Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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

The rest are not so good.

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.

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.

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.

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

This thread epic fail.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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'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.

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.