Star Wars: why Episode 1 is not important.

Featuring Star Wars watch list and Peter Ward’s Time Rep.

For those of us who are children of the seventies there is only one series of films worth talking about, no, not The Godfather or The French Connection: Star Wars.

For those of us who are children of the seventies there is only one series of films worth trying to forget, no, not Pirates of the Caribbean or Transformers: Star Wars.

This is the dichotomy that we fans of the Star Wars universe must endure, a love for the original saga and a disappointment for the prequels.

But there is a way to enjoy the whole saga as George Lucas intended without sitting through the first three movies (I mean eps 1 to 3) yearning for them to end and then you can start enjoying yourself. Last week I had a conversation with fellow writer Joe Hewett about the Star Wars sextology and he had heard of a way to sit through the whole saga, the perfect way to enjoy the movies without twists being ruined, and here it is, the movies should be watched in this order:

A New Hope

The Empire Strikes Back

Attack of the Clones

Revenge of the Sith

Return of the Jedi

With one notable exception from the list: The Phantom Menace. Really, what is the point of TPM? We learn nothing save for the fact that Anakin Skywalker is a miracle baby without a father (err, what?); we also learn that Palpatine is a pretty sinister power hungry politician (err, yeah, got that) and we learn that all the Jedi did was a lot of talking and sitting around; could have probably understood the movies without all of the knowledge above.

So to start, we have the fun and adventure of the first movie while the web is being cast and questions are being raised; then we move on the mother of all twisters to then go back in time, a flashback if you will, to find out what really happened, to then travel to the present and see Darth redeem himself.

So at roughly two hours per film I suggest that the Star Wars day starts at midday with the 1977 original (although it’s not the original, you can’t get that version anymore); then straight on to the rest and you should be learned and exhausted by 10pm where you can go to bed cuddling an Ewok.

Of course, you could always add the excellent Clone Wars series of cartoons to the experience.

Last week I read Peter Ward’s Time Rep; this e-book is available on Amazon for the Kindle and can also be downloaded as a free-book. I loved the concept of the book and the story had excellent pace, but one thing I found annoying was the extent of mistakes in the wording, not grammatical, but words missing. As much as I love the whole e-book revolution and am a part of it myself, I think there is a danger for writers to rush their work out without properly editing their script; as much as I enjoyed Time Rep, I felt that it was let down by this apparent laziness. We’re not all perfect and we can’t all afford to have our manuscripts professionally edited, but if you read through your work, laboriously, then you really would be doing yourself a huge favour rather than selling your work short. 

Star Wars is available at Amazon on Blue-Ray

Time Rep by Peter Ward is available at Amazon for Kindle