The circle is complete.
What is new Machete order? Extending the original gives:
IV
V
II
III
VI
VII
VIII
(IX)
We still have to watch Solo and Rogue One.
Solo has to come after Empire Strikes Back. You just saw Han get frozen in carbonite, plus a lot of Lando action.
Could you do Rogue One first? Think about watching this space movie about a battle station then oh shit it can destroy planets?
That would give us:
R1
IV
V
Solo
II
III
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Harmy’s Despecialized for the original trilogy of course.
I would just ditch solo and rogue one. As great as the cinematography and editing in Rogue one is its story is really superfluous. Plus you’ll probably get uncanny valley whiplash watching Digital Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia side by side with the real thing. Solo makes more sense thematically if you paused Episode 4 and watched it right after Han and Chewie leave with all the money. The audience is like Luke, disappointed, but then you get justification for his mercenary ways and his last minute return in the trench run is even more exciting/surprising.
The machete order only mattered when Star Wars was a limited experience of a small set of movies.
Now that there’s just Star Wars all over, I think it matters less. Just watch every Star Wars movie when it comes out. Watch at least a few of the old ones for context.
Just go with chronological order of release. It really doesn’t matter.
I guess I thought Machete implied the it was the first time someone was seeing them.
Yes, even in that case, it doesn’t matter.
It gets more ridiculous when you factor in the new TV series
VI
V
II
Clone Wars
III
Solo
Rebels
R1
VI
Resistance S1
VII
VIII
Resistance S2
IX
I think one of the original points of the Machete Order was that Star Wars was “important” and the order you watched mattered, and just as importantly it was okay to skip one of only six movies!
Now Star Wars is unending, not particularly special or important, and you’re probably not going to watch all the movies in order anyway, because there’s now too many, so skipping a movie is expected and not transgressive.
I put out my own Episode I fanedit, and making it fit into the Machete Order in the obvious place was one of the goals of the edit. I planned on working on it more, and even did a BlueRay HD version, but never got round to finishing it. That’s because making that edit finished was no longer an clear path to “completing” Star Wars. There is no longer any hope of “completing” Star Wars, at least not within the time and skill of a single fan editor.
So who is watching Mandalorian? I am that’s who.
Watched the 4 available episodes of The Mandalorian last night.
It started out really strong. Like yeah, even more Star War! Aw Yiss.
But then during episode 3 I sloped from yay to meh. Episode 4 was entirely meh.
Episode 4 specifically gave me flashbacks to the '90s. The storytelling was so dated and uninspired. The acting wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t anything to write home about. I felt like I had flipped on a TV to a random prime time TV show where everyone just happened to be wearing Star Wars cosplay. It gave me all the same feelings that made me stop watching live action American TV in the first place.
If you’re going to pull a Cowboy Bebop situation where only some of the episodes focus on the main plot, and the others are completely episodic with a little bit of character development, then those other episodes need to be absolutely wild. I need that high concept biz. Give me that episode where the fridge fungus kills everyone in an Alien homage. Give me that Dexter’s Lab episode where Mandark can only say “ha ha ha”. Don’t give me a random episode of Xena: Warrior Princess with the costumes changed.
The fact that it’s Star Wars means it should be super easy to make powerful episodic content. That makes it even worse that they failed. I’ll give 'em one more shot to see how they do in episode 5. If not, then I’ll either stop watching, or figure out which episodes are the real plot episodes and watch only those.
I’ve been fine with every episode, even 4’s noticeable slowness and purely episodic story, but the heart of it is that Mandalorian is expressly accessing and using Western tropes and stories for all of its plots. To me that’s great since I’m a genre fan, but I can see other people not being willing to see it for that reason.
Yes, it’s fine to trope, but you gotta put at least a little spin on it. If you’re going to just tell it straight, then you have to execute on another level.
Like if your theater troupe puts on Hamlet. You either need to mix it up in a new amazing way, like many do. Or you can just play it straight, but just do it SO WELL, that you put others to shame. Or you can be god-tier and do both at the same time. Mandalorian does neither. It plays it straight, and does it at a C level. It’s not an F, but it’s also not worth my time.
I also think there are people like my mom who are totally okay with this level of effort and miss easy, comfort TV like Xena.
Oh there is definitely an audience for it. Otherwise why would they produce it in such great quantities? It’s just not me.
It’s the same reason I don’t like Star Trek, or Firefly, or Battlestar Galactica, or whatever other TV show is hot. Even though all the other nerds are into it.
Lol, after all that Star Wars vs. Star Trek over the years. Here for the first time, we finally get what is arguably Star Wars doing Star Trek.
Only natural since the nu-Trek films and Discovery are essentially Trek doing star wars.
Part of why I haven’t had the urge to watch Mando yet is that I have this kind of thing from all the other shows I’m watching.
- The Good Place (rapid plot progression, big swerves)
- She-Ra (big swerves)
- His Dark Materials (beautiful, good acting, closely following book theme/mood)
- Carole & Tuesday (leaning into the music concept. e.g.: characters performing full songs Nodame Cantabile style)
- Dark Crystal (puppets!)
If a show slows down but doesn’t have a heavy high concept, suberb active/visuals, or at least big swerves, I have plenty of better things to watch these days.
Just watch the first 3 episodes of Mando only.
The 4th episode is literally Arrive at a village. Meet some single-episode characters. The village is threatened by barbarios. Defend the village from the barbarios and their “monster” (an AT-ST). Convenient excuse forcing characters to leave at the end of the episode. Convenient excuse is obviously going to be used to get the characters to move along to the next 30 minute adventure at the end of every episode.