After a life spent immersed in pop culture, here’s what it was like to experience all six Star Wars movies for the first time in 2015.

I’m nearly thirty, and until last week, I’d never seen Star Wars.

It’s impossible to avoid the hype surrounding the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but as someone with no attachment whatsoever to the franchise, I’d been tuning it out. However, just enough of it seeped through, and one day not long ago, it struck me: this new movie is going to be good. Not just the nostalgia factor. Not just the special effects. The impression I was getting via fandom was that this is going to be a well-written, progressive, character-driven movie that will hold up on its own, and all at once I realized that if I do not participate in enjoying it, I am going to be missing out.

Odd as it is to me that J.J. Abrams switched his Star-power from Trek to Wars, his work on the 2009 reboot made a total Trekkie out of me — a complete virgin to the Final Frontier. I saw Star Trek nine times in cinemas, and have since become obsessed with the original series as well, so I kind of know what he’s capable of. But his new Star Wars movie isn’t a reboot — it’s a continuation of George Lucas’s overall story, and I knew that if I wanted to properly experience The Force Awakens, I was going to have to watch the other six movies first.

The reasons why I’d never seen Star Wars before are wide-ranging: at first, it was because I grew up with a disinterest bordering on distaste for space-based science fiction, a prejudice that got slowly dismantled by Firefly, Doctor Who, and as I mentioned, the Star Trek universe. Sci-fi opened up to me, but everything Star Wars related remained solidly in the “no thanks” column. I always carried a mild, underlying amount of scorn about the franchise and those who swore by it — that may have had something to do with the people who’ve driven the fannish narrative for the past 40 years, something I’ll touch on more later — and the vibe I’d always gotten was that once you look past the impressive-for-the-era effects, Star Wars wasn’t a very well-written or acted body of work, that it lacked depth, and that it wasn’t really about the human experience, especially compared to the ground-breaking early days of Star Trek.

However, recently, I’ve been trying out this radical new concept of not shooting down stuff that other people love, or wasting energy on actively disliking things. My attempt to eliminate negative attitudes has been running kind of concurrently with the resurgence of Star Wars, and through bits of meta that passed on my Tumblr dash, GIF sets of Original Trilogy deleted scenes, and charming interviews with the new cast, I realized that there might be something in this for me after all. The real deciding factor was my discovery of the Machete Order — a blogger’s 2011 suggestion which has caught on in certain circles. Instead of watching Star Wars in the order of release, or the actual episode chronology, Machete Order places the prequel trilogy as a flashback — after watching Episodes IV and V, at the big daddy Vader reveal, you go back and watch I, II and III to see how Anakin got to that point, before watching Luke deal with this realization throughout Episode VI. This option instantly appealed to me as a method that would add a lot more character depth and emotional impact to Luke and Anakin’s story and made me more interested in Star Wars than I’ve ever been before.

Everyone knows the basics about Star Wars, even if you haven’t seen it. It’s inescapable, particularly for someone immersed in many other offshoots of pop culture and fandom. For most of my life, particularly before the rise of Harry Potter, Star Wars was still the biggest phenomenon, the most referenced touchstone in all of pop culture. I’ve always known enough to identify when something is a Star Wars reference — in fact, I felt like I knew everything it was possible to know about these movies without having actually watched them. I knew who was who in the Skywalker family tree, and who Ben was. I knew about Tauntauns and AT-ATs and Ewoks. I knew that Samuel L. Jackson’s only stipulation about his character was that he got to have a purple lightsaber. I knew that the remastered editions created character assassination controversy over Han no longer shooting first. Star Wars is so ingrained into our lives that it’s impossible to not have picked up on a lot about it via sheer osmosis, and all of that information created a preconceived notion for me of what these movies were.

Here’s what I discovered when I took a week to actually sit down and watch them.

Keep reading on page 2: ‘A New Hope’ and ‘The Empire Strikes Back’

‘Episode IV: A New Hope’

• Okay, so Chewbacca is sentient — this is a thing a thing I’ve never been sure about, if he was a furry alien with personhood or if he was like, a pet.
• The droids are also more sentient than expected, to a degree that’s both charming and disturbing. The fact that they’re given so much personality makes the prejudice against them quite uncomfortable. This is a factor that the series never goes on to address — it’s never really explained if their reactions and initiative are genuine free thought, or if they’re just programmed to perform their purpose in a way that humans find pleasing. Is it, in fact, no better than slavery?
• I also assumed, for some unknown reason, that R2-D2 and C-3PO had always been Luke’s little buddies, but it turns out they’ve been freaking everywhere.
• Vader is such a drama queen and it’s amazing. Not what I expected AT ALL. The fact that the Empire goons don’t really believe in the Force and that he’s seen as a semi-crazy religious fanatic was a new and interesting factor that took me totally by surprise.
• While we’re on that subject, the use of the Force is super sketchy, even by Obi-Wan Kenobi. Like, even using the Light Side is kind of ethically questionable when it comes to mind tricks. Is this not a problem for anyone else?
• I’ve heard “as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced” parodied so many times that I had subconsciously assumed it initially came from a comedic source, like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
• The impression I expected to have of each of the main trio turned out to be 100% wrong.
• I expected Leia to be the kind of damsel character who becomes a bad-ass eventually but has to like, learn that she can save herself. Instead, she’s more competent and tough than the boys from her very first scene, and is basically 1000% done with them all the time. Han is kind of a dick, a genuinely self-serving character who severely rubbed me the wrong way from the get go. And Luke isn’t a cheesy, boring, cock-blocking, whiny kid, he’s lovely: a clever, long-suffering, subtle, natural hero with an old soul and beautiful integrity.
• It’s worrying to me that the narrative being shared by the prominent voices in pop culture about these three is so opposite to what I ended up seeing on screen, and I think it says a lot about who those prominent voices have been for the past 40 years — namely, idiotic boys who idolize the wrong aspects of Han as the pinnacle of manhood, therefore projecting a false image that discredits the value of all three leads. I really like them all, and I hate nerd culture for lying to me about them.
• It should be noted that even when watching, I totally did not notice Han coming back to help with the final fight — I lost track of all the rebel pilots and when he greets Luke in the base afterwards, I literally thought it was just like “Look! I stayed around and waited for you to return, great job buddy, I’ll totally have your back from here on out!” I had no idea why he was being awarded with a medal until someone filled me in. Oops.
• Also, Obi-Wan does pretty much nothing but die and Yoda isn’t even in this movie — with all the fuss surrounding them, I thought they’d be much more prominent from the get-go.

‘Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back’

• The main thing I took away from this movie is that Han Solo has likely been responsible for the gross behavior of several generations of geeky men.
• Let me break that down. Leia is a super fantastic feminist character. It isn’t like “a product of the time” that women weren’t powerful or something — when Empire opens, she’s in command of the rebel base. It isn’t portrayed as unusual that she is respected by everyone.
• Except Han.
• The way he “flirts,” the fact he pushes and pushes and presumes and rejects her agency, despite it genuinely ang/ering her, is flat out unacceptable in my books.
• It’s super obvious to me that Leia falls for Han despite that behavior, not because of it. She values who he is when that nonsense falls away — his bravery and loyalty and whatever, his good heart, the way he went out to save Luke. He’s pretty decent, that’s plain to see. But his outward demeanor is terrible. It’s not like Han wears her down with that stuff and that she finally finds it charming. The whole point is that they come into their true feelings once the stakes are raised and the bullshit is stripped away.
• However, I can see very plainly the way that Han’s aggressive surface behavior has been emulated by many terrible men, who think that this is the way to be attractive and confident and what will end up making girls want them. It doesn’t. It’s just mean and creepy.
• Congratulations, nerds, you have missed the entire point of Han Solo, Leia Organa, and character development in general.
• Enough about that. Luke remains my main bae. Little things like him continuing to call Obi-Wan “Ben,” and him talking to the droids like they’re people of value, continue to endear him to me, as do his attempts at patience when with crazy-cakes Yoda.
• I’ve just finished covering The Legend of Korra for Rewatchable and I cannot believe that NO ONE mentioned to me the fact that Luke’s experience training with Yoda in the swamp is something that Korra directly copies in a way that has to be intentional. One of the most interesting parts about this experience is seeing just how many things I love have borrowed from Star Wars.
• I really liked the bit where Vader can sense the Falcon (sans Luke) due to Leia’s presence — it’s a great bit of foreshadowing.
• The most significant thing that it turns out I didn’t know about this entire series is that Vader isn’t the biggest bad — Palpatine is. I was aware of the existence of an Emperor but didn’t know how significant he was, and it turns out that he’s the absolute worst in a way that creates a little empathy for Vader. This is much clearer in II, III and VI, but the hints start here.
• Vader trying to pitch the idea of turning Luke to the Dark Side — does he genuinely want to harness his power, or does he just want him not to die? How long has Vader known that Luke exists? This aspect seems really inconsistent.
• I didn’t know when in the Original Trilogy the father reveal took place — I kind of assumed that it happened at Vader’s death, and was not ready for the fact that Luke had a whole other movie to reflect on that and try to redeem or rescue his father.
• If someone says “search your feelings” one more time I am going to cut off my own hand with a lightsaber.

Next: ‘The Phantom Menace’ and ‘Attack of the Clones’

‘Episode I: The Phantom Menace’

• I’m told you can leave off Episode I from the Machete Order, but I’m both an obsessive completist and a huge Ewan McGregor fan, so I kept it in.
• Mistake.
• This is really… not a good movie, is it.
• The pacing is just terrible. I found the introduction very hard to follow, and every action scene – the battles and, oh God have mercy, the pod race — drags on for way too long.
• Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi is a gift and the only reason this movie is worth sitting through. His imitation of Alec Guinness is uncanny, with delightful added sass levels. No wonder he’s in so many memes.
• You guys, Jar-Jar Binks is really not as annoying as everyone makes out. Where’s the beef? His buffoonery causes just as much (or as little) nonsense as C-3PO’s in Empire, but I haven’t seen anyone hate on that so viciously. Jar-Jar is fine. Let him be.
• I guess, to give credit where credit is due, this movie has some important groundwork about like, why droids make the world’s worst army, and why Ani and Padme make the world’s worst couple, and stuff.
• Why don’t the other Jedis notice the Force in Palpatine? That would have saved them a lot of drama later on. How does one identify the Force? Obi-Wan had to test Anakin’s blood, but in other moments, various Jedis seem to be able to sense each other.
• The Sith and the Dark Side in general really aren’t explained enough — like what, exactly, is different? How does it work? Is it just using a different emotional “fuel” for your power? Does the use of it actually warp your mind, or do you have to be a dick to start with?
• I remember Darth Maul being on so much merch in 1999. He was like the face of the whole franchise resurgence. Yeah, turns out he’s literally a nothing character. Is he the titular “phantom menace?” I guess? Well, he’s dead and I can’t recall a single line of his dialogue.
• OH MY GOD ANAKIN IS JEDI JESUS. WHAT. NO FATHER. HIS BIRTH WAS THE IMMACULATE FORCE-CEPTION. ARE THEY SERIOUS WITH THIS.
• Knowing the reveal in advance, Padme’s playing swapsies with her maids wasn’t hard to follow, but I don’t understand if, upon the film’s release, we were meant to realize the whole time that Handmaiden Padme was Queen Amidala, or if we were meant to be shocked.
• Well, either way, that white dress of hers at the end looks like something President Snow forced her to wear.

‘Episode II: Attack of the Clones’






• Anakin Skywalker needs a good smack to the back of the head, he’s such an arrogant little shit and really bad at being a Jedi — behavior-wise, not power-wise, I mean. I understand that this is the entire point of the prequel trilogy, but man, it’s tough to deal with. Like, this is his story — he’s, in a way, the hero — but they couldn’t make him too sympathetic, and that certainly worked out, because oh my god, shut up, Anakin. Find your chill.
• Like, your floor length black cloak is really not subtle.
• It’s a good thing we’re not actually meant to root for Ani and Padme because as annoying as they are solo, they are utterly intolerable together. I cannot believe that someone actually approved that script and allowed those scenes to be filmed and put out in the universe. I’m embarrassed for them.
• Anakin’s romantic declaration is the worst — not only is it horribly written and acted, it puts the blame on Padme for his feelings. Like, she flat out rejects him, but apparently she just changes her mind because that’s what happens in Star Wars. Unlike Leia and Han, this isn’t a matter of people missing the point. She really does just change her mind.
• Natalie Portman, you have an Oscar. I’m so sorry this movie happened to you.
• Like, that picnic scene. You should sue. I’m serious.
• “Be mindful of your thoughts” = “Keep it in your pants.” Nice. Also, if Yoda can sense all of Anakin’s rage, does that mean he can also sense all of his… other emotions?
• Aside from showcasing the worst love story in the galaxy, this movie is actually pretty good with a lot of complex and unexpected twists.
• I very much enjoyed Obi-Wan’s interplanetary detective adventures, also his beard, diner buddies and increased sass level. “You want to go home and rethink your life.” Ben, please.
• The entire big ending battle in the arena was great, and Padme finally got to do something competent instead of sitting around being ineffectual. That poor girl. She’s meant to be this very prolific politician, and she doesn’t get to show any of that off. At least here she gets to prove that she’s better than the boys at getting out of handcuffs.
  
• Count Dooku’s double-bluff gave me whiplash, as did the discovery of the Stormtrooper origins, and watching Palpatine beginning to groom Anakin is so sinister and so creepy and so much more interesting character-wise than anything else in this series.
• I get why they did it, but using CGI for Yoda and R2 instead of puppets was actually quite jarring. I’m glad to hear that The Force Awakens will feature a good amount of animatronics.
• No idea why they felt a need to give Boba Fett (who people seem obsessed with for reasons that I’ve totally missed, because from what I saw, he does barely anything in the originals) an emotional origin story, but there you go.
• I feel like the Jedi are very bad at keeping or checking records. Like, if Dooku was an actual Jedi who ordered the clones and then defected, how did they not know where he ended up once he left the Jedi order?
• Same deal in regards to Anakin and Padme’s ill-advised marriage. If it’s official, is that not on a record anywhere that might throw up a red flag, like, hey, we have this guy registered as a Jedi who’s also registered on a marriage certificate?
• What else happened… Oh, yeah, they went back to Tatooine. I have questions about Ani’s mom getting bought by that dude who married her. Was she like a sex slave or was it legit? Also, there’s the future Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Sorry you’re going to die horribly!

In conclusion: ‘Revenge of the Sith’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’

‘Episode III: Revenge of the Sith’



• I guess Anakin has graduated from Padawan school now because he’s allowed to have ridiculous hair and an incredibly unsubtle all-black leather outfit. He’s also got a much more fun and friendly dynamic with Obi-Wan — brotherly, homoerotic, whatever you want to call it. It’s great, for the twelve seconds it lasts.
• Ani’s become better at being a Jedi since his secret marriage — I guess if he knows he has a little rebellion tucked away, it’s easier for him to put up with all the protocol. Anyway, he has found some chill, which makes him a bit more likeable, at least at first.
• Of course, this is Anakin Skywalker, don’t get your hopes up. It’s still confusing to me — do they actually want you to root for him at any point, given what we all know is coming?
• Tell us again how wonderful it is that you’re pregnant, Padme. Come on, once more with feeling. Spoiler alert: it is not wonderful. Another spoiler alert: if you make out in a public government building everyone is going to see you.
• I’m assuming that no one has ever told Anakin about the prophecies about himself, because he seems to just think that the Jedis don’t like or trust him, which ends up making him resentful. Maybe if they filled him in about the risks surrounding him, he’d feel more comfortable with the situation and not turn to the friendly ear of his good buddy Palpatine.
• Okay, straight up, how has no-one noticed by this point that Palpatine is shifty? He isn’t exactly trying to hide it any more.
• Has no one in these movies ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Come on, guys! It’s always the actions you take to try and avoid the thing that end up making the thing happen! Just pretend like you never saw it and all will be well.
• Yoda’s whole spiel about letting go of what you fear to lose is exactly the same lesson that Aang learns from his guru in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Just saying.
• This movie really doesn’t hold back on how thoroughly Palpatine has been manipulating Anakin. It’s classic abuser grooming, it stinks of gaslighting, and it’s just utterly twisted. It’s almost sleazy, and it got to the point where I was relieved that he revealed his true intentions, because it was so blatant that it would really be idiotic for Anakin not to notice. Once Ani does know how the cards fall, Palpatine doesn’t see anything wrong with, you know, sending voicemails directly into Ani’s brain. Cool friend.
• This is actually a very good, very raw movie with some decent character work. Anakin’s growing self-hatred as he ties himself to Palpatine, the way his mind twists the more he uses the Dark Side, the systematic slaughter of the Jedis, Obi-Wan’s grief, Padme’s realization that Anakin is cray-cray… It occurred to me while watching this just how much Obi-Wan’s life is going to suck for the next thirty years, and I got really, really sad for him.
• That being said, Obi-Wan, if you loved him so much maybe you should have given him a clean death and put him out of his misery, instead of cutting off both of his legs and an arm and leaving him on fire? Like, that’s not very humane, and also, he survived to ruin another day. No wonder you went to live in a cave.
• For all that they’re the worst couple ever, the bit at the very end when Anakin is in the Vader mask, using that famously scary voice to ask after Padme is kind of tragic. The surgery to put him into his life-support armor hammers home how much of a cage it is and how completely the new Emperor now owns him. It’s tough to call someone who’s done what Anakin did — killing Jedi children, choking out his pregnant wife, betraying everyone who’s ever loved him — a victim, but it’s also tough to deny that there’s an element of that when it comes to his relationship with Palpatine. A note for future generations: if any politicians show an extra-special creepy interest in your superpowers, just say no, kids.
• Leaving Luke on Tatooine with Anakin’s family is truly a genius move. It’s literally the first place Vader would go, so I’m assuming he doesn’t know the babies got born, which begs the question — when did he actually find out about Luke? And was Obi-Wan ever going to come and get Luke and teach him what’s what? Putting him there was such a scumbag Dumbledore move, like, oh well, it’s dropped.

‘Episode VI: Return of the Jedi’



• Well, Jabba the Hutt is as gross as expected. Why do these Hutt things even have power? Could he take anyone in a fight? He can barely move. But between the droid torture, the slave girls, and the weird Jim Henson animal band doing a musical number that would have fit better in Labyrinth, his lair sure is a horrid place to be.
• In terms of becoming a real hero, and to become worthy of Leia, Han needed to be knocked down and have his surface nonsense stripped away — the carbonite is his Mr Rochester moment, right down to the blinding factor. I don’t mind him and Leia being together after this ordeal, because now, it’s for the right reasons. Their role-reversal of the “I love you,” “I know,” exchange is way preferable to the version in Empire, mainly because it involves Leia blowing someone up.
• For all that I’m like, oh, the Jedi mind tricks are really unethical, Luke doing it is super hot.
• I’ve been hearing my whole life that Mark Hamill is super wooden in these movies, and that the acting isn’t good, but can I just call bullshit on that? His delivery is much more naturalistic than Harrison Ford’s. Han speaks like a cartoon, Luke speaks like a real person.
• After Jabba makes Luke fight the Rancor and he kills it, there’s a shot of its human handler checking that it’s dead and breaking down into full-on sobs. What a strange and distressing thing to showcase.
• Leia tricking and then killing Jabba is obviously the best. She is easily the most competent person in this franchise and once again, I’ve no idea why this isn’t something that gets talked about more. Oh wait, I have plenty of ideas why, and they all start with misogyny.
• How big is the time gap between Empire and this? Because Luke has come on in leaps and bounds in his use of the Force. He made his own green saber and leveled up without ever going back to finish training with Yoda — by the time he gets back, Yoda’s noping the hell out of there.
• “What I told you was true from a certain point of view.” I’m glad Luke was as unimpressed with this little bit of Obi-Wan logic as I was, because seriously, dude?
• This movie is the best of any of them so far, even including the Ewoks. My favorite thing about the Ewoks is that King Julien’s lemur community in Madagascar is obviously based on them. They like to move it, move it.
• Luke and Leia — yes, yes, they’re brother and sister, it’s very sweet. Leia clearly has a lot of potential to master the Force, so I am very keen to see if that is something that’s a part of the new movie. Do you have to commit to the Jedi lifestyle to use the Force, if you just happen to have it?
• I’m still thinking about the way that Palpatine basically owns Vader. Could Anakin have been healed in a way that didn’t make him totally dependant on Palpatine? Would it have made a difference at all in what he chose to do?
• “Now his failure is complete.” – Sick burn, Anakin. You’ve made Obi-Wan’s life suck enough already. Way to salt the wound.
• How, precisely, does Palpatine expect to convince Luke to come over to the Dark Side? Just depending on daddy issues? Ugh, his glee when he has Luke and Vader fighting in front of him — stop making them perform for you, you creep.
• The Machete Order’s greatest triumph lies in the way it lines up the parallels between Vader and Luke and their temptations to the Dark Side. Watching Palpatine trying to score himself another Anakin, watching Vader quietly realize he doesn’t want that for his son, and watching Luke achieve what Anakin couldn’t hits home a lot harder than it would have otherwise. Both sets of trilogies are flawed in different ways, but running them together in this order does seem to elevate them to be the best that they can possibly be, especially in terms of character development.
• Just as I’m asking myself “when will someone finally kill Palpatine,” Vader finally kills Palpatine, which is very satisfying, if about 25 years overdue. I had no idea at all that Vader actually makes good in the end — I assumed that he died in battle with Luke — and I found myself quite touched that he actually did come through in the end, for Luke’s sake.
• This movie should really be called Return of A Jedi — there’s really only one around at any given time. Yoda’s dead, Obi-Wan’s dead, and Luke’s a newbie. The only Jedi to technically “return” is Anakin, in his few moments of redemption. Speaking of which, I watched the remastered editions because I was told it would be less jarring switching between the different eras, but I was still not prepared for the smirky Jedi ghost of Hayden Christensen to appear at the end, replacing the original Vader actor.

In conclusion, what I took away from this experience is that Star Wars in practice is a very different beast to Star Wars in theory, no matter how much it’s been referenced in pretty much everything ever. Every base fact that I knew about Star Wars turned out to be correct, but my initial impression of its lot of deeper matters, like themes and characterization, turned out to be the opposite of what I actually witnessed, which, as I mentioned, says a lot about who’s been dominating the conversation for the past 40 years.

However, I’ve got a feeling that’s all about to change. I’ve already seen The Force Awakens, and as I anticipated, it made watching these six movies, with all their quirks, completely worthwhile. If I know what fandom likes – and I do – the old-school grumpy gatekeepers are in for a nasty surprise. The way that these movies are talked about is about to undergo a dramatic facelift, led by a new breed of fans who finally feel like this is something that they can engage with. And honestly, it’s about time.

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ is in cinemas today