Weekend Reading: Rod Hilton: Star Wars: Machete Order
: The Star Wars Saga: Introducing Machete Order: "Watch the films with them in this order: IV, V, II, III, VI...
...Episode I is gone. Episodes II and III aren't exactly Shakespeare, but stand ing next to the complete and utter train wreck that is Episode I, they sure look like it. At least, III does.... Episode I is a failure on every possible level..... Luckily, George Lucas has... ma[de] the content of Episode I completely irrelevant to the rest of the series.... Every character established in Episode I is either killed or removed before it ends (Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, Chancellor Valorum), unimportant (Nute Gunray, Watto), or es tab lished better in a later episode (Mace Windu, Darth Sidious). Does it ever matter that Palpatine had an apprentice before Count Dooku? Nope.... Does it ever matter that Obi-Wan was being trained by Qui-Gon? Nope.... Search your feelings, you know it to be true! Episode I doesn't matter at all....
Buh-bye, Binks!... No midichlorians.... No Jake Lloyd.... No confusing Padme/Queen switcheroo.... Less confusing master/apprentice relationships.... Nothing about trade disputes....
Booting Episode I isn't merely about pretending a crappy movie doesn't exist. Viewing Episode II immediately after V and Episode IIIimmediately before VI actually tells the story better than including Episode I does... creates a lot of tension after the cliffhanger ending of Episode V... uses the original trilogy as a framing device for the prequel[s]... ends with the most satisfying ending, Episode VI... starts the series off with the two strongest films....
Episode II quickly establishes [Anakin as impulsive and power-hun gry, which keeps his character consistent with eventually becoming Darth Vader. Obi-Wan never really seems to have any control over Anakin.... Obi-Wan now always has a beard for the entire... series, and Anakin... always wears black. Since these two characters are played by different actors... having them look visually consistent does a great deal toward reinforcing they are the same people.... Machete order also keeps the fact that Luke and Leia are siblings a surprise, it simply moves the surprise to Episode III instead of VI, when Padme announces her daughter's name... a more effective twist.... Den of Geek has also written up an article highlighting some more things that work better in Machete Order that I didn't mention. I particularly like the extra dimension it gives Yoda....
You might be wondering if it's worth skipping II and only watching III... but Episode III just assumes you know who every one is. Ham-handed as it is, Anakin's love for Padme is the ultimate reason for his fall to the dark side, and Episode II has most of that. Additionally, without seeing the Clone Army being created in Episode II, seeing the Jedi fight alongside them in III would be extremely confusing, since they look almost exactly like Stormtroopers in III....
Update: I recently discovered my college-aged brother-in-law's girl friend had never seen any Star Wars films and wanted to watch them all over winter break. Armed with the new Blu-rays, we all went about watch ing them, and I showed them in Machete Order. It actually works even better than I originally anticipated.... There's a great pattern here.... IV ends with a victory that seems to have some sinister undertones, then V is dark and unresolved with a cliffhanger, II ends with victory with sinister undertones, then III is dark and unresolved with a cliffhanger again. It works incredibly well, and when III ended every one demanded we immediately watch VI to see how every thing gets tied up.... The flaws with Machete Order seem to not be problematic.... I asked her if she found Jar-Jar annoying and she asked 'who's Jar Jar?'--Mission Accomplished....
Similar to the Animatrix, which can be watched at any time after the first one, the collection of Episode I, the Clone Wars cartoon series, the Clone Wars CGI series, a number of video games, and the Clone Wars movie can all be presented as part of a collection of 'extra stuff, made for kids'.... It's not part of the main viewing, but more like an expanded universe kind of thing....
The most common com plaint about Machete Order, by far, is that it eliminates Qui-Gon, and he's important (or that his lightsaber battle is 'cool'). Since this is so common, I thought I'd respond to it.... The argument goes: Qui-Gon is extremely important, because it's his intense desire to train Anakin that Obi-Wan feels responsible to continue.... Obi-Wan wasn't... ready... so... Anakin is poorly trained and... susceptible to the dark side.... The fact of the matter is, we don't really need to understand WHY Anakin is even susceptible to the dark side. In fact, it makes him more sympathetic if the reason is simply 'it's tempting' or 'to save his wife'. But we're actually given the why in the elevator scene in Episode II - Obi-Wan is a shitty teacher who has no control over Anakin and who Anakin sees himself as better than...
