When my sons were young, the original three were the only Star Wars movies available, and we watched them together on our VHS player. But now, my grandchildren are approaching the age when they can appreciate the movies, but what order should they watch all nine of the movies. Logically, The Phantom Menace should come first, but it is generally agreed that it is a disappointment, while A New Hope is recognized as one of the greatest movies ever. Has anyone watched the entire trilogy of trilogies with young children, with maybe Rogue One and Solo inserted: What order did you use?
Machete Order
Watch 4, 5. Skip the rest. Then do Rogue One. Finished!
I’ll point out that the “related topics” below the bottom-most post has 4 cites to roughly the same question. The OP might usefully read those too.
Always watch Star Wars (Episode IV A New Hope, if you insist) first. It’s the best, and only stand alone film of the lot. Nothing that happens in the other films does anything to make it a better film.
I watched the first two trilogies with my kid before the third trilogy came out. She liked IV a lot. She liked V a lot. She, at that point, was most interested in Darth Vader — even before the big reveal in V, but even more once that happened. I asked if she wanted to see the story of how Vader got that way. She enthusiastically ageeed, and so I showed her I-II-III before we did VI. She enjoyed ‘em all.
When asked to pick a favorite of all six, she eventually settled on PHANTOM MENACE.
Definitely the original trilogy first. There was a fad a couple years back for the “machete order” which was 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, the idea being you explore Anakin’s backstory after the reveal, and then get the redemption. IMO all 3 prequels suck so just skip them entirely.
Something that potentially would be interesting is: Andor → Rogue 1 → OT. Although Andor is too mature for a kid.
Possibly, but I don’t trust the opinion of anyone—including myself—who saw the original trilogy as a kid and the prequels as an adult.
In general, any series (not just Star Wars) is best experienced in the order that it was originally presented to the public. That’s because later entries, even if they are set earlier, are informed by the knowledge of what has already been presented. The creator will usually assume that viewers/readers are at least somewhat familiar with the stuff they’ve already done, and that they already know something about the world and perhaps the characters.
This is true in the Star Wars prequels, in ways both small (“You’ll come to a bad end, Greedo!”) and large (the moment in Revenge of the Sith when the mask is lowered onto Anakin’s face, and we hear the Darth Vader “breathing” for the first time–which only works so well because we know that sound and what it means).
This is the same reason that I think the renumbering of the Narnia books is such nonsense. It doesn’t make sense to say, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that we the readers don’t know who Aslan is, if we’ve already read all about him in The Magician’s Nephew.
First watch: release order, because…
- watching I-III will spoil excellent storytelling reveals in IV-VI, and
- switching from turn-of-the century CGI to 70s - 80s blue screen effects limits how much these trilogies feel “of a piece.”
Watch Star Wars first, see if you can track down the original Silver Screen edition where Han Solo shoots first, and before the new effects were put in.
I like the idea of Star Wars, then V, I, II, III, VI actually.
I’m somewhat tempted to do this myself because I’d happily rewatch Andor and I just got the OT on Blu Ray for a great price. However, I find the shift in tone jarring. Even Andor and Rogue One don’t quite line up as nicely as they should in terms of tone. Going from the end of Rogue One to the comedic hijinks of A New Hope is really weird. How soon we forget that Darth Vader just slaughtered a whole bunch of dudes.
Manny Bothans?
I’ll go against the grain here. When my son was around 9 and wanted to watch the entire series with me, I argued for different ways to watch, like machete order, but he insisted on 1-9. And, maybe I benefited from low expectations, but I thought the story arc did, surprisingly, work pretty well that way. Plus you get the worst movie out of the way at the start.
But I’m no Star Wars super fan. I loved the original when I was 13, but then the rest had diminishing returns for me after that.
Giving it a little more thought, If the big reveals in 4-6 have already been spoiled by general pop cultural awareness, I guess a sequential viewing makes the most sense. I often forget how few people (even young ones) are unaware of the major beats in the saga before they have even seen any of the films.
I never liked Machete order because the end of Episode III makes you really want to watch A New Hope again. That said I think for first time viewing release order is best with the option to skip Episode I (and frankly Episode II kind of stinks also except for the cool fight at the end).
However, anecdotally I have heard from people that young kids tend to enjoy the Prequels more than the original trilogy so maybe there is something to be said for Episode order.
Why the name “machete”?
Probably because you put a big slice in between two of the original films to view the Prequels. I’ve also seen versions of the Machete Order in which you “hack out” most of Episode I, and only watch certain scenes, because most of it is irrelevant to the rest of the series.
It was originally posted to the blog ‘Absolutely No Machete Juggling’.
Because if you don’t watch it in that order, you have to answer to the Rancor Wrangler: