u/Regular_Number5377

Kill me.

Ok, so not to jump on the recent bandwagon of rankings, but I just got done watching the entire saga with my kids and I have some thoughts I wanted to get down.

My first and main takeaway from rewatching the whole series is that I am, in fact, a Star Wars fan. I was surprised to find that I didn’t actually dislike any of the movies, and even the ones lowest on my rankings which before this I would have labelled as outright ‘bad’ have some very strong redeeming qualities. Overall I’m glad every movie in the series exists, even whilst accepting that some are deeply flawed.

1. A New Hope. ESB has been my favourite for a very long time, but on the rewatch ANH actually takes the win. It really is the perfect self contained Hero’s Journey. The characters are amazing, the world building is incredible, and the fact that the plot is so expansive but still manages to tell a great self contained story is astonishing. The only thing which could be improved is the Lightsaber combat, but that’s a small element of the story in this one. I would also pay money to scrub some of Lucas’s awful late additions of CGI.

2. The Empire Strikes Back. Still holds up as the most exciting and dramatic entry, and basically is the genesis for most of the lore of Star Wars via the scenes with Yoda. The settings are absolutely peak, from Hoth, to Dagobah, to the asteroid belt, to Bespin - nearly every scene of this movie has become a stand alone pop culture reference, and for very good reason.

3. Revenge of the Sith. Easily the best of the prequels, It still has some of the issues which plagued AOTC with the complete lack of chemistry between Anakin and Padme, however the two amazing assets this one has are Palpatine and the Lightsaber combat. This film is basically the Palpatine show, we see him in full Machiavellian mode, transitioning from grandfatherly politician to maniacal space wizard before our eyes, and it’s fantastic. The Lightsaber combat in this one is an absolute treat, from Anakins duel with Dooku, to Obi-Wans fight with Grievous, and peaking at Obi-Wan vs Anakin, which is hands down the best Lightsaber battle in the whole series in my opinion.

4. Return of the Jedi - this one slipped out of the top three for me on this watch through, I think it just feels too goofy in parts when compared to the first two. It’s still a great film with a lot going for it including Jabbas palace and the final confrontation with Vader and the Emperor, but yeah, I kind of wish they hadn’t ended on the Ewoks, watching a division of imperial Stormtroopers and AT-AT’s get systematically taken apart by 3ft teddy bears really retrospectively damages the intimidation factor the Empire has in the early movies. My kids loved it though so perhaps it’s just an age thing.

5. The Last Jedi - I swear I’m not trying to be all edgy and contrarian here - on rewatching this one, I was amazed to find I really enjoyed it this time. I don’t actually hate the characterisation of Luke here, he’s clearly very powerful but full of regret, and he has some great scenes if you can look past the blue milk. I also think that Rey and Kylo’s scenes are mostly very well done, the throne room fight is the best lightsaber battle of the Sequels, although that’s not saying a huge amount. I like this one particularly because of how determined it was to strike out and do something different from what was expected from a Star Wars movie, especially after TFA seemed to establish that they were just copying the OT again. It loses points for its story being the start of making Poe and Finn completely redundant - Finns jaunt to Canto Blight achieved nothing, and Poe being kept in the dark by Holdo for no good reason is an entirely unnecessary conflict and pointlessly threatens everyone’s lives. Unfortunately, there is a big issue with this film in that it closed off a lot of plot points and didn’t leave a clear story path for the next film to pick up, and that had a serious impact on its sequel, but to be honest I consider that a wider failing of Disney rather than an issue with this film in particular. It’s often said that TLJ is a good stand alone film but a horrible middle part of a trilogy, and that’s accurate, if ROS had managed to stick the landing, this one would be remembered a lot more fondly.

6. Rogue One - a very solid, more grown up Star Wars movie which tells a tight story. To be totally honest, I loved this in the cinema but on rewatch in the context of the whole saga it left me a bit cold this time, and it was my kids least favourite of the series, mainly due to the lack of Jedi. It is a very solid experience though with an excellent third act, and I very much respect its balls for being able to kill off all its main characters, creating a rare example of genuine peril in this franchise. The Vader scenes throughout but especially in the final 10 minutes absolutely boost the whole movie up a notch.

7. The Mandalorian and Grogu - this one is a lot of fun, it’s a relatively low stakes adventure movie with equal parts badass fight scenes and Grogu being cute, it’s impossible not to like it. The reason it’s down at number 7 is primarily due to its pacing, it very much does feel like three episodes of the TV show slapped together, and you can even kind of tell where the climax of one episode happens and the build up of another begins, and this feels weird in a feature length movie. It’s low stakes also mean it’s naturally less epic that the others. Other than that though, it’s a great film.

8. The Force Awakens - I forgot how much I liked this one, it’s introductions to the new trio of Rey, Finn, and Poe are really strong, and it makes you sad to know that they do nothing interesting with two out of the three of them going forward. The film is basically pure fan service, with tons of returning characters, and that’s OK, but it takes the nostalgia a bit too far and ends up feeling like a straight remake of A New Hope (orphan with mysterious lineage on a desert planet ends up finding out they have mystical abilities and escapes the planet on the Milleniulm Falcon, meets a wise mentor who gives them a lightsaber, then confronts a masked Sith Lord on a space station which has the power to destroy planets which the rebels successfully blow up.). Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain, they were always going to have to deal with comparisons to Vader, so getting ahead of that by making it a key pillar of the character was a smart move. Overall it is a good movie, but it loses minor points for how derivative it is of ANH, and major points for how its plot effectively renders most of the events of the OT completely moot, this was a terrible call which set the Sequels on a very shaky path from the beginning.

9. Solo - Solo is not a bad film by any means, it’s actually quite enjoyable more often than not, but more than any other film on this list it feels like it’s just kind of ‘there’. It’s a fun small scale heist movie with strong performances (particularly in the scenes between Han and Lando, which do set up the dynamic we later see in ESB quite well), however it’s constantly hampered by the feeling that it’s telling a story that really just didn’t need to be told. The plot is overstuffed for what it is as well, the whole arc with Han’s love story was completely unnecessary and just serves to pad out the runtime. Whilst the lead actor is good, you never really buy that this is the same Han from the other movies. Overall it’s an entertaining enough film that doesn’t hit any massive peaks or terrible lows. It gets extra credit for including one scene where there is a standoff, and they make very clear that Han absolutely, definitely, shot first.

10. The Phantom Menace - TPM is a wildly inconsistent film, it absolutely has some great parts such as Duel of the Fates and the Pod Racing, but the overall plot, writing, acting, and CGI are all really sub par. Personally I would have preferred if they had aged Anakin up a lot to already being a young Jedi Knight, and the end of this film could have been the start of the Clone Wars. That would mean they could start the romantic subplot between Anakin and Padme early and AOTC wouldn’t have had to spend half its runtime forcing an awkward romance plotline from scratch. Some great actors are in here trying to do their best, but overall it’s a movie which feels like you are slogging through a lot of bad bits to get to the handful of great scenes. It introduces Darth Maul, who is the single coolest character ever added to the series, but unfortunately it also introduces Jar Jar, which largely cancels that out. Again though I remember liking it a lot more as a kid, and my kids loved it this time, so perhaps this is also an age thing.

11. Rise of Skywalker - ROS is the most structurally flawed movie of the series by far. It’s biggest flaw is not entirely its fault, it is the third act in a trilogy where the story has been left with nowhere interesting to go by the previous films and it has to just make up basically a brand new one. It chooses to do this by clumsily retconning a lot of what TLJ did, and randomly throwing in Palpatine and an absolutely absurd number of Star Destroyers all armed with Death Star lasers because why not, all built in secret and crewed by millions of people Palpatine apparently pulled directly out of his ass. It’s not good, and there were definitely far better places this should and could have gone. On the bright side however, I do think ROS handles Carrie Fishers death about as well as they could have under the circumstances, the scenes between Kylo and Rey are again very strong, the action overall is top tier, and the chemistry between the main trio is still there - they remain enjoyable to watch on screen even when wading through increasingly ridiculous plot points. I also think it deserves props specifically for the scene where Ben is talking to Han and he isn’t quite able to get out the words ‘I love you’, and Han just cuts him off with ‘I know’ which was a genuinely touching callback. Overall it’s a movie full of good elements that is massively hobbled by an atrocious overarching plot.

12. Attack of the Clones - this film is what people think about when they say the prequels are bad overall. The acting between Anakin and Padme in this one is honestly painful to watch, and the characterisation of Anakin as a creepy stalker was a very odd choice. The action is pretty lacking as well, with several scenes feeling like they came out of a PS2 game. The film is at its strongest when it’s focusing on Obi-Wan, and his scenes on Kamino where we learn the origins of the clones are the most interesting part of the film. The climax is notable as it has the most Jedi fighting on screen at once, but it’s a brief sequence, and is overshadowed by the next scene where they turn Yoda from a wise old mentor into a tiny backflipping pinball. Overall it is kind of the opposite to ROS, the overarching story is cool and interesting, but the acting, pacing, and action scenes let it down badly.

Got 3/4 of the way through changing the rear brakes yesterday when I came up against these buggers, they need rewound to compress rather than pushed in like a normal caliper piston, and I didn’t have the special tool for that. I managed to get a bit of leverage on it with a small chisel and rewound it just enough to get the new brake pads in, but it added an extra 2 hours to the job. Doing the front brakes next week, does anyone know are they the same as standard or are they the normal ones you can compress with a C-clamp?

Really need some help here - trying to do the rear brakes, but I’ve been really struggling to figure out where the best place to jack up the rear of the car is. Everywhere online says the rear differential which I was dubious about to start with, however I jacked up on that earlier but the car slipped off the jack and it looks like it may have caused some damage to the diff, not trying that again as I aged about 10 years when it fell.

Looking to figure out if there is either another point on the rear that I can safely jack the whole back of the car up from, or alternatively is there a way to jack from the pinch welds along the side of the car so I can still get an axle stand under the jacking point on the sill and do one side at a time?