This is the first installment of Fan Service, a guide to engaging with gargantuan, lore-heavy stories. In each volume, we'll recommend a watch/read order to approach the given series with and dissect our argument for it. First up: the canon of a galaxy far, far away.
Four decades in, there's perhaps never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan. The excellent Rogue One just came out on Blu-ray, new sequels and spin-offs are guaranteed for quite some time and there's a television show that's actually worth watching. Today is also, you might have noticed, May 4.
It's also, arguably, the worst time to be a new fan. Four decades in, there's a lot of Star Wars stuff you can consume. And it certainly doesn't help that the saga's timeline is, well, complicated by a series of prequels.
So, whether you're new to the series, introducing someone else, or just reliving the adventures, here's our recommendation for the best way to experience that galaxy far, far away.
Honestly, Just Watch Everything In Release Order
There are three popular ways to run through the Star Wars saga, assuming you start with the movies. There's what George Lucas recommends, chronological order — where you'd follow the in-universe order of events; special fandom orderings — the most notable of which is the Machete Order; and finally release order — where you stick to consuming the big stories in the order they were made.
Our recommendation is mostly release order:
- Star Wars (1977)
- The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
- Return of the Jedi (1983)
- Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999)
- Episode 2: Attack of the Clones (2002)
- Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2015)
- The Force Awakens (2015)
- Star Wars: Rebels (2015-present)
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
- Any books, comics or other canon media
The bolded entries are the two animated Star Wars series. They're really important, as we'll touch on, but they can be skipped — which leaves us with release order for the films. Seems simple enough, so why does this order matter?
It all comes down to a simple fact not only of filmmaking, but of storytelling in general: All prequels are, by nature, sequels. Regardless of where they sit in the timeline of events, we call installments of media that take place earlier prequels because, just like a sequel, these installments are building on events and the world that were established in the original work.
This extends to why you should watch The Force Awakens after seeing the prequel trilogy. The Force Awakens is a direct response to those films just as much or more than it is a continuation from Return of the Jedi. It had to prove that the franchise could recover from the missteps of the prequels and reignite fan fervor under Disney's ownership. The Force Awakens largely played by the tone of the original trilogy, to the point where some criticized it for being like a remake of the original.
Regardless of how the film lands for you, the artistic choices behind The Force Awakens were made in response to how the Star Wars saga unfolded over the past 40 years.
George Lucas Says Chronological Order Is Best — But He's Wrong
The problem getting started with Star Wars is two-sided. First, there's the inconvenient fact that the first three movies to be released, the original trilogy, come in the middle of the current continuity. Then, there's the not-insignificant matter that the prequel movies are widely considered to be terrible. Episode 2: Attack of the Clones won a Golden Raspberry award for Worst Screenplay.
Until the release of The Force Awakens, much of the zeitgeist surrounding the Star Wars saga dealt with the prequels. The conversations were largely negative, along the lines of "are these movies cringe-worthy, or outright detestable?" Most examples of fans standing up for the prequels came about a decade after the release of Episode 3 — but you can find hours upon hours of die-hard Star Wars fans ripping the prequels to shreds, like in Red Letter Media's foul-mouthed and comprehensive Plinkett reviews:
Generally, in the mid-to-late 2000s, any conversations about how to catch up on Star Wars would then revolve around whether it was worth watching the prequels at all. George Lucas himself made it clear that he thinks watching Episodes 1-6 in chronological order is best.
While it is straightforward to follow the series in chronological order1 barring a few continuity head-scratchers, the biggest problem with watching from 1 through to 6 is that you'll get spoiled on a major plot point in the original trilogy. There's a good chance you know what that moment is whether you've seen the films or not, thanks to cultural osmosis. It's the spoiling of that moment that inspired the next option.
Some Fans Say Machete Order Is Best — But They're Wrong
In 2011, one computer scientist came up with an order that went viral. Rod Hilton, a Colorado-based programmer, published a 4,600-word article on his personal website that he called "an amazingly long blog post about the best order in which to watch Star Wars."
The order Hilton proposed was as follows — 4, 5, 2, 3, 6. No Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Be warned: Hilton justifies this order because it preserves that big twist referred to above, and he identifies in his post.
The watch order gets its name from Hilton's blog. "I've dubbed this 'Machete Order' on the off chance it catches on because I'm a vain asshole." When you search "Star Wars Machete Order" on Google, you get upwards of 850,000 results. Score one, Hilton.
A lot of virtual ink has been spilled over the merits and drawbacks of the Machete Order (like, seriously, there are tons of articles). Hilton's original blog post explains his reasoning about as well as this clip of Patton Oswalt talking Machete Order on Late Night with Seth Meyer does (and it's a lot quicker — but only watch if you don't care about spoilers).
Six years have passed since Hilton introduced Machete Order to the world, and now there are two more Star Wars movies plus dozens of new Disney-approved canon stories. After The Force Awakens was released, Rod Hilton made another lengthy blog post: his official updated order now places Rogue One and any other side-story prequels at the end of the viewing order in however you see fit, even though we can be sure that those films will twist our understanding of the universe and its characters.
Since we're almost guaranteed to get a new Star Wars movie every year for the next decade, trying to create a comprehensive, narratively-justified viewing order seems like a Sisyphean task.
So What About Those TV Shows And Everything Else?
When Disney acquired Star Wars in 2014, decades of stories and characters were effectively tossed in the garbage bin all at once. The hard work of writers, animators, voice actors (and continuity experts, even) suddenly became a footnote. It's as if a million voices cried out in terror... and then were suddenly silenced.
It's not as though all the old stories are gone (in fact, plenty from what was the "Expanded Universe" have been rebranded and re-released as "Legends"). But, with the removal of over 30 years of books, comics, games and other spin-offs from canonical consideration, it's no longer an insurmountable task to consume all of the Star Wars canon — a sensible order can help with that.
People who consider themselves serious Star Wars fans really should watch The Clone Wars and Rebels. For starters, the former follows main characters from the movies during the titular conflict that bridges Episode 2 and 3, and the latter fills in the time period between the prequels and the original trilogy. Like Rogue One (which has blink-and-you'll-miss-it references to the show), Rebels is adding to the Star Wars canon in pretty serious ways — as was the idea for years.
See, a long time ago on a Marin county ranch, George Lucas talked about making a Star Wars television series. This eventually became The Clone Wars, which was then followed by Rebels. Episodic Star Wars is second only to the films in terms of intention and functional importance to canon — and, best of all, a lot of it is really good. With nine seasons of television to consume, the two shows also make up the majority of the Star Wars canon screentime.
As for tying in canonical books and comics? Trying to consume these stories in the order they were released would whip you around a lot, constantly hopping through Star Wars continuity. Consuming them in chronological order wouldn't be much of an improvement. What's worth remembering is that, per supervision of franchise guardians at Disney, these particular installments can't do too much to mess with the Star Wars universe. Though they tell stories involving important characters, the creators largely have their hands tied in terms of making significant additions and they're rarely called on to fill in motivation or plot points that affect the movies or TV shows. At this super-fan level, follow your gut and few references should evade you.
Before You Plan A Marathon, Know What Versions You're Watching
One last complication: There's a good chance you'll know what "Han shot first" means even if you haven't seen A New Hope. That's because it stands as the pop-culture testament to George Lucas's poorly-received re-masterings of the original trilogy.
Episodes 4, 5, and 6 all got theatrical releases in the '90s with additional computer effects and extended scenes added — the '00s DVD releases saw yet another wave of changes made. All of these edits became especially controversial because the original versions of the films haven't been made commercially available in a contemporary, cleanly-transferred format since the days of VHS tapes.2
Some suspect that the reluctance to re-release the unaltered films has to do with Marcia Lucas, George's ex-wife, creative confidant and one of the editors on the original trilogy (as the theory goes, no original releases means no royalties paid to her). Or it could just be that Lucas is simply a meddler to a fault — even when The Phantom Menace was released on Blu-ray, the Jim Henson Studios puppet used for Yoda in 1999 was replaced with a CGI character.
There are fans who have worked to make HD restorations of the original trilogy without new effects and scenes available: Harmy's Despecialized Edition is the most famous of these efforts. Unfortunately, possessing these restorations is dubiously legal at best, and that's only if you own Blu Ray copies of the films. There's some hope that Disney will, in pursuit of fan dollars, release HD or 4K versions of the original films sans-changes. Until then, you'll have to make due with what you have available, or wade into murky legal waters in pursuit of a "pure" experience.
Do Watch, Or Do Not Watch (There Is Also 'Give It A Try')
There's no ill-will here — if you still believe there's a better way to hop on-board with Star Wars than release order, that's a-ok (If you're reading this to try and figure out how to get a particularly skeptical friend into the films, it's never a bad move to start with your favorite installment).
Still, there's a really strong case for watching these films in the order they came out. For over 15 years, the original trilogy stood alone as films: in that time, through their lasting influence and a steady flow of spin-off material, they changed cinema forever. Without those three movies, there would be no Star Wars. The series paved the way for the expansive, intricately-planned film continuities like those peddled by Marvel and DC Comics. The films pushed special effects forward in a way that changed nearly every big-budget film made today, regardless of genre. The story of why Star Wars matters to culture at-large gets muddied when you watch the series unfold another way.
As for anybody who still wants to craft their own narratively brilliant fan-order once we've got dozens of Disney produced Star Wars films? May the force be with them.
Want more, young Jedi? Check out our dedicated 'Star Wars' channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment