Ever since the first few moments of the original Star Wars: A New Hope, when a small shuttle was chased down by a massive Star Destroyer, fans have dreamed about flying through the stars in a galaxy, far, far, away. The various spacecraft of the Star Wars films and TV shows have some of the greatest variety in any franchise, which means everybody has their favorite.
So what are the best ships in all of the Star Wars franchise? From the Rebels to the Empire and from A New Hope to The Acolyte there are so many cool and interesting ships to choose from. Here are some of our favorites.
9. Lambda Class Imperial Shuttle
The Imperial Shuttle introduced in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi doesn’t do a lot. It’s a personnel shuttle, so it’s only designed to carry people around. It doesn’t appear to have much in the way of weapons, but it does have an incredibly fun design that requires two of its three wings to fold up whenever it lands.
Why did they build it like this? Nobody knows. Is it super cool? Absolutely. The design became so iconic for shuttles that the folding wing look would continue to be used, with The First Order having similar designs for Kylo Ren's shuttle.
8. Razor Crest
When it debuted in the first of the Star Wars Disney+ shows, The Mandalorian’s Razor Crest wasn’t a particularly sexy ship, but that’s part of why it was so great. It was likely preferred by Mando because it was so functional. He wasn't looking for the fastest or the coolest ship in space. He had a job to do and needed a ship that would get the job done. The Razor Crest was that.
If he needed to chase down a bounty, the Razor Crest could do it, but the ship was also his home. It had everything he needed to live since he was always moving. And it had plenty of storage space for his carbonite-frozen visitors.
7. Naboo Royal Starship
Everything from the Prequel era is a bit sexier and a bit shinier than the Original Trilogy. If you watch the Star Wars movies in order, it's even clearer that the suffering under the Empire affects everything, even the spacecraft. The Naboo Royal Starship is a perfect symbol of everything that existed before the Empire that was lost.
If you're a queen, you get to travel in style. Queen Amidala's Royal Starship is so sleek it looks like it's traveling through hyperspace when it's standing still. The thing is so shiny it might blind you if the sun reflects off it in the wrong way, but nobody is ever going to claim it's not a memorable ship.
6. First Order TIE Echelon
Not every awesome Star Wars spaceship is actually in a movie. In fact, one of the coolest ships can only be found in a Star Wars theme park. The First Order’s TIE Echelon is a ship that was designed for Colin Trevorrow’s abandoned version of Star Wars: Episode IX. However, as Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland and Walt Disney World were in development around the same time, the ship design was used there, where it still remains today.
The ship was designed to be an armed troop transport, and it's easy to see the inspiration of other Star Wars ships, including some other ships on this list, in the new creation. While we never saw this ship in the films, it's an incredible set piece at Galaxy's Edge.
5. Imperial Star Destroyer
From the opening shot of Star Wars: A New Hope, we knew everything that we would ever need to know about the Galactic Empire. The Star Destroyer fills the screen showing us the power that the Empire has and how small the Rebel Alliance is by comparison. The Star Destroyer is basically a flying city full of evil.
Future Star Wars movies would make bigger ships, but they'd never quite match the menace of the original. At a certain point, the scale gets lost. The Rebels never had anything to match even the standard Star Destroyer, so anything bigger was just showing off.
4. X-Wing
When you think of space battles, you probably think of the X-Wing fighter. It’s a simple design that looks formidable in a fight, while at the same time showing that the Rebel Alliance is a rag-tag group of fighters because all X-Wings look like they might fly apart at any moment. Whether flown by Luke Skywalker or Poe Dameron, the X-Wing is no less iconic.
Dogfights with the X-Wing are as exciting as anything we've seen in a Top Gun movie. It's why so many were excited by the idea of Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron movie. An entire film about X-Wings and all the action that suggests is too much fun to ignore.
3. Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter
The standard TIE Fighter flowed by the Galactic Empire is fine. It’s functional and it looks as scary and menacing as it needs to look, but Darth Vader’s personal TIE Fighter was something else. The first Star Wars movie needed to do something to make sure the audience knew which ship Darth Vader was in, and the minor and simple modifications to the general TIE design were perfect, making the ship look as menacing as the man flying it.
Vader's ship isn't just shaped differently, it's also smaller. It makes his ship harder to see and hit, while also making it more maneuverable. We would learn later just how good a pilot Anakin Skywalker was, but this ship hinted early at his skill.
2. Slave I
We finally got to spend some real time inside Slave I, Boba Fett’s iconic and unusual spaceship, as part of The Mandalorian but it’s been an iconic Star Wars set piece since its brief appearance in one of the best Star Wars movies, The Empire Strikes Back. The ship has a design unlike any other in Star Wars, one that embraces the fact that in space concepts like “up” and “front” are all relative.
These differences may have been part of the reason that Boba Fett, despite his brief time in the original trilogy, became one of the Star Wars characters fans embraced. From his ship design to his full body armor, we had so many questions that eventually the franchise would need to give us answers.
1. Millennium Falcon
What is there to say about the most important ship in all of Star Wars that hasn’t already been said? The Millennium Falcon has been through a lot. Originally owned by Lando Calrissian before being won by Han Solo, lost, and then returned to the smuggler, the Millennium Falcon has been through it all. The Falcon was unlike anything we’d seen in sci-fi movies before, but that’s what made it so memorable.
While these may be the best, there are so many great ships in Star Wars it's honestly difficult to narrow it down to a small list. And with so many great upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows, including Skeleton Crew and The Mandalorian and Grogu, we're sure to see some amazing new designs that may eventually join this list.
