Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

We can debate forever about which Star Wars films are good and which are bad, but regardless of the endless loops those conversations can mire us in, I think it’s clear The Empire Strikes Back revealed that this galaxy far, far away was worth revisiting, that its tales could be the stuff of both grounded, human intimacy and epic mythmaking. Here, the fairly shallow archetypal characters introduced in the original Star Wars (or, if you must, A New Hope) become far more defined and real. It may be the “slowest” entry in the original trilogy but to me this is its greatest asset, as it’s in its most lowkey moments that we really see the bonds these characters have forged.

It’s the fact that we get this time to grow attached to them as people who do things like navigate romantic longing or risk it all for a friend (“Then I’ll see you in hell!”) that makes it so painful when they find themselves betrayed in the end, that makes Han Solo’s “I know” one of the all-time great movie lines, that makes Vader’s revelation of Luke’s identity so shattering. Its ambiguous ending, which finds our heroes in dire straits and staring down an uncertain future, is deliciously bold for a major franchise film, and the visual design of that climactic lightsaber battle in the carbonite facility on Cloud City is second to none. Okay, I’ll say it: Star Wars doesn’t get any better than this. — Carolyn Petit