John Boyega has had a complicated relationship with the Star Wars franchise over the last few years; although he’s obviously acknowledged the way the sequel trilogy of movies helped bring him to international fame, he’s also been unabashed about expressing that the Disney movies’ non-white characters ended up sidelined in favor of serving the stories of Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren.
None of which has stopped Boyega—who would be out on the promo trail right now, stumping for his new sci-fi comedy They Cloned Tyrone, were it not for the SAG-AFTRA strike—from putting forward some serious, and seriously spicy, thoughts on Episodes VII through IX this week. Specifically, Boyega did a pre-taped interview with First We Feast’s Truth Or Dab: Rapid Fire, where he fielded a series of quick Hot Ones-style questions, the most controversial of which was when he was asked to rank the three Star Wars movies he appeared in.
Boyega, who’s charming throughout video, appears positively gleeful at the prospect of stirring a bit of franchise shit up, and rattles off his rankings with the ease of someone who had this hierarchy close at hand. Number one, with a bullet? The Force Awakens, “most definitely the best.” The Rise Of Skywalker comes in second. “And then the worst—in the most respectful sense—is Episode VIII. But they’re all lovely.” Boyega then shoots a bit of side-eye for the benefit of the camera, suggesting he wasn’t entirely enamored of his character Finn’s very long side trip to Canto Bight in Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.
So, there you have it: A personal and respectful ranking of these three films, which will definitely not cause the entire internet to implode in the manner that basically every argument about the relative merits of the sequel trilogy has over the last decade or so of online movie-going fandom.