The Empire Strikes Back

Essential, and this is the page the whole ordering argument is about. There is one line near the end of this film that is the most famous reveal in cinema, and chronological order spends three films setting it up before you get here. Watched second, it is a revelation. Watched sixth, it is a recap of something you have already been shown, delivered to a character who is the only person in the room still surprised.

The film is also the one that proved the series could be something other than an adventure. Lucas handed directing to Irvin Kershner, who had taught him at film school, and the script went through Leigh Brackett, a veteran of Hawks westerns and pulp science fiction, before Lawrence Kasdan. What came back is slower, funnier and considerably crueller: the heroes lose every engagement, the relationship is built out of bickering that never resolves, and the film ends with one lead frozen, one maimed and the fleet scattered.

Dagobah is the part that has aged best. A training sequence is standard; a training sequence where the teacher is a puppet, the lesson is that the student is impatient and unteachable, and the student fails the central test and is told so, is not. The cave sequence does more with a mask and a jump cut than most films manage with an hour.

It is the best-looking of the three, with the snow walkers done in stop motion and the asteroid chase assembled out of model work and a potato. Watch it second. There is no good argument for anything else.