Phantom Menace Episode 1

This trilogy is more than the sum of its individual parts; one of the few examples of true auteur filmmaking in blockbuster cinema. It is may be an acquired taste due to it's complex political backdrop and worldbuilding but this is the very thing that makes it unique in the genre. If you have to pitch it the core artistic merits are:

- highly original, relevant and thought-trough storytelling using mirroring techniques rhyming & variation methods - essentially a 3-act play: Act 1 Daylight (exposition, colorful heyday of republic), Act 2 Twilight (beginning of the end, the shroud has fallen), Act 3 Darkness (fall of liberty and values)

- The only saga that shows the systematic corruption and final downfall of liberty, democracy and of the heroes, and the rise of demagogues (whereas 99% of genre films are play-it-save, happy ending stories about nothing by corporate committee)

- iconic art design in terms of vehicles, architecture, miniatures and costumes

- William's acclaimed scores (and Burt's sound design)

- great world building and extension of the lore (Sith, balance concept, Couuscant etc)

- quotable and meme-able dialogue (there is always a bigger fish, this is how liberty dies with thunderous applause etc etc)

Also, it pushed the new technologies like hardly any other trilogy. Beutiful.