What is your favorite Star Wars film?

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Since you asked what was my favorite SW film, not the best of the SW films, I have to vote for the original Star Wars. While Empire may have been a better film, I'll never forget going to see Star Wars a couple days after my 5th birthday. My Mom and Grandmother took me and a friend to see it as an extra birthday present for me, and it changed my life. Sure, I was only 5, but the effects of that film are with me to this day. I became an immediate fanatic, and everything was "Star Wars" this and "Star Wars" that. We didn't have alot of money growing up, so going to the movies was a special treat. Somehow my parents took me to see SW 3 or 4 times, and I managed to get quite a few SW toys as well. And now I'm sitting at work 27 years later, responding to a question about which is my favorite film. Yeah, I think that SW turned me into a geek.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Star Wars: A New Hope - It changed everything, it marked a moment in movie history that said 'from this point on things are going to be different'.

 

[Taelorn76]

I voted for Empire Strikes Back. Just because I like how the Empire stuck back.

Also because that was the first Star Wars movie I ever saw, plus the whole "Luke I am your father" just made my jaw drop.

 

[The Serge]

The Empire Strikes Back

This was the second movie I saw as a child (the first was Star Trek: The Motion Picture; I was 6. I remember very little from my initial thoughts other than:

1. Being scared to death of Darth Vader. His costume. His persona. His hissing breath. He was magnificently scary to an impressionable kid. I remember starting very dramatically when, as Luke is sneaking back into the building after Vader's use of the force knocked him out... He's sneaking back in, looking this way and that, in utter silence. Only the sudden hiss of Vader's breathing alerts him in time to dodge what appeared to be a killing blow right before Vader proves that Luke never had a chance in their first confrontation.

2. "The Imperial March!" That's what I fell in love with symphonic music (alas, I don't play)! There are few musical experiences beyond those while watching a Star Wars film. Although Williams struck gold with the Theme from Jaws, The March from Superman, and the Star Wars Fanfare, I am convinced that his crowning achievement was The Imperial March. I mean, not only does it perfectly identify with Darth Vader (and, until The Emperor's Theme, the Dark Side of the Force), it's music that truly captures goose-stepping, heartless, tyranny. BRILLIANT!

As far as the "original" edition and the Special Edition... I think that most of the changes in the Special Edition of this film were unnecessary. Aside from Cloud City, I can't think of a single change that was necessary. The icebeast wasn't necessary; adding that asinine scream when Luke falls down the shaft wasn't necessary (if anything should have been here, it should have been Vader stopping Luke's fall before letting him go which was in the original script); that whole cutting of the escape from Cloud City with Vader asking for his shuttle and repeated shots of the shuttle getting to the Executor wasn't necessary. So, I went with the original cut.

 

[drothgery]

I'm kind of surprised that ANH is getting any love here. Does the first half-hour of the movie just get wiped from people's minds, like the last half-hour of RotK?

 

[Jeremy]

I think my favorite might have to be the Clone Wars. No, not Attack of the Clones, but the animated miniseries of the Clone Wars that is done in 5 minute shorts.

It is condensed Star Wars in a visual format giving me lightsabers, the Force, star fighter battles, and better dialogue then the other recent movies that had all the money and technology they could ever want for but couldn't hire someone to write decent dialogue or hire someone to direct a moving performance from the actors or hire someone to tell George Lucas that the brilliant ideas that originated his world do not automatically make him the best person to write, manage, and direct everything regarding Star Wars. Certainly they mandate he be part of the team that does such, but delegation to people who have true talent and training in... Nevermind.

This has all been covered before. No one will read this that hasn't read or had these thoughts before.

 

[John Crichton]

I'm kind of surprised that ANH is getting any love here. Does the first half-hour of the movie just get wiped from people's minds, like the last half-hour of RotK?

You mean Vader's entrance and Luke's wanderlust? Nope. Good stuff.

 

[Silver Moon]

Had to vote for the original Star Wars. No other Sci-Fi film will ever come close to the the experience of watching this in the theater at age 15 while sitting next to my best friend.

 

[Tallok]

I can't decide, but my favorite's probably ANH, except... it's missing yoda, so Empire Strikes Back... Oh, I dunno, howzabout both?.... I can't do that? oh well, another vote for the first one... it has something the others lack, but I'm always partial to first movies in series...
this, of course, with the qualification that yoda from ESB is one of the very best characters from any movie I've ever seen

 

[James Heard]

Empire all the way. I refuse to even watch Attack of the Clones, I'm done with Ewoks and Jar Jar and not even Portman's sweet flesh can draw me back.


Empire was just...mythic. Everything else has had way too much lack of pondering "of course it should work this way" smacking on the head. Star Wars might have been my favorite even so though, except I had a friend who watched the thing over and over and over again while he was studying and whispering the lines in synch with the actors. Seriously, the guy is like a brother to me but that particular habit was disturbing.