We have a new mission. There we were, coming down off the excitement of watching the Chiefs beat the Patriots in a thrilling nail-biter, when an ad for the upcoming Star Wars movie came on the TV. T asked us when we plan to see it, to which I answered, “the second week, at the earliest.” Naturally the conversation ensued, as it does in every gathering where there is more than a glimmer of Star Wars fandom, which of the movies are the best and worst, and in which order should one watch them?
We generally agreed on relative quality of the originals, prequels, and sequel. I suggested that I’d like to see the stand-alones again to see whether I was right in saying that Rogue One edges out Empire for my pick for best of the lot. Three of us hadn’t seen the prequels in years, and T’s girlfriend had never seen any of the series. (She dislikes space movies, and had reasons to back it up, so that’s fair.) We debated where the extra movies and series fall on the timeline, and eventually just consulted the book of all knowledge for the answer (I googled it). And then we formulated a plan to watch everything in chronological order, start to finish, before episode nine comes out. At first we were considering doing a marathon, but we have lives and responsibilities, and I can’t sit on the couch that long without crippling myself, so that was out. We checked our calendars, and found it wasn’t easy to line those up either. So we decided why wait? We loaded up Phantom Menace and jumped right in.
I’m not sure I had watched episode one since we saw it in the theater two decades ago. We were so excited back then. I can say with confidence that the statute of limitations is surely used up, and I can admit that when we checked the kids out of school early on opening Friday, they didn’t really have “appointments” like we told the school secretary. We just wanted to see it at the noon showing. We were deeply disappointed with the movie, but that didn’t stop us doing the exact same thing in subsequent years when the next two premiered. I wonder whether those school offices were onto us? (Probably.)
Watching tonight, I saw a lot of the same flaws that bugged me the first time around. I felt like it pandered to school children then, and I still believe it. There is a scene with Anakin showing off the pod racer he built to other kids, and it just feels like Lucas promised his investors that he would put their kids and grandkids in the movie if they’d pony up cash. I probably would have let it slide if one of the kids hadn’t had braces on her teeth that were so obvious during her one speaking part.
None of us really enjoyed this episode much more than the first time through, but we are made of stern stuff. We aren’t deterred yet. Someday this week we will move on to the real disaster, Attack of the Clones. Then things ought to pick up when we move on to Revenge of the Sith, Solo, and Rogue One, in that order. I plan to suggest, and expect it to be approved, that we watch Rogue One and New Hope all in one sitting, to settle forever in our minds that they blend seamlessly together. That’s the part I’m looking forward to, and it will be worth putting up with what is next on the schedule.
I’m not dumb enough to try to put up copyrighted images from any part of this series to illustrate, so I’ll just show what I’m sitting next to: my still-barren Christmas tree. I’ve asked twice now for help getting down the boxes of decorations. Tomorrow I will get more pushy about it.
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