May the 4th be with you! Here’s everything our critics have said about the ‘Star Wars’ franchise

May the 4th be with you! ‘Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace’ From left, Liam Neeson, Jake Lloyd and Ewan McGregor play Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, a young Anakin Skywalker and Jedi apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively, in “Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.” Former L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan — who reviewed all three prequel films — didn’t love “The Phantom Menace.” His review said it was obvious that the new addition to the franchise was “aimed at younger audiences” and noted that it “delivers lots of spectacle but is noticeably lacking in warmth and humor.” Review: The Prequel Has Landed ‘Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones’ Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker parry with each other as R2–D2 rolls along in “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. Commentary: How Disney’s ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ changes Princess Leia’s legacy forever ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Times television critic Robert Lloyd wrote that the 2014 expression of the “Star Wars” brand seemed “sent to hold your attention until the arrival of the seventh live-action film.” The cartoon series premiered on the Disney Channel and was “the first tangible fruit of the incorporation of ‘Star Wars’ into the Walt Disney empire, and a Disney cartoon is very much what this is.” “Though firmly in the Lucas tradition, this is also a Disney cartoon, for a Disney crowd and a Disney corporation — watching, you can almost feel the plastic and the plush — and whatever the characters are up to, however cute or sentimental the business, it is smartly designed and cinematically staged, and not hard to enjoy.” Review: Disney Is the Driving Force of ‘Star Wars Rebels’ ‘Andor’ From left, Diego Luna, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Faye Marsay play Cassian Andor, Arvel Skeen and Vel Sartha, respectively, in “Andor.” The critically hailed Disney+ series “Andor” tells the story of how Cassian Andor transforms from disaffected, self-centered thief to committed resistance fighter willing to die for the cause, Brown wrote. And what initially seems like a zippy stand-alone adventure soon reveals itself as a grimly exciting prequel to the first, or should I say fourth, film in the series, ‘Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.’ ” Review: ‘Rogue One’ Adds an Uneven but Thrilling Wrinkle to the Mythology of ‘Star Wars’ ‘Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope’ Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, left, and Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the original 1977 “Star Wars” film, now known as “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.” The first-ever “Star Wars” film from director Lucas — originally titled simply “Star Wars” — was heralded by the late Times critic Charles Champlin as “the year’s most razzle-dazzling family movie, an exuberant and technically astonishing space adventure in which the galactic tomorrows of ‘Flash Gordon’ are the setting for conflicts and events that carry the suspiciously but splendidly familiar ring of yesterday’s westerns, as well as yesterday’s ‘Flash Gordon’ serials.” Review: ‘Star Wars’ Hails the Once and Future Space Western ‘Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back’ Darth Vader, left, and Luke Skywalker in a pivotal scene from “The Empire Strikes Back.” Champlin really got into the spirit of the Force, praising both the first film and this one for their optimism and more: “‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ like all superior fantasies, have the quality of parable, not only on good and evil but on attitudes toward life and personal deportment and there is something very like a moral imperative in the films’ view of hard work, determination, self-improvement, concentration and idealism,” he wrote. ‘Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi’ John Boyega plays Finn in a scene from “Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi.” The series’ eighth official episode, directed by Rian Johnson, was hailed as “easily its most exciting iteration in decades” by Chang, who described it as “the first flat-out terrific ‘Star Wars’ movie since 1980’s ‘The Empire Strikes Back.’” “It seizes upon Lucas’ original dream of finding a pop vessel for his obsessions — Akira Kurosawa epics, John Ford westerns, science-fiction serials — and fulfills it with a verve and imagination all its own.” Review: ‘The Last Jedi’ Brings Emotion, Exhilaration and Surprise Back to the ‘Star Wars’ Saga ‘Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker’ Daisy Ridley plays Rey in “Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker.” “The Rise of Skywalker,” the frenzied big-bang conclusion of the franchise’s third movie trilogy, “offers itself up in the spirit of a ‘Last Jedi’ corrective, a return to storytelling basics, a nearly 2½-hour compendium of everything that made you fall in love with ‘Star Wars’ in the first place,” Chang wrote in 2019.