It may seem absolutely crazy, but it’s true. Some people haven’t seen the Star Wars movies. How this happened is not clear, and it’s not a widespread problem to be sure, but it does exist. If you’re one of these people who somehow grew up without the Star Wars movies in your life, there is help available. If you don’t have the time to watch six entire films before December 18, then just watch this video and get caught up on all six films in less than three minutes.
If your primary focus is learning and understanding the Skywalker family storyline of the previous films then this video, from Eclectic Method, actually does a remarkable job of hitting all the major plot points in a very short period. It doesn’t waste time with any scenes that don’t include a piece of dialogue important to that story. As evidence, The Empire Strikes Back is only given less than 10 seconds of total time in the entire video. Luke meets Yoda. Luke finds out Darth Vader is his father. When you think about, nothing else of importance actually happens to Luke in the film.
Of course, by focusing on the Skywalker family, other aspects of the films are entirely edited out. Han Solo is nowhere to be seen in the entire video. While removing him takes out a massive chunk of the original trilogy it is true that his character is really unimportant to Luke’s character arc. Han is always off doing something else when Luke is dealing with Darth Vader, so by focusing on one, you have no choice but to remove the other.
The other interesting thing to note is that the prequel trilogy is actually over half of the total video. Whether we chalk that up to the fact that the prequels are more nuanced stories with more structure and detail or to the fact that characters just won’t stop talking is entirely up to you. At least we don’t have to hear much from Anakin in The Phantom Menace.
Ultimately the Skywalker focus is likely the right choice going into The Force Awakens. The fact that we don’t know a lot about what’s going on with Luke Skywalker, and by design, certainly implies that the Skywalker story will continue in the new set of films. While watching this video alone would not give you much insight into several of the characters you’ll see in the new film, it does tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the Skywalker family. Is there anything crucial to the previous films that they left out?
