Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

4 5 6 stop

Machete order or bust.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uQCgrP5jelY

watch them in release order for sure, starting with Episode IV and ending with Episode III.

As for prequel versions, wherever you got the 4kXX files from should also have Schorman's HDTV rips of the prequels that I recommend. That way you get to see ugly ass puppet yoda in The Phantom Menace the way god intended, but you don't have to suffer DVD quality. If you can't find them, shoot me a DM or just download any blu-ray/disney+ rip, the prequels didn't change too much over the years besides some effects being re-rendered here and there.

Also big recommend the Andor TV show and Rogue One once you're done with the prequels. They connect the two eras nicely.

edit: oh yeah, i totally forgot. watch the Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars Miniseries between Episode II and Episode III. It's not super important to the story but I have a lot of nostalgia for it, and you'll enjoy seeing General Grievous actually looking cool before they completely squander him in the movie.

Fan orders are a terrible idea don't do them. Watch in release order, feel free to skip parts that aren't interesting. The fact of the matter is that the entire series has been written by the seat of the pants of the people making it, meaning that there are absolutely no insights to be gained by watching prequels before the originals, and every entry in the series has taken great pains to be comprehensible on its own. If you skip stuff you might miss out on some "I RECOGNIZE THAT!" moments in later material, but that's fine.

Also... the prequels are really bad. You may want to skip them entirely. I would suggest watching the Original Trilogy, The Clone Wars (the 2D animated tv movie, not the 3D animated tv show), the Mandalorian season 1, and then Andor seasons 1 & 2. Those series represent everything worthwhile in the Star Wars TV and movie canon, literally nothing else is worth your time.

Try to find the original versions of the first three movies without the added CG that messes with the story a little.

skip it and watch stark trek TNG instead

First watch these:

• Star Wars Holiday Special
• The Ewok Adventure
• Ewoks: The Battle for Endor

When you have finished those, you should be filled with hate and suffering. You will welcome the dark side. Now you are ready.

Start watching

• The Phantom Menace.

Stop watching before the pod race ends.

Play the videogame

• Star Wars: Pod Racer.

Crash the first pod race, killing little Anakin.

Congratulations!

You've stopped the evil Sith lords from rising to power. You've saved the Ewoks. You've saved Jarjar. Balance in the universe remains balanced. You truly are one with the force. You are ready for the light side.

Watch

• Clone Wars

The animated series that aired on Cartoon Network. Not "The Clone Wars"!!! That's different. Don't watch that one. It sucks. You want the one made by Genddy Tartakovski, known for his masterpieces, Samurai Jack and Dexter's Laboratory and his pivotal work in the series The Powerpuff Girls.

You wont need to watch anything else.

You wont want to watch anything else.

Ever.

Don’t bother with the sequels. Tfa was okay, but it’s shit by og standards.

I'd recommend watching them in release order, as that's how most people have experienced them. You'll have a better understanding of the commonly ascribed strengths and weaknesses of the respective films and trilogies if you watch them this way. It is also very common opinion that each trilogy is substantially worse than the previous one, so if you watch them this way then you have an off-ramp at the end of the first and second trilogies if/when you've decided you've had enough - you'll never have to sit through bad films to get to the good ones.

The Machete Order is an interesting idea but I'm a little hesitant to recommend it because so many of these fan edits are designed by people who are in so deep that they tend to skim/omit information that is actually relevant to first time viewers who have no idea what is happening. Star Wars fans, like all fans of these geek franchises, often have a hard time seeing things from the perspective of people who don't share their obsession. For that reason, I also strongly recommend against watching any of the TV series or filler/standalone films until you've finished at least the first two trilogies, because they are written for Star Wars fans to flesh out the events around the main films and are filled with tons of irrelevant references and fan service that are just going to confuse and/or bore you.

I'm a fan of the Machete Order.

There may be some spoilers in that blog post, it's been a while since I read it, so here it is in summary:

• A New Hope (4)
• Empire Strikes Back (5)
• Attack of the Clones (2)
• Revenge of the Sith (3)
• Return of the Jedi (5)

Phantom Menace is omitted because it's the weakest of the prequel trilogy and everything that happens in it is summarized at the beginning of Attack of the Clones anyway. If you want to be a completionist then watch it between Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones.

There's good reasons for following this order, but it's hard to describe them without spoiling anything. Basically, Lucas assumed you'd watched the original trilogy when he made the prequels, so it's got a bunch of spoilers in it that the Machete Order preserves quite nicely.

1. Star Wars
2. Empire Strikes Back
3. Maybe Rogue One

The rest are not so good.

Ctrl+f: "holiday special" - Phrase not found.

This thread epic fail.

Watch in release order. This is the way they were written so it will make the most sense as a first time viewer.

You will hear about the Machete order if you research Star Wars viewing orders, but this is best for subsequent watches.

Aside from the OT and PT, the projects I recommend are the Clone Wars series (it's a lot though), Rogue One, Andor, and the Mandalorian.

Kenobi was meh but had some really good moments.

Watch the sequel trilogy once if you must, but I think they're pretty bad and forgettable.

I'd do my best to watch them in the order they were commercially released so you can appreciate how damaging and awful the edits are.

Definitely 456-123 order, I know some people have different ways they prefer to watch but I think that kind of detracts from watching how the franchise evolves over the years.

If you want more after that, rogue one and andor is pretty good, clone wars/bad batch has some good stuff (though I'd recommend finding a watch guide for clone wars, some episodes are straight up kids stuff, other episodes are almost literally Vietnam war and decapitations)

I think the sequels are interesting to watch, I'm a bit of an 8 apologist in some areas, but you have to go in with the expectation that there's a general decline in story progression and making sense from movie to movie.

Honestly though I think the series has a general decline after 5. It's all not bad, and there's some good stuff, but if you find yourself uninterested don't force yourself to continue after like episode 6.

Just posted this in a thread about watching the show Andor. Additional context, I’d watch the movies first before you decide to get into any of the shows

——-

I highly recommend Rogue One as well. It follows Cassian Andor as a spy for the rebellion immediately after the second (and final) season of the show.

Rogue One is a story set immediately before the first movie: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Immediately as in the final scene of Rogue One is the first scene of A New Hope.

Similar to the other commenter, the problem is that Rogue One is by far the best movie of the entire franchise, so you start at the high point.

If you like the movie and want more Star Wars, I recommend this order. I’ll list the title and the “episode” number

1. Rogue One (3.9)
2. A New Hope (4)
3. The Empire Strikes Back (5)
4. The Phantom Menace (1)
5. Attack of the Clones (2)
6. Revenge of the Sith (3)
7. Return of the Jedi (6)

There are three more movies after #6, but there’s almost no point in watching them.

It’s really important to remember that a lot of the Star Wars movies aren’t good but they’re cultural institutions and you kinda have to accept them as they are. The writer/director of the original trilogy spent a lot of time tweaking and editing them after their original releases including adding new scenes digitally created decades after the release.

Watch versions as close as possible to the original theatrical versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Don't even bother watching anything else with the words "Star Wars" on it, life's too short to sit around watching boring, shitty media that wastes your time. Can't say I recommend almost any of the novels, either.

The prequels were made with the idea in mind that people had seen the originals, and after they saw the prequels, they would watch it in Prequel->OT order.

The correct way to watch Star Wars if you've never seen it before is Original Trilogy, then Prequel Trilogy.

Make sure to watch Rogue One between E 3 & 4.

The machete method Is my recommendation, I did this with a newbie and they really enjoyed it. 4, 5, 2, 3, 6

with a lightsaber handle in your butt. and a droid on your lap.

Definitely in chronological order of release as the other comment says, but make sure to find the despecialized edition fan re edit which brings the high quality changes to the resolution and sound, but leaves the movies as they were originally shown without the terrible edits from Lucas in the late 90s.

Also, feel free to skip all of the sequels. They are nonsensical and self defeating with every successive installment. I gave the episode 7 a pass on their rehashing of the original and was excited to see a female hero taking up the mantle, but 8 and 9 just undo any positive or coherent story/message structure that could have spun from 7.

Edit: Do not miss Rogue One or Andor. I'd watch those after the prequel trilogy and in order of release too

I don't know if anyone has done special versions of the prequels, so I'd just watch them as-is. George Lucas hasn't re-released a fucked-up version of those (yet, anyway).

In my own opinion, these are the exact versions of the original series I recommend:
05-Star.Wars.4K77.2160p.UHD.no-DNR.35mm.x265-v1.0.mkv
The.Empire.Strikes.Back.1980.D+80.v2.1.UHD.2160p-oohteedee.mkv
03-Return.of.the.Jedi.4K83.35mm.minimalNR.v1.6.UHD.2160p.mkv

Or the 1080p versions if 2k is too much for you. I didn't make notes about why I preferred each one when choosing them a few years ago, so if there are any newer edits you might evaluate them yourself. And apparently Radarr overwrote my selections at one point because none of my file sizes match the table...

Only watch OG trilogy pre-90's edits and leave the rest to your imagination

Unpopular opinion: just watch Visions S1&2 and then forget about the rest.

I have a master playlist on my Plex server with every Star Wars show and film in timeline order, including episodes in between episodes and seasons in between seasons (mostly for the Tales of the X series and for Rebels/Andor). It took me ages to set up, but it’s based on an article I saw somewhere. If I can find it,I’ll edit this post and link it here. But, as I recall, googling “Star Wars timeline order” should get you a pretty good and authoritative set of lists. Some differ, but they all tend to explain their decisions.

I also did this for all of the Star Trek series and films. That’s a lot longer. The Star Wars one is ~8 days. The Trek one is 33 days.

I've watched/have the Anti-cheese Edits of the Prequels I-III, and the De-Specialized Edits of Episodes IV-VI, and truly enjoyed both.

I don't recall seeing 4k versions of either of these available yet, nor am I aware of suitable source re-leases that could be used to make such. Best of luck to you.