Admit it: as a child, and possibly as an adult, you kept a careful ranking of the coolness of various Star Wars characters and ships. Here are some of my own Star Wars coolness rankings (1=most cool, 10 or higher=least cool):
Imperial soldiers:
- TIE Fighter Pilot
- Imperial Guard (the red-robed Emperor’s bodyguards)
- Biker Scout
- AT-AT Pilot
- Snowtrooper
- Stormtrooper officer (dunno if they’re actually officers, but they’re the ones with the colored badges on Tatooine in the first movie)
- Stormtrooper
- Black-uniformed Imperial officer
- Grey-uniformed Imperial officer
- Death Star superlaser gunner (with the goofy pointy helmets, who push the buttons that fire the Death Star’s main laser)
Spaceship Coolness Rankings (1=most, 12=least):
- Super Star Destroyer
- Slave I
- B-Wing
- TIE Interceptor
- Millenium Falcon
- Star Destroyer
- TIE Advanced (Darth Vader’s TIE)
- X-Wing
- A-Wing (possibly deserves slot #8 above–it’s a tough call)
- Y-Wing
- TIE Fighter
- Cloud City Pod Car
The Bounty Hunter Coolness List:
- Boba Fett (of course)
- IG-88
- Boushh (“Because he’s holding a thermal detonator!”)
- Bossk
- Greedo
- 4-LOM
- Dengar (starting with Dengar, they start getting uncool fast)
- Zuckuss
And the Imperial Officer Coolness Rankings:
- General Veers
- Admiral Piett
- Admiral Motti (“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure
up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels’ hidden fort–“) - Captain Needa (he gets coolness points for dying in a spectacular manner)
- Moff Jerjerrod
- Governor Tarkin
- Admiral Ozzel
What have I missed? Pick a category I haven’t covered, and let’s see your ratings!
by 
by request…here’s my ranking of the Rebellion’s Coolest:
Coolest Rebellion soldiers:
1. Wedge
2. That guy who talks to Luke while Luke is getting ready to blow up the Death Star in A New Hope (though that might also be Wedge)
That’s all I know.
Coolest Rebellion spaceships:
1. The Millennium Falcon
That’s the only one I know.
Coolest Rebellion officers:
Um…all the main characters?
That lady who was talking to everybody before they headed off to Endor didn’t seem very cool.
I have to say, I think the Xwing is the coolest, but then I’m a fighter jock kinda guy, and stay away from the bomber weenies and the tanker toads.
Sure, the Death Star was cool, but what was it blown up by?
The discussion of cool Rebellion fighter pilots begins and ends with one person:
1. Porkins
http://www.sammler-event.de/porkins.jpg
Skywalker? Pansy.
Worst space battle advice:
1. “Eject!” (Given to the pilot who is in the middle of insisting that he’s all right when he explodes in his ship.)
Even as a young kid watching those movies I had the sense to know that ejecting into the cold vacuum of space was not too better an alternative to being turbo-laser fodder…
I would argue with #12 on your spaceship coolness rankings. The pod cars always seemed pretty lame to me.
In its place, I would add one of:
– Medical Frigate (the one from ESB)
– Imperial Shuttle
– TIE Bomber
Did you add Admiral Ozzel to the list just because he’s one of the Imperial Officers with names? Because pretty much everything he did was stupid. So I guess it’s cool that he made an idiot out of himself.
Category: Droids
1. Probot
2. Power Droid (the ‘gonk’ droid)
3. R2 (before we found out he could fly)
4. IG-88
5. That little black thingy that skitters around the Death Star, and somehow makes it over the ledges between doors.
6. 2-1B
7. R5-D4 (“[whine]This R2 unit’s got a bad motivator!![/whine]”)
8. The droid in jabba’s palace that was torturing the power droid.
9. That robotic arm that was helping Han fix the Falcon in ESB
10. C-3PO
11. That drunk-looking robot in the sand crawler in Star Wars
I realized that I missed three important droids in my list. I’ll just list them here, rather than try to re-order the list:
– The interrogation droid
– The fake C3PO from Cloud City (“nice to see a familiar face”)
– The black C3PO from the Death Star
While I’m not going to re-order the list, I will say that the two 3POs would be higher on the list than the real one, and I’m not sure about the interrogation droid. I think at one point its interro-needle instilled fear in me as I watched the movie, but it seems a little goofy now.
OK, good comments all. Now to deal with this troublesome Joel:
1) I actually put the Pod Car at #12 because it was the lamest spaceship I could think of. So I think we’re in agreement there. I actually thought the Imperial Shuttle was pretty cool–I’d put it around #10ish. The TIE Bomber at least looked sorta cool, so I’d put it around there as well. And yes, the Medical Frigate sucks (or maybe I’m just sick of having to constantly defend it in Rogue Leader).
2) Admiral Ozzel is on the list because he died in a cool and well-deserved fashion. And as I learned from a visit to the official Star Wars site, every single Imperial officer in the movies has a name, and undoubtedly a novel based on his adventures.
3) 2-1B… is he the Death Star Droid? He ruled. IG-88 should be higher on your list, methinks. And what about those ridiculous-looking multiple-spindly-armed round droids on the Tatooine moisture farm?
Apart from those comments, you have done well.
2-1B is the medical droid that tried to drown Luke in the bacta tank, and then later poked and prodded his new hand with a needle. Is it a coincidence that Luke became less whiny after getting worked over by the medical bot? I think not, and I think we owe that droid a debt of gratitude for it.
Also, 2-1B looks pretty creepy.