I was still very interested in seeing it when it came out. But after I saw TLJ in the theater, I basically lost interest entirely, and so Rise of Skywalker was the first Star Wars movie that came out in my lifetime that I didn’t go see in the theater.