Star Wars: How To Watch The Movies In The New Machete Order

The Star Wars franchise is constantly growing. As it stands, there are 12 canonical films and nine TV shows. It may never achieve the sheer quantity of content as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's still no small task to watch the entire Star Wars story. In 2011, blogger Rod Hilton proposed a condensed, reshuffled viewing order that minimizes watch time and focuses the narrative. He called it the Machete Order. 

Disney has released a few new Star Wars films since 2011, but USA Today updated Hilton's list to account for the new projects. According to Hilton, the Machete Order is a better narrative structure because it firmly follows Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) journey, and, as Hilton notes, Luke is the central character of Star Wars.

The Machete Order is as follows:

• "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope" (1977)

• "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back" (1980)

• "Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones" (2002)

• "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" (2005)

• "Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi" (1983)

• "Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens" (2015)

• "Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi" (2017)

• "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker" (2019)

This list ignores all nine TV shows, "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," "Solo: A Star Wars Story," and "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace." Controversially, "The Phantom Menace" never made the cut, even back in 2011, but Hilton's reasoning makes sense.

In his original blog post, Rod Hilton claims "The Phantom Menace" is irrelevant to the Machete Order because it adds nothing to Luke Skywalker's story. When defending his stance, he said, "Every character established in ['The Phantom Menace'] is either killed or removed before it ends (Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn, Chancellor Valorum), unimportant (Nute Gunray, Watto), or established better in a later episode (Mace Windu, Darth Sidious). Does it ever matter that Palpatine had an apprentice before Count Dooku? ... Does it ever matter that Obi-Wan was being trained by Qui-Gon? Nope ... "

Hilton also notes that by excluding "The Phantom Menace," midi-chlorians, Jar-Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), and young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Llyod, who fans bashed) are all but erased from the lore, something he believes to be a net positive. The only other significant change is the Machete Order places "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" right after Luke realizes Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) is his father in "The Empire Strikes Back," making them serve as an extended flashback sequence while protecting the narrative's twists. After that, the last four films are watched in the standard chronological order. Every now and then, things get to be simple.