Star Wars opened on 25 May 1977, took ten Academy Award nominations and won six, plus a special award for Ben Burtt's sound effects. Since then it has spread into television, video games, LEGO aisles, theme parks and a Disney+ launch line-up. In May 2026 it came back to cinemas after seven years away with The Mandalorian and Grogu.
That reach is the interesting problem. A franchise this large stops being one thing you can rank and becomes sixteen things, each measured by a different yardstick — a score, a villain, a console library, an actor's CV, a theme-park queue.
The catch is that the answer keeps changing. Pick a different list, and Star Wars becomes a different size.
The franchise question
The broadest version of the question puts Star Wars against every other film series ever assembled: Marvel's Infinity Saga, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, James Bond, Star Trek.
Star Wars has the longest runway of the lot. George Lucas released the first film in 1977, and the saga has been releasing films across five decades since.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has the counter-argument, and it is a strong one. It started in 2008, thirty-one years later, and has put out far more films in a fraction of the time.
Scale and longevity are different virtues, which is exactly why this list is worth arguing about.
Eleven films, one family argument
Turn the lens inward and Star Wars stops competing with anyone else. The eleven films in this ranking run from A New Hope in 1977 to Solo in 2018, and the fight is entirely internal.
The Empire Strikes Back is the usual answer. Irvin Kershner directed it in 1980, and it is the film that gave the saga its darkest turn and its most quoted revelation.
A New Hope has the better claim on importance rather than craft. It is the one that won the six Oscars, invented the modern blockbuster, and made everything after it possible.
Then there are the other nine, which is where it gets unfriendly: three prequels from 1999 to 2005, three sequels from 2015 to 2019, and two standalone films that split opinion in opposite directions.
Three films, judged as a set
This ranking judges trilogies rather than films, which changes what counts. The Star Wars original trilogy enters as a single unit: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, released in 1977, 1980 and 1983.
Judged as a set, its case is consistency plus a genuine ending. Richard Marquand's Return of the Jedi closed Luke Skywalker's arc in 1983, six years after the first film — a complete story, not a franchise left running.
Back to the Future is the awkward rival here. Robert Zemeckis made three films in five years from 1985, all with the same cast and the same internal logic, and the third one actually finishes the story.
The Lord of the Rings, The Godfather and The Dark Knight are all on the same list, and two of them were shot as deliberate trilogies rather than assembled into one. Star Wars was not planned this way, which is either the flaw or the miracle.
The genre it defined
Space opera is the one category Star Wars can fairly claim to have built. The 1977 film took the serial adventure format, put it in space with a mythic structure, and set the template every later entry answers to.
Three Star Wars films appear here — A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi — which is a rare thing for any franchise on a genre ranking.
2001: A Space Odyssey is the objection, and it is not a small one. Stanley Kubrick released it in 1968, nine years earlier, and it treated space as something vast and indifferent rather than as an adventure playground.
Interstellar, both Dune films, Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy fill out the field. Between them they show how far the genre travelled after Star Wars decided what it looked like.
One decade, tougher company
Narrow the question to science fiction in the 1980s and the field gets much harder. Star Wars has one entry: The Empire Strikes Back, from 1980.
Its case is that it is the rare middle chapter that deepens a story instead of stalling it, and it did so while inventing the on-screen technology to show it.
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is the film most often used against it. Released in 1982, it lost money on first release and then spent forty years being reappraised into a masterpiece.
Aliens, The Terminator, E.T., The Thing, RoboCop and Akira are all here too. The 1980s was the decade science fiction stopped being a B-genre, and Star Wars is one cause of that rather than simply one of its beneficiaries.
The music, not the movie
This ranking is not about Star Wars at all. It asks which John Williams score is his best, and Star Wars is simply one of the entries.
The 1977 score won Williams the Academy Award for Best Original Score and did something unusual: it brought the full orchestral idiom back to Hollywood at a moment when film music was moving towards pop and synthesisers.
Jaws is the problem. Williams won an Oscar for that one too, in 1975, and he did it with two notes — arguably the most efficient piece of film scoring ever written.
Williams has five Academy Awards for his scores, for Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. and Schindler's List. On a list of his own work, the Star Wars fanfare is competing with four other winners and a shelf of nominations.
Sequels, and the one that changed the rules
Before 1980, a sequel was understood to be a lesser thing — a cash-in on a hit. The Empire Strikes Back is the film most often credited with breaking that assumption, which is why it appears on a ranking of the best sequels ever made.
It earned that reputation by getting darker rather than bigger: the heroes lose, the story does not resolve, and the audience waited three years for an answer.
The Godfather Part II has the rival claim and a stronger trophy cabinet. Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film won Best Picture, something no Star Wars film has ever done.
Terminator 2, Aliens, Toy Story 3, Spider-Man 2 and Avengers: Endgame round out the field — a list that mostly exists because Empire proved a second film could be the reason to remember the first.
The man in the mask
Ask about science-fiction villains and Star Wars supplies two of them: Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Very few franchises get more than one name onto a list like this.
Vader is the reference point for the whole category. When the American Film Institute picked its fifty greatest screen villains in June 2003, he came third — the highest science-fiction entry on the AFI list.
HAL 9000 is the counter-case, and it works by being the opposite kind of monster. Kubrick's computer never raises its voice, never puts on armour, and kills a crew in a calm, reasonable tone.
The Xenomorph, Agent Smith, the T-1000, Roy Batty and Thanos fill out the rest. Vader's advantage is that he is also a tragedy — a fallen hero rather than simply a threat — which is the trick most of the others do not attempt.
Inside its own galaxy
This ranking shrinks the world to a single franchise and asks which Star Wars character is the best. Every option comes from the same galaxy, so nothing external can settle it.
Fifteen names are in the field, and they span nearly fifty years of storytelling: Darth Vader and Yoda from the original films, Ahsoka Tano from animation, Grogu from 2019 onwards.
Yoda is the one that reveals how strange the saga's appeal is. A small puppet with inverted syntax became the franchise's shorthand for wisdom, on the strength of a single stretch of The Empire Strikes Back.
Han Solo works by refusing all of that. Harrison Ford played him as a sceptic who does not believe in the Force, which is why he functions as the audience's representative inside a story about destiny.
Somebody else's career: Harrison Ford
Here the list belongs to an actor, and Star Wars is reduced to three credits on it. Harrison Ford was a jobbing actor and part-time carpenter when he was cast as Han Solo, and the 1977 film made him a star.
Three Star Wars films are in the field — A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi — which is more than any other single franchise he worked in.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is the rival, and it is a fight between two characters Ford created four years apart. Steven Spielberg's 1981 adventure gave him Indiana Jones, and Ford is the only actor to have originated two roles this famous.
Blade Runner, The Fugitive and Witness are on the list too, and Witness brought him his only Academy Award nomination for acting. Measured by the work rather than the box office, Han Solo is not automatically the best thing on his own CV.
The prequels, on Ewan McGregor's terms
Ewan McGregor played Obi-Wan Kenobi in all three prequels, released in 1999, 2002 and 2005, then returned to the role for a Disney+ series in 2022. All three films are options on a ranking of his own work.
Revenge of the Sith is the prequel with the strongest case. It is the film where the trilogy's promise finally lands: Anakin Skywalker falls, and the story connects to the 1977 film it was always heading towards.
Trainspotting is the opposition, and it is a different kind of film entirely. Danny Boyle's 1996 adaptation made McGregor famous three years before he picked up a lightsaber, and it remains the performance critics reach for first.
Moulin Rouge!, Big Fish, Black Hawk Down and Shallow Grave are also here. This is the list where being in the biggest franchise on earth counts for the least — the prequels are competing against the reason he was cast in them.
A Jedi Master against Jules Winnfield
Samuel L. Jackson played Mace Windu across the three prequels, a senior member of the Jedi Council and the only Jedi given a purple lightsaber — a colour Jackson reportedly asked for so he could find himself in crowd scenes.
That is a genuinely memorable piece of Star Wars, and on this ranking it is one credit among fourteen in one of the busiest careers in film.
Jules Winnfield is why. Jackson's hitman in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction brought him an Academy Award nomination in 1995 and is routinely named among the great screen characters of the 1990s.
Nick Fury, Ordell Robbie, Elijah Price and his Django Unchained role are all in the field too. This is the lens where the galaxy shrinks hardest: the most famous franchise in cinema, entering a list where it is simply not the interesting thing about the man.
Star Wars on television, in a field of 64
The Mandalorian arrived in November 2019 as the first live-action Star Wars series and the show Disney+ launched with. It is the franchise's entry on a ranking of the best television ever made.
Its case is that it solved a problem the films had not. By making the galaxy small — one bounty hunter, one child, episodic jobs — it found a register that suited television instead of importing the scale of a blockbuster.
The Sopranos is the scale of the opposition. David Chase's HBO drama ran from 1999 to 2007 and is the show most often credited with starting the era of television that this entire list is built on.
Sixty-four shows are in the field, including The Wire, Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks and Chernobyl. Star Wars on television is a genuine achievement and also, here, one entry among the medium's best.
The role-playing game nobody expected
Star Wars has produced a lot of video games, and one of them turns up on rankings that have nothing to do with the franchise. Knights of the Old Republic, made by BioWare and released in 2003, is on a list of the greatest role-playing games ever built.
It earned that by setting a story four thousand years before the films, which freed it from the saga's continuity, and by hiding a twist about the player's own identity. It won Outstanding Achievement in Story at the D.I.C.E. Awards and was named overall game of the year by Amazon.
Baldur's Gate 3 is the modern benchmark. Larian's 2023 release swept game-of-the-year awards and is the game most people now name when they mean an ambitious role-playing game.
The Witcher 3, Skyrim, Final Fantasy VII, Disco Elysium, Chrono Trigger and Elden Ring are all in the field. Knights of the Old Republic is a landmark, and it is also a licensed tie-in on a list of originals.
The part you can walk into
Star Wars is one of very few film properties you can physically visit. Rise of the Resistance opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios in December 2019, and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run puts guests in the cockpit — both are options on a ranking of Disney World attractions.
Rise of the Resistance is the ambitious one. It runs as a multi-stage sequence rather than a single ride, moving guests between a transport, an interrogation and a trackless vehicle chase.
Space Mountain is the incumbent, and it has fifty years of goodwill behind it. It opened at the Magic Kingdom in 1975 — two years before the first Star Wars film existed — and it is still the ride people name when they picture the park.
Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain, Tower of Terror and Flight of Passage are also on the list. This is a ranking of engineering and queue memories, where a franchise's cultural weight buys it nothing.
And then there is the jacket
Somebody built a ranking of the best performance by a jacket in a motion picture. Han Solo's vest is on it — a sleeveless black waistcoat over a white shirt, worn by Harrison Ford in 1977.
It qualifies because it does a job. The vest reads as practical and slightly disreputable, which tells you who Han Solo is before he says a word, and it has been reproduced by costume-makers for nearly fifty years.
The scorpion jacket from Drive is the competition. Ryan Gosling's ivory satin bomber from the 2011 film became an instant design icon and is arguably more recognisable as an object than as part of a character.
Indiana Jones' leather jacket, Tyler Durden's red leather, Neo's coat and the Kill Bill tracksuit are all in the field. That Star Wars turns up on a list about outerwear is the clearest measure of how far it has spread.
The answer keeps moving
Sixteen lists, and Star Wars is a different size in each one. On the franchise question it is the whole point; on a Samuel L. Jackson list it is a footnote to a career; on a ranking of jackets it is a waistcoat.
None of those readings is wrong. They are just different questions, and the honest way to compare anything this large is to stop looking for one verdict and ask a narrower thing instead — judging options two at a time rather than assembling a single league table.
Star Wars gets its next test soon. Starfighter, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Gosling, opens on 28 May 2027, a few days after the first film turns fifty.
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