What's The Most Star Wars Star Wars Movie?

We often rate Star Wars movies, what about rating by the most Star Wars of Star Wars movies?

My meaning of this isn't which Star Wars is filled with the most in-universe stuff, or the coolest in-universe stuff, or contains the types of narrative moments someone loves to get from Star Wars.

What I mean is: If we take the plots and strip them down to their generic forms, which Star Wars plot is so deeply Star Wars that its general plot doesn't make sense, and only makes sense when wrapped up inside of a Star Wars setting?

This will likely make more sense by just getting on with it.

A New Hope.

A rural farm boy joins a rebellion against a tyrannical empire after discovering a secret message. Along with a group of diverse allies, he saves a captive leader and stops the empire from destroying the rebellion in a decisive battle that alters the course of the conflict.​

Empire Strikes Back

After a critically lost battle, a heroic young fighter trains with a reclusive wise mentor while his allies are pursued across the galaxy. The hero suffers a moral blow when he attempts to kill the powerful enemy leader only to discover them to be his estranged father while being forced into retreat.​

Return of the Jedi

The young hero saves his allies from villainous clutches in a daring rescue mission. However, he is so focused on redeeming his estranged father who is second-in-command of a tyrannical empire, that he deserts his allies on the eve of a climactic battle to face his father, which leads to a deeply personal confrontation that culminates in his father's redemption when he sacrifices his life to save his son, the hero, by defeating his sworn emperor and ending his reign.​

The Phantom Menace

Two heroes are sent to resolve a trade dispute but uncover a larger threat from a sinister force. Their journey leads them to a gifted child, believed to be a prophesied savior, who they begin to mentor amidst the onset of a larger conflict that threatens stability.​

Attack of the Clones

A young hero is assigned to protect a senator from assassination attempts, while they themselves fall into a forbidden romance. Their mentor's investigation reveals a secret army and a conspiracy that ignites a war, with the heroes and their new allies at the forefront.​

Revenge of the Sith

A young hero, torn between loyalty and love, is seduced by the alure of power amidst a war. His lust for power transforms his passions into a tragic duel with his mentor and culminates in the rise of a tyrannical empire and the near extinction of his previous allies.​

The Force Awakens

A scavenging hero and a defected soldier from a rising tyrannical army join forces with an unsanctioned rebel force. Along their quest to recover a renowned leader for their forces, the hero becomes more aware of their special role in confronting the tyrannical army as discovery of the legendary leader they sought out nears.​

The Last Jedi

A young hero seeks training from a disillusioned legendary hero, while facing an impulsive antagonist, leading to revelations about her ordinary lineage and challenging previous beliefs. Meanwhile, her allies engage in a desperate struggle against a resurgent empire, culminating in unexpected alliances and betrayals that reshape their roles in the ongoing conflict as the impulsive antagonist kills his leader and takes control while they invite the hero to join them.​

The Rise of Skywalker

A young heroine confronts her lineage's dark legacy while seeking to end a resurgent empire's reign, leading her to a final confrontation with her estranged and long-thought dead grandfather who is the emperor of this reformed empire. Joined by allies in a decisive final battle, she and her antagonist, who have become close to each other over time, struggle to save each other from their deaths as they attempt to kill her grandfather and prevent his return to power.​

Rogue One

A group of unlikely rebels band together in a fully realized suicide mission and steal the plans of a tyrannical empire's devastating superweapon.​

Solo

A street rat joins a crew of outlaws, and finds new friends, to pull off a daring heist for a powerful crime syndicate which they end up betraying and, in the process, learns dangerous lessons as he double-crosses his own mentor who was planning to double-cross him.​

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The question is, again, which movie's plot makes the least intelligible sense without the Star Wars backing.
That is, we're playing a game here. As Lucas did to The Hidden Fortress, where he repurposed it into a new story, and where The Magnificent Seven was a retelling of The Seven Samurai, we're asking which movie is the hardest to transport out in this manner. By answering that, we effectively answer which Star Wars movie is the most Star Wars movie.

When considered through this lens, the order that appears to arrive is very different from how one might consider them in terms of favorites or popularity.

1. The Rise of Skywalker

This movie is basically nonsense without the Star Wars bracing to hold it up and would require extensive rework to migrate it out into another movie. The idea of a lost lineage to a newly reemerging evil grandfather while simultaneously struggling with a twin soul drawn across enemy lines stretches to the brink of indifference to most audiences at best as a standalone movie. It almost doesn't matter what we do or how we attempt to reposition things, this movie would hardly make sense. It's basically stuck being Star Wars and can never really become the inspiration for something else in like fashion that the Hidden Fortress became Star Wars.​

2. Return of the Jedi

This movie is only marginally more intelligible than the previous when removed from Star Wars housing and would equally require hefty revisioning to migrate it into another story. It's essentially not transportable. The best shot we'd have is making an old-style samurai movie out of it, but this too would require dumping a lot of the first half of the movie in exchange for something that ties the end into higher meaning as a standalone movie as we'd need to spend time setting up the ending. The best shot we'd have is a sort of Billy Budd set up of some kind, perhaps a political thriller of some kind, but we'd be dumping a lot to make it happen. Even then, it would likely barely stand up well at all, or be understandable in any truly dramatically meaningful manner. It's more or less stuck being in Star Wars and not being repurposed in years to come by some other filmmaker as fuel for their movie.​

3. The Empire Strikes Back

This would take some considerable dancing to position the relationship of the Father and Son into a place that is digestible in like fashion. We'd basically find ourselves most likely making a mob movie variation of The Godfather II out of it, while simultaneously embarrassingly trying to avoid the "I'm your father" revelation while still doing a paternal revelation that is central to the entire narrative. It's actually somewhat easier to accomplish than others below it, but because of the renowned instance of the reveal it would be almost impossible to avoid drawing attention to what it was.​

4. The Last Jedi

A little easier, but still somewhat clumsy plot when removed from Star Wars framework, but it could be made to work in another story given a bit of translated rework. There are some Chinese epic frameworks, for instance, where it could find room to exist. We don't even really need that, either, as The Sorcerer's Apprentice shows how the ideas in The Last Jedi can be applied in a different setup fairly well, balancing a love interest and ornery mentor into yet another magical fairytale.​

5. Revenge of the Sith

Things begin to get a little bit easier here as now we just, mostly, have to transport rising betrayal between a mentor and pupil. That's not hard. That's already been done before. The Karate Kid III, The Prestige, and even The Black Swan (loosely) do this to varying extents. Dashing in tragic backfiring damage of losing your loved one as you fall victim to wanting to kill your mentor is equally not too troubling of an angle to swing as there are a bunch of ways to cause familial death. For example, The Devil's Own can be looked at as a way to transport this kind of element out.​

6. The Force Awakens

This basic plot construct could be migrated to a few different story setups without a ton of heavy lifting. It mostly just requires an insecure lead, a defective soldier, a fascist regime, and a rebel resistance. That can be cobbled together in just about any given WW2 setting if we wanted, and even modern war movies could pull this off with a little restaging of who is who. Heck, Stargate is effectively this movie if we told it from the village kids' point of view.​

7. The Phantom Menace

This isn't terribly difficult. This is almost on par with asking if we can hide that we've made a Ben-Hur plot movie, and yeah, we can. We can put this plot into nearly anything we want without much effort to line things up. Harry Potter, Golden Compass, and on it goes, really. Anything where you take character and trek them along into a life they didn't aim for, and end up in the middle of a big 'ol world-shaking throw-down instead of a life of oppression.​

8. A New Hope

While this is my personal favorite, because what made this movie so catchy was that it repurposed so many older movies to form itself, it consequently falls very low on this list due to being very easy to transport into other movies. In fact, it has been transported into several other movies. The Last Starfighter (which... I still wonder if Rian Johnson was tipping a joke in his title at that), The Fifth Element, Independence Day, Stargate, Top Gun: Maverick... etc... can all be looked at (and have been) as A New Hope with some bit of tweaking here and there.​

9. Attack of the Clones

Though, it is somewhat more unique to have the forbidden love interest not involve love on opposite sides of the enemy line, a forbidden romance and political intrigue leading to war aren't exactly all that challenging to migrate to any story wrapping that we want. They've been done many times and will continue to be done.​

10. Solo

Heist life, seedy underbelly, betrayal, high stakes. This is very easily migrated to any story we want to. It's more or less a blend of The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and Diamonds are Forever (even borrowing its car chase), both of which operate on rather universal plot shticks so it's not very hard to swing this around and make yet another heist movie out of it.
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11. Rogue One

This is just a war plot. Big terrible super weapon, impossible direct access only set up, small band of folks, suicidal mission. It's basically the plot of The Guns of Navarone as a slant of Apocalypse Now in many respects as it is, so transporting it into yet another war time movie really wouldn't be that difficult. It's basically a very The Seven Samurai type of shtick (which is now being repurposed into Rebel Moon). Suicidal missions behind enemy lines are a basic trope of war movies, so this really is the easiest to repeat.
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And there you have it. My stab at listing the movies by how immutably they are Star Wars.

Cheers,
Jayson