The Single Biggest Mistake Each Star Wars Movie Has Made

A mostly great franchise, but nobody's perfect...

Star Wars Revenge Of The Sith
Lucasfilm

Star Wars is unquestionably one of the most famous and beloved film franchises of all time and even now, over forty years since its beginning, it's still going from strength to strength, havig expanded into pretty much every medium there is through its vast Expanded Universe. The world is still obsessed with Star Wars and, frankly, the franchise deserves it.

Sure, some of the films are better than others, but considering that out of eleven movies, we've had three great ones (Episodes IV, V and VIII), two excellent ones (Episodes VII and Rogue One), two good one (Episodes VI and IX), three OK ones (the Prequel Trilogy) and only two terrible ones (The Clones Wars film and Solo), that's pretty good going. It's also arguable that the Star Wars universe is the most compelling film universe ever created.

Still, no franchise is flaw-free, not even one as awesome as this, and the films have made plenty of mistakes, such as misjudged writing, poor performances, plot holes and more. But what is the single biggest mistake each of the twelve instalments of the Star Wars franchise has made? Time to find out...

12. The Phantom Menace - The Horrendous Script

Star Wars Revenge Of The Sith
Disney

While not a terrible film, The Phantom Menace is still the worst out of the Skywalker Saga and although flat direction and mostly terrible acting certainly didn't help, it was George Lucas' ghastly screenplay that really torpedoed the entire thing.

Lucas has many talents but writing dialogue is not among them (he's been endearingly honest about this over the years), so it's a shame he didn't just write the story and let someone else handle the script.

Thanks to the awful writing, The Phantom Menace is a wooden, charmless story that's as robotic as a Trade Federation battle droid and is positively drowning in endless exposition, laughable dialogue, plot holes a-plenty and terrible attempts at comic relief (looking at you, Jar Jar). It's twenty years old, but the film is not getting better with age.

What also undermines it is the story's lack of importance in the rest of the franchise. The only significance this has is Anakin meeting the Jedi and since that meeting is incredibly contrived (seriously, how the hell was a convoluted bet involving a kid in a pod-race the only way to get the money to escape from Tatooine?) the film's story feels rather pointless.

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Film Studies graduate, aspiring screenwriter and all-around nerd who, despite being a pretentious cinephile who loves art-house movies, also loves modern blockbusters and would rather watch superhero movies than classic Hollywood films. Once met Tommy Wiseau.