Hollywood Presents

2016-06-22

by Darknut

Machete Order

Are you, like me, disillusioned about Star Wars? Is Star Wars dead to you now? Did you buy Episode 3 used for $1 just because it was there for $1 but also because you know someday you'll be ready to re-live that trauma again?

Well, some guy from the Internet named "Machete" has a pretty well thought out idea about how to make use of the prequel episodes. In fact, his perspective kinda sorta almost makes them excusable.

I don't want to repeat all of the guy's reasoning here, but I do want you to have a chance to think about it before you read the reasoning. So here's the order:

• Episode 4: Star Wars
• Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back
• Episode 2: Attack of the Clones
• Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
• Episode 6: Return of the Jedi
• Spaceballs: The Movie
• Episode 1: Now This Is Pod Racing

This is supposed to make the most sense for someone who's never seen any Star Wars before, ever, such as a small child. (However, if such a person is not a small child, he or she or it may be a communist or extraterrestrial, so further treatment besides just being exposed to Star Wars may be necessary.)

The main problem with the prequel trilogy is that they're about the origins of Anakin. Well, the real main problem is that they completely fail to explain the origins of Anakin in any satisfactory manner. We're just supposed to accept that Anakin suddenly, completely turns evil one day, just because he's a pissy teenager, or something. Anyway, nobody actually cares about Anakin's contrived, unconvincing, Jesus-like origins except for George Lucas. The good part of Star Wars is the original trilogy, and the prequel trilogy completely spoils the original trilogy if presented in the numerical order, for no good reason other than that we supposedly long to see the gosh-darned origins of everything. So if this ordering doesn't make sense yet, try thinking about it presuming that the order is meant to best tell Luke's story, not Anakin's.

Think about when certain surprise information was revealed, and how the prequel trilogy spoils those surprises, and what would happen if we do indeed treat it as a flashback of sorts, since that's what it actually is. For example, watching Episode 3 before Episode 6 spoils the surprise that Luke and Leia are siblings, but that's not even a big deal compared to everything else that's spoiled...

After you've thought about this, go ahead and read that "Machete" guy's explanation: http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/. I threw Episode 1 in there at the end even though that "Machete" guy deems it completely unnecessary because I kinda enjoyed it (don't kill me) even though it has the most spoilers of all.

By the way, it's completely normal to be this obsessed with Star Wars even though it has so many problems.

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