The Negotiations Will Be Short
My brother once posed this most pressing question about someday possibly having children; “Should I show them the Star Wars movies beginning with episodes 4 thru 6? Or should I start with Episode 1?”
This is indeed a perplexing dilemma. Providing food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and a decent education is the easy part. But one wrong move in viewing the Star Wars films could be an irreparable disaster. Should they learn Darth Vader’s awful secret when Luke Skywalker does? Or should they know about it two movies earlier? What’s a nerd to do?
An interesting test case came forward a few weeks ago when one of Jessica’s co-workers told her that she had never seen ANY of the Star Wars movies, (not even “The Ewok Adventure”) and that her boyfriend had excitedly tried to show them to her. What makes her case interesting is that he decided to begin with “The Phantom Menace.”
When George Lucas was slowly unveiling the first three chapters he stressed numerous times that all six films are meant to be one big movie told from beginning to end. That may be his intent, but “The Prequels,” came out over 20 years after the originals. I’ve tried watching them that way, but I don’t know how well it works since I know where the story is going. So I was interested to hear out things went for Jessica’s co-worker; a Star Wars Newbie trying to watch them in order.
She had questions right from the beginning. The opening crawl begins by talking about a Galactic Republic, taxation of trade routes, a blockade of battleships, something called the Trade Federation, and a Supreme Chancellor (This is really nothing big. Even the most knowledgeable of Star Wars Fanboys are still confused by most of this.)
But then in the first scene two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui Gon Jinn, begin discussing being mindful of the living Force and sensing things. Then their alien hosts are suddenly talking to a hologram image of someone called Darth Sidious. He’s talking about landing troops and killing the Jedi. And it is at this point that the girl has dozens of questions already. And they can all be summed up in one question; “Who are all these people and what are they blathering on about?”
Rather than sit on all these questions and be confused, she begins asking her boyfriend what the hell is going on here. She hammers him with questions; what is the Trade Federation? What are these trade routes and why are there tax disputes over them? What is the Living Force? What do the Jedi mean about sensing things?
So after five minutes what happens? The boyfriend gets tired of being asked all these questions and tells her to leave the room. She never finishes the movie and, quite frankly, is so confused she’s not sure she really wants to.
After hearing this I have a clear picture of something I was already pretty sure of. The Prequels don’t work as the beginning to a six chapter series, because they are written as though the viewer has seen the originals.
For example, take The Force. Nowhere in Episodes 1 thru 3 is there any explanation of what the Force is and what it does. In Episode 1 there is some mumbo jumbo about some microscopic organisms in your cells called Midichlorians. The more you have of them then the stronger you are with the Force. Other than that, though, all the exposition on the Force takes place in Episodes 4 and 5. Obi-Wan Kenobi gives Luke (and the audience) a bare bones explanation in the original film and Yoda expands our knowledge in The Empire Strikes Back. So if you’ve seen those films first and you sit down to watch “The Phantom Menace” then you already know the background on this entire story and don’t need any explanation. So George Lucas doesn’t bother to provide any.
So the obvious answer to the question is this…Watch the original films and act like the others never happened. You’ll save yourself and all your heirs a lot of headaches.