Every Star Wars Movie's Opening Scene Ranked

Hot, buttered popcorn in a cool, dark movie theater. The drum-and-horn march of Alfred Newman's "20th Century Fox Fanfare." Silence as blue letters flash across a black screen: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." And then, the unmistakable blare of John Williams' iconic score; on screen, a block of yellow text slowly flying upward towards the heavens. A "Star Wars" movie has begun.

For 45 years, each "Star Wars" film has begun more or less this same way. There have been a few changes, naturally; the Disney-produced sequels, starting with 2015's "The Force Awakens," no longer use the Fox fanfare, and the non-"Episode" prequels "Rogue One" and "Solo" had their own variations on the opening theme song and title crawl. But every one of them follows up the serial-like preamble with a whiz-bang opening scene that sets the tone for the movie that will follow. Some of these opening scenes are all-time classics, some are underappreciated gems, and some, frankly, promise a better time than the rest of the film can deliver. Let's take a look at the opening scenes of every "Star Wars" movie, ranked from worst to best.

In the 16 years between 1983's "Return of the Jedi" and 1999's "Episode I – The Phantom Menace," anticipation among fans had grown to a fever pitch. What would "Star Wars" look like in the modern era, with a new cast and state-of-the-art effects? The answer, apparently, was political bureaucracy, as the opening scene of "The Phantom Menace" thrusts Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his young apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) into a taxation conflict between the Trade Federation and the Galactic Senate, with the small planet of Naboo caught in the middle.

The sequence is not all dry negotiations, of course. The spineless Trade Federation, under the command of a mysterious cloaked figure, sends droid soldiers to kill Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, and a "Star Wars"-style blaster-and-lightsaber battle ensues. But many of Lucas' most questionable choices in the film, and indeed the prequel trilogy as a whole, are already present: the flat direction and stilted dialogue that defeats normally charismatic actors like Neeson, McGregor, and Natalie Portman; the decision to model several alien species after specific ethnic caricatures; the preference over lightweight, frictionless CGI over the more tactile, familiar textures of models and makeup. Every "Star Wars" opening scene work bests as a preview of the style and thematic concerns that the rest of the film will follow, and "Phantom Menace," for better or worse, is exactly that.

For a franchise that once went 16 years between films, "Star Wars" was risking serious audience fatigue when it released "Solo: A Star Wars Story" just six months after "The Last Jedi." Not only that, but the production went through a high-profile shakeup when original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired and replaced by filmmaker Ron Howard, resulting in massive reshoots. Not only that, but the film was attempting to recast Harrison Ford's Han Solo, one of the most iconic pairings of actor and character in film history. The odds were stacked against "Solo" working at all, but you know how this guy feels about telling him the odds.

The resulting film is torn between delivering a fun space adventure and hitting every recognizable part of Han Solo's backstory, from important moments like meeting his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca and winning the Millennium Falcon from frenemy Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) to trivial ones like how he got his gun. The opening scene serves up this conflict in miniature — Howard directs a fleet, fun speeder chase through the broken down shipyards of young Han's (Alden Ehrenreich) home planet, set to a rousing and romantic new theme from composer John Williams, all bogged down by references to thermal detonators, the gold dice that will one day hang in the Falcon's cockpit, and the laughably unnecessary moment in which Han's clearly symbolic last name is literally bestowed upon him.

The second "Star Wars" film produced by Disney, 2016's bleak prequel "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" was beset by reshoots and behind-the-scenes shake ups just as "Solo" would be two years later. For audiences, that mostly translated to a number of scenes from the film's trailer not showing up in the final cut; the finished film hangs together remarkably well, a stark consideration of wartime sacrifice that affords no last-minute rescue for its doomed Rebel spies.

That tone is set in the film's opening scene, a flashback in which the pastoral life of young Jyn Erso (Beau Gadsdon in this scene, Felicity Jones as an adult) and her family is shattered by the arrival of Imperial troops. Her father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) was an Imperial scientist whose moral objections to working on the Death Star forced him into hiding, but now the Empire, represented by the slimy Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn at his most villainously charismatic), has come calling once again. Young Jyn flees to an underground bunker as her mother Lyra (Valene Kane) is shot down by Stormtroopers and Galen is taken away to finish his work on the deadly space station. The scene effectively lays out the narrative and emotional stakes of the rest of the film, even if it's also a prime example of the Disney prequel tendency to have everything important to a character happen all at once.

After two films of throat-clearing, 2005's "Episode III – Revenge of the Sith" finally lands viewers in the middle of an actual star war, as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker race to "rescue" Chancellor Palpatine from the clutches of Sith lord Count Dooku (horror icon Christopher Lee) and the four-armed Jedi-killing droid General Grievous. Little do they know, of course, that Palpatine is in fact Dooku's evil master, and that the kidnapping was staged as part of his years-long plan to rule the galaxy.

"Star Wars" rarely takes full advantage of the three-dimensionality of outer space, which makes it a pleasant surprise when the camera pans down from Obi-Wan and Anakin's solitary interceptors to settle on the gigantic battle raging just below them. The three years since "Attack of the Clones" have seen a noticeable jump in the quality of the film's effects, as well as in Ewan McGregor's hair, now a respectable, Alec Guinness-like side part. He gets the series catchphrase "I have a bad feeling about this" while Hayden Christensen gets to join Harrison Ford in telling us where the fun begins. Christensen still struggles with infusing Anakin with anything resembling charm or passion, but overall the film is invigorated by being the final entry in the prequel trilogy, at last able to show all the things audiences have been waiting for, from the fall of the Republic and the rise of Darth Vader to Yoda and Chewbacca being friends, apparently. 

In 1980, there was little sense of what a "Star Wars" film was, beyond what audiences had seen in "A New Hope." Movie sequels of the era, particularly sci-fi sequels, mostly gave audiences more of the same, but cheaper. The endless James Bond series offered variations on a theme with each new entry, while 1974's "The Godfather Part II," directed by George Lucas' friend and collaborator Francis Ford Coppola, showed a new path forward, a sequel that was both more epic and more intimate than its predecessor.

"Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back" takes its cues from both Bond and "The Godfather," establishing many elements — Luke Skywalker's parentage, the ability to move objects with the Force — that are essential to every "Star Wars" film that followed, while also being unafraid to challenge its audience with dark material. Its quick-and-dirty opening scene strikes a number of opposites from "A New Hope:" instead of a Star Destroyer in hot pursuit, we see one slowly, implacably launching probes across the galaxy; instead of the brown, dry deserts of Tatooine, we see the white frozen wasteland of Hoth. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) gets a hero's entrance in both films, but this time he's suddenly attacked and dragged away by a wild snow monster. The stakes are immediately set by the floating probe droid and the vicious Wampa attack: Our heroes are not safe here, and their achievements in the previous movie will not — cannot — save them.