Star Wars: Machete Order

[jducoeur]

Thanks to hungrytiger for pointing me at this article -- The Star Wars Saga: Suggested Viewing Order. It makes a compelling case that, if you are introducing someone to Star Wars for the first time, you should show *neither* the original nor the prequel trilogy first, but instead interleave them.

The analysis makes a lot of sense. My only quibble is that he suggest omitting Episode I entirely, which is a great boon to humanity *but* loses the best single piece of music in the whole series. I mean, let's get real -- the only reason I cared about going to see Episode I was the video trailer of Duel of the Fates. Terrible movie, but it's John Williams' masterpiece in my book.

(And I find myself put oddly in mind of Narnia by the whole thing. The order he argues for is, in many ways, very similar to my preferred reading order for Narnia, with The Magician's Nephew just before the final book. I suspect he's right that it works, and for some of the same reasons.)

Anyway, I am almost tempted to organize a Star Wars Day at some point, just to try this out: it's been enough years since I last saw them for my palate to be reasonably clear. Maybe one of these days. (Higher priority is the Batman party that I need to hold sometime in the next couple of months, before the next movie comes out...)

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

BATMAN PARTYYYYYYYYY

Sorry. I mean to say, I approve of this plan.

Each of the prequels had a great bt of music to come out of them- the adore the Love Theme from Episode II, cheesy as it is, and Battle of the Heroes is also great, but you are correct, sir, in saying the Duel of the Fates is the best. Also the Obi-Wan/Qui Gon/Darth Maul lightsaber battle is a great bit of fight choreo. It's just too bad there's all the crap that gets in the way of it.

(Also, I am a published order of Narnia purist. Anyone who suggests chronological order is a heretic. Yes, even if that person is CS Lewis.)

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Anyone who suggests chronological order is a heretic. Yes, even if that person is CS Lewis.

Seriously - internal consistency:

They say Aslan is on the move – perhaps has already landed.
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do;

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I know. I'm so annoyed that you can only get the full series in one volume in the Heretical Revisionist Order. And if you want them numbered PROPERLY, you have to go used- practically vintage.

[cellio]

A Sharpie can fix that for you, no? :-)

[serakit.livejournal.com]

So what do you watch at a Batman party? (Since I'm in the middle of the sixties Batman and I'm guessing it's not that.)

[jducoeur]

The current series: Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I haven't seen the former since it first came out, and have never seen the latter, so I'm figuring on doing a movie day for both sometime before The Dark Knight Rises comes out in July...

[serakit.livejournal.com]

So considerably less light-and-fluffy than the stuff I've been watching?

[jducoeur]

Oh, heavens yes. The Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy is significantly the darkest version of Batman on video. It's darker than the previous movies, and those are far darker than the 60s TV series...

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

If I could just watch the fight scene, I would. The rest of it...yeah, whatever.

I am reminded of camping out to go see Ep 1 when it came out. We were up in Randolph, I think, and I looked up to see "14 Phantom Men" running across the LED screen for the theater I was going into.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I liked how they brought cards with popcorn and soda into the theater to sell to the people who had been waiting in line for hours.

[cellio]

Can't you get most of the musical joy by just listening to the soundtrack? :-)

(I actually haven't seen the second trilogy, having heard how bad episode 1 was. So you're saying I could just skip that and watch the other two?)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Correct! The main point of Episode I is the pod-race, an exciting action sequence solely for the sake of an exciting action sequence. Anakin is still a child when he's drafted as a pilot and winning the race shows that his abilities are just starting to come out and he's an exceptionable individual. You now know everything you need to know about Episode I and you get to skip about 90% of Jar-Jar Binks as a bonus! :)
-- Dagonell

[jducoeur]

Read the linked article -- it goes into fair detail about the subject. But the high point is that he recommends watching the movies in the order IV, V, II, III, VI, and treating I as, at most, a prequel that you can watch or skip later, a la The Hobbit. Very nearly everything of any relevance in it gets recapped in II, so you don't miss much.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Or, don't read the article and be our lab rat.

[cellio]

I could do that. They aren't on Netflix streaming, so using actual DVDs this will take some weeks. But I've popped IV into the queue (haven't seen it since initial release), so that's a start. :-)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

The article was interesting and convincing.

But what really got me excited was the link to Star Wars Despecialized Edition. I was assuming I was going to have to wait until Lucas was dead before someone made something like that available.

[celiskywalker.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting/cool idea, I'll definitely have to try it.