ESB is my favorite Star Wars movie, because it’s the most artfully made film of the bunch and contains the most crucial parts of the overall mythology and the highest drama, but if we’re trying to decide which is the “greater film” (which is a stupid thing to worry about), it has the major disadvantage of being unable to function on its own. SW works as its own self-contained story, as the first act in a trilogy, and as a middle chapter in the overall saga, whereas ESB by design can’t be anything other than Act II.

It would also be a huge mistake to undervalue the fact that SW created that whole world. Sure, ESB expanded on it beautifully, but the bulk of the true invention is in that first film.