Yes, this thread is about our personal ranking of the films so it is very much each person’s opinion.
As to whether or not a movie is well made, well, that depends on your criteria. There is the ability to write a cohesive story, then the ability to write scenes, then there is the casting, directing, cinematography, special effects, acting, editing, sound editing, music, art direction, and more. That is kind of the point of the award shows. They pick a winner in most of these categories (they run the writing ones together which makes sense for their purposes) and then the best of the year.
Back in the dark ages when I grew up in the 70’s, the expectations for special effects were pretty low. Star Wars was pretty incredible, but so were the movies that followed that didn’t use the not yet separate ILM. Star Trek: TMP, Battlestar Galactica, and many others were on their own. BSG had the advantage of people who had worked on Star Wars, but they used a variety of techniques to continue to improve the effects shots. Still, in a lot of cases you can tell, even today. So it creates a bar that we old people have judged newer releases on. People talk about the effects in the PT being fake and I find them above the bar and quite good.
Acting is another subjective category. Do you judge just on their performance or on their ability to morph into the character? Do you judge them based on one performance or on their body of work?
In the end, great movies combine great work in all areas. That does not mean those are always people’s favorites. It doesn’t explain the popularity of some movies, like the Twilight series. Sometimes people get caught up in something about the story that is less quantifiable. Some of the truly great films have that aspect as well.
As someone interested in writing, but not very talented myself, I find that the areas of the screenplay are what I look at first. Does the story flow. Does it have a beginning and ending and a solid route from one to the other. From then, the other aspects take over. I find in many ways, actors and their performances can be the least important aspect for me to enjoy a film. The editing, cinematography, and music are the most important. A CG fest isn’t going to impress me. CG that helps convey a good story and paint a picture of the world they movie is trying to create does. I have a pretty good ability to suspend disbelief, but when something way too obviously violates the laws of physics, it can pull me right out of a film. The Mechs in Pacific Rim and the destruction of the Hosnian system in TFA are two prime examples.
So when you ask people to rate films, you are going to get a host of responses. I know that the PT are very derided around here, but not everyone hates them outright. It takes a lot for me to hate a film. A contrived script (Avatar and Pearl Harbor), something historical or already established done badly (Geronimo: An American Legend and Star Trek Into Darkness), a bad book adaption (Battlefield Earth), and a few other pet peeves lead me to give some movies that others dearly love my worst rating. compared to some of those stinkers, the PT are absolutely fabulous works of art. We all have our individual preferences. The PT stink far less than a great many movies out there. I’ve seen my share of them and the PT are as far above them in my opinion as the OT is above TFA.