Ranking The First 30 Minutes Of EVERY Star Wars Movie From Worst To Best
Which Star Wars movies nailed the opening half an hour, and which failed to... DO IT!
The opening stretch of any movie is absolutely crucial.
If you fail to really grab the audience's attention early on with a spectacular set-piece, intriguing story development, or some superb world-building then it's almost impossible to keep folks engaged for the remainder of your picture.
But if you do absolutely nail that first 30-minutes of action on-screen, you give your movie the best chance to succeed and leave viewers with no choice but to stick with the promising tale until the glorious or sometimes bitter end.
And that brings us to the galaxy far, far away....
Unleashing a grand total of eleven live-action movies into our own world to date, the Star Wars franchise boasts some of the strongest and most compelling opening half hours ever to play out on the big-screen. But it's also seen a few rather underwhelming opening salvos over the decades, too.
So, where do each of these first 30-minutes of live-action prequel, original, and sequel trilogy mayhem, along with a few spin-offs, rank when it comes to the best and worst of the bunch?
Well, with a nod to the fine folk over at r/StarWars who inspired this list with a recent post, it's time to find out, people!
11. Episode IX - The Rise Of Skywalker
J. J. Abrams' second sequel earns itself last place for the opening crawl line of "The dead speak!" alone.
Now sure, as with all of the most recent trilogy movies, the cinematography once that infuriating chunk of text had floated off-screen was rather breathtaking at times.
Kylo Ren ripping his way through Mustafar is majestic. The silly lightspeed skipping sequence contains some utterly gorgeous visuals as the Millennium Falcon darts across the galaxy.
But none of that changes the fact that Palpatine's baffling and unnecessary return gets things off to a frustrating start, one that the final movie in the Skywalker Saga struggles to ever really recover from.
In that opening 30, there's unmemorable dialogue - outside of recycled lines/callbacks from prior movies - a sweet yet jarring effort to squeeze the late Carrie Fisher into the picture, and countless moments that made little to no sense at all early on.
The aforementioned lightspeed skipping flying in the face of the established rules of jumping to hyperspace and Finn's "They fly now?!" comment completely ignoring the fact troopers had boasted jet-packs since the Clone Wars are just a few.
And the whole opening stretch just rushing to cram in as many nods to the past as humanly possible, via cameos, themes, and more, set the tone early for this one.
You were right to have a bad feeling about this.