Every Star Wars Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

2. Star Wars

Flashback to the 1970s. It's a time when the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese are changing cinema for good (and for the good), and among this new generation is George Lucas, who struggles to get his space opera off the ground. Everyone doubts it could work, almost as many doubt its quality.

May 25, 1977 comes, and queues are round the block for Star Wars. It's a film that changed cinema and ignited its biggest ever franchise. It's almost impossible to imagine what the subsequent 40 years of film would've been like had this failed, but Star Wars - now labelled A New Hope - was a major success. What's more, though, is that's it's utterly sensational.

There are some rough edges to the film - those which Lucas has spent the subsequent years trying to smooth out and only making worse - and Mark Hamill isn't a great actor at this point, but is a good enough fit for the idealistic young dreamer Luke Skywalker. The issues are minor and easy to forgive when everything works so well, kickstarting a franchise, launching a hero's journey, and becoming an icon.

Beyond its status, it's a thoroughly enjoyable film in its own right. The pace never sags, the new heroes are immediately likeable, and it gives us a terrifying villain in Darth Vader. It appeals to a broad audience while introducing some sci-fi/fantasy elements like the Force and lightsabers, you get an immediate sense of a rich world, and there's a self-belief from Lucas in what he was making that he'd later lose, underpinned by the instantly iconic score from John Williams and the genius editing of Marcia Lucas.

It's funny and weird, epic and intimate - from the opening crawl and huge Star Destroyer to the death of Obi-Wan and the trench run via the Cantina, it's at once familiar and alien, turning us all into Luke Skywalker staring out into the twin sunsets on Tatooine.