IV, V, I, II, III, VI
February 29th, 2012




That’s the Ernst Riser sequence and it is epic.

Start with this essay by Rod Hilton, passed along by Galley Friend A.K. It’s about the best order to watch the Star Wars series for someone who’s never seen any of the movies. And the case for IV, V, I, II, III, VI is quite compelling:

George Lucas be­lieves that Star Wars is the story of Anakin Sky­walker, but it is not. The pre­quels, which es­tab­lish his char­ac­ter, are so poor at being char­ac­ter-dri­ven that, if the series is about Anakin, the entire series is a failure. Anakin is not a re­lat­able char­ac­ter, Luke is.

This al­ter­na­tive order (which a com­menter has pointed out is called Ernst Risterorder) inserts the prequel trilogy into the middle, al­low­ing the series to end on the sen­si­ble ending point (the de­struc­tion of the Empire) while still be­gin­ning with Luke’s journey.

Ef­fec­tively, this order keeps the story Luke’s tale. Just when Luke is left with the burning ques­tion “how did my father become Darth Vader?” we take an ex­tended flash­back to explain exactly how. Once we un­der­stand how his father turned to the dark side, we go back to the main sto­ry­line and see how Luke is able to rescue him from it and salvage the good in him.

The prequel back­story comes at the perfect time, because Empire Strikes Back ends on a huge cliffhanger. Han is in car­bonite, Vader is Luke’s father, and the Empire has hit the re­bel­lion hard. De­lay­ing the res­o­lu­tion of this cliffhanger makes it all the more sat­is­fy­ing when Return of the Jedi is watched.

But wait–there’s more! Hilton proposes an alternate sequence: IV, V, II, III, VI.

Look closely. You’ll see what he’s done there. I’m not going to spoil his reasoning. You should read the whole thing yourself.

Hilton’s most mind-blowing reveal, however is way at the top. And it’s this:

For people that couldn’t care less about the prequel trilogy, I suggest Harmy’s De­spe­cial­ized Edi­tions. They are 720p blu-ray discs (AVCHD discs ac­tu­ally) that are the result of “Harmy” from The Orig­i­nal Trilogy forums painstak­ingly re­con­struct­ing the the­atri­cal re­leases of all three films uti­liz­ing a wide variety of video sources as well as custom mattes.

And . . . I’m spent.

If someone is already sitting on a Harmy edition blu-ray . . .

  1. rearadmir0l March 3, 2012 at 4:09 pm

    Good job being ahead of the internet curve !!!! This didnt pop up on my usual RSS feeds until today. My wife is a Star Wars virgin, and is having back surgery this week — as soon as she is unable to move, I plan to remedy that situation and do the Machete viewing.

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