Please refrain from hurling profanity at me in the comments. I am a fragile man and don’t do well with criticism. I’m well aware that the consensus on this topic says that the Star Wars films are in a league of their own. Personally, I like Star Wars, but as a whole, I have always found the movies overrated. In my eyes, I don’t think they surpass George Lucas’s other blockbuster series, Indiana Jones. 

Luke Skywalker is a less compelling protagonist than a handsome archeologist who hates snakes, seduces hot women, and evaporates Nazis. Mark Hamill is a fine actor but overall is carried by the incredible settings crafted by George Lucas. Luke on his own is an interesting character, but once you strip away the lightsaber and The Force, he doesn’t bring anything special. 

Indiana, on the other hand, is a complex and interesting character, and Harrison Ford delivers an inspired and legendary performance in every part of the trilogy. Ford, unlike Hamill, elevates Lucas’s writing and every piece of dialogue is nailed.  

Star Wars is undoubtedly great, but there are definitely weird parts to the movie. First of all, why is Han Solo best friends with a giant bear who speaks no English? Also, I have no idea why they gave C3PO the ability to speak and not the coolest character in the whole series (R2D2). Leia, Han Solo, and Obi-Wan are all good side characters but don’t lift a finger to Brody, Sallah, or Henry Jones Sr. Also how freaking good was Sean Connery in the Last Crusade? 

I was first introduced to Connery with his appearances on Celebrity Jeopardy! (I Garfunkled your mother Trebec) and loved his performance in The Last Crusade. While I do enjoy laser swords smacking against each other, there isn’t a lightsaber battle throughout Star Wars that can lift a candle to Sean Connery running at birds with an umbrella causing a plane to crash.

Also, we can’t dive into this discussion without mentioning the fact that Luke Skywalker KISSED HIS OWN SISTER. That’s weird. If you like Star Wars, that means you like incest, and I can’t be friends with you. I get that Indiana and his dad made out with the same girl, but that’s peanuts compared to macking on your own flesh and blood.

Throughout the Indiana Jones trilogy, there are great adventures where Indiana must get to a precious artifact before it falls into the wrong hands: a magic stone that keeps children under a spell of slavery, the Ark of the Covenant which would make the Nazis unbeatable in battle, and the goblet of Christ which would give everlasting life to the Nazis. 

Lastly, in just about every Star Wars it seems that George Lucas makes another Death Star appear out of thin air in every movie. Maybe the Empire has a Death Star tree that has those things churning out, but I don’t think so. 

I know that this is an controversial position, but I really believe that Indiana Jones is a better movie series. Like pineapple and ham on a pizza, Indiana Jones is wholly underrated and I am not scared to stand up and defend it.

Before I start, I have to get something out of the way: Please hurl criticism towards my opponent Samuel Bartelt Gardner. He has an opinion that differs from my own and that is not allowed on the internet. His email is [email protected]. He plays football and is self-conscious about his feminine hips and huge ears.

A high concept fantasy space opera and a story about an American archaeologist might not seem like they have a lot in common, but the more you think about it, the more similarities you will see. Things like them sharing the same writer and composer. Or them both having Harrison Ford as a key cast member. But there is one key difference: one is terrible and one is Star Wars.

Even though the quality between the series is the biggest difference, it is far from the only one. For starters, lightsabers are way cooler than whips. The crack of a whip might be cool, but it has nothing on the immensely satisfying crackling of the ignition of a lightsaber. Space age weapons just make for way better fights than normal weapons. 

Now some of you might point to the admittedly quite basic choreography of fights, such as Darth Vader vs Obi-Wan, as a weakness, but I think there is a beauty in the simplicity of the fight. What this fight lacks in both choreography and soundtrack, especially when compared to the later installments in the franchise, it more than makes up for with its gravity and dialogue. Even still, the worst Star Wars fight is miles ahead of anything in the grounded and dull combat of Indiana Jones.

My personal favorite part of Star Wars (and any story, for that matter) is the villain. And outside of maybe Bowser and The Joker, there is no antagonist that is more iconically evil in all of entertainment than Darth Vader. Whether it’s his sleek black helmet and suit or his foreboding, monotone and robotic voice, everything about him screams evil. It might surprise you that he only has a total of 34 minutes of screen time across the original trilogy, but I love this decision. It brings a lot more weight to his scenes and makes you understand just how big of a deal and how evil he is. Do you know what else is evil? That’s right, you guessed it: math.

If you add up the Rotten Tomato scores and average them out for both Indiana Jones and Star Wars, you get an average of 89% for Star Wars and a measly 83% for Indiana Jones. Now I’m just a regular guy, so I can understand why you might disagree with me. But disagreeing with both expert critics and math? 

Before I lay my case to rest I have to address the elephant in the room. Yeah, Luke kissed his own sister. So what? Everyone makes mistakes. They didn’t know. Indiana and his dad made out with the same girl. That’s super weird. I rest my case.