The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. There is no consensus to move the articles at this time. Thank you everyone for your input and time you put into this discussion. Dr vulpes (Talk) 02:31, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace → The Phantom MenaceThe Phantom Menace
• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones → Attack of the ClonesAttack of the Clones
• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith → Revenge of the SithRevenge of the Sith
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens → The Force AwakensThe Force Awakens
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi → The Last JediThe Last Jedi
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker → The Rise of SkywalkerThe Rise of Skywalker

– The film project prefers using official names when possible. It lists various caveats, multiple of which apply here, but perhaps most importantly, official sources don't even agree on the names. Among the sources recommended by WP:NCF, The AFI titles Episode I "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace", which is a different punctuation than ours, and the British Film Institute titles Episode VII "Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens", which is the style we use for the prequels. Given this, as well as Lucasfilm's position (detailed below), it is hard to even say with certainty that the current titles are the official ones. Now, the caveats:

Common names – Sometimes, it is acceptable to use an alternative common name that is more concise or recognizable.

All of these films, as well as The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, should be treated the same. Almost nobody would be able to figure out on their own which films use just the subtitle, which films use the Star Wars: Episode Y – XXXX format, and which ones use just Star Wars: XXXX. Reliable sources pretty much always treat them as a set, without distinguishing between them. CNN uses Episode Y: XXXX, ABC News uses Star Wars Episode Y: XXXX, The New York Times uses just the subtitles, the Los Angeles Times uses Star Wars: Episode Y – XXXX, and The Hollywood Reporter uses just the subtitle. This doesn't necessarily indicate what the common name is, but it does suggest that whatever it is, it should be the same for all of them. As far as what the common name is, at least in my experience, I have most often seen these films referred to by just the subtitle, but really any consistent standard would be better than what we've got.

Branding subtitles – Subtitles and possessives used for brand recognition may be omitted for concision, unless they are being used for natural disambiguation.

This especially is the big reason why I would prefer just the subtitles. This is a quintessential case of a possessive used for brand recognition. For Star Wars films, Rogue One already drops the branding subtitle A Star Wars Story, and there are several examples of films dropping the branding at the beginning of the title, including Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, as well as the National Lampoon films Animal House and Van Wilder. And removing them does make the title much more concise; in particular, using the subtitles for the prequels cuts the total character count by over half.

Lucasfilm: this isn't an official caveat, but I do think it's important to note. These articles are titled this way simply based on whatever naming scheme Lucasfilm just so happened to be using at the time. When making the original trilogy, they used just subtitles. When making the prequel trilogy, they used the prequel naming scheme for the prequels as well as the original trilogy. When making the sequels, they used the sequel naming scheme for the other two trilogies. Now, they're using the format Star Wars: XXXX (Episode Y) (see: starwars.com, Disney+), and they do that for all the films. Lucasfilm has never considered these films to have differently formatted titles. It doesn't make any sense for us to have the titles frozen to whatever they happened to use at the time. The original naming scheme was just subtitles, which I prefer, but they definitely should all be the same. Ladtrack (talk) 22:07, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I'm gonna oppose this based on common name.. the prequels and sequels are always referred to using the Star Wars prefix and in fact it's confusing to not include them... while the original films were marketed without the Star Wars prefix and are commonly known by the general public by those names. I don't think maintaining consistency across the franchise or retitling every time Lucasfilm changes their minds is as important as sticking with what the films are commonly known as. Spanneraol (talk) 22:53, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You really think the average person will know that one film is called The Empire Strikes Back and another is called Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and that yet another is called Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Even though journalists can't even make that distinction? Ladtrack (talk) 02:38, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These articles have been around for many years and it hasn't been a problem before now.. why the need to change things? People know what they are called. Spanneraol (talk) 03:06, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Use just the subtitle for all, including A New Hope. The general public does not remember which films used which naming scheme. O.N.R. ^(talk) 21:14, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Even if you get rid of the episode number, you have to keep the Star Wars prefix.. definitely dont just use New Hope. Spanneraol (talk) 21:17, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That film has a long, complicated title history and the central issue there is different. Given that, as well as how many times that page has been proposed for a move, I think that it would be better for that question to be handled in its own RM. Ladtrack (talk) 00:23, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Not "A New Hope". I think film articles should use the official original titles from the original release. Retroactively renaming the article to something like "Star Wars: A New Hope" can be disingenuous, inaccurate and jeopardizes the seriousness and encyclopedic purpose of Wikipedia. Remember, "Star Wars" is the official original title. Joy040207 (talk) 21:51, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per Spanneraol. It has been this way for many years. This has been discussed before, and the current naming was the result. There are also a multitude of redirects in place for anyone who may know a film as The Phantom Menace or A New Hope.— TAnthony^Talk 01:09, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not so much the ability to find the articles that I'm concerned with - as you've said, the redirects do a good job of that and finding the article would be neither better or worse with the pages moved - but rather them being more concise, as well as consistent with each other. Ladtrack (talk) 21:11, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment/question - Responses have included "These articles have been around for many years" and that "this has been discussed before". Stipulated. But unless prior consensus/conversion was reached, like, last week, I don't think "we've talked about this already" is an automatic "let's keep things as they are." Is it possible someone can point Ladtrack (talk · contribs) -- who's been a registered user only since July -- to the archived conversation from way back when? Knowing our community, I'm sure the discussion was frought and is a huge wall of words. I wonder: if there we no prior consensus, or we were making Wikipedia anew today, would we reach the same consensus? How much of the prior lengthy discussion was in the midst of new films coming out, the acquisition and branding still in flux, etc.? --EEMIV (talk) 11:50, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I would appreciate that. I looked myself and the best I could find is this back in 2016 but that proposal is just changing the punctuation, not removing the possessive. There are also a variety of (failed) proposals to move The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to include possessives, but that is not what I am trying to do. To the best of my knowledge, the titles I am proposing have not been significantly discussed before, which is why I am finding "it's always been this way" a little hard to swallow. Ladtrack (talk) 15:59, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose all: the original trilogy films were widely known without the prefix or episode number when they came out. The prequel trilogy films were known and marketed with full names, while the sequel trilogy films mainly used only the prefix and subtitles. Current titles are accurate for their respective release periods, just because Lucasfilm and Disney decide to change their marketing methods from time to time, we don't have to go around renaming all their past projects to be consistent. Recognizablity isn't at problem here, current titles would come under the Naturalness of WP:CRITERIA. Vestrian24Bio 16:29, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, largely per nom. The inconsistency is misleading insofar as it does not reflect any important difference in real world usage. Srnec (talk) 00:25, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Leaning toward supporting the notion of simply subtitle for all except SW/ANH, which might need some extra consideration. The naming criteria policy includes elements of concision and naturalness. I don't think too many folks are reaching for the em dash to search for a prequel, or typing out the Episode _, when looking for one of these articles. (Side wondering: do Wikipedia's logs tell us which of the various redirects to an article are the mostly heavily hit? If that's what people are searching or clicking on, that might be instructive.) The concision bit of trimming bits off is compelling too, along with the opportunity to address the consistency item from the naming criteria. I think to a general audience, the subtitle is also sufficiently recognizable. The ample redirects help everyone land in the right place as-is, I know, and what I don't know are any guidelines around actual title vis-a-vis a web of redirects that help people land in the right place. --EEMIV (talk) 15:23, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @EEMIV, we can use the redirect views gadget to see, which one's getting more hits, I'll post the links here. Vestrian24Bio 16:30, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @EEMIV, here are the links for redirect views:

  • Original: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
  • Prequels: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith
  • Sequels: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker

  Vestrian24Bio 03:23, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for the data. Just FYI, some of the links provided here are throwing up error messages or otherwise acting weird, so these ones should hopefully work better: The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker. Also worth noting is that the articles for some of these films have previously had different titles, so their pageviews will be skewed higher because of views that were recorded during that period, as well as internal links that were left over afterwards. As far as I can tell, this is true of any of the first six films that are formatted as Star Wars Episode X: YYYY, as well as Star Wars: Episode VIII/IX for the last two sequels. There may be others as well. Ladtrack (talk) 04:08, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I think there are good points all around, and it would be nice to have the article titles as concise as possible. One thing I have not seen anyone mention are the secondary topics for some of these films where there may be a downstream effect because they share the current name, such as Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (soundtrack) or Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (video game). So we may want to consider WP:CONSISTENT in this sense too, not just across the films. I agree with Vestrian24Bio's point that the titles reflect the release periods, and the derivative media tend to reflect that too. At the same time, I do recognize that all these films' titles are recognizable on their own (and would still be primary topics too). Just food for thought about the derivative media. Erik (talk | contrib) 16:46, 3 October 2025 (UTC)s[reply]
• Support - I was going to oppose this, but after reviewing the articles I like the concise title. Including "Star Wars" or "Episodes" just muddies the water. This will bring some standard to most of these films. Nemov (talk) 18:43, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment – I would like to bring up the other Star Wars projects besides the main trilogies, because they are similarly inconsistent. Consider the article titles for Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story. Additionally, consider the article titles for Andor (TV series) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (miniseries) versus Star Wars: Ahsoka, Star Wars: The Acolyte, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, and possibly Star Wars Tales (TV anthology). It doesn't really seem like we have a formal rule in place, just whoever names the article first gets to keep it that way. I like the idea of concise titles (the Ahsoka one genuinely shocked me), but I also like the idea of keeping the episodic distinction for the nine central films. I just wanted to bring up that we have other problems with naming for Star Wars projects in general. TNstingray (talk) 23:54, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  These are mostly formatted this way for purposes of natural disambiguation, and while I think some of the TV shows could/should be moved around, I don't think this problem applies to the films, because they're all the primary topic for the subtitle already. To give you an example of what I mean about natural disambiguation:

  Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story have differently formatted titles because one is shortened for brevity, while the other cannot be. Ideally, the second film would be titled Solo, but it cannot be because it is not the primary topic for plain Solo. The title would then have to be "Solo (2018 American film)" which would be very bad, so instead we just put in the subtitle because it's not as bad. Rogue One is already the primary topic for its title, so it gets to avoid the subtitle.

  Luckily, we don't have this problem for the mainline films, because they're already the primary topic for their subtitles. They can all have the best possible name. Ladtrack (talk) 00:43, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @TNstingray: Solo, Ahsoka, Acolyte, Tales come under WP:NATURAL disambiguation and has been discussed in RMs before. Vestrian24Bio 02:50, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Ladtrack, @Vestrian24Bio: Have they been discussed in RMs before? Besides the ones opened today? I'd like to see those conversations.

  • Link to new Andor RM: [1]
  • Link to new Obi-Wan Kenobi RM: [2]

  After thinking about it more, I think the strongest argument is keeping the films at their theatrically released names, and letting redirects do the work they have always done for anyone that might not be a diehard fan. Shortening for brevity is a weak argument that causes the encyclopedia to lose information... we could follow the same reasoning and shorten the Harry Potter books and films to just "Chamber of Secrets", "Prisoner of Azkaban", etc. or, we could shorten the Peter Jackson films to just "The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Two Towers", etc. Given that those clearly do not make sense, I therefore cast my vote as Oppose, and I would also support restoring the Rogue One article title to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (and this is coming from someone who hates the "A Star Wars Story" subtitle with a passion). TNstingray (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, they have been discussed before. Tales has a very complicated RM history because it is somewhat unclear what the name of the series is, if it is indeed one show and not three, and also how to disambiguate it. Ahsoka and The Acolyte were fairly recently moved to their current titles from Ahsoka (TV series) and The Acolyte (TV series) on the basis of natural disambiguation. The Peter Jackson films may very well have been named with just the subtitles, except that the books they're based on are called The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The possessives serve to disambiguate the films from the novels. Ladtrack (talk) 16:40, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @TNstingray

  • Rogue One: 1, 2, 3
  • Solo: 1
  • Ahsoka & Acolyte: 1
  • Tales,
    • RMs: 1, 2, 3
    • Other related discussions: 1, 2, 3, 4
    • RfC: RfC

  Vestrian24Bio 12:51, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There's also another RM for Ewoks, animated series. All other animations have consistent titles with the Star Wars prefix. Vestrian24Bio 12:55, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you for providing the links. I now completely disagree with naming any article title anything other than the corresponding project title, but that is clearly beyond the scope of this discussion. TNstingray (talk) 13:30, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's an understandable position. You should consider proposing that at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films). If people agree with you (a not unlikely possibility, judging by this RM), you may be able to change the naming conventions as such. Ladtrack (talk) 15:12, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose, per comments and no need to devoid the titles of their main topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:21, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose The Star Wars films are often known simply by their episode number as well. Therefore, removing that will do more harm than good. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 07:16, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Only the prequels currently have the episode number in the title. The original trilogy films are just The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and the sequels are currently formatted as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Do you think the prequels are especially known by the episode number? Ladtrack (talk) 17:00, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, the prequels are especially known by the episode number. Spanneraol (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  More so than the sequels or the original trilogy? Really? Because I have yet to see any reason to believe that claim and both my personal experience and the sources I've been able to find strongly indicate otherwise. Ladtrack (talk) 20:26, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  To be clear, the marketing for the prequel trilogy emphasized their status as prequels. I'm increasingly convinced the citation of WP:NATURAL for this entire conversation, as well as for film titles in general, is inappropriate due to its subjectivity and inconsistency. I genuinely don't understand why it is so difficult to have article titles match film titles when redirects exist. This sort of conversation, as well as those baffling decisions at other franchises are a waste of editors' time. TNstingray (talk) 13:28, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I think the "inconsistent" naming is simply to represent accurately their official titles from their original release. For instance, the prequel trilogy should keep their numbers, as that seems to be their official titles (judging by this billing block here[[3]]). For the sequels, the article titles are correct, as that is how Disney and Lucasfilm named the film (see this billing block: [[4]]). For the original trilogy, however, it is a bit tricky, as the posters consistently include "Star Wars" in the title, as in "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back", and I could not find sources where just the "subtitles" are the official titles. But we can just stick with them for "consistency" within the three trilogies.

Original trilogy: Just titles (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi)

Prequel trilogy: Numbers (Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Episdoe III - Revenge of the Sith)

Sequel trilogy: Title and subtitles, no numbers (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) Joy040207 (talk) 21:46, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]