My relationship with Star Wars has always been meh. I first watched one of the movies sometime in the 90s and just couldn’t get past the poor recording (a pirated videotape 🥴), and the outdated-looking special effects.
So, when the prequels rolled around in the mid-2000s, I didn’t bite. I wasn’t invested in the series.
But then, Pedro Pascal came along. Fresh out of Narcos, I developed a massive crush on him and so watched The Mandalorian – the joke’s on me, as he showed his face once? during the entire series.
Still, I enjoyed the series and started enjoying the Star Wars world, and my curiosity was mildly piqued by the rest of the movies.
But, it was really my son who started everything. He was playing a Star Wars game with his friends, and I casually mentioned that all the movies were available on Hotstar. That’s it, we immediately had to look through the inventory, decide on the order of the movies – do we see them based on release date, or based on when they are set in the universe?
Keeping in mind, my poor experience. I suggested we start with the prequel – The Phantom Menace. It would be more modern looking and there would be some backstory for the characters. And so that’s what we did.
Was it a good choice? I don’t know. When it was released, The Phantom Menace was generally panned, and I agree with some of the criticism. There is so much wrong with it that I’m not sure where to start. For one, it’s extremely slow. And two, I still wasn’t impressed with the world-building and action (there’s one super-long car race that was so tedious, I couldn’t even). It was also hard to believe that the cute kid from The Phantom Menace would grow up to be the feared Darth Vader.
Still, that didn’t stop us from embarking on the second and third movies – Attack of the Clones, and Return of the Sith.
Attack of the Clones wasn’t much better. The problem is that its romance plot lacks emotional weight; indeed, lack of emotional weight cripples most of its plotting. It didn’t help also that my son was least interested in the romance, and wanted to fast-forward all those scenes, so I may have missed something. But looking at the actors’ (Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen) wooden expressions, I don’t think I missed anything.
The action sequences were still engaging though, and made up for some of the silliness of the plot.
No complaints about Revenge of the Sith though. This movie was flat-out awesome. Although I didn’t quite buy into the hero-to-villain arc of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader, overall, the movie was awesome and perfectly set up the start of the older Star Wars movies.
I was a little sad at some of the character choices (side-eyed some of Padmé’s decisions), but I think Revenge of the Sith is the best Star Wars movie so far. Next week, sadly, is Piglet’s exam week, but I can’t wait for the Christmas holidays to start so I can guiltlessly binge-watch the rest of the movies with him.
Yup! I am finally, irrevocably hooked on Star Wars now!
I did this during the pandemic, when I was still getting Netflix discs; I watched the prequel trilogy, then Rogue One, then the original trilogy, to get the entire thing done in order. When you watch it that way, Anakin kind of becomes the true overarching tragic hero of the story, which is interestingly different from how I originally perceived him when the first three movies came out back in the 70s and 80s.
“Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones” are still hot garbage though. 😁
The prequel is redeemed by the last movie. I agree that Anakin seems like the key protoagonist, and I liked Hayden in the role, but wish his story was built up better. We watched A New Hope last weekend, and I was amazed at just how much fun it was – not a single boring moment. Tonight is my son’s last day of school and so we are going to watch The Empire Strikes Back. I have high expectations of it.