If you have yet to watch the compelte Star Wars saga through in “The Machete Order”, this May 4th is absolutely the right time to try it.
Coined by blogger Rod Hilton, the Machete Order is an approach to rewatching the Star Wars films in a way that seeks to minimize some of the prequel’s lame qualities and tell a more complete story across the six films.
Rather than just pretend the prequels (Episodes I,II and III) never happened, the machete order recontextualizes them as an extended flashback sequence between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The viewing-order for the series then becomes Episodes IV, V, II, III and VI.
The idea behind the Machete Order is to pivot the focus of the films from telling the story of Anakin to telling the story of Luke. As Hilton puts it:
“Putting the prequels in the middle in general allows the series to end on the sensible ending point (the destruction of the Empire) while still beginning with Luke’s journey. The prequel backstory comes at the perfect time, because The Empire Strikes Back ends on a huge cliffhanger. Han is in carbonite, Vader is Luke’s father, and the Empire has hit the rebellion hard. Delaying the resolution of this cliffhanger makes it all the more satisfying when Return of the Jedi is watched”
For all the hate that Episode I gets, the reason it gets cut here is because Hilton asserts it’s actually irrelevant to the series as a whole:
“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 established better in a later episode (Mace Windu, Darth Sidious)”
Though George Lucas insists that the correct order for the series is one that follows the chronology, it’s hard not to see the sense in the Machete Order. So if you’re one of the many fans sitting down to revisit the series today, this is the way to do it.
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