Funny enough, I could live with Phantom Menace being ranked first if the sole criteria were lgihtsaber battle. It's the one thing that movie has going for it.
Anyway, I'll rank them - and provide a little reasoning as to why. I do believe there's a bit of pointlessness to just ranking them, but a little explanation makes things a bit more interesting.
1) Empire Strikes Back. A rather obvious one. The ground battle on Hoth is great, the villains aren't completely incompetent (Boba Fett), the new characters introduced are complex and three dimensional (Lando), and then there's the shock encountered when we find out Vader's Luke's father. Luke starts treading the path of the Dark Side when he ignores Yoda and brings along his lightsaber, only to wind up killing "himself." All around, the best Star Wars movie.
2) Return of the Jedi. So a lot of people don't like the ewoks. Personally, my only problem with the ewoks is that they were able to beat the best forces of the Empire. Meh. Dumb. But ewoks otherwise were fine; cannibalistic teddy bears have a special place in my heart. And their dumb tricks that prove successful make sense - when the ewok hijacks a speeder bike to help Leia and company, it works.
Now, getting past that...the rest of the movie is great. The space battle above Endor is possibly the best one out of all the movies; I'll have to see Revenge of the Sith again, but, outside of the battle above Coruscant, nothing else comes close to the fight over Endor. Freeing Han Solo, from the thermal detonator threat, to the rancor fight, to that Hutt laugh...great. The temptation of Luke by the Emperor and Vader's redemption were also well done.
3) ...up in the air. I'll have to see Revenge of the Sith again. For now, though, I'll say A New Hope. There's nothing really wrong with it, and the attack on the Death Star is good, but it doesn't stand up to the destruction of the second Death Star while the lightsaber duel between Vader and Obi-Wan looks plain boring in comparison to most of the other lightsaber fights, regardless of what movie they're in. The destruction of Alderaan, however, and Tarkin, both stand out. The fact that Tarkin seems to have some control over Vader also seems exceptional, particularly after you see Vader killing admirals and captains left and right in the later movies.
4) Revenge of the Sith, for now. It has a lot of good stuff in it. The opening scene is spectacular, from the visuals to the action, and the dialogue isn't anywhere near as bad as it later gets in the movie. It's dark, willing to at least glimpse upon some truly dreadful things Anakin does on his fall to the Dark Side. Ewan MacGregor does a generally bang-up job on Obi-Wan. Anakin's fall is fairly believable. It's just the dialogue and some of the fight choreography...ugh.
And, err, I haven't seen Attack of the Clones in the longest time. I want to put the Phantom Menace at 5 just because I actually have seen it fairly recently and it has its high points. Darth Maul's fight beats out any other lightsaber duel. Yoda's dialogue isn't complete babble; I like the "fear leads to suffering, etc," and his judgment about training Anakin. Beating on the droids, running from the destroyer droids...also enjoyable. But then there's Jar-Jar, gungans in general, Anakin flying into the Trade Federation ship and blowing it up from the fighter deck...meh.
As for Attack of the Clones at number 6? The arena battle seemed to be a bunch of toys just waiting to be sold. The fight between the clones and the droids were done similarly. The love scenes were awful. Anakin was flat, two-dimensional. The scuffle between Jango and Obi-Wan wasn't bad. Yoda versus Dooku, though...goofy.
Anyway, there's my ranking and take on things.
