7. Star Wars
The most lighthearted of the six live action Star Wars films, Star Wars can be said to best represent George Lucas' vision of an archetypal fantasy story mixed with samurai films and the serials he grew up with, most significently Flash Gordon. It all came together in Lucas' mind, and with the aid of revolutionary special effects, he created a landmark film and one of the great cinematic visions of the last forty years. But Star Wars' appeal isn't just due to its imagination, though that's a big part of it, it's also due to the love we have of the characters. Like many great hang out movies- and many great adventure stories, Star Wars is about widely different people coming together becoming part of something larger than themselves. There's the farmboy Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his co-pilot Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), the old Jedi Knight Ben Kenobi (Alec Guiness) and the droids C-3P0 (Anthony Daniels) and R2D2 (Kenny Baker). Only Luke really fits in to the traditional hero mold as he comes of age through the story, and Ben fills the Gandalf role- but Lucas also subverts our expectations of the "damsel in distress" cliche and makes Leia an assertive and intelligent woman who can hold her own along side the male characters. This unlikely band of heroes bicker and have different motivations- particularly Han, who's more interested in money and doesn't seem all that keen being a hero. By the end of the film, however, he comes through for the rebellion and it's hard not to sure feel a surge of joy as he comes out of the stars and helps Luke destroy the Death Star, as well as finally joining Luke and Leia to become a "new hope" for the galaxy as it fights against the evil Empire.